Lars's Graduation and Quillow (Quilt) Sunday 2019: It's A Wrap!

You guys -- my firstborn baby just graduated from high school!!!  Lars's commencement ceremony was Saturday afternoon and then on Sunday morning we had the Quillow Service at Christ Lutheran Church for all of our high school graduates.  Our church has been doing this every year for the past 20 years, and if you're a quilter living in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, you ought to come check it out next year.  If you're interested in seeing what the Quillow Service is all about, the video is available online here and the Quillow Blessing begins about 45 minutes into the service.

From Left to Right: My Younger Son Anders, My Husband Bernie, My Graduate Lars, Me, and My Mother

First off, what's a quillow?  A quillow is a quilt with a pocket sewn on the back so it can be folded up into a pillow.  My quilt for Lars doesn't have one of these pockets because it would have limited and complicated my quilting options and Lars was never going to fold his up into a pillow anyway -- this quilt is going on the bed in his college dorm room in the Fall.  Most of the other kids have the kind of quilt that folds up into a pillow, those are the directions that were given out by the church, and that's why it's a Quillow Service and not a Quilt Service.  It wasn't a mandatory feature or anything, and I opted to disregard the instructions.

All of the high school seniors process into the sanctuary wearing their caps and gowns during our contemporary worship service.  They are all different colors because the kids from our church come from so many different high schools.  My kiddo and his classmates from Ardrey Kell High School are wearing purple.

Group Photo of the 2019 Graduates

Graduates Stretched Out Across the Sanctuary With Their Families and Their Quilts

At some point during all of this, there's a slideshow on the big screens with each child's baby picture and high school graduation picture, as well as their plans for the Fall.

Then the parents, grandparents and siblings come up and we wrap a QUILT around our graduate, lay our hands on him or her, and give them this blessing:

I come this day before God to bless you and thank Him for your life.  You have given my life a deeper meaning and calling.  Through you, I have experienced God's love, joy and forgiveness.  Wherever you go, whatever you do, my love goes with you, and you will always be a part of my heart.  May this quilt remind you of the warmth of my love, the care of this faith community, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.  And on those nights when I cannot wrap you in my arms, wrap yourself in this quilt and know that in God's family you are never alone.

Lars, Me, My Husband Bernie Behind Me, My Mother Beside Me

Then we exchange places and our kids give their parents this blessing:

You have given of your heart and of your home.  You have loved and cared for me, even when it was difficult.  Today I honor and thank you for your courage, patience, wisdom and love.  Wherever I go and whatever I do, I will always be your child, blessed by your love.  I thank God for blessing my life with you.

By now most of the women in the sanctuary are bawling and the men are pretending they have something stuck in their eye.

Then the quilts are folded up and the graduates and their parents go back to their seats for the remainder of the service.  Lars and his best friend, Ashton, also sang a duet during the worship service, which was really nice.  (The photo below was taken during rehearsal PRIOR to worship, when they were hamming it up -- they were much more serious during the worship service.  :-). Can you tell these boys are glad to be done with high school?!)

Lars and His Best Friend Singing a Duet, and Me Cracking Up In the Choir

Out in the Narthex or the Upper Commons or whatever they're calling it these days, tables were set up with a spot for displaying a trifold display board full of photos and memorabilia for each graduate along with their quilt and their Bibles, which were turned in to the church office two weeks ago so that each of our pastors could sign them.  I love this picture of my husband and my son together:

Bernie and Lars

And here's one of Dad, Lars, and "Mother," as Lars likes to call me:

Bernie, Lars and Me

And downstairs in the Lower Commons area they had a reception set up with refreshments.  I missed out on most of that and didn't even get to see anyone else's quilt up close because I was singing at both services and warming up with the choir between services while the reception was going on.  I'm glad that other people were taking so many great photos and sharing them with me!  Have I ever told you guys how much I love our church family at Christ Lutheran?!

My Graduation Quilt for Lars, 68 x 90 "Mission Impossible"

Finished With Only Five Days to Spare!

So now you all finally understand why I had a hard deadline for finishing this graduation quilt!! I would have wanted to send Lars off to college with a Mom-made quilt anyway, but I probably would have put it off, thinking I had PLENTY of time before he reports to campus in August...  Honestly, it's great to have this finished now and not have it hanging over me all summer, or worse -- have it be the high school graduation quilt that didn't get finished until he was through with college!!

And now, a Question...

I shared this quilt on Facebook and Instagram after finishing it, and a number of people have been requesting that I write up a pattern for Mission Impossible.  I've never done that before -- what do you guys think?  Is this just a nice thing people say when they find out you designed a quilt pattern yourself, or do you think anyone would actually want to buy the pattern if I put in the time to write up all of the instructions and put them, along with traditional templates and foundation paper piecing patterns, into a downloadable PDF format?  I will say that this is not a beginner friendly pattern because there are too many different techniques involved (foundation paper piecing, traditional cutting with templates, traditional curved piecing, and invisible machine applique piecing).  I'd probably consider this quilt appropriate for an Intermediate quilter.  I would include a pressing plan for the seam allowances and tips and tricks for getting those bulky seam intersections nice and flat where the four geese arcs converge.  I'd also include a color key for the Kona Solids that I used to get the 3-D effect (I did not use any gradient fabrics, just solids) and I suppose I'd have to include a few other size options and an alternate colorway. So, lots of work involved to do it right, but it WOULD be cool to see other quilters' interpretations of my design.  What do you think?  If any of you have any experience writing, publishing, or selling patterns, please share your feedback in the comments or email me directly.  

I'm linking up with:

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·      Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com
What I Made Monday at Pretty Piney Quilts

·      Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com 

·      Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/

·      Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/

·      Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/

·      BOMs Away at Katie Mae Quilts: https://www.katiemaequilts.com/blog/ 

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

New Fabric and New Glasses Have Arrived!

Kona Solids Arrived for Lars's Graduation Quilt!

Look what came in the mail yesterday!  I just noticed that I have the two lightest blue shades reversed in that photo, but that's pretty much how they will be laid out in the quilt.  The background fabric is definitely purple, even thought it looked nearly black in the computer-generated design rendering.  All of the colors look brighter in this photo because of sunlight streaming in though the kitchen window, but we are NOT complaining about sunlight in the Carolinas when so many of you are bundled up against snow and sub-zero temperatures!  Although, I can't resist gloating that it got above EIGHTY degrees in Charlotte today, and I ventured out in sandals for the first time this year.  I knew that the sun would come back if I got a pedicure!  It's like saying "I believe in fairies!"  and then Tinkerbell comes back to life!

Here's my EQ8 design for these fabrics, in case you missed it from an earlier post:

My EQ8 Design for Lars's Grad Quilt

It is really nice to know for certain what these fabrics will look like together before I start cutting or piecing anything.  I'm glad I decided to order different fabrics.

I took my Jingle quilt top to the guild meeting for Show and Tell last night, which was fun.  It felt good to show my work to other quilters who understood what went into the making of it.  I haven't gotten any more quilting done, though, but I did get caught up with some work I needed to do for my interior design clients and I'm continuing to acclimate to the new iMac computer.  Oh, and I got new glasses today -- not just readers, but progressive lenses that I can wear all the time that are supposed to help me with night driving and midrange computer and music reading.  I've never worn glasses full-time before and I feel kind of silly, like I'm wearing a costume, but I hadn't realized the slight deterioration in my distance vision until I popped these glasses on today and suddenly things in the distance were sharper and clearer again!  

New Glasses.  Do I Look Like Velma Now?

Even Without Glasses, I Was ALWAYS a Velma...

Tomorrow morning I've got to put some orders in and wrap up some paperwork for the client I met with today, and then I've got to take my Bernina 750QE in to get a board swapped out.  My dealer ordered the part for me and is having me bring the machine in to get it done while I wait so I won't have to go a single day without my Main Squeeze sewing machine -- how awesome is that?  And while I'm there, I'm going to check out THIS new machine that has been intriguing me on the Bernina web site:

New Bernina Model B475 QE

This might just be my next studio addition, and if it is, we're not going to call it "another new sewing machine."  We're going to call it a "Bernina Travel Accessory."  I need to leverage the power of Social Sewing if I'm going to get that graduation quilt done on time, and that means I need a sewing machine that is easier to schlep around to bee meetings and sit-and-sew without a fork lift.  Yes, I do have two little Singer Featherweights, but I miss some of the modern Bernina bells and whistles with those vintage beauties and I'd like to be able to swap back and forth between machines.  I really like the smaller size and weight of the B475, the 5.5 mm feed dogs, the jumbo bobbins (same hook system as the 7 Series Berninas so the BOBBINS are interchangeable!), and the fact that I can use so many feet with it that I already own.  There's the bright LED light, the piecing straight stitch that I love (although it has a different stitch number on this model), the FHS knee lift, and I could even use my BSR foot on this machine if I wanted to.  My walking foot would fit this machine, if I wanted to work on attaching binding somewhere besides my studio, and because it's not just a straight stitch, I could use it for machine appliqué as well...  Best of all, MSRP is below $2,500 for this machine.  I believe it's sized between the 3 Series and 5 Series models, kind of like a Goldilocks "just right" sized machine, and I have high hopes!  We'll see how it sews tomorrow.  No rush.  I have plenty of cutting to do before I start piecing that quilt. 

Have a lovely evening and happy sewing!

I'm linking up with Esther's WIPs on Wednesday linky party because I'm SO EXCITED that this Geese In Circles grad quilt is finally a WIP instead of just an idea in my mind!

Grad Quilt Design Evolution + A Fabric Shopping Mission

Okay, so from those initial ideas I showed you last time, this was the color scheme my senior liked best for his graduation quilt design, the one with the royal blue flying geese against chartreuse:

The Chosen Colorway

But of course I can't just leave it at that, because, well, ME.  Once Lars-of-Ours gave me the thumbs up on the yellow/green and blue idea, I went back to EQ8 for some finessing.  

First concern: I don't want the finished quilt to look too juvenile, which could happen if the colors are all too bright and pure.  Yet I don't want it to be sombre and dreary, either.  Solution: the background is going to be the darkest, inkyest purple that I can find, like if the Amish wore purple, this is the purple they would wear.  But the geese are going to be lighter/brighter so they kind of glow and float against the dark background.

Second concern: If I'm not excited enough about the design, I am much, MUCH less likely to actually get the quilt finished -- EVER -- let alone in time for the Quillow Ceremony in June.  The piecing of this quilt is just as straightforward if I'm working with three solid color fabrics as it is if I'm playing with tints and shades...

So here's where I am with the design right now:

Now I Am Starting to Get Excited!

I am loving the three-dimensional effect that happens when I simulate using gradient fabrics for those geese!  Doesn't it look like chain links woven together?

So, how do I pull this off in real life?  Well, looking at my Kona Solids color chart, I selected Kona Midnight Purple for that background fabric:

Kona Solid in Midnight Purple, on Amazon here

Then for the flying geese, I was looking at ombre fabrics over on eQuilter.com.  

Gelato Ombre in Chartreuse

Gelato Ombre in Olive Garden

...And for the geese themselves:

Evening Ombres in Ocean

Gelato Ombre in Ocean Blue

And this is the part where I wish I was shopping in person at the well-appointed LQS (Local Quilt Shop) that exists only in my imagination.  I found six different online sources for that Kona Solid Midnight Purple fabric, and the exact same fabric looks completely different on each web site because each one is using their own photo of the fabric with different lighting, etc.  Yet I'm confident that I've chosen the right color because I have an actual swatch of it in my hand on the Kona color chart.  With these ombre fabrics, they could turn out to be all kinds of darker or brighter or greener or whatever once they showed up in my mailbox.  

And yes, I know I could just select seven different blue fabrics and seven different shades of the yellow-green to achieve a similar effect, but I like the effect of the colors gradually deepening WITHIN each patch rather than each patch being slightly darker than the patch before.

As I've lamented to y'all before, my nearest "local" source for a decent selection of high quality quilting cottons is an hour and a half round trip, or worse if I time it so that I get stuck in rush hour.  I know I have seen a few ombre fabrics there in the past, but I don't remember it being an extensive collection so it's really hit or miss that they'll have what I'm looking for.  

Ugh.

Well, I do have a bit of a shopping list accumulated:

• I need to find and purchases a replacement green fabric for the leaves on my remaining Frankenwhiggish Rose applique blocks.  I need a tattoo on my forehead that says "ATTENTION FABRIC SHOP: PLEASE SELL ME TWICE AS MUCH FABRIC AS I THINK I NEED BECAUSE IT'S ALWAYS DISCONTINUED BY THE TIME I RUN OUT!"

  

  I Did Not Buy Enough of This Fabric Back in 2014, and Now I Am Punished!

• I need the blue inner border/binding fabric, Kona Solid in Denim or something similar, for my pineapple log cabin quilt 

  

  I've Been Joining These Blocks Into Rows Intermittently...

  
  

  

  ...But I Haven't Yet Purchased the Blue Inner Border Fabric

• I need a backing fabric for my pineapple log cabin quilt, too.  

So that probably warrants a journey down to Sew Much Fun, don't you think?  Today and tomorrow it's their End of the Month/End of the Bolt Sale, 25% off any regular priced fabric if I buy whatever's left on the bolt.  The dark purple and the pineapple quilt backing are each going to be over 10 yards of fabric, and check out this photo from their shop that they just posted on their Facebook page a few minutes ago:

This Fabric Is Waiting for ME at Sew Much Fun!

I spy with my little eye some deep, dark PURPLE!  You guys, this fabric is calling to me and I have to go purchase liberate it from captivity immediately.  Wish me luck!

But first, I'm linking up with:

• ·       Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/
• ·       Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/ 

Lars's New Quillow Plan: Can I Finish This In 9 Months If I Haven't Started It Yet?

New Plan for Lars's Quillow, 74 x 98

Reality check: Lars starts his senior year of high school this coming Monday.  We are just nine months away from his senior year Quillow Blessing at church.  In case you're not familiar with this tradition, the annual Quillow Service at Christ Lutheran is when the graduating seniors parade to the front of the church in their caps in gowns while their baby pictures are flashing on the screens and the choir sings bittersweet anthems about letting go and launching them into the Big, Scary World, trusting in God to protect them.  Then the parents wrap a special quilt around the shoulders of their son or daughter, specially made for the occasion (many families do a quilt that folds up into a pillow, hence the term "quillow"), the pastors say stuff that makes everyone cry, and we do a special blessing.  This is a day for waterproof mascara, for sure.

Lars-Of-Ours, My Rising Senior

So anyway, Lars is going to need a quilt for this, and it needs to be completely finished by the beginning of June.  He and I collaborated on a design for this quilt over a year ago in EQ8, and although I absolutely adore the design we came up with, I've decided it's not suitable for his quillow for a number of reasons.

My Original, Unrealistic Crazy Person Design

What are those reasons, you may ask?

1. I haven't started it yet, and do you see all those tiny pieces?  Let's be real, folks -- there is NO WAY I would get this finished on time.
2. Lars's "quillow" is going to be a bed quilt for his college dorm, not a pillow, so I need to think about what it will feel like to sleep beneath the quilt.  A quilt with a bazillion pieces is also a quilt with a bazillion heavy seam allowances.  So I do plan to make the original quilt eventually, but as a wall quilt rather than a bed quilt.
3. If I locked myself in my studio for the next 9 months, working nonstop with only peanuts and M&Ms to sustain me, and miraculously managed to finish this quilt on time...  Then what if something BAD happened to the quilt at college, like it was stolen or ruined in a laundry mishap or something was spilled all over it -- can you imagine how devastating that would be?  I need to design a quilt that I can make with a reasonable investment of time so that, in the unfortunate event it's lost/damaged/stolen, my son won't feel responsible for the loss of a family heirloom!
4. Again, although I love the stained glass inspired cross design on its own, the interior designer in me is thinking about how this bed quilt will fit into a typical college dorm room that my son will be sharing with a roommate.  These are small rooms that get cluttered up very quickly, and I think a simpler, more graphic/modern quilt design is more likely to look good in the room with whatever else he and his roommate have going on in there.

Lars, of course, is bummed that he isn't getting a giant stained glass window for his quillow quilt, and he reluctantly gave me two criteria for coming up with an alternative design:

He wants it to be purple.

He also wants it to be "Cooler than everyone else's, and not just because all the squares match up, either."  

Hah!  I said it's not a competition to see whose parents can come up with the best quilt, but then he explained that I have been making cool things his whole life and he wants his quilt to be something special that only his mom could make...  And how am I supposed to argue with that?  He has been sleeping under this quilt for the past 6 years, and my quiltmaking skills have improved quite a bit since I made that one for him.  

Lars's Current Bed Quilt, Made in 2012

So I'm going to translate "cooler than everyone else's" into "cooler than the last one you made me," because that's what I think he was really getting at. 

One of the things I love most about the cathedral window quilt design is that I based it off of a design that Lars created in an EQ Intermediate Piecing Design class we took with Barb Vlack back when Lars was 13 years old.  (Yes, EQ software really is so easy that a child can use it!)  Wanting my new quillow design to also be a collaboration between mother and son, I went back to that old EQ7 Project File from the 2014 class to see what else I could use as a starting point for the new design.  

Lars's EQ7 Design from 2014 Class

I like how this design incorporates curved piecing and is similar to the Drunkard's Path blocks I used in his previous quilt, but with the greater complexity and "cool factor" of the arcs of graduated flying geese.  Since I can print my foundation paper piecing patterns directly from EQ8, as well as templates for the curved background fabrics, it won't be difficult to piece accurately, either.  

So the first thing I did was to resize the quilt to a size appropriate for an XL Twin dormitory mattress, scaling the block size up to 12" for a bold, modern scale (reducing the number of pieces and seams is an added bonus).  Each circle is made up of four blocks, so those are 24" circles.  Then I offset the rows of circles to create a half drop pattern repeat.  

Is It Purple Enough? Is It Cool Enough?

Now, THAT is a quilt design that I am excited to turn into a real quilt!  I am not 100% sure what Lars has in mind for the color scheme beyond the Purple Imperative, so I created a few different color schemes for him to choose from.  I may even drag him off to the quilt shop with me to select the actual fabrics.  

Or Will He Prefer Purple with Red and Gray?

I know I want either solid fabrics or nearly-solid fabrics for this quilt, with a dark, saturated purple background.  I like the Modern/Amish vibe that gives me, and I feel like it keeps the quilt from looking too cutesy for a young man.  Of course, I've never been one to limit my sons' color choices to brown, navy or gray.

Or Purple With Royal Blue and Chartreuse?

The more I play with different colorways, the more I like this design.  

Or Purple With Light Blue and Red?

Wouldn't it be a cool fabric print for drapery panels, printed on linen with a 24" repeat?

If Quilters Designed Drapery Fabrics

Okay, so THAT was probably not the most productive use of my time today...  FYI, you can NOT do that with EQ8.  I exported the quilt rendering photo as a JPEG from EQ8 so I could share that with you here on my blog, and then I imported that quilt design image into a separate interior design software program and rescaled it so I could use it as if it was a drapery fabric...  I am proud of myself for stopping at that point, because I REALLY wanted to PhotoShop a lovely mountain view behind those windows, drape a snuggly throw across the arm of the sectional, and top it all off with a fabulous contemporary chandelier.  This is what RESTRAINT looks like.

And now, my lovelies, I'm signing off so I can wrap up some last minute errands and details for my younger son's birthday party that is happening this evening!  Son the Younger turned 15 recently and is about to begin his sophomore year of high school.  Which means I will have ANOTHER quillow quilt to design and create as soon as I finish Lars's!

Birthday Boy Anders, My Rising Sophomore

Anders is going through a phase where he thinks it's hysterically funny to cower in fear whenever Mom takes his picture.  Fun times!

I'll be linking today's post up with:

• ·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com  
• ·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/
• Esther's WIPs On Wednesday http://estheraliu.blogspot.com

Lars's Stained Glass Quillow Quilt, Revised, and a Game Plan!

So the overwhelming consensus from you guys is that I should go with the design I shared yesterday for Lars's Quillow Ceremony quilt.  I played around with recoloring it in EQ7 again today to make it look more like a stained glass window:

Final Design, Maybe.  68" x 102" XL Twin

The way I had it colored originally, there was too much green (and it was the wrong shade of green), too much black, and I wasn't getting the glowing effect that you see from a medieval stained glass window.  I pulled some photos of medieval stained glass windows off the Internet for color references and went about recoloring my quilt with mostly batik fabrics of varying shades.

Chartres Cathedral Window for Color References

Notre Dame Cathedral (?)

Chartres Again (I think)

To recreate the glowing effect of a stained glass window in a cathedral, I used different shades of each color fabric with the darker shades towards the outer edges of the quilt and lighter shades near the center.  

So, there are two different 24" blocks in this quilt:

Lars's 24" Bear Paw Variation

I'll need six identical Bear Paw Variation blocks like the one above.

Lars's 24" Star Block

I'll also need two full Star Blocks like the one above, each with slightly different coloration, as well as six half Star Blocks and four quarter Star Blocks with different coloration to go around the outside of the center blocks.  There are no sashing or borders in this quilt, but each one of those blocks will be an onerous beast!

I've used a total of 18 different batik fabrics in this design as well as solid black.  EQ7 is calculating that I need a total of about 17 1/2 yards of fabric for this project (that's just the quilt top, not including 6 1/4 yards of backing fabric or the binding fabric), but if I end up paper piecing it I'll need to allow even more fabric for the waste factor.  Although I pulled a lot of my batik fabric images from eQuilter's web site, I probably want to select my actual batik fabrics in person to be sure I'm getting the right shades for the effect I'm trying to create.

I was already poking around on Spoonflower, though, and found two terrific options for the quilt backing:

Trust the Lord Your God by Kristi Duggins, available here

or 

The Lord Is My Strength by Wren Leyland, available here

Does everyone know about Spoonflower?  It's an Internet business based in Durham, North Carolina that does custom digital printing on everything you ever wished you could design yourself: Quilting fabric, apparel fabric, home dec fabric, giftwrap, wallpaper...  Are you excited yet?  Best of all, there's no minimum order and swatches are only $5.  Not only can you design your own fabrics and have them custom printed by Spoonflower, but you can also sell your designs on their web site and earn a commission when someone else orders them.  So if I decide to use Wren Leyland's fabric design for Lars's quilt backing, Spoonflower will pay Wren a commission on my order.  Cool, right?  I've ordered swatches of each of these backing fabrics that I'm considering so I can test launder them before I make a final decision.  After all, I'm a LONG WAY from needing the backing fabric...

Diane suggested setting goals for this quilt to make it more manageable and to ensure getting it done on time, and I think that's a great idea.  I've just made some adjustments to the schedule she proposed: 

• For sanity's sake, I need to finish a couple of my WIPs before I cut into a new project.  The Math Quilt, the Butterfly Bear Paw Quilt, the Jingle Quilt and the Pineapple Log Cabin quilt all need to get finished by the end of September 2017.
• Figure Out Paper Piecing, Print Patterns, Purchase Fabrics by end of October 2017
• Center Blocks Pieced by end of April 2018
• Partial Outer Blocks Pieced by end of August 2018
• Entire Top Pieced by end of October 2018
• Embroidered quilt label, personalization designed & stitched by end of January 2018
• Quilting Completed by March 2019
• Bound and Labeled by end of May 2019
• Ready to Gift at Quillow Ceremony in early June 2019

I know that I don't have as much sewing time from October through the end of January because that's when my interior design business tends to heat up, plus I have holiday preparations and Christmas caroling throughout November and December.  Anyway, it's only a plan, and it can always be revised, right?  Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, I've spent way more time in front of my computer over the past couple of days than I've spent in my studio behind my sewing machines, so that's where I'm headed after a nice, hot shower.  I've been stricken with the most obnoxious, unseasonable stuffy nose and sore throat right at the kickoff to summer vacation!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone, and happy stitching!