bits and bobbins

been spending the last several days (read: the weekend to now) making pinwheel patchwork blocks, using some beige twill i thrifted ages ago (so long ago i can’t remember when or where i found it), and scraps of silks, cottons, cords and blends. found the instructions for this block in a great patchwork-making book i snagged at purl at some point last year, 501 rotary-cut quilt blocks by judy hopkins.

each block is about 12.5 inches square, and i’ve got about 16 of them, so i’m probably going to gather them up together and make some kind of 4 x 4 foot square wall-hanging thing. never mind that i have no more free wall space on which to hang such a hanging…

i’ve found myself wanting to do a lot of quilting of late, or patchwork, really. wanting to play with fabric, color, design using patchwork as my medium. but not always wanting to go to the trouble of making a bed-sized behemoth. so i’m only committing myself to small-ish wall-hangings (like this one), and i’m having a lot of fun…

another finished object! really? wow!

(truth be told, i have a lot of finished (sewn, knit, or crocheted) objects lingering around, i’ve just been incredibly lax about cataloging (and sharing) them!)

anyhow, this here’s a fairly simple kimono style robe. the pattern is from the 1970s, this pattern to be exact. fabric is patchwork i made myself, from various and sundry scraps i had in my scrap fabric stash. it’s a pretty equal mix of vintage and new fabrics. the edging and belt are made from newly acquired bits of fabric, as is the unseen solid red-orange lining.

the impetus?
most ready-to-wear robes are abysmal, and lack personality (perhaps i’ve been looking in the wrong places? hah!). anyway, i never could find a fun (or sturdy!) robe in the usual mass market retail venues, and haven’t found a thrifted robe that’s up to my own quirky, personal snuff. so i felt i had to take matters into my own hands, as it were. i wanted something really 70s and fun…i think i succeeded.

yes, it’s like wearing a quilt, but that was sort of the point.

ages ago (read: many, many months ago), i mentioned i was working on making a bunch of liberated log cabin style quilt blocks, done in the vein of quilter gwen marston. the method i used is detailed in marston’s book, liberated quiltmaking II.

anyway, i made over one hundred of said log cabin blocks, with the intention of making a wall hanging of some sort, as well as a queen-size quilt, and then using the remainder for experimentation (table runners? potholders? pillows? art? something else??). all the blocks are made using solid-colored scraps of silk, cotton, cotton corduroy, and cotton/poly that were languishing in my stash.

the first of those intentions to be realized was the wall hanging, which is shown above. it’s roughly 3 feet x 3 feet, dimentions-wise. the back has a sleeve for hanging; i’m in the process of finding a nice rod with which to hang it from. i jerry-rigged this up on to the wall of my studio with masking tape in order to snap a photo.

the quilt is merely machine stitched-in-the-ditch; when it comes to quilting in a more complicated manner than that, i’m (currently) pretty lost. so i’m keeping it simple. it’s pretty much straight-line quilting for me at this juncture (this being, like, my 3rd finished quilt-like project ever). i’d love to learn how to stipple and have it look nice! just need to get more practice, probably…?

overall, i’m pretty darn happy with it. making the liberated quilt blocks is tremendously easy, and wickedly addictive. making each little block feels like one is making a little piece of art. putting them all together is a nice exercise in and of itself; one gets to fiddle around with and observe the interplay/balance of colors featured within. it was easy to just let go and let the piece come together intuitively.

(if you’re so inclined, you can peep at some close-ups of the quilt here, here and here.)