Mr. Wilson

This is a post about my quilting companion Wilson, just because it's been a while since I talked about him.

Wilson "supervising" quilting.

I got Wilson while I was going to college.  Two years living in the dorms was the longest I'd ever gone in my life without a cat.  When I moved off campus into a duplex getting a cat was high on my priority list.

 I found a one-woman no-kill cat shelter and drove down on a cold February day to meet her 100+ cats.  I should mention, at this point, that Wilson is allergic to cats.  Yes, you read that right.  A cat who is allergic to cats.  When he is the only cat in the house it's not too bad.  He sneezes a lot, if he rough houses too much he breathes loudly, and his eyes run constantly. 

At the cat shelter, living with hundreds of other cats, it was a different story.  Even with twice a day allergy pills he was, well, pretty gross.  He breathed so loudly, even at rest, that he sounded like Darth Vader.  He had big snot globs clogging up his nose and going all over and he sneezed almost non stop.  It was gross, I really wasn't interested in him.  Besides, Wilson was already a year and a half old and I'd been planning on a younger cat.  But, while I was walking around looking at other cats, Wilson kept following me and climbing up into my arms.  He purred his phlem-y purr and eventually fell asleep in my arms.

The cat lady said, "Is he just melting your heart?"  "Yes," I said. "Does he do this with everyone?"  She said most people couldn't stand him for long enough to give him the chance.  She told me she was 95% sure that he was allergic to cats, didn't have a chronic respiratory infection or anything.  "When you've had him home a few days he should clear up," she promised.  My brain wasn't so sure about this.  If you'd been him back then you would have thought he had some major medical issues.  But, my heart said yes and on Feb. 14, 2009 my sniffling, wheezing, snotty baby was delivered by the cat lady.

Holding down a UFO

It took a few weeks, but gradually I noticed that Wilson's wheezing was quieter and his sneezing was less.  These days I just have to watch that he doesn't get too overexerted and start wheezing, and occasionally I find dried cat boogers stuck to the wall that need cleaning.  Oh, and he snores quite loudly. If there are other cats in the house I give him an allergy pill at night to sleep.  I think being so stopped up during his development may have permanently affected his balance.  He isn't graceful like other cats at all.  He's "special".

Wilson: Quilt Inspector performs a quality control assessment

I really appreciate the cat lady for being Wilson's first mama.  She not only saved his life, she gave him a name and looked out for him.  She had over a hundred cats in her care and she knew every one's name and personality and preferences.  If you have anyone like her in your area, I'd encourage you to support them.

After a run in with a snake.

Wilson has such a funny little personality.  I've had a lot of cats and I don't think any of them have had a personality like his.  He likes to be in my lap whenever possible.  If I had a dime for every time I've leaned across him to reach my sewing machine...  Every morning he comes and noses around my face until I raise up the bed covers to let him under.  He turns a few circles until he finds a good spot and then lays down with his head on the pillow and his body under the covers.

 He is a special, special boy and I'm lucky to have him.

Finished T-shirt Quilt

 I think I've said most of what I wanted to say about this quilt, so this post is mostly pictures.

The backing is a flannel sheet and all the bits of shirt/boxers/etc I had leftover set in a simple grid similar to the front.

I attached two of the tags from inside the t-shirts under the binding.

This is the shoulder panel from a camo shirt.

Wilson enjoyed breaking in the quilt this week.  Tomorrow it goes in the mail to my cousin.

Focusing on the Details

Today I pinned the t-shirt quilt of my uncle's clothes.

The last time I saw him was in July 2010, less than a month before he died suddenly. 

We were visiting family and my mom was making a point to tell everyone about my new quilting hobby.

Everyone was crowded around a laptop, looking at pictures from this blog, and he looked at me and said pointedly "I like quilts." I asked him if that was supposed to be a hint.

I asked him what kind of quilt he would like and he said "I like hunting and deer and trees and motorcycles." I told him he'd have to wait and see, privately shuddering and the idea of making a deer themed quilt. (Although that nice Paint-by-number line did come to mind.)

I was going to make him two quilts for Christmas. A "tacky" deer and camo one for his hunting cabin and a nice Carpenter's Star for his home. I'd already been browsing for fabrics after I got home from that trip, although I hadn't bought any yet. I was thinking about the designs, planning them out in my head.

He was a young man. He was funny and warm and alive -- and now he isn't. Sometimes focusing on the details seems to make it a little easier to deal with.

When I don't look at the whole picture at once it doesn't hurt as bad.

These were his clothes. He was a big man; I was able to do all the background pieces from one camo shirt and still had some left over.

I think it's important with a t-shirt quilt that it doesn't look like just any other quilt made with fabric bought off the shelf. These were clothes; they were worn by a real person. There are buttons and zippers and tags.

He always made me hug with "both arms" before he would let me go.

He was big and tough -- but he loved cats.

He rode his Harley from Mississippi to Texas to see me when I graduated high school.

 

He killed himself on August 17, 2010 and we miss him every day.

Suicide is real, we need to talk about it. Please spread the word. There are resources, there is help. You aren't alone.  Suicide Prevention Hotline Directory

T - shirt progress

I have to admit, I have never liked the look of the standard, grid-style, t-shirt quilt. They just don't appeal to me, for some reason. So, when my cousin sent me three boxes of my uncle's old Harley stuff and camo and asked me to make a t-shirt quilt with them she gave me an interesting challenge. There were t-shirts with large designs as well as smaller sleeve and front-chest logos. There were also half a dozen patches, a do-rag, and a pair of boxers!

Boxers, disassembled and stabilized with fusible interfacing. I have to admit, I love these.

I have actually made a t-shirt quilt before, here after referred to as The Quiltastrophe, which has never seen the light of day.  It was a victim of a fabric that bled in the wash, followed by a botched attempt to clean the escaped dye.  When I did that one I decided not to use fusible interfacing on the shirts, thinking I could get by without it.  In fact, the shirts worked fine without the interfacing, but since there were going to be so many more shirts in this quilt I thought I'd better stabilize them a bit this time.  What a difference it made!  The materials are so much easier to work with when they're not stretching and warping constantly.  Even the denim shirt, which wasn't particularly stretchy to start, benefited from the interfacing.  Of course I managed to melt the interfacing glue onto my iron in the process, but that's another story.

I flipped through my file of quilting images on my computer until I had an idea for a design that would use all the different sized pieces and not look like your regular t-shirt quilt. I cut each of the large designs into a rectangular piece and paired it with a strip of smaller pieces joined by sashing.  These big blocks will be fit together in a semi random pattern.

I wanted to include fun things, too.  Things to show that these were clothes-- that they came from a person, not a fabric store.  This strip of buttons is from the front of a button down. I put a panel of the boxers with the little motor cycles behind it so the buttons can be opened.

Some day my cousin will have kids who won't ever be able to know their grandfather, but I want them to see things like this and know that he was fun.

(Yet Another) Late Christmas Gift

This one is TWO Christmases late! That's right, I started this project in November of 2010. It was destined, all along, to be a gift for a friend and a fellow artist going through a rough time. She is finally going to receive it this week. The design is supposed to be like Braille. Believe it or not, those four repeated characters (are they called characters?) are four words: "Be still and know" part of a Bible verse from the Psalms. The last set trails off, "Be still and..." I'm not positive it's completely right, since I am not a native Braille reader. That may be wrong kind of "still" (as in "The party is still on" as opposed to "Sit still and be quiet"). The person I am giving it to is not a Braille reader either, so hopefully if it's wrong no one will ever notice.

This wall hanging is about 40"x18" and it uses lovely shot cottons (the ones that have two colors woven together) which gives it a lot of texture. The quilting also gave it texture, and there is an extra disk of batting behind each of the reverse appliqued Braille dots to make them poof up. This will be nice for my friend not only to have hanging on the wall to look at, but also to run her hands over as the texture of the design is so vivid. (Can texture be vivid? I think it should be able to be.) I can't wait to finally give this to her :)

(Another) Late Christmas present, an art quilt, and a new project

Thank goodness someone had a camera on Friday when I gifted these. This one was for the guy on the left there. I'm not sure what to call it. Nested boxes? Some kind of modified star? Anyway, I chose all flannel and homespun fabrics and did the design with big half-square triangles, so it came together quickly. It is really, really cuddly and soft. This one finished out at about 64"x74", a nice size for a guy on the short side.

Here is a picture I should have posted yesterday, but I didn't have it yet, of my tall friend with his. I like how you can tell he's smiling just by his eyes. The backing for both my Christmas quilts came from the same flannel sheet set, so it tied them together and made them extra soft.

In the wake of the two big quilting projects I'd been working on for so long I decided to do something quick! This was a great way to use some scraps (although it hardly made a dent). I quilted it densely with a variegated blue thread and then washed it on a gentle cycle to fray the "rain" just a bit. It required a major hair cut after the wash, but the finished project definitely came out like I was hoping. I gave it to one of the cat ladies in my life and she already had it hung on the wall!

This box of clothes my cousin sent me is my next project. They are some of my late uncle's clothes and a lot of Harley stuff to make into a memory quilt. I am still mulling over exactly how I want to arrange it all. It's going to be hard to cut these up, even if I know it is to make them into something better.

Christmas Quilts finally delivered!

Today (yes, several weeks late) I finally delivered this year's "Christmas Quilts" to their recipients. I made two quilts for a couple of men I work with a lot in the community theater. The one I am showing first is a Carpenter's Star pattern made with Kona solids for the stars and some lightly patterned browns for the background.

I make my carpenter's stars with Y seams rather then "cheating" with a slightly different pattern to get away with only squares and half-square triangles (example here, notice how every other one of the center squares are larger). As you can see I made 5 whole stars, 4 halves and 4 quarters, and oh, my! The Y seams! I'm afraid after this that I can't even look at another Y seam for at least a year.

One of the issues with this quilt was that the guy I made it for is 78" tall (that's 6'6") so a normal sized throw quilt would have been a toe warmer! I added a zigzag border on two ends to make it longer in that dimension and then put a 5" border all the way around. It ended up about 90"x73ish" (somehow one short end is 71" while the other is 75". Don't even ask me how I lost 4 inches. I have no idea.)

This is what the partially pinned quilt looked like when I quit for the night and went to bed. I had to cover the parts that were already pinned because Wilson (my cat) tries to grab the pins and run off with them. Of course, since they are attached to the quilt, that doesn't work so well and he ends up tugging on the fabric. He's a nut.

All wrapped up with a label and ready to gift!