Peoria Street Surplus

May 01, 2023 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

Sometimes we can’t explain the things we do for our art and this is one of those instances. I sewed up this quilt top in 2018, using extra blocks leftover from my Art 140 quilt. After having it long armed, I decided it needed to be hand quilted instead. So I spent the next 2 years ripping out the quilting I paid for, and quilting it by hand, block by block. I used the same lines as the original quilting, and joked that it was a very expensive way to mark a quilt. I often questioned my sanity. Now that it’s finally done and on our bed, I’m happy. Measures 83”x83” Photos by Mitch Hopper.

Yoshiko's Donut Mountain

April 29, 2023 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

I finished this earlier this year, it’s a quilt dedicated to donuts. It was conceived at QuiltCon 2015 when I bought this Yoshiko Jinzenji fabric featuring the puzzling yet pleasing motif of donuts floating over a mountain range. I started collecting fabrics to complement it, including a little bundle gifted to me by Celina Mancurti after I assisted in one of her QuiltCon screen printing workshops the same year. That stack of fabrics stayed stashed in a bag for 7 years, the longest I’ve ever had a project in progress. I’m glad to check it off the list. It’s not my favorite thing I’ve ever made but they can’t all be! It’s scrappy and a bit wild and I had fun piecing the donuts.

For the record my favorite donuts are glazed donuts from Walmart circa 2009 (I think they changed the recipe since then), and powdered donuts from the Oak Park farmers market. {{{excellent photos by @man.of.action as always}}}

Mini for Miki

April 29, 2023 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

Last year my guild Chicago MQG held a mini-quilt swap with the Mexico MQG The prompt was to put our partner’s first initial somewhere in the quilt. My partner Miky Zapata mentioned she loves the work of Carolina Oneto so I decided to channel her style for this project. I took Carolina’s on-demand course “Curves and Transparencies” (available on her website) and used the techniques from her class to create this composition (it’s a lowercase cursive m). It was my first time working with transparencies and it was super challenging but fun!

Sadly this mini quilt got lost in the mail somewhere between here and its destination in Mexico. A tiny part of me still hopes it magically resurfaces and makes its way to Miky. But it probably won’t. Still, I enjoyed making it and learning something new. I definitely recommend Carolina’s class!

sensory toy project for summer fieldwork

April 25, 2023 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

Last summer I spent four weeks of fieldwork at Freedom Woods Equestrian Center where they give lessons, they compete in shows, and they’re also home to the clinic of a wonderful OT, Paula Lundell. Paula uses horses as her therapeutic tools in her OT practice, which is called hippotherapy. She asked us to come up with a project for her. I immediately thought of using my quilting skills to make something for Paula’s clinic.

My initial idea was to make a field of prairie points that the kids could put clips on. Paula likes these clips in her clinic for all kinds of activities because they promote fine motor, motor planning, and bilateral coordination, which is just a fancy way of saying, both sides are working together. Clients can stabilize a point with one hand and put the clip on with the other. It can also be used to practice color identification, which integrates the visual system and communication as well.

Another student was on this fieldwork with me, my friend Hamilton. He said the prairie points were cool but weren’t very horsey considering the setting we were in. I thought he had a fair point so I decided to make a second side and make it horse themed.

Horse side of toy, displayed on stand made by Hamilton

detail. Named the horse Lamilton, a combination of Laura and Hamilton :)

It features prize ribbons that provide sensory stimulation. The velcro itself gives great sensory input, plus the ribbon’s tails are all different textures. I affectionately refer to them as Crinkly, Fluffy, Lumpy, and Bumpy. Again, they can be used to practice color recognition and they’ll promote bilateral coordination as kids use both hands to take them off and put them back.

The final detail is the horse’s mane, which is 3D so the kids can put clips on there as well. This is something that Paula will often do in the arena on the real horse. One day we watched a kiddo get upset, worried that he was hurting the horse by pulling off the clips. Horses don’t have nerve endings in their manes, which is something I learned this summer, so it doesn’t hurt them at all. So this can be a great practice activity in the clinic before introducing it on the actual horses and clients can learn that it won’t hurt them. I constructed this project like a pillowcase, with one side open, and Hamilton made a beautiful wood stand for it to slide over. We wanted to be in the vertical plane instead of lying down on the table because working on a vertical surface has its own benefits, like engaging the muscles of the shoulder girdle and core, promoting visual tracking, and spatial awareness. Placing the wrist in extension encourages better control of the fingers, and working against gravity is a great strengthening activity.

I made the prairie points with the help of a tutorial by Hayley Grzych on the Bernina blog. I enlarged a paper pieced pattern by Made by Marney to make the horse side.

It was really fun to get to see it put to use in the clinic during our last week there. This month made me a true believer in the magic of horses and hippotherapy. I feel so lucky that I got to spend time there, and honestly, it felt more like summer camp than work and I loved every minute.

spending time in the garden at Freedom Woods

I also made a little gift for Paula to show my appreciation for everything she shared with us during our time at her clinic. I tried to model the horses after the four horses she uses for therapy, Marshmallow, Nelly, Pumpkin, and Flash.

new prayers: may i, may you

October 27, 2022 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

This quilt is about motherhood, growth, change, acceptance, pain, love, compassion, and hope. It was inspired by finding this tiny preemie outfit in storage, and the work of artist Russell Barratt who uses whole clothes and dots in his work.

My son recently went through a very hard couple of years. I tried to support but also give him space to live his life, and I did both very imperfectly. It was really difficult not to be consumed by worry, and not to feel like everything was somehow my fault. I made this quilt, using clothes that were worn by my boy 19 years apart, not for him but for myself, to work through what I was feeling during this sad and stressful time.

The prayers of my upbringing are foreign to me now. I let them go a long time ago. Instead, I borrow the words from the Buddhist tradition metta, or lovingkindness meditation. I meditate on these phrases and wish them for myself as a young mother, for my present-day self, and for my son at all of his ages and stages. I do my best to hold all versions of us in tenderness and compassion. As I write this now, my son is doing much better. Here’s to even better days ahead.

I made the applique dots by printing photos onto pink vellum, cutting them into circles, adding some handwriting, layering them onto fabric, scanning them and sending them to Spoonflower to print onto fabric. The applique and quilting were all done by (my) hand. Mitch Hopper took photos.

There are many versions of Metta but this longer version is the one I use most frequently:

(first you say it for yourself)

May I be filled with lovingkindness.

May I be safe from inner and outer dangers.

May I be well in body and mind.

May I be happy and at ease.

(then you say it for someone else, an individual, a group, or the world)

May you be filled with lovingkindness.

May you be safe from inner and outer dangers.

May you be well in body and mind.

May you be happy and at ease.