WIP Wednesday: the one with Things To Do

Works In Progress
- postage stamp
- plaidish
- cousin quilt

Daily: Sew one block of something (postage stamp, if nothing else), sew 1 seam of paper-piecing

Weekend (Saturday and/or Sunday): sew four blocks together
- make a backing for a quilt top

Weekly: WIP Wednesday post from now until Christmas

Thinking Forward: design for Quilt Show 2023
I'm absolutely blank on this one right now. They want the quilt finished by entry time - but for the binding. I don't know if it's trying to kick incidental/casual quilters out of the show, or to prioritise/preference non-modern stuff (because modern designs and patterns are more likely to be utilised by younger women who are short on time), or if they really have that many dropouts each year.

I have dropped out of the Quilt Show once. And that was the year I tore a calf ligament two weeks before and my cunning plan to self-quilt Swarm ended up on the couch along with me.

Actually, that's an idea - Swarm II, seeing as I gave away Swarm to a couple who I'm not sure are talking to me anymore after 2016, 2020, and now the 2022 mid-terms.

Quilting ladies don't like to get political for the most part - the thing about being Largely White Ladies means you can ignore politics for the most part, or trust that the White Men will protect you (so long as you fit into their norm of what White Ladies Should Be Like). Being able to ignore politics is something that many others can't do, because the shift and sway of politics affects them, even when the actual policies don't.

For instance, you might have denigrated "the Chinese (government)" for COVID-19. After all, China is a long way off, and 'the Chinese' are a big body of people that you don't usually see or having to interact with, and even so it's mostly people like myself who are culturally integrated.

Unfortunately for people like me, we might very well be culturally integrated, but the way certain people will treat us face to face is as though we're not. And it's no good to say, "well, they're just bad people" because 'they're just bad people' does not eliminate the bruises, the physical injuries, the trembling shock of being openly abused on the street, or the feeling that you'll never be safe again among white people whose smiles disguise their dislike.

By the way, black and brown quilters - whatever their background - have had to live with this treatment for, oh, as long as White America has been ignoring that their society was not only built on the back of black slavery, and by the enforced efforts of black slaves, but that it created a socially stratified (as well as segregated) society.

I digress, but I feel like it's needed. Sure, there aren't too many people reading this, and after 2016 and 2020, I'm fairly sure y'all know where I land on the political spectrum, and most of you haven't gone running away yet...

Anyway. Swarm II. That's the plan. It's going to be messy AF, though. So many small pieces. But maybe it's also time to work up a pattern...

Swarm II

So, six years ago I made the quilt Swarm. And it was hugely popular and very much beloved by my instafolk. It got accepted to Quiltcon and I sent it there for display, but rather than bring it home for my collection, I sent it to friends in the US who had hosted me many times before.

I probably should have checked that they wanted it first. And they're too polite to give it back if they don't like it. (In that way that 'polite' means 'refusing a gift is uncharitable and one Does Not Do That'. Very southern.) Also, we're not on speaking terms right now: I think she believes I'm stupid for 'living in lockdown (ie. "fear")' and I think she's headed for 'everyone who isn't on my political side is wrong, and moreover, anti-American' territory, if not already there.

So Swarm is more or less lost to me. Which means I should really put together a Swarm II. I had plans for one about four years ago, for my spiritual mentor at the time who loved purples and lavenders, and who I was going to make something for. We kind of lost touch - I think she might have been going through some deconstruction, and her husband was dealing with an autoimmune disease and, well, we didn't get around to meeting up and just lost touch.

I have found better ways to do the Swarm Quilt, although it's still going to be a very piece-y quilt. I just need to write them out and put them together. I say this a lot.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival: Swarm by Sel

Welcome, most of you presumably from the Bloggers' Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side.

This is the story of a bunch of buzzy bees bumbling around in my brain, and how sometimes ideas come together in unexpected id-tugging ways...

Swarm (by Sel) took me two full years to actually complete from piecing to binding, but I think it was kind of worth it.



Name: Swarm
Size: 75" x 88"
Design: original by Sel

The fault lies entirely in hexagons. I rather love hexagons, but they're kind of a pain in quilting - all those y-seams! However, I have designed multiple quilts based off hexagons (including a rather fun and complicated 'colourwash' kind of quilt) and am always on the lookout for cool hexy patterns. But I really liked Elizabeth Hartman's "Honey" quilt, featured on the cover of her book 'Modern Patchwork'. A friend of mine, Penny Poppleton made a spectacular version of it back in 2012, and while I liked the design, I didn't want just the honeycomb, but also the bees...

There were designs. Triangular grid paper, pencils, and design after design after...hey, I like that idea...

And then RJR fabrics announced the Cotton + Steel collection, with the 'blenders' and the 'low-vols' and I went "OOOOOH!" Bought most of the basics range and started cutting and sewing.

Most of the long story is at this post I made in December last year, however the addendum is...that it got accepted into QuiltCon!! I blame my friend, Bec, from SydModSQuad for encouraging me to submit it.

And it got photographed by the C+S official Instaccount! *boggles* *wibbles* *squees*

Then I sent it to Houston.

Uh. But not the Quilt Show. If I'd thought about it, I'd have submitted it to the 2016 Houston Quilt Show first, but instead, I opted to gift it to some friends in Houston who've let me stay in their spare 'oom nearly every time I've visited the US. Ah well. I did get to see it in use when I went to visit them in July, though!


It's one of my favourite quilts, to be honest, and I do regret giving it away just a little. Guess I'll just have to make another one... Streamline the process... Write that pattern...


Submitted in the Original Design section of the Blogger's Quilt Festival!

"Swarm" got accepted into Quiltcon!

My quilt got accepted into Quiltcon - the Modern Quilt Guild's annual quilt show!

I'm a little bit surprised - last year, they were really pushing the 'modernist' look for quilts: lots of negative space, improvisational piecing, and so forth, and 'Swarm' doesn't really fit that profile:


But it was lovely to get that email!

Now I have to: a) label and label-cover, b) fit a sleeve, c) package and post.

Guess that's going to be this weekend gone!

finished quilt: "Swarm"

It's a long way to the finished quilt if you want to design your own...




Say hello to "Swarm"!

I started it around May 2014, with a design idea but not very much of a clue on how to execute it. I knew I wanted to use the new line of quilting fabrics, Cotton + Steel, though, so I bought a great deal of the Basics range, and then set about cutting it up.


There was a lot of sewing and cutting and ironing and trimming. It has 20 rows, and nearly 30 triangle blocks in each row. That's 600 pieces - not counting that the large triangles are made up of 2 pieces, and the small triangle blocks are made up of 4 pieces that need to be sewn together.


That's at the old house - the one that we had to clear out before buying a new house, redoing it, and moving into it last year. So it kind of went on hold in the middle of all that, and then there was the settling in and the starting of the garden and the summer... I didn't get back on the job until Autumn 2015 - around March.

It took me a year (April 2015) to get to the point where I had enough pieces to start putting it all together:


There were times when I despaired of how many pieces were needed, and how complicated the whole quilt was. However, my quilt groups kept telling me to keep going, keep going, it looks great, it's going to be gorgeous

And when it did start coming together, it was beautiful!


I don't know what it is about this quilt, but it just hits people in the feels. I've had a lot of people admiring it! Maybe it's the colours, the brightness, the...well, playfulness of the pattern... At any rate, it's definitely a show-stopper!


Maladicta even gave it the butt-stamp of approval. Which, okay, in this house, isn't difficult. But she was quite happy with it...


I had a backing, I had a plan for quilting it, tt was going to be submitted in the Sydney Quilt Show...

And then I pulled a muscle in my calf. Ow.

And I couldn't do the quilting and couldn't find someone to do the quilting for me in the time left before the quilt had to be submitted. So, no show. *sighs* While at the show, I looked at the two spaces allotted to the quilts that I couldn't finish due to my injury, and sighed.

I sent it off to my quilter before I went overseas, I think, and have been waiting for her to get back to me. It took a while, but when it came...it was definitely worth it!


Smokey agreed. No sooner had it taken it out of the mailing bag, then she settled on it. She's since pretty much taken every opportunity to head-butt it, muzzle-rub against it, or roll in it.

There's a part of me that still can't believe I thought up this pattern, let alone executed it!


Name: Swarm
Size: 75" x 88"
Design: original by Sel
I'm trying to write a pattern for it, but it's a bit exhausting, and everything's pretty busy right now.

I've submitted it to the Modern Quilt Guild's competition for Quiltcon 2016 in...San Diego, I think? However, I doubt it will make it in - I don't think it's quite 'modern' enough as the MQG defines modern quilts.

It looks stunning, though. And I'm definitely keeping this one. :)

If you want to go back and see the progress of this quilt, the hashtag on Instagram is #swarmbysel. (Some of the earlier pics won't be tagged because I only came up with the name this year.)

I'm linking this up to Sew Modern Monday over at Canoe Ridge Creations!