How the GFG was finished

The previous post was more a biography of my grandmother than an exposition of my latest (and greatest ever) finished quilt, my GFG. Here are those details.

The quilting was finished by stitching in my "happy toes" pattern on the sides. The binding for the flower border was a pieced binding using scraps from the flower fabrics. The ends were finished with a knife edge binding, which was the trickiest part for me.
I debated whether I should use orange hexagons, or green ones on the back. I chose the green, because they bring a part of the front back to the reverse side. I made a few more hexagons, and simply stitched them to the front hexies after trimming back the orange and batting a little. Then I appliqued the open edges to the orange fabric. Easy peasy.
I love the knife edge binding. It feels great and special. But if I had to choose, I think the pieced binding attached to the flower border is the prettiest part of the quilt.

Thanks, Grandma, This One's for You

Gertrude Alice Borders had a hard life, but made the best of it. Her mother died when she was born, and her father's hands were so crippled, he couldn't comb her very curly hair, so he kept it cut so short, one could hardly tell she was a girl. Her older brother was the light of her life, but he died in the great flu epidemic of 1918, when Gertrude was just 9 years old.
She met and married Charlie Cole, who brought stability and humor to her life. At the birth of their first child, Virginia Lee, (at home of course - there was no question of going to a hospital for an iceman's family), the mother-in-law came over from next door to help. Gertrude and Charlie lived in a tar-paper wooden frame house, next to Charlie's parents. Astonishingly, right after the birth, everyone went back to the in-laws' house for a drink (of tea, they were teetotalers). Gertrude had to get up that evening and cook dinner.
Mary Joyce followed Virginia Lee by a couple of years, and Charlie's brother had two boys of his own. When Mary Joyce was about 2 1/2 years old, the 1937 Flood invaded Louisville, Kentucky, as well as Clarksville, Indiana, where the Coles lived. They lost everything, and their house was torn off its foundation and flipped 3 times over, finally landing a quarter mile down the street. The Red Cross, contrary to its work today, came to this impoverished neighborhood, but only to SELL the desperately needed basics of life.
After rebuilding and making most of their own furniture, life stabilized. Charlie's brother's wife died, and Gertrude found herself taking care of Willie's boys, David Rae and Norman Lee. Charlie settled into a janitor's job at the local schools, and the girls grew up.
Both girls' first marriages failed in the 1950s, both because of domestic abuse. Both girls moved back home, Virginia living with her grandparents next door, and pregnant Joyce lived in the "little bedroom"
with her son Cole, already 2 years old. The little bedroom was just large enough for a single bed.
Life went on for a few decades, and Gertrude and Charlie finally retired. The janitor's pension helped until Charlie died in 1987, and Gertrude lived on Social Security for the rest of her life.
In 1997, almost 60 years to the day of the 1937 Flood, another flood came through and destroyed her house again. Not in the same way, because a floodwall had been built that protected the area in 1997. However, poor city planning had put a large parking lot behind Gertrude's house, and runoff from the rain destroyed her basement. She lost everything again.
Gertrude made quilts throughout her life, because blankets and comforters were not in the budget. Crazy quilts and simple quilts were the main designs, but the last quilt Gertrude made was a double wedding ring for her eldest granddaughter, Mary Alice. Quilts not lost in floods were worn out, eventually being thrown away. Gertrude died in 1999.
Grandma, I quilt today because of the example you set. This flower garden quilt is for you, because you gave me hope and persistence when I had none. Each of these hand-stitched seams have your memory stitched in.
Thank you, and I love you and miss you still.

What's this?

For some of you this will be easy to figure out. Clearly, it's several pieces of cloth, sewn together. But I have a specific purpose for it, and you should be able to figure it out based on my work the past year.
All I'm going to say is, I'm getting close to finished!

cosman and finding quilt stores in Europe

Europe is a haven for quilters, even if the price of fabric is sometimes scary. Quilt stores are more regional, though. There are many patchwork stores in my state, Baden-Württemberg, but far fewer in the state where my husband was born, Franken (Bavaria).
The best listing of stores in Europe is found at cosman.nl. As of today's count, there are 1083 patchwork stores in Europe.
Some statistics for your analytic pleasure:

• Germany has 253 stores, or 1 store per 1411 square kilometers. That means you theoretically only have to drive 40 km to get to the "nearest" store.
• The Netherlands, with 118 stores, is 1 store per 317 sq km, or an 18 km drive.
• France has 159 stores, 1 per 3979 sq km, or a 63 km drive

Fun, huh!? Sadly, the theoretical driving distance is not true for most of us. In my state, I'm in a region with 18 stores in Stuttgart alone. My daughter's home is located in a region with 37 stores nearby. That means I can easily access over 50 stores if I want to (and the spirit is willing, but the purse is weak).
On the other hand, if you live in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, you only have Regine's Nähparadies, but she's probably glad for less competition.
Finally, and very cool, you can download the GPS coordinates for all of these stores onto your Navi system. TomTom systems even download it directly from the website.
Read a little about the site author himself at the Nederlands Quilt Guild site (Dutch only)
My husband has told me that as soon as I retire, and have an electric car that runs on solar panels attached to the roof of the car, I'm allowed to visit all of the shops I want. As long as I leave the credit card at home. But he didn't say anything about my EC card. Heehee. :)

Reward for good and faithful service

It was my 15th anniversary at work last year, and the company celebrates these anniversaries once a year for everyone who had their anniversary in the previous year. It's a nice event, and I really appreciate the recognition, because that simple event reminds me that the company is aware of my service and appreciates it. We have our pictures taken, our managers come to the party, and, since it's Germany, we all get a bouquet of flowers.
A nifty additional benefit (but not as important as the acknowledgement) is a gift certificate proportional to the number of years of service. We usually get a certificate to a local mall, and I use the certificate to indulge in some luxury for myself.
Now, my quandry is that there isn't all that much I want from the mall this year - I want neutral fabrics, because I'm participating in Bonnie Hunter's Roll, Roll Cotton Boll and she is coming to the area to teach classes in February, which will require even more scraps. So DH and I agreed we'd use the certificate for miscellaneous needs that we can buy at the mall, and I'd go buy fabric where ever I wanted.
About the same time, the quilt seductress Judy brought a catalog from Keepsake Quilting to a meeting. They had a winter sale on overstocked fabrics, $100 for 100 FQ. Wow!
Normally EUR 2.50 is a good price for a FQ here in Germany, so I calculated the potential customs and VAT costs to see if it would still pay to order from there. It did, and I ordered a couple more things to "spend" the rest of my certificate. The beige neutrals and the McKenna Ryan fabrics also came in budget-priced scrap packs.
Last Thursday the fabric came - AWESOME!!! Here are some pictures. You've already seen the results of my ironing extravaganza, so this post is a little out of sync.

The prewash question

My marathon ironing session prompted the question, "Why bother prewashing?" Here's my answer.
I am NOT a witch prewashing fanatic. If it serves my purpose, I prewash. If not, I don't.
So far, here are the reasons I've sometimes NOT prewashed:

1. I want the extra-crinkly look when I wash the whole quilt later
2. I had no clue how to wash the tiny bits

Here are the reasons I have prewashed:

1. Fabric fondling is fun
2. I actually like ironing
3. Red leaches color, and I have the color-catchers to prove it
4. Messing with the fabric gives me more ideas
5. To have more control over the stiffness of the fabric
6. Because I'm mixing prewashed with non-prewashed, but I want to minimize the shrinkage differential

Now I know how to wash the tiny bits (handwash in the sink or use the wool/handwash setting of the machine), so that reason goes away as well. I do like Catholic Bibliophagist's comment of only ironing just before use, so I may do that on occasion, too.
OK, I'll admit it - it's mostly for the fondling and ironing.

Gooseflower scrap quilt progress

My BOM quilt using 2 BOMs and my flying geese is coming along nicely. Here is a picture of the center of the quilt.
BOM 1, won in July at guild, is the 6 large flowers, one purple, one yellow, and 4 in pink/red.
BOM 2, also from July, are not currently shown. They will become the edging.
The rest of the blocks you see are my flying geese from the swap we did at guild this year.
I've finally decided on the layout of the flowers en pointe, the geese surrounding them, and four pair of geese as accent points through the center of the quilt. Empty space in the center will be neutral scraps, and the rest of the quilt will come from the other BOMs.
Now off to do my last tweaking. I still want to look at the quilt several times and rearrange geese so I cannot see any large groups of color or patterns. Then I will create "rows" diagonally so I can sew them in a sensible fashion.
How do you like the name Gooseflower quilt? I kinda like it.

W.I.T.H.W.I.T.

What In The Heck Was I Thinking?

WITHWIT is normally used when a quilter finds some fabric in her stash that is remarkably ugly and she can't remember why she bought it.
In my case, I just didn't think far enough down the chain when I bought my fabric from the US. You see, I believe in washing and ironing quilt fabric before using it, except when I really want the crinkly look in my quilts.
So no fabric enters my stash until it's been washed and ironed. That means my entire haul from Keepsake, and from the two quilt shops in the Netherlands that I visited on my way back from Essen on Wednesday, all needed to be washed and ironed.
So on Saturday I washed. And ironed. And washed. And ironed. Here is the result.

Hard to imagine that stack contains

• 100 FQ from the Keepsake Winter Scrap Bag
• 24 FQ from two other collections
• 20 10" squares
• Half a dozen long quarters
• Various other small bits, each a FQ or less

Almost 35 yards in all. The first stack of FQ I carried to the laundry room, which is an unheated, tile-lined room in the basement. By the time I got all of the FQ unfolded and put in the washer, my fingers were numb. The next load I unfolded upstairs in the warm living room.
What I learned while preparing so much fabric:

• My machine has a wool/handwash setting which washes the fabric without unraveling it too much
• Just spinning is far better than even a short time in the dryer
• Letting the fabric sit for a while in the drum lets some of the moisture escape, making ironing easier
• Sometimes it's worth taking the ironing board upstairs to a heated room
• It took 2 1/2 cans of sizing/starch and 4 1/2 DVDs to iron it all
• The best movie out of the ones I watched? Mord ist Mein Geschäft, Liebling. Love that film!

Ordering fabric from the USA

I recently ordered from Keepsake Quilting in the US. When I thought about the customs duty and VAT, I was convinced that it would not be easy to buy fabric affordably.
Quilt fabric tends to cost Eur 12-14 per meter (a meter is about 10% more than a yard). You can find sales as low as Eur 8, but the normal prices tend to be well over Eur 10.
Don't get me wrong - I know that everything tends to be about that much higher-priced here than in the US, and I understand the reasons for it, both social and practical.
Social, because we want to have a decent life for all here, without taking advantage of people in other countries, simply to have the cheapest price. That means taxes are higher, with the resulting increase in benefits.
Practical, because there are simply fewer quilters here, which implies lower volume of sales, which tends to raise costs. Fair enough. Also, if you have to wait for minimum 1 month to get your fabric, and don't know what might be sold out, it can get rather inconvenient when you're designing a quilt.
That's why I buy, and will continue to buy, most of my fabric locally. I love my local quilt shop.
In this case, I wanted to take advantage of Keepsake's 100 FQ package. They use fabric that is not selling as well as anticipated, and offer it at a bargain price of $1 per FQ. The downside is you don't get to choose the fabrics, and that includes the quality. So I bought with trepidation, in case I was paying for poor quality fabric. That did not happen - I got marvelous quality, and a great variety of fabrics. Manufacturers included Andover, Moda, Robert Kaufman, and more.
So what were the costs, after duty, shipping and tax were paid? Here's how it broke down:

• Fabric (2 scrap bags, 1 FQ collection, 1 10" square collection): $172
• Postage: $24
• Duty: none because the total value excluding shipping was less than EUR 150 (was EUR 130)
• VAT: EUR 27.62, which corresponds to a rate of 21.2% for textiles

So I paid a total of EUR 158, and got 30 linear meters of normal width fabric, which corresponds to just over EUR 5 per meter. Not bad, given the long shipping time and the lack of choice. 

Design Book - keeping track of my stuff

Missing appointments, forgetting quilt dates, remembering what I was going to do with those BOMS, these are all challenges for me. Having a Design Book helps.
Last July, I won some Blocks of the Month at guild, and I knew I wanted to combine them with my flying geese which I wouold get in October. So I laid them out on my design wall (actually a bed with a flannel sheet on it) and waited for the geese to arrive.
When they did arrive, I sorted out some specific ones to use in a sewing machine cover, and the rest I distributed within my BOM quilt blocks. The design grew naturally, and let the set stay on the design wall until my Christmas vacation, still a week away.
Now DD is coming home during the vacation, and I need to clear off the bed so she has a place to sleep. Also, it's time to figure out the additional spacer blocks I need.
So I sketched the layout into my design book. Here's how that looks. Since I'm putting the flower blocks en pointe, I sketched the rows on the diagonal. Now I see that I need a 1 inch border in the center spacers, and 4 inch blocks for the other spacers.
Now to clean off the bed and make up the room nicely for my beloved visitor.