Aller Allie - Quilting ... just a little bit crazy: a marriage of traditional & crazy quilting

Publisher: AMY MARSON

Creative Director: GAILEN RUNGE

Art Director: KRISTY ZACHARIAS

Editor: LIZ ANELOSKI

Technical Editors: SUSAN NELSEN and DANIEL ROUSE

Cover Designer: APRIL MOSTEK

Book Designer: ROSE WRIGHT

Production Coordinator: ZINNIA HEINZMANN

Production Editor: KATIE VAN AMBURG

Illustrator: MARY FLYNN

Photo Assistant: MARY PEYTON PEPPO

Photography by DIANE PEDERSEN and NISSA BREHMER of C&T Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted

Published by C&T Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 1456, Lafayette, CA 94549

Dedication

To Carole Samples, who brought us together. We thank you and love you very much.

Acknowledgments

Ive been blessed with so many wonderful people who have lighted and smoothed the path this book has taken:

Thank you to Martha Green, Sharon Boggon, Carole Samples, and Judith Baker Montano, the Big Four in my crazy-quilt world over the last fifteen years, for leading the way into new ways of seeing and working. Meg Cox, Jodie Davis, Vicki Day, Brenda Groelz, Jean Krynicki, Mark Lipinski, Amy Milne, Edith Minne, Michele Muska, Linda Pumphrey, and Alex Veronelli have supplied me with friendship, encouragement, supplies, and tools to make my heart sing and to keep my hands busy. Seeing their professionalism in the quilt industry and serving with some of them on the board of the great nonprofit, the Quilt Alliance, has been a true inspiration to me. Tracey Brookshier, my quilt oracle, has always given me good advice. And thanks to Victoria Findlay Wolfe for her amazing Fresh off the Farm workingmans quilt, demonstrating how the modern quilt movement can go crazy too.

I especially want to thank my sister, Mary Landis, for her best friendship and always insightful, hilarious understanding; my husband, Robert, the center of my beautiful, crazy world; and most importantly, my co-author, Val. It has been an absolute joy working with you.

Over the years, many people have encouraged me on my crazy-quilt path. I would first like to thank my family for letting my crazy-quilt obsession take over several rooms in our house. For many years my children have watched their mommy play with her ribbons.

Special thanks to Carole Samples for mentoring me when I didnt believe in myself, an act that means so much to me; to Judith Baker Montano for your friendship, advice, and encouragement; to my best friend, Dixie Derksen, for the support you have given me all of these years; to Jean Krynicki of River Silks for sending the most gorgeous box of silk ribbon I have ever seen; to Marin Hanson, curator of exhibitions at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum, for letting Allie and me look at My Crazy Dream to our hearts content; to all of my students who have come to my home over the last seventeen years and taken classes from me: It means so much to me that you thought I had something to offer you; to Victoria Findlay Wolfe for the use of her Fresh off the Farm workingmans quilt in our book; and to Allie, my co-author: It was a wonderful journey and I enjoyed every minute of ityou are the best. And to God, through whom all blessings flow

Serendipity is responsible for the genesis of this book, a happy accident that became a most pleasant surprise. Val hosts the Victorian Stitchery Retreat every year in her hometown of Wichita, Kansas, and in 2011, both Allie and Carole Samples were teachers. Carole had asked if she could give a lecture that week, and Val was more than happy to say yes. The room was packed as everyone eagerly anticipated Caroles lecture. Just who do you think happened to sit together?

Carole gave the most moving lecture we have ever heard, bringing the Victorian crazy quilters of the 1880s so vividly to life that both of us were almost in tears, soaking in her passion for her subject. It turns out that we both shared a deep love for historical quilts, for Carole Samples and her legacy, and for our own workgiving those old quilts a new, modern life. The very next morning, we vowed to write a book together. Who would have ever thought that two girls from different states and different crazy-quilt styles would come together to write a book? Serendipity!

The fruit of our labors is now in your hands. We want this book to serve you by combining both of our styles and offering you as many choices and techniques as we can, so crazy quilting will come alive for you too.

We hope it becomes a go-to resource for traditional as well as innovative crazy-quilting skills. You will find several ways to piece and appliqu crazy-quilt blocks and wholecloth crazy quilts too. Val presents an extensive section with step-by-step photos of the basic crazy-quilt embroidery stitches, as well as a few basic silk ribbon stitches for the beginner. Allie explores combining machine embroidery with handwork in new ways, both to speed things up and to open up new possibilities for those who are not as enamored with handwork. We offer several techniques for finishing crazy quilts using unusual batting supplies, tying, or quilting, and we include unique binding strategies as well.

One of our major goals was to cross the quilting genre boundaries, to show that crazy quilts can be functional. We offer small, bed-size, and lap quilts, some of which incorporate lots of machine quilting. Truly, any traditional quilt can incorporate elements of crazy quilting, and any crazy quilt can include quilting our aim is to show you how.

We each created our own version of each of the five themes presented. We hope to demonstrate how crazy quilting can reflect very different aesthetics and working methods. We also aim to show that you do not need a large stash, or even fancy fabrics, to make a crazy quilt. (There is a lot of cotton in evidence here.) While Allies projects reflect decades of collecting fabrics, Vals fabrics were purchased specifically for her projects. Either approach works great and yields a lovely quilt.

It is our final hope that you find as much joy in creating these projects as we have.

Val and Allie

In this chapter we present many techniques for constructing blocks and for assembling and finishing crazy quilts. We have each distilled our combined experience of 30 years in crazy quilting, so you can jump right in with the method and style that works best for you.

Sometimes we will sew blocks and borders together, as with any traditional quilt top. But more often, we appliqu fabrics and even blocks onto a foundation. (To appliqu is to apply a layer of fabric on top of another, with a finished or a raw edge.) We offer both hand and machine techniques for appliqu, all of which yield a block ready for embellishment.

Making Crazy-Quilt Blocks and Borders

Freezer-Paper Template Appliqu

Sewing a block using freezer-paper templates traced from patterns ensures that you will be able to exactly replicate that blocks design. Believe it or not, this is sometimes desirable in crazy quilting. Randomness and repetition can be a great combination when designing these quilts.