Round the block

Block 9 of the Sue Ross Block of the Month is done. I machine appliqued this one, and I have to thank Harriet Hargrave for her great book "Mastering Machine Applique." In it is everything you need from machine settings and needle size to different techniques explained through words, pictures and illustrations. I used the invisible machine applique stitch that looks similar to hand applique. I learned how to machine applique from this book, and I turn to it every time I want to machine applique.

My souvenir of the Winterthur exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Couldn't show it to you before because it was in the dishwasher.

American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection

My Carpenter's Wheel has nothing to do with this post, but I don't have any pictures that do! And this is the last thing I finished, for the Sue Ross BOM, so it'll have to do.

This weekend I went to the Milwaukee Art Museum to see "American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection." The exhibit was good, but no photography was allowed, which is why there are no related photos with this post.

There were some incredible quilts, and the more closely you looked, the more you saw in them. A lot of people looked at the quilts for a few seconds and moved on. The things they missed! One white wholecloth quilt with the densest quilting I've ever seen was actually made from two quilted petticoats. Can you imagine that much work going into your underwear?

A number of wholecloth quilts were done on floral fabrics, which apparently was common for the time period. One was quilted with a feathered border, an inner border and then clamshells through the center. The quilting was hard to see on the floral fabric, and I am amazed the quilter would put that effort into something that wasn't noticeable unless you really studied the quilt. And how did she see her markings? What did she mark with?

Another quilt was made with two sizes of half-square triangles in a large variety of fabrics with newspaper sandwiched between the layers. You could see the newspaper in places where the fabric had deteriorated. I think the woman who made the quilt was married to a ship's captain so she had access to fabric from around the world, and the exhibit pointed out some of the interesting pieces in the quilt.

For hexagon fans, there is a beautiful example on display. I noticed one teenage boy pointing out to his mom how the quilter had mirrored fabric choices across the quilt. He was quite impressed with her placement. I was impressed he'd looked that closely.

My husband walked up to me when I wasn't a quarter of the way through the exhibit to say he was done, but he was going to show me his favorite quilt and then go look at what else was in the museum and to take my time. I did!

The museum is beautiful, shaped reminiscent of a sailboat and located on Lake Michigan. After viewing an impressive amount of art inside, we got coffees and sat on the terrace and enjoyed the view, the perfect summer weather and a swarm of dragonflies.

One last thing from the exhibit that made me smile was this quote from the write-up for a lone star quilt that you see in the exhibit advertising: "Despite its skillful construction, this quilt will not lie flat." We've all been there!

There's still time to see these quilts. The exhibit runs for a few more weeks, through Sept. 6.

A clean house is a sign of a broken sewing machine

Just returned from a trip (more on that later) where I was able to shop at Greenbaum's Quilted Forest. OMG what a great shop! In 2007, American Patchwork and Quilting magazine named the store one of the 20 best quilt shops in the United States and Canada.

Above is my haul. I was very restrained. Probably because there was so much to look at that I was constantly distracted from one pretty piece of fabric by another pretty piece of fabric. Also because I don't really need anything.

I ended up buying a few bits that related to things going through my mind lately, such as Laura Gunn's Lantern Bloom, the new Gerta collection that I'd read about the night before, and three pieces with text on them, including a half yard of "Housework Whenever?" by Sharon Yenter for In The Beginning fabrics.

That's where I got the title for this post. The fabric has retro images of women with quotes, including:

• I got a sewing machine for my husband! Good trade, huh?


• If I sit here long enough maybe they will fix their own dinner!


• I sent my son to college so I could keep my fabric in his room ... expensive storage!

I also got a couple pieces of Aboriginal fabric to add to the ones in this block I made right before the trip.

The pattern is block No. 6 from the Sue Ross Block of the Month that I'm doing through Material Obsession. This is going to be a quilt as soon as I make more blocks and figure out how to set them.

Speaking of the BOM, here is block No. 7. All done. Piecing was not too hard, and the templates made it easy to cut accurately, which always helps. Appliqueing the piecing to the background is where I have trouble. This was one of my better efforts. Not too wobbly a circle at all.