A Beautiful Faraway Place I'll Never Go

June 09, 2019 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

When I made this quilt it didn’t have any special meaning. I was having fun playing with colors, remembering the color theory and technique I had learned in a workshop with Tara Faughnan. I crowd sourced for title ideas because nothing immediately came to mind. A friend said it reminded her of photos she had seen of Cinque Terra Italy at sunset. After looking at the images myself, I had to agree.

The idea of the world’s most beautiful places is tinged with sadness for me at the moment. I used to think I’d reach the age of retirement and then happily go traveling the globe with Nate. Now that we know more about how severely climate change will affect our lives in the next decades, I’m realizing that will probably always remain a dream. Not only will flying become an extravagance beyond the reach (and outside the moral code) of most people, but many beautiful coasts and places around the world will simply be gone. I think it’s important to put people first and I am hoping (and voting) that our leaders will make choices that minimize the damage already done and prioritize human survival. I know it’s a selfish impulse to grieve my lost leisure travel, but I’m taking a minute to be sad about all the places I’ll never get to see with my own eyes.

A Beautiful Faraway Place I’ll Never Go, back

This quilt is good for a twin size bed, measuring 65” x 80”. I quilted it on my domestic Juki. Mitch Hopper took final pictures for me.

Two Mini Quilts

May 24, 2019 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

This quilt was made for a swap between my guild and the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild. My partner didn’t give me any requests, just told me to make whatever my heart desired. So I used scraps from a previous project (my Good Bones mini quilts from my drawing final) and the design was loosely inspired by the Arne Quilt by Rossie Crafts. I did my own quilting on this one and was pretty happy with the outcome.

And another mini for a swap. This time it was a swap within my own guild. Again, my partner left it pretty wide open in terms of what she likes, so I tried to make something that reflects what I see in her: bright, vibrant, energetic. I had fun improving my way through this mini. My partner liked it and it turned out to be a parting gift, as she soon after moved from Chicago to Milwaukee.

Train Track Pennies

August 20, 2018 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

My last living grandparent passed away in early 2016. My dad's mom lived to be 90, and lived independently very nearly until the end. She was wonderful in many ways. She was sweet and funny, crafty and thrifty, made THE BEST scrambled eggs, popcorn, and lasagna, and had the greatest stories about her life as a young woman.

When I was a little girl (around 6 years old, I think), I spent 3 weeks at her house during the summer. It was much too long for a kid that age, and I was a homesick wreck by the end. Still, I have a lot of great memories from that trip. We took walks, put coins on the train tracks, picked Queen Anne's lace which we then put in a cup of food colored water. We made seed bead bracelets and I repeatedly spilled the bowl of beads we were working from. We would patiently pick them up together. Once I spilled an entire bottle of Calamine lotion on her carpet. Again she surprised me with her calm reaction. Coming back from one of our walks one evening, I ran ahead and locked the back door and the front door and then ran out again. I had locked us out of the house. I think I thought it would be funny, but I was soon in tears realizing it was not actually a good joke at all. Grandma took it all in stride, again, and calmly found a neighbor to help us pick one of the locks and get back into the house.

I think because of the good experience of staying with her that summer, I always felt close to her. When I graduated high school, instead of staying home and enrolling in community college, I decided to move in with her and attend one near her. I was a terrible roommate, self centered and inconsiderate. I know she must have been irritated with me much of the time but once again I felt so close to her because of the time we spent together. We watched the first season of The Bachelor together and had to hide our eyes and giggle when things got too sexy in the last few episodes (same thing when we watched Coming Home with Jane Fonda). I was vegetarian at the time and she went out of her way to cook things completely foreign to her so that I could eat. We spent countless hours chatting in the kitchen as she washed dishes and I dried. She beat me at Scrabble many times. She was still playing with and beating my parents until a few weeks before she died. I wish I had recorded some of her stories somehow, and I wish I hadn't waited so long to make her a quilt. She only got to use the one I made her for a few weeks.

One of grandma's garments I included in the quilt

My parents and sister did most of the work of cleaning out her house after she was gone. I asked them to set aside some things I could use to make a quilt. They delivered a large box full of clothes and bed linens, and also lots of my grandma's own craft projects, like doilies, or table runners she had embroidered. These items sat in my house for over a year before I was ready to cut into them and make this quilt. They carried the smell of my grandma's house so strongly. It was an emotional experience just to open the box. After a couple false starts, I finally got going.

I decided to make these oval shapes to represent the pennies we used to smoosh on the train tracks behind Grandma's house. I used the six-minute circle method to piece them, and was happy to discover the technique also works for shapes that aren't perfect circles. Once the ovals were made I cut some into halves and some into quarters and mixed them all up. I felt inspired to include another design element... I had always been fascinated by notebooks full of Gregg shorthand that my Grandma used for practice during her time in secretarial school. The secret-codedness of it all was intriguing to me and I thought the lines were beautiful. I decided to applique shorthand symbols over the top of the flattened penny shapes, and I chose words that describe the attributes I most admired in my Grandma. Patience, generosity, love, curiosity, humor, service, fortitude, and neatness.

shorthand symbols applied with a bias tape machine applique technique

This quilt was emotionally challenging at first. Then it developed into a technical challenge. I've never worked with so many different types of fabrics before. There are silks and polyesters in here, along with cottons of all different weights. There are thick fuzzy blankets, and nubby hobnail bedspreads. I put interfacing behind the stretchy fabrics and forged ahead. It's extremely thick in some spots but my Juki handled all the different fabrics beautifully. I quilted this one myself. I was proud to have it hang in the juried show at QuiltCon 2018. Thanks to Mitch Hopper for taking final photos for me, the last four images here are by him.

quilting detail

back of quilt. I used a flannel sheet found in my grandma's house, new in its packaging.

Naive

August 17, 2018 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

Naive Melody by the Talking Heads has been a favorite song for years. I wanted to make another quilt using the Drunkard's Path alphabet I designed, and this lyric, "Never for money / always for love," emerged as a phrase I love enough to put on a quilt. I think of it as an unofficial, cheeky motto for my quilt-making. When you're a quilter, people are constantly asking you if you sell your quilts. And, well, here is my answer.

sketchbook and palette, inspired by a notebook cover

I decided to attempt matchstick quilting for the first time on this quilt. I had.... issues. In an attempt to hide, yes, I'll admit it, the puckers created by botched matchstick quilting, I decided to add lots of big stitch hand-quilting. That was two years ago. I'm still working on this quilt, slowly adding hand stitches in beautiful variagated embroidery floss. I love the look and the texture, but it's taking stinking forever. I've probably logged over 60 hours in hand stitching on this, and no end in sight. I don't know if I'll ever be officially *done* with this quilt. If I do ever finish it, I'll post updated final photos.

After investing many hours and much thread into the matchstick quilting on this piece, I decided to add some hand stitching. This added about three more years onto the completion date… once I started adding hand stitching, I just wanted to add more and more, and, well, it took a very long time. I think the texture is so unique and lovely but I will never do this finish on a quilt again. Somebody please slap me if I ever consider it.

This piece measures about 57”x72”. Mitch Hopper took the following 4 photos of the completed work.

The Cat Quilts

August 10, 2018 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

I never expected to turn into a cat lady. Growing up my family had cats but they lived harsh, short lives in the out-of-doors. I learned not to get too attached.

When my kids got bigger one of them wanted a snake. I wasn't into it. My husband convinced me we should talk the kid into a cat instead. And so we did. And then I fell in love. Hard.`I was so charmed by the way our cats (yes, plural, as we soon got a second) moved and played, so delighted by the way my kids connected with them. I posted cute cat videos on my social media. I started noticing all the very cute cat-themed items available for purchase in this world. I bought a cat shirt and cat pins. Probably some other stuff I can't remember. People started giving me gifts with a cat motif which was rough because I'm extremely picky about my cat motifs. I felt like this was all becoming too much. I felt like a too much of a nerdy cat lady, basically. So I came up with the perfect way to cool it with the random cat purchases but still fully indulge my cat obsession. FABRIC DUH. I started buying up all the cute cat-themed novelty fabric I could find. I wondered if I could possibly make an all cat fabric quilt that didn't look completely tacky and garish. The most modern-aesthetic cat-quilt ever made. That was my goal.

I had long admired the Color Wheel quilt in Joelle Hoverson's Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts. I decided this would be my first all-cat-fabric endeavor. I cut wedges out of all my cat fabrics, and ended up with enough for two and a half color wheels.

The first full color wheel I made used all of my favorite prints, all of the best colors. I had trouble finding orange cat-fabrics that weren't Halloween themed. I ended up dyeing a couple fabrics with white backgrounds in order to fill out the orange quadrant. I used my absolute favorite neutral kitty print as a background. I had to search and scrounge for it, since it was an older and popular Lizzy House print. I had *just* enough of it to finish the top. This quilt was given to my daughter and hangs above her bed. She loves it and it totally makes the room.

The back of this quilt has all the wedges I cut from the neutral prints. They didn't fit into the rainbow color wheel but made their own striking version against the blue background prints I chose.

Kitty Color Wheel hanging on slanted wall

I made a second kitty color wheel, a more scrappy version, with a varying background and second-tier colors and prints. This was a gift for kids I babysat for three years, a parting gift as our time together came to an end. Their color wheel wasn't as strong as the first version I made, but it still made for a cute gift. I used more cat prints to piece the back of their quilt too.

Label for Kitty Color Wheel #2, a gift for some special kids in my life

Around the same time as my kitty color wheels were taking shape, my guild embarked on a medallion-a-long. I had never made a medallion quilt before (a quilt that grows by adding borders around a central block, rather than by adding rows to each other), so I was eager to give it a go. The Seattle Modern Quilt Guild kindly agreed to let us use their 2015 pattern. I started off with this pattern but didn't stick to it strictly. I worked out my own designs for several of the borders. The challenge with this quilt was to stick to 100% cat novelty prints, but keep an eye on the overall composition of the quilt, especially in regards to color and contrast. In the end I was very happy with how it turned out. Nikki Maroon did the gorgeous quilting for me, and Mitch Hopper took the final photos. It measures 83" square. Big beautiful girl. I put 12" square cat fabrics on the back to use up my stash. I really think I've scratched that cat-fabric itch and won't need to make any more quilts with this theme. Like, ever again.

And here are the two knuckleheads who started the whole thing... Lupin and Sirius.