HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT

For a long time, I have wanted to own a traditional American quilt. I love the textures, the patterns, the intricacy. Like most fringe, artisan techniques that are visual, each pattern on the quilt has a history and meaning and theres a sense of country old timey-ness about them that I need to make my modern, city life bearable. 

 

Its hard to find the perfect quilt. Time and money are the two things that are usually required to satisfy any collector/consumer in their passion. Unfortunately for me, if I have one, its quite possibly because I don’t have the other. (Although this is exponential, because there is usually a certain point in your work life where money can buy you time and time can make you money) Anyway, I digress. As is my usual nature, if I cant find something I want I usually just start my own. So last week I started making my quilt.

 

 

I didn’t want to start yet. I leave my current work role on Sept 1st and I was going to use this date to begin my quilt. But I couldnt wait, because once I had my fabrics, it was too exciting to not start! Quilts are romantic. You build a relationship with something that takes you that long to make.  You build an emotional connection. It makes you concentrate. You cant answer emails while quilting. You can’t do conference calls while quilting. Its almost like meditation. This quilt is a metaphor for my slowing down… 

 

My quilt symbolises my freedom. 

 

I’ve decided I’m not going to start any new business/partnerships/projects until my quilt is finished. I want some time out and I want to see it through to the end.

 

Just to give you an idea of the task I’m undertaking. The above image is my first quilt block* based on a design called Evening Star. It is made up of 28 individually cut pieces, consisting of 3 different fabrics. These fabrics mush be washed and ironed before use and they must be cut on the grain. Once cut they need to be sewn together – by hand or machine – and then steamed flat, with the back of the light seams folded onto the dark seams (seams shouldnt be ironed open).

 

As you can see, mine has a slight variation in the middle than the official image below, but that is the beauty of quilting… there is no right and wrong with designs.

 

 

So I need to made 42 of these blocks to make the front of the quilt. I’m actually going to mix two block designs – of which there are hundreds – the other block is called Kings Crown, below.

 

 

Then once i’ve sewn these 1176 small pieces of fabric together, you find your backing fabric and sandwich a piece of batting* between it. Then you need to handstitch the entire top of the quilt. These patterns are just as intricate as the quilt blocks and probably will take me as long.

 

Ok so I’ve bored you enough now, but its gonna be beautiful! I just mocked this up on photoshop. I’m 28 going on 88 right now…

 

 

 

*Block is one square or unit of fabric made up of lots of smaller bits of fabric

*Batting is the foamy filler of the quilt. The soft bit basically.

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If only you could somehow make money without leaving The Life at all…

Shar

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The 9-5ers

Tom Wolfe, along with Dorothy Parker before him, and Bret Easton Ellis after, is one of the few writers whose books I return to again and again, often just diving into the middle to read a chapter or two before placing it back on my bookshelf, smug and satisfied.

I return to them because they write about people. Society, class, fashion, trends, the cutting edge. And like most subjects that revolve around popular culture – its cyclical and therefore always relevant. I picked up Bonfire of the Vanities again when the London Riots of 2011 was plastered all over the news (black guys gets killed, people riot, politicians flounder…), and the merry-go-round of fashion-parties-restaurants-sex-cocaine favoured by Bret Easton Ellis is something I still encounter in New York and LA today.

But when I picked up The Pump House Gang last week, and immersed myself in the basement of Noonday Underground, I thought – WOW! Now that I’m a 9-5er (I recently took up post as Nike’s Energy Marketing Manager after working for myself forever…) I would LOVE it if I could go to a rave in the middle of the day and let myself be free. Where all the cool kids remove themselves from the “straight faces” and dance solidly for an hour on their lunchbreak before returning to their desk jobs working for The Man. Why doesn’t this exist?! We need some hope in the doom and gloom… Maybe ill start one up!

And then I checked my Twitter feed. I’m not a twitter fan, and I hadn’t checked it in months – I just reply to people who @ me. And like an oracle – what was the first story I see? On Stylist Magazine no less … “Would you go to a rave on your lunch break? This new trend is coming to the UK!” With a link to a new party called Lunch Beat, starting in Manchester.

So that’s that then. Life imitating art imitating life. And I was already too late.

Shar

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