Pamela Thiele Art Quilts

GrandBaby Thread Issues

I have been worrying about what thread to use to quilt this quilt. I was thinking I SHOULD use grey. But I don’t WANT to use grey. It’s almost as bad as white. I never use white. Ever. I don’t even buy fabrics that have a white background except for of course black and white prints and even then I prefer them to be more black than white.

So while I was taking my nap – yes a nap – I came up with the thread solution which is to use a variegated thread in primary colors. This is not why I nap – I am supposed to be getting rest and healing from my knee injury and my disgusting winter cold. But instead I started thinking about thread and that was that. Very productive nap if you think about it.

And no I do not have a bad cold now or I would not work on the GrandBaby’s quilt. Although I suppose any germs could be washed out. I’m not taking any chances.

And then I started to worry again about what to do with the extra fabric I’ve cut out. Naturally I can use it for the back. But should I cut it more and do a pattern on the back? Or not? This became so problematic, I finally fell asleep.

Or Maybe Not

For the GrandBaby’s quilt, I’ve chosen five large and five small prints and I’d planned to use one large square of each. And make nine-patches using all of them.

Or maybe not.

Now I think that doesn’t work. So today  I’m using 2 each of the five large prints. For the large squares. God knows what I’ll do with all the excess large squares of  the small print stuff I’ve cut out. I shudder to think. It’s sitting there on the cutting table…..

But I think the visual is less confusing with fewer fabrics for the large squares. I want the GrandBaby to like her quilt, not to be confused by it.

And to be honest I want all the adults who are going to be taking care of her to want to use the quilt, not to put it away with a shudder.

The GrandBaby’s quilt and the scary extra fabric

I have started making the baby quilt for our grandbaby, due the end of April. She’s a girl but her parents aren’t deciding on a name until they see her. Seems smart to me.

Her parents’ decorating scheme is gray with black and white accents. And since babies allegedly only see in black and white initially, I’m thinking that makes it easy to make a quilt everyone will like. I hope.

As always I have way over-cut-out the fabric. I cut enough for what I thought would be two quilts. But no. There’s at least enough for 3 maybe four. Unless I do something creative for a border. Although size is an issue – I don’t want to make the world’s largest baby quilt.

This over cutting what I may need is in part just something I do and in part Mary Ellen Hopkins’ fault. Nice to have someone to blame. I heard her speak, over 20 years ago, and she suggested always cutting out enough fabric to make two of the same quilts.

The problem with this is that I find that boring. I don’t want to repeat myself. Although since I am selling my quilts, I realize it’s good to have one to sell and one to use as a sample. But I never seem to get around to making the second one. So I have to worry about what to do with the extra fabric because I experience cut-out fabric as a pressure. USE ME! It seems to scream.

Cut-out fabric also feels like a deadline to me. And I have always had a problem with deadlines in that I HAVE to meet them. So the fabric pieces sit on my cutting table like rebukes. I begin to avoid looking at them. I avert my eyes from the rear of the table, which is where they’re sitting. Which makes it hard to use the cutting table because I can’t look at the part where that damn fabric is stacked up.

Where was I? Ah yes, size. Worrying about the size of any quilt I make is something I normally don’t do which is another reason why I bet I always go so overboard in cutting things out. Generally the size just happens. However this is a baby quilt. So I need to have a size in mind from the start, which is very confining to me.

The pattern itself is easy. A simple alternating one-patch, nine patch. I love this look with large colorful florals. I’m hoping it works equally well with bold black and white prints.