How to Make a Quilt

After a long and fruitful conversation about quilts with my Aunt Heidi last night, I decided to post some pictures of my creations so that she and everyone else might see my handiwork. The longer I work on this, the more I consider myself a "Quilter," but I know I still have a long way to go before I become Accomplished at this art. Heidi says that my great-grandmother (her grandmother), whom we called Boodie, always wished she'd taken up quilting, and had stored away yards and yards of scraps in anticipation of that goal, but it never got used. Also, her mother, my great-great grandmother, was an excellent quilter and some of her work is left unfinished, never to be taken up by Boodie, though still kept ready to go in those boxes as well. My desire to learn quilting is fueled by an intense admiration of all the craft work Boodie did do, once upon a time, and a desire to emulate the cozy beds at her house with their hodge podge of sheet sets and scrappy quilts (which I now know were made by my great-great grandmother!).

First Quilt

My first quilt ever began with a quilting class at Santa Barbara City College. Little did I know then that our instructor was having us design our quilts in pretty much the most expensive way possible (short of buying Egyptian Cotton 1000 thread-count fabric!), but the results are nothing to sneeze at and the the techniques I learned are the true value.

The six blocks of my quilt.

We made "sampler quilts." A sampler quilts feature a variety of different traditional quilt blocks, and are unified by the repeating colors in each block. My colors are red and gold, which are derived from the "Focus Fabric," and are in turn used in each block and in the border of the quilt (see below). Each block also has a "background fabric" (in this case, it's off-white) that also serves as a unifying element. I had seen quilts that didn't use a background fabric, and I thought they weren't as pretty as those that did.

Here are the blocks with borders added and the setting in process of being attached.

I ended up adding dark brown borders around each block because the fabric for the setting was so busy that it muddled the colors and patterns of the blocks themselves. It's funny how that works out. You never know until you see it laid out and ready to go.

This is the assembled quilt top. Note the three reds (a dark, medium and light) and three golds (a dark, medium and light). In putting together the quilt top, I took care to arrange the blocks so that no one block or pair of blocks is constantly drawing the viewer's attention. Notice that two blocks have an octagon shape in them. These have deliberately been placed separate from each other. The same goes for the two blocks that have heavy amounts of pink. Finally, I placed my two favorite blocks in the middle row, because I love them.

My two favorite blocks, traditionally called "Rosebud" and "Cat's Cradle"

Fast forward a year later. Here I have laid out the "quilt sandwich": backing, batting and top.

First it is pinned.

Then it is basted with long, running stitches.

Then I hand quilted it. No need to shudder or cringe on my behalf; I quite enjoyed it and became pretty adept at making those close, tiny stitches that are the mark of good quilting (see below). This part took me about a month and a half, working a few hours every day while watching The Wire on DVD. I developed a tough little callous on my left index finger from catching the needle as it came through the quilt thousands of times. Certainly a mark of pride, for me.

Here is the back of the quilt, now finished. My quilting pattern was to just "stitch in the ditch" as they say. Rather than attempt anything more complex, my quilting lines just follow along right next to the seams between pieces of the quilt top. This is simpler and faster than curvy designs and I like the effect on the back, which now carries an echo, or perhaps a shadow, of the pieced design on the front of the quilt.

Here are my quilting stitches up close. According to my quilting book, an average quilter can do 6 stitches per inch, an "Accomplished" quilter can do 8, and a "microquilter" can do 14! After weeks and weeks of practice, I was doing between 6-8 stitches per inch. Evenness of stitches is more important than how close-packed they are, though.

Quilting has ruined store-bought quilts for me. Now I examine bedspread quilts in places like Pottery Barn and Bed, Bath and Beyond, and I am aghast and appalled. Many of these quilts, which they have the gall to charge over $100 for sometimes, have "quilting" stitches that are half an inch long and spaced 3 or 4 inches apart. It looks like they forgot to take out their basting! This is a travesty on the art of quilting.

Second Quilt

My second quilt is a "jelly roll" quilt, meaning that most of my fabric will come from two "jelly rolls," which is the trademarked term that the Moda fabric company gives to bundles of fabric strips. Each jelly roll has about 40 strips, each 44-inches long (the width of most fabric yardage) and 2 1/2 inches wide. A jelly roll usually contains one strip from each kind of fabric in a given line. My jelly rolls are from the "Park Avenue" line, and they were on sale.

A jelly roll in the wild

Alas, two jelly rolls is not quite enough fabric for the quilt I want (queen-sized bedspread with generous drop and pillow tuck: 96 x 102 inches!). So I collected a few more quarter-yards of fabric, which you can see folded up below.

All the fabric for my quilt top (save the border)

Fabric close-up

My design is intended to give the appearance of random piecey-ness to my quilt top while still being simple and fast to cut and piece. Only two size pieces will be used: 3 x 2 inches and 10 x 2 inches.

Cutting a 3 x 2 inch piece (they're actually 3.5 x 2.5 so there can be a 1/4-inch seam allowance)

Here is all the fabric for the top of my quilt

This is 720 3.5" x 2.5" pieces, 144 10.5" x 2.5" strips, and 270 2.5" x 2.5" squares (for a pieced inner-border). It will yield 72 10 x 10 inch squares. So far so good! I'm in the middle of sewing together the 3 x 2 inch pieces. My wonderful housemate has a sewing machine that she neglects terribly and so is happy to let me use it.

For an idea of what this quilt will look like finished, check out this artist's Etsy listing for her own jelly roll quilt. Notice the lines of shorter pieces separated by longer strips. My quilt will be much larger than this one.

How to Do Stuff: Cooking Lavender Creme Brulee

This is part 3 in (what has become) my occasional series, "How to do Stuff," (part 1 being "How to Spend a Year in Australia" and part 2 being "How to Replace a Broken Car Window"). Today's installment: Lavender Creme Brulee!

I got to taste this astoundingly delicious concoction at a friend's wedding in June, and when the opportunity arose a couple of weeks ago to actually make creme brulee (my first time), I insisted that it be with lavender, just for kicks. Here's what you need:

• Just over 1 quart of heavy whipping cream (40% if you can get it)
• The yolks of 6 eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 packet of vanilla sugar
• A whole mess of lavender (I had a mixing bowl full of it)

Step 1: Soak the lavender in the cream for a couple hours, at room temperature. This step is done to taste, but remember that the baking process will further enhance the flavor. Once you can taste the lavender in the cream, you're good. I helped the process along by squishing up the lavender a bit with a potato masher, because I was worried there wouldn't be enough flavor. The bonus I got for my squishing efforts was the little pieces of lavender floating in the cream afterwards, which was just adorable, so I left them in.

Step 2: Separate the yolks from 6 eggs, again at room temperature. There is no picture of this. This was my first time separating eggs, so it was a little scary. My word of advice: be careful not the let the yolk get punctured by the sharp edges of the shell. Don't get too happy with the flipping back and forth, this will lead to yolk breakage. Ack!

Step 3: Cream the yolks and all the sugar in a mixing bowl. Use and electric mixer and blend and blend and blend. Do this until you can't see the individual grains of sugar any more. It will take more than 10 minutes, so be patient. The result will be super-fluffy and you will be pleased.

Step 4: Bring the lavender-infused cream to a boil, remove from heat, and let sit for 15 minutes. Doesn't "lavender-infused cream" just sound romantic and delicious? I feel like I work at some upscale restaurant, even though this all happened in my friend's kitchen.

Step 5: Combine the cream and eggs/sugar mixture slowly. Be sure to do this a little at a time while constantly stirring. We don't want the cream (which is still pretty warm) to cook the eggs at all, so it's important to keep the stuff moving.

Step 6: Fill your ramekins nearly to the top. This recipe filled up eight of these, which are about a pint each. So cute!

Step 7: Place the ramekins in a roasting pan filled with enough water to go halfway up the sides of the ramekins. This step allows the creme to bake evenly and not scorch on the edges.

Step 8: Bake for ~45 minutes, or until the cream is set, but still trembling in the middle.

Step 9: Remove from oven and chill in the fridge ~2 hours. This step is done when the custard at the center of the dishes is firm to the touch, but has about as much give as the flesh on the underside of your arm.

Step 10: Sprinkle each ramekin with a light dusting of sugar (baking sugar works best) and melt it with a torch. This step can be repeated if you like a really thick brulee crust (like I do!). I used raw cane sugar for this step, which tended to burn before it even melted. It smelled like marshmallows.

Step 11: Enjoy! You're ready to eat as soon as the melted sugar on top hardens. Break out your teaspoon and get cracking! Ahh, this reminds me of one of my favorite movies: Amelie.

My taste-testers said they found the lavender flavor too strong, though I liked it. Evidently, lavender is a mild anesthetic, and eventually it will numb your taste-buds. The first bite is still fantastic, though! I will infuse the cream a little less next time. My next attempt at flavor-infused creme brulee will be with roses, which sounds exciting. I'd also like to try clove and lemon.