The Mom Quilt – Finished!

Dear Mom,

Your quilt is finished! When the rain lets up, I’ll roll it up in a plastic bag and put it in a tube with a dowel rod to hang it on and mail it to you. I feel terrible it’s more than a month since I promised it to you, but it’s not like I haven’t been late before. I consider it a family tradition! And I have been working on it very hard. I didn’t really expect it to take this long!

You might have to iron it a little with low heat when you get it, but it’s pretty indestructible at this point. One reasons I find quilting with silks like this so interesting is that it gives the impression of being a delicate sort of thing but as I’ve said before, silk is not really delicate. Most of the silk I’ve worked with is tough – I’ve broken sewing machine needles and when I embroider it forces me to use leather thimbles and needle grippy things  or I dent my fingers. Plus the overall project, because it’s quilted so densely, is extremely sturdy. You’ll see. It’s a thick piece of work.

A few weeks ago when you wrote me, Mom, you said you didn’t see how I had enough patience to do this. Truth is that it doesn’t take me any patience. It might be weird, but I can’t sit still long enough to hand-hem a pair of pants, but I can spent 50 hours hand-quilting. It doesn’t feel like tedium, and I don’t get impatient. I love sitting down and putting stitches in this fabric. It’s fun. I even ripped out quilting I didn’t like in some places and started over. I’ve definitely found something that I love to do.

I’ll miss this quilt. I ended up liking it quite a bit, and the pictures just aren’t the same as seeing it in person. There is too much depth and texture to it to really get a good idea of what it’s like in a picture. But then again, I’ve been looking at this so long that I don’t see the picture for the details anymore. In a couple of weeks I”ll look at it again and see if I can see the flowers and leaves again. But I think I need some time away from it first.

Have fun with it when you get it!

Details:

Neutral oatmeal linen backing fabrics (2 layers), thin cotton batting, silk kimono fabrics from Ah! Kimono.

Needlepoint, Inc. silk floss and DMC floss (what’s that stuff made of?) for quilting.

Hand quilted/embroidered and machine and hand pieced. Hand bound.

Posts for this project:

Concave and Convex, Iris quilt: creating the quilt puzzle pt. 1, Iris quilt 2: fabric piecing technique, Iris quilt 3: putting it all together, The back speaks, The Mom Quilt – Finished!

Had a DIY Moment

I tend to go to museums to get gifts for my mom. Museum and Historical Site visiting are things she and I like to do together, in addition to eating out and the occasional spot of theater or other cultural activity. So when it came time to pick out her gift, I thought I’d go over to the Asian Art Museum of SF because I don’t think she’s ever been in a museum quite like this before. I figured I could find something there she would like just fine. And I did, a beautiful scarf made of silk kimono fabrics.

And then I had a moment that all crafters will recognize, in which I thought to myself, “You know, I think I could make this myself.” That do-it-yourself urge can pop up at any time. And thus this gift was born (which is prettier than the ones in the store anyway):

The scarf and pins were made from nine different pieced silk kimono fabrics, beautiful pieces from my collection. Oh yes, silk kimono fabric is now something I’m collecting from various places, a fabric obsession kicked off two years ago when I joined the quarterly club at Ah Kimono. I’m pretty sure they think I’m crazy from the number of times I’ve changed my address since joining. No matter. I will accept this with equanimity if I can continue to receive regular packages of this beautiful fabric.

The scarf features such fancy things as French seams and asymmetrical folding/piecing, and coordinates shades of purple (my mom’s favorite color) with gray and black. I was going for “elegant.” I won’t say I made it without error, but it’s close. My purpose in the seaming I did was to give some shape and structure to the scarf because the fabrics are nothing if not slippery. It looks best when ironed within an inch of its life, which I wouldn’t do well with, but my mom’s a lot more conscientious than I am about things like ironing.

I also made two coordinating flower pins out of silk fabric. There are a lot of tutorials out there about this process, but basically you cut out varying sizes of circles from your fabric, lightly singe the edges of your silk circles so they won’t fray too much, then you sew the layers together, pleating and ruffling to create the shape you want. I made covered buttons for mine to finish them off, and sewed clasps on the back. I made the first one as a test and then another one for my mom. Both turned out well, so I got to keep one for me!

So there you are. This is the *only* gift I made this year, because I just couldn’t manage to do any more than that with everything else going on. Sometimes, though, you gotta give in to the DIY urge when it hits.

Linzer Cookies and other tales

3.5 cups of butter later, I remembered why I only bake once a year. Luckily, I was determined and stubborn enough that I finished the cookies even though I was totally fed up with the process half way into the first batch. Pictures? Not so many. I was often too covered in flour and butter.

My proudest accomplishment of this round of baking was Strawberry Linzer cookies.  2 hours = 14 painstakingly made cookies. Based on this recipe. They really are good, and they really do take a while. And to get those shapes, the dough really does have to be *exactly* the right temperature or you get to start all over. Also? Please only try to do this if you have a normally sized kitchen.

I also made Ginger Spice Cookies – like gingerbread but more spice. I picked this recipe because it had the most spice of any recipe I found.  Ginger juice that I made from real ginger, molasses, brown sugar, cinnamon, allspice and ground black pepper. YES. I may have added more spice than the recipe called for. I love my food to be flavorful! These are done (I made them into candy canes and tiny angels, stars, gingerbread men and trees) but need a bit of decoration still.

I also made these cookies from Epicurious. Except mine are Milk Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies. The original recipe wanted bittersweet and white chocolates. I thought it would be too much. I think I was right. I added extra cranberries too.  These are actually my favorite of the three cookies I made. Tasty, with a slight crunch and a soft middle, with plenty of tart and sweet flavor. YUM.

Let me tell you, though, that I don’t bake most of the time because:

1) Cookies make me feel guilty.  First I put in the butter. Then the sugar. Then the white flour. And I think … that’s it? I’m eating pure Bad For Me? I CANNOT DO THIS. And then I do. Because mmmm, cookies are tasty. I happen to really disagree with Kate Moss, who said recently, to my everlasting irritation and disgust, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Quite too bad and sad for her! There’s a lot more to life than being skinny. I’ll eat her cookies too.

2) Baking pastries takes FOREVER. Preparation, refrigeration, cookie cutters, baking, cooling, decorating. Just be done already! Cooking is really way easier. Much more instant gratification. Much less exercise of my limited quantities of patience. Maybe it was just that I chose really difficult recipes?

3) I have to measure things. I am not the type of person who either follows directions or measures stuff. I “go with what feels right,” but this is not an acceptable way to do things when baking. Some people follow directions, follow patterns, follow instructions, follow rules, follow guidelines. I am definitely NOT one of those people.

And also. Let’s remember the Cardinal Rule of Cookie Baking Chez Miriam.

If you show up at my house and I offer you freshly-baked cookies, I have not magically turned into Super Housewife. Let’s just realize that this was one of those times my hyperness and OCD got the better of me. It’s Solstice-Chanukkah-Christmas. I’m allowed to be slightly crazy about something, right?