I spent most of the last week deep in the creativity zone, trying to solve the problem with the background for the Elemental Changes quilt. I feel like I must be on Plan Z by now, though it’s really not quite that bad, I suppose. If you recall, I’d decided that the pale green and white palette wasn’t going to work, and I thought it needed more color, lots more color. I spent an entire day fleshing out the the fabric choices, starting with the Bali fabrics that I’d used for the Inchies themselves, and adding fabrics in between them to expand the palette. Here’s Plan B on the table:

Of particular note is how many of the original background fabrics made it into Plan B’s color palette: absolutely none. Not. Even. One. Validation in it’s purest, simplest form. The first background fabric choices were obviously not even close to right if none of them made the cut for this second plan. Despite the validation though, the plan fizzled after I put some of the parts up on the design wall. While playing with all the colors was satisfying, I couldn’t figure out if it would all work as I wanted it to, and it was going to be a huge amount of work and fabric to get it all up on the design wall just to see if it would work out. The more parts I put up, the less I liked the result anyway.

The good part about Plan B: I laid hands on every single piece of fabric that I have in the studio, except the scraps*. Really, every single one, right down to the fat quarters. I’ve got some really awesome fabrics in my collection, I must say. Of course, now that I’ve pulled out hundreds of them and decided Plan B’s not working, I have to put them all back. *sigh*

*I didn’t go through the scraps, because the huge tub that my scraps are in has been missing since the move. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s kind of bugging me that this giant Rubbermaid tub is nowhere to be found. How could a giant Rubbermaid tub be hard to find?

I thought about many other directions at that point, including starting completely over with a more limited palette to begin with, or even scrapping the entire plan altogether and using the Inchies for something else. I wasn’t sure if I’d have time to finish the project before the deadline if I started over, so that was going to be a last resort, but every day that goes by without a decision or some progress is one day closer to that deadline anyway. In the midst of all this, I started to wonder why I do this to myself, but that’s another whole rant by itself.

Along about Thursday, I think, I decided to look at Beyond Charm Quilts: The Ultimate Challenge, a great book from the mid-90’s. The Ultimate Challenge was to start with a charm pack of squares of many different fabrics, and make as many charm quilts as you could from the original set of squares. Each quilt must have an identical piece of every one of the original fabrics in it.

I’ve always wanted to do this challenge, but just never gotten around to it. The point is, the authors started with a charm pack of 100 Jinny Beyer Palette fabrics, which span the colors of the rainbow and are widely varied in value just like the Inchies for this project. I perused the Gallery in this book with an eye toward identifying the unifying element in each quilt. How did they turn this rainbow of hues into a cohesive whole?

I discovered that many of the quilts, perhaps even the majority, used shades of grey, black, cream or white in the background. Okay, fine. Fine. It’s not what I had planned at all but having nothing to lose at that point, I gave it a go. I pulled out some black, grey and white fabrics and slapped it up on the wall, and came up with this:

It’s still missing some background pieces, but you get the idea. I think I like it and it will work, and I’ve ordered some other fabric to use in the setting spaces and border, so hopefully it will show up double quick and be the right color when it does. It’s much better than it was, in any case. I’m off to make more Inchies; I have about half of them done now!

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Here’s where the current project, Elemental Changes, is at the moment:

This is one quarter of the quilt on the design wall, minus some background/fill in pieces. I finally decided that I needed to see it on the wall instead of just imagining it in my head, so I put it up this morning. My first thought was “Okay, maybe this is going somewhere,” but that turned into “It’s not speaking to me.” Well, it’s speaking to me but it’s not saying the right things. In my head I keep seeing more color behind the Inchies parts, instead of this fade-into-the-background greenish white thing I’ve got going on.

The idea in the beginning was that the quilt needed a background that was subtle and didn’t fight with any of the colors of the Inchies, because the Inchies are the main thing. I chose this neutral green/beige/white color palette so that it would be quietly in the background, but it’s just not looking right now. I keep seeing color, lots of color, in the background so that the colors can interact with each other more and I can play with the transparencies and luminosities of it all.

When I look back at some of the quilts I’ve enjoyed making the most, here’s what they’ve all had in common: gathering lots of fabrics, cutting piece by piece, playing with the color and shape interactions on the design wall and letting serendipity make the magic happen. I haven’t done a piece like that in a while. I guess it’s time to dive into the stash and pull out hundreds of fabrics and let fly the creative spirit!

I have to laugh about this kind of thing whenever it happens, because I remember a conversation I had with a fellow quilter years ago. She said that she thought that so many women were drawn to quilting because it gave women something they could control, when so much of their lives is just beyond control, or even controls them. I told her I couldn’t speak for all women, but I don’t control my quilts, they often control me, demanding to be made a certain way or with certain techniques or colors, happily tossing my plans out the window without second thoughts. This one’s a case in point, right here. The quilts are in charge, and I’m just along for the ride.

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No, not “Where do old quilters go?” We know the answer to that one, they just go to pieces. I mean, what do I do with all the quilts sitting around the house that we don’t use anymore? I’ve been thinking about this for a while, since about the time we were decluttering the house during the pre-move craziness. I counted the quilts just “sitting around” one day and there were more than a dozen, and that doesn’t include the many wallhangings that are not on the walls at the moment, and might never be again.

I guess this is the prolific quilter’s quandary. I spent at least ten years making a large number of quilts per year. Some I made to go with what was in the house at a particular time, and now the house looks different so they don’t go. Some I made because the fabric spoke to me, and some were class samples for classes I no longer teach. Some were sample quilts for quilt patterns or books I wanted or tried to write that never went anywhere.

Here’s where some of them are at the moment:

Starting from the left:

• Winter Windmills, made as a sample for a pattern for a book that never got written.
• Love at Last Sight, made from a set of Block of the Month blocks called Marching Band.
• Stars & Stripes, one of two that I made like this from a pattern in The Block Book, by Judy Martin.
• The next one is unnamed; it’s the quilt I made from the first set of friendship exchange blocks I ever had in 1995 with the Black Forest Quilters.
• The snowball quilt has a name, but it’s on the label that I actually made, but can’t find at the moment because it never got attached to the quilt. Shame on me. I made this quilt for a class sample in the mid-1990’s

I like all these quilts, and some I’m even attached to like Love at Last Sight, and I suppose that if they weren’t hanging on the rail at the top of the stairs I’d want something else to hang there to soften all that metal. But even some of these I could let go and probably not notice their absence and there are yet more quilts hiding out around the house that I’m not attached to, and that I wouldn’t mind getting rid of if it came down to it. And I’d have more room to store and display the as yet unfinished quilts that are waiting in the wings.

If you don’t have extended family that wants and or will use lots of quilts, which I don’t, what do you do with them all? To be clear, most of the quilts I no longer want or will use are not new quilts; they are quilts that we’ve used at some point, but they no longer go with the overall look and decorating scheme of the house. I haven’t been able to find any place that just needs coverings of any type, whether new or not, to give these quilts to. And they’re not so old and worn out that I just want to throw them in the thrift shop bin either. I’d like to give them to someone who really needs them and will use them.

Your voice: How many older quilts are sitting unused at your house? How do you store or display them? Do you have family or friends who take them, or do you have a charity you donate to?

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