WINTER 2009 Supplement

Flamingos in Oregon: Designing a Quilt
by Mary Christine Delea

Some quilters love nothing more than to open a quilt magazine or book, or pattern, and follow the directions to make a quilt. Some of these designs become quite well-known; I am thinking of Atkinson Designs Yellow Brick Road, which I made years ago and which continues to be a favorite of quilt classes and lone quilters. Like the joke about it being illegal to be a suburban white kid in the late 1970s and not own Frampton Comes Alive (I owned it—still do), I think there is some law that every quilter make at least one Yellow Brick Road quilt.

Other quilters—my friend Kimberly is among this group—design their own quilts, and the results are elaborate, complex art pieces worthy of awards and museum walls. These quilters often use computer software programs, grid paper, and lots of math to get their ideas into fabric. I love to pop into Kimberly’s quilt room when she is in the middle of making a quilt; the grid paper alone makes me giddy, the way I used to feel in math classes, like an alien dropped into a Martian culture. The planning alone deserves an award, never mind the revision, the pages filled with notes and numbers, and, again, that whole math thing.

(One of our five cats, Ouija, on the quilt. Don’t worry—I washed it before putting it on the bed in the guest room!) Photo by Mel White

I am in between these two types of quilters. I like to design my own quilts, but I tend to keep my designs simple. I admire quilts that use simple blocks to create complex designs. Plus, I am often rushing to make a quilt—a birthday is only a month away, or surgery, or something. And I like my quilts to be thematic. Other quilters focus on color as their primary source of inspiration, but I am into themes (ask my husband, Mel, about our prison drive, or the Elvis vacation, or how we name our cats). I recently experienced both a design and time challenge for a quilt, and the result is Flamingos in Oregon. In order to force my husband and me to pull our guest room together (i.e., transform it from a cat-box room into an actual people room), I offered to put up a poet who was coming to Oregon for a conference and some readings. I had only met Daniel Nathan Terry once, but was confident he might enjoy a bed. In fact, a bed with bed linens. At any rate, it was time to turn the guest room into an actual guest room.

 

My design challenge came from the theme for the quilt. I am in the process of decorating our house with bright, tropical colors, and lots of beach and ocean design elements. If you have a guest room, you know that you can really go to town on design in that room. So we painted the walls sea foam green, put up bright blue sheer fabric (with sparkles) for a window treatment, hung some nautical art on the walls, bought a twin bed (Craig’s List), mattress and box spring (new from Goodwill) and sheets (Amazon), and painted some furniture (hot pink, mango, sea foam). The twin quilt I wanted to make for the bed had to continue the colors and the theme of that room and—when Mel and I get around to the rest of the rooms that aren’t done—the whole house.

As usual, I also had a time challenge of about two months. This is plenty of time to make a quilt, if one isn’t me, I guess. But with painting furniture, preparing to present at two conferences, and all sorts of other life events, it soon became crunch time. I decided to use my stash (the fabrics I already own) so I could make my deadline (Daniel getting off the plane at PDX).

How, exactly, did the design come? As with many (most?) of my poems, I don’t know. But, I have seen a lot of quilts, and read about them, studied them, thought about their design, and made a fair number. As with writing poems, there is a bit of muscle memory at work.

I did know that I wanted to use my flamingo fabrics, an odd assortment of fabrics I had collected over the years. They ranged in size (5” to 2½ yards), color, scale, and treatment (some were realistic, others comic, etc.) I also knew that my stash had enough fabric to use in the quilt and mimic the colors throughout the house.

The design of this quilt—and every quilt I have ever designed—also takes into account my personality quirk of easily getting bored by repetition. I am amazed when I see a quilt made of hundreds of the same blocks, the quilter endlessly (it would seem to me) repeating the same steps thousands of times. Although I respect those quilts and the very focused folks who make them, that isn’t me. However, in my pattern instructions below, I have made the blocks more consistent.

One more point about the pattern. I cannot provide the standard “Fabric Requirements,” as this quilt was made from my stash. But if you have a stash of your own, and it includes some novelty fabrics and some “background” fabrics that could be pulled together for a theme, you will be able to make this quilt.

Flamingos in Oregon
Finished Quilt Size: 65 x 80
56 total blocks (28 with flamingo fabrics, 28 with background fabrics)
Block Size (unfinished): 9½”
Block Size (finished): 9”
Borders (unfinished):
Blue: 2” on the sides, 2½ top and bottom
Pink: 3½

Follow the grid (and the quilt photograph) for the block layout. The pictures that accompany each block description are blocks I made using other novelty fabrics, as I think this pattern is easily translated into many themes, and I wanted to provide some ideas. Plus, my quilt group, The Scrappy Quilters, uses 9½” blocks to make quilts for charities, so these random blocks will find homes.

The directions below are per block.

Flamingo Blocks	(Click on image for larger version)
9½ square (1 fabric) 14 total: 2 black, 2 teal, 4 yellow, 4 brown, 2 pink all novelty fabrics
Square in a Square (2 fabrics) 7 total: 1 blue, 3 teal, 1 pink, 2 turquoise 6½ center novelty fabric 2 strips background fabric: 2 x 6½ 2 strips background fabric: 2 x 9½
Diamonds (2 fabrics) 5 total: 1 black, 3 yellow, 1 pink 6½ center novelty fabric 1 square of background fabric, 10½, cut once diagonally. Cut those 2 triangles in half again. After sewing the 4 triangles to the diamond sides, trim to 9½.
Framed Square in a Square (2 or 3 fabrics) 2 total: 2 brown 4 center novelty fabric
Inner Border: 2 strips background fabric: 2 x 4 2 strips background fabric: 2 x 7
Outer Border: 2 strips novelty or 2nd background fabric: 1.75 x 7¼ 2 strips novelty or 2nd background fabric: 1.75 x 9½
Background Blocks	(Click on image for larger version)
9 Patch (2 fabrics) 2 total: orange fabric 1: cut 5 3½ x 3½ squares fabric 2: cut 4 3½ x 3½ squares
T Square (3 fabrics) 4 total: purple fabric 1: 1 strip 3½ x 6½ and 1 strip 3½ x 9½ fabric 2: 1 strip 3½ x 6½ fabric 3: 1 strip 3½ x 6½
Quarter Triangles (4 fabrics) 6 total: blue From each fabric, cut a square 10½. Cut in half diagonally once, and then cut each triangle down the middle (the same process as was used in the Diamond blocks). After sewing, trim to 9½.
Half Square Triangles (2 fabrics) 7 total: pink From each fabric, cut a square 10½. Cut in half diagonally once, and, after sewing, trim to 9½.
7 Patch (2 fabrics) 5 total: green fabric 1: three 3½ x 3½ squares fabric 2: 2 3½ x 3½ squares and 2 3½ x 6½ strips Sew so that fabric 1 makes a diagonal line.
Rail Fence (3 fabrics) 3 total: yellow From each fabric, cut a strip 3½ x 9½.
Half-framed 4 patch (3 or 5 fabrics) 1 total: gold fabric 1: 2 3½ x 3½ squares fabric 2: 2 3½ x 3½ squares (You can also make the 4 squares for the 4 patch section from 4 different fabrics). fabric 3: 1 strip 3½ x 6½ and 1 strip 3½ x 9½

After sewing the blocks together to create diagonal lines of color, quilt as desired. I did a combination of small loops and large puzzle pieces in my quilting. (I am very fortunate to be able to rent a long-arm machine at a nearby quilt store, Canby Quilt and Fabric). With this type of design, be sure not to over-quilt (as I do on some quilts that aren’t so busy). Keep it simple so that the novelty fabrics stand out.

I would love to say that after sewing and quilting, I immediately sewed a wonderful binding to my quilt, but wonderful bindings are not yet part of my skill set. My bindings, so far, cannot be described using “wonderful” as an adjective. So I had one of the owners of Canby Quilt and Fabric, Ruth Derkson, bind my quilt. Since this quilt is going on a bed, it’s going to be used, and it’s going to get washed. I need my quilts to have bindings that hold up. (You might wonder, since it’s on a guest bed, why the quilt will have to be washed a lot. We don’t have that many guests. But we do have five cats, and all but one has claimed the guest bed as the cat bed. That quilt will get washed a lot.)

Daniel’s visit was fun and successful. Three cats are currently asleep on the guest bed. I have a niece I think is expecting a quilt from me this Christmas, so it is time to check out the stash and choose a theme.

1C	8B	2A	9D	3C	10F	4A
8B	2E	9D	3A	10F	4E	11G
2A	9D	3C	10F	4A	11G	5A
9D	3A	10F	4E	11G	5H	12I
3C	10F	4A	11G	5A	12I	6A
10F	4E	11G	5A	12I	6C	13J
4A	11G	5H	12I	6E	13J	7C
11G	5A	12I	6A	13J	7C	14K

1: Blue Flamingo A: 9½” single fabric block
2: Black Flamingo B: 9 Patch
3: Teal Flamingo C: Square in a Square
4: Yellow Flamingo D: T-Square Block
5: Brown Flamingo E: Diamond in a Square
6: Pink Flamingo F: Quarter-Square Triangle Block
7: Turquoise Flamingo G: Half-Square Triangle Block
8: Orange H: Framed Square in a Square
9: Purple I: 7 Patch
10: Blue J: Rail Fence
11: Pink K: Half-Framed 4 Patch
12: Green
13: Yellow
14: Gold

     

  

 

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