Quilt in your Sleep?

I do knitting, quilting, and tatting, and design for each, and sometimes I have some sort of problem, go to bed, and the next morning literally wake up with the answer! And quite often I just put the yarn or the fabric out on the sofa for a few days, look occasionally, pat it as I go by, and at some point -- a day or a week later -- the stuff designs itself. I don't know why or how that works, but it certainly does! (When I was in college and had a major paper to write, I would read quite a bit and then ignor the entire thing for a while. Sooner or later the paper just "happened", and all I had to do was the writing itself.) Go figure.

I don't quilt in my sleep, but I do design quilts in my head to help me relax and go to sleep. And when I have an especially bad migraine (the kind where all I can do is lay in the dark), I will design quilts to distract my mind from the pounding pain.

Frances (who has been known to shovel snow in her dreams this past winter)

=A0(When I was in college and had a major paper to

That's how I wrote term papers, too. Just let them percolate in my head until the night before, then pull an all-nighter typing on my portable typewriter (the kind that when you return the carriage too hard, the whole typewriter ends up on the floor!)

Frances (whose motto in college was: If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh--!)

It's comforting to know (35 years later) that I was not the only one for whom "first draft =3D final draft" and "I begin at the beginning and stop at the end." The results were decent grades. (Hmmm, how much better would they have been if I had revised and rewritten? I'm not going to re-enroll in an effort to find out.)

Nann

I have quilted in my sleep twice already. I haven't solved any quilting problems in my sleep yet, but I have certainly dreamed about quilting.

The other day I bought a new ironing board cover that has measurements on it, including angles and circles. Absolutely useless for any purpose I can imagine, as far as quiltmaking goes (maybe dressmaking?) but it looks really cool! And that's what I told my SO. He said, "Yeah, you can tell a quilter lives here. One look at your work area and a visitor knows you're apt to rip his clothes right off and make a quilt out of them."

ep

That is pretty funny EP. Today we were visiting dd's house. Workmen were cleaning up a repo a couple of doors down and we got to talking with them. We got to go in the house and check it out. Dh saw this absolutely massive kitchen island and told dd the house is meant for a quilter. What a great quilt pinning space. Your mama is going to want this house. I was so busy being shocked at the abuse of this nearly new house I was sick, but I did manage a bit later to start thinking about that island. Having an ironing board cover that looks good is a good thing IMO.

How are those shirt quilts coming along? You making progress? TAria

The mini-quilts took a lot longer than they should have to make. Too many distractions and to many halts for decision-making. I got a good three mini's with a lot of variety in quilting patterns, batting, threads, reinforcement, and bindings, and then washed the heck out of them -- warm water and hot tumble-dry. I haven't yet analyzed the results of this first wash; but it appears that my favorite batting is still my favorite batting; I know what quilting pattern I think would be best, with a second and third choice; some of the shirt patches will have to be reinforced; and some of the shirt fabrics may have to be dropped altogether.

I kept careful notes of the assembly of the mini-quilts, it's just a matter of comparing my notes to the flawed areas on the quilt. Then I'll hand-stitch some repairs -- some of which are due purely to my zipping through the assembly, for which I'm not getting paid and some of which appear to be un-reinforced shirt patches that just aren't going to survive, so I can't use those shirts.

I swear when I took those poor beat-up quilts out of the hot dryer and saw some of the shirt-patches were bad, I just about wished I'd never heard of quilting. So I put it aside and am cutting and piecing a new St. Louis block bed quilt for the weekend, just to get my joy back.

My mind remains open to telling the client that this just won't work, and coming to an equitable sharing of the cost of trying, but I still don't think it will come to that. I think that part of the problem is that most of the shirts were kept in plastic bags from the laundry for the six and half years since her husband died. This worried me from the start because I have done some book restoration work on an old, valuable library where someone had wrapped the individual books in plastic a few years befor -- with good intentions, but the fact is that plastic emits chemical fumes that just ruin books and fabric. The dress shirt fabric in these shirts is just great; it's the lightweight summer cottons and poly-blends that have suffered from storage in plastic. But the dress shirts are mostly solid color with the occasional tastefully striped shirt, so the client will have to drastically reconsider the effect of eliminating checks and plaids and brights stripes if I decide we just should avoid light weights altogether.

I'll repair the mini-quilts at night in front of the TV tonight or tomorrow night. Handling these mini-quilts and comparing my notes on which triangled I reinforced and which I didn't will give me a better feel for where we stand. (I did one each for each lightweight fabric, one reinforced and one not). Last night I pieced strip sets for the St. Louis block until 11:00, so I may continue with that tonight.

Thanks for asking, Taria . ep

The mini-quilts took a lot longer than they should have to make. Too many distractions and to many halts for decision-making. I got a good three mini's with a lot of variety in quilting patterns, batting, threads, reinforcement, and bindings, and then washed the heck out of them -- warm water and hot tumble-dry. I haven't yet analyzed the results of this first wash; but it appears that my favorite batting is still my favorite batting; I know what quilting pattern I think would be best, with a second and third choice; some of the shirt patches will have to be reinforced; and some of the shirt fabrics may have to be dropped altogether.

I kept careful notes of the assembly of the mini-quilts, it's just a matter of comparing my notes to the flawed areas on the quilt. Then I'll hand-stitch some repairs -- some of which are due purely to my zipping through the assembly, for which I'm not getting paid and some of which appear to be un-reinforced shirt patches that just aren't going to survive, so I can't use those shirts.

I swear when I took those poor beat-up quilts out of the hot dryer and saw some of the shirt-patches were bad, I just about wished I'd never heard of quilting. So I put it aside and am cutting and piecing a new St. Louis block bed quilt for the weekend, just to get my joy back.

My mind remains open to telling the client that this just won't work, and coming to an equitable sharing of the cost of trying, but I still don't think it will come to that. I think that part of the problem is that most of the shirts were kept in plastic bags from the laundry for the six and half years since her husband died. This worried me from the start because I have done some book restoration work on an old, valuable library where someone had wrapped the individual books in plastic a few years befor -- with good intentions, but the fact is that plastic emits chemical fumes that just ruin books and fabric. The dress shirt fabric in these shirts is just great; it's the lightweight summer cottons and poly-blends that have suffered from storage in plastic. But the dress shirts are mostly solid color with the occasional tastefully striped shirt, so the client will have to drastically reconsider the effect of eliminating checks and plaids and brights stripes if I decide we just should avoid light weights altogether.

I'll repair the mini-quilts at night in front of the TV tonight or tomorrow night. Handling these mini-quilts and comparing my notes on which triangled I reinforced and which I didn't will give me a better feel for where we stand. (I did one each for each lightweight fabric, one reinforced and one not). Last night I pieced strip sets for the St. Louis block until 11:00, so I may continue with that tonight.

Thanks for asking, Taria . ep

Oh, it's absolutely a learning experience, j. I do hope it will result in some good quilts for her grandchildren, but if not, not. In the meantime, I find it more motivating than something that requires perseverence to try to master the skills and knowledge necessary to do a fairly straightforward project like this -- shirts permitting! Every once in a while I get a fright and wonder if I can do this or if it will work or whatever, but, you know what? Every creative endeavor I've ever engaged in has been that way. You should have seen me when I used to write for a living! One day it would look impossible and the next day, I'd be saying, "Dang, I'm good!"

ep

Thanks for the update EP. I hope you are able to plug away and work it all out. Sounds like a good challenge. You seem up to it though. (easy for me to say!) Taria