Stitch. Bias.

Stitch/bias

I thought that I had thought the name through thoroughly. And I did, or I thought I did. But I’m musing on words right now, so I searched and …. [bear with me on the dictionary stuff, please]:

Stitch [stich]

1. one complete movement of a threaded needle through a fabric or material such as to leave behind it a single loop or portion of thread, as in sewing, embroidery, or the surgical closing of wounds.

Many years ago, a person I barely knew gave me this lovely little needle-book. I don’t actually know how old it is, but it’s tiny and exquisite and had obviously been well used in its prime.

The outside is petit point, or at the very least, very fine needlepoint. The peach inner lining is probably silk.

The needle pages themselves are a loosely woven wool, with silk blanket stitching around the edges. I’ve put a quarter for scale in the photos. It’s a bit hard to make out in the above, but the first page is embroidered “7”. Subsequent pages are 8, 9, and …

“X” – gotta love that. I’ve got to say that the needles are some of the finest I’ve ever seen.

There’s a tiny brass button on the outside, which I couldn’t get in focus no matter how hard I tried. But I think you get the idea.

[Disclaimer: It’s highly unlikely that I’ll go back to my toomuchwool days of posting daily. But I thought about this one all day, so here you go.]

Is perfection something you strive for? Have you ever asked yourself why?

Welsh quilts, antique Welsh quilts, were the single thing that cured me (yes, I’m being biased) of my striving for perfection. In my hand quilting, in my fiber endeavors in general. These days, I think most of us are familiar with the concept of wabi sabi – acceptance of transience and imperfection. But it took me years of battling with myself to figure out that “perfection” – perfect stitches, perfect symmetry – weren’t what I liked at all.

This is one of the old Welsh quilts in my collection. Early to mid 20th century, cotton sateen in a solid cheddar color on the front.

The back is a kind of funky print, which nearly obscures the quilting when turned to the wrong side.

The quilt is thick, heavy. Nearly pristine, actually. But nowhere near a work of art … or perfection. I love it, though, for it’s joyous use of color and it’s presence.

It’s simple, really. Lots of spirals and double lines – nothing fancy. Nothing “original.” But the overall effect is stunning.

Have you ever spent a winter in an unheated home? I haven’t spent one in Wales – I can’t even imagine! – but I have spent a couple in India. I love the mesh, the marriage, of warmth and beauty that this quilt represents. Utilitarian, yes – it’s at least 3x thicker than most commercial quilt battings. But just for keeping warm, it could have been far simpler – more basic designs. A bunch of straight or diagonal lines.

It follows a pretty classic formula for a medallion quilt: a central circular design, filler areas, and borders. But it’s a lot more, taken as a whole. Less than perfect, perfectly warm. Beauty, utility … irregularity, imperfection.

I’m taking a head-first dive back into blogging, after a very long absence. And my thoughts are probably a bit scattered – I’m way out of practice with writing like this. But I’d like to -I hope to – convey my appreciation for the beauty in simplicity, in utility. The cumulative effect that sincere effort has on a finished object. Not perfect stitches, not symmetry. Taken as a whole, some things mean so much more than their imperfect parts.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons making quilts, and I’d like to share one now. While my opinions are just that, opinions – and rather biased ones at that – I’m hoping that someone can learn from my mistakes. Or at the very least be forewarned before falling down certain rabbit holes.

I’m an avid hand quilter, and have been for over 20 years. I learned to quilt (queue blurred focus, rolling fields, and sentimental music) from Mennonite ladies in Central Pennsylvania – no kidding. They had their ways of doing things, and I quilted in a relative vacuum in my home in New York City for several years, before I realized that there were other ways.

Corner detail – basket quilt

At the time I made it, this was my idea of a reproduction quilt – I used mostly (but not all) “authentic reproduction” fabrics and wanted something old-fashioned looking. To me, that meant heavily hand quilted. If you look at the corner triangle, above, there’s an elaborate feathered corner motif – a stencil was used for that. As I recall, the quilt was basted and partially marked by the Mennonite ladies who were friends of mine. When I took it home to quilt it, I did have some decisions left to make for quilting designs, and that was when I fell down a certain rabbit hole.

sashing – front side

The sashing fabric, seen above, is extremely high contrast. There are black pointillist dots, white areas, dark green, medium brown, dark brown. There’s so much going on there that it became very, very difficult to find a marker that I could see, on this fabric that was used throughout the quilt.

Tip #1: Figure out when the quilting is going to count.

After much trial and error, I finally wound up using a permanent, acid-free fine point marker in brown for the sashing areas. You may be able to see just the faintest trace of the marks in the above picture, but you may notice that you cannot pick out the design. And trust me, there’s definitely a design in there.

sashing detail – wrong side

Seen from the wrong side, you can catch the detail of sweet little paisley shaped leaves, climbing vine-like through the sashing. My rationale – and yes, I rationalized a whole lot on this one – was that it was “just for me” and I was going to see the quilting on the back of the quilt. Because the back of the quilt was plain white.

quilting – wrong side

Lovely isn’t it?

Tip #2: It’s very rare that you look at the back of a quilt.

side details – front

As you can see, there’s a general … sense of quilting. Some details visible in the side triangles, and some textural effect in the sashing. But really and honestly – that’s it. Textural detail that doesn’t translate to near the amount of work I put into marking and quilting that sashing.

Tip #3: If you can’t see the marks, you won’t see the quilting.

blue basket – detail

Again – high contrast black/white/periwinkle fabric. See those quilting stitches? Not much, really. They’re there, but at least in the case of the baskets themselves I stuck to simple straight lines. Easy to mark, quick to quilt.

orange block

I think I’ve made my point(s). While I protested – too much – and justified my work to the nth degree, in the end what shows is basically just texture. As a hand quilter, I’m all about the texture and the detail, but I learned some really valuable lessons here about when to put the time in on something. These days I prefer to put my quilting in where it’s really going to count.