THE BALLAD OF LUCY JORDAN

 

Every so often a quilt comes along that changes the way you see the world. For me “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” has done just that.

The past 2 years I have made a specific quilt to enter in the Canberra Quilters Annual Member’s Exhibition. Approaching an exhibition is different for everyone and for me it’s a really personal journey and it’s one that I love to undertake (although at times I say I would like to quit and walk away).

I make a quilt specifically for the Exhibition. This quilt is different to the other quilts I make because I go out to challenge myself, focus more on my technique and try to do something that terrifies (and thus excites) me. The other quilts I make are for fun and I’m sure as the years go on the way I approach making quilts will most likely merge and any quilt I make may be up for entry consideration.

For me entering the Exhibition is two fold. On the one hand I just get a real kick out of being part of it. There’s something really special about having something you made hung in amongst a sea of amazing quilts. To walk through the exhibition and see what others have made and how everyone is so different and each and every one of us brings something unique to the table with our entries. It’s a gift and a joy.

But, the other side of the coin for me has become about growing and learning as a quilter. I consider myself the Jon Snow of quilting. (“You know nothing Jon Snow.” It’s a Game of Thrones reference.)

I have so much to learn, so so much, and the journey of learning is one of the things I really thrive on. Just when I think I’ve mastered something the quilting universes throws me a curve ball. It’s great, and frustrating, and then great again.

The unexpected success that last years exhibition sent my way was like a lightening bolt. Suddenly this thing that I dabbled in and thought I’d like to be good at became real and I felt like I had found my passion in life.  The thrill of having someone (I’m in no way associated with) say “This is good” just flicked a switch for me.

Now, prepare yourself I’m about to say something some people are going to have a hard time hearing; I enter shows to see my quilts do well. *shock horror*

I’m not going to lie, or sugar coat it or hide behind some BS (well it would be BS if I said it) about “it’s just great to be nominated” – for me (and this is purely for me – so don’t read this as a statement on why others do/should enter shows) entering the shows has now become (in part) about cracking that elusive riddle of being judged.

I put time and consideration into my Exhibition quilt. I try to demonstrate that I’m growing and evolving and I’m learning from each step I take on this journey and for me part of that journey involves seeing if my quilts are improving by having them judged.

I’m yet to meet someone in the quilting world who hasn’t gone weak in the knees fan girl squee-ing when they’ve won a place or an award. It feels great. It’s validation that what you’re doing is well done and you’re mastering your craft.

The thing that I also balance this with is that I make quilts to have fun (a sick kind of torturing fun sometimes, but it’s still fun).  Just because I want my quilts to do well does not negate or devalue my creative process and I find it a little weird that we don’t celebrate people wanting to perfect their craft and encourage them to do so.

So this year, while I pondered my Exhibition quilt I thought about all the things I’d learned in the previous year. I thought about the things that were exciting me in others work and I thought about what could stretch me out of my comfort zone.

I’d been crushing something fierce on the work Elizabeth Hartman has been doing with solids lately and I decided I wanted to try and work with solids. All solids. A solids palette that I picked.

Around the time I was thinking about it I saw this amazing necklace that one of the cast was wearing on Hart of Dixie (and I’ve looked and I can’t find an image of it) and I used that as a jumping off point for my colour palette.

I ending up using Kona Cotton Water for the background and Kona Cotton Pacific, Kona Cotton Jade Green, Kona Cotton Candy Green, Kona Cotton Ice Frappe, Kona Cotton Wisteria and Kona Cotton Tulip.  (I may have ordered a lot more Kona Cotton’s in just to be sure that was the palette I wanted to go with… all in the name of science of course.)

I have been a long time fan of Lee Heindrich of Freshly Pieced and so when I saw her quilt, Freeflow, I knew I wanted to have a go at making it. It’s a paper pieced pattern and turned out to be the first paper pieced quilt I’ve ever made.

Here’s where my first lesson came in. I’m not that big a fan of making foundation pieced blocks. I love to look at them, I love to see other people do them but I do not enjoy making them. Well that’s not entirely true either, I have fun making them but that fun only lasts so long.

This quilt only has 10 blocks in it but not a single block in this quilt did I not have to unpick. And not just once or twice either, there’s one seam in this quilt that I unpicked THIRTEEN times! By the time I got to the last seams I was so over it all and I let a block slide through that was off it’s point by about half an inch. I just couldn’t do it any more.

I also found with this quilt that the points of my stars were crinkling after I ironed them. I have no idea what caused it and after judging day I spoke with the judge about what could have caused it and she gave me some tips to try on the next one which I’ll be sure to do. This issue comes back into play a little bit later too… (It also impacts on why we now have a new nickname for this quilt.)

I actually had to remake EIGHT of the blocks TWICE (so that’s 16 blocks in total) because I’d gotten the colour placement reversed when piecing, not once but TWICE. Lesson learned, don’t sew after 8pm the brain is too fried.

I really enjoyed watching this quilt come together. On paper (no pun intended) it looked so simple (well not simple but achievable) but the reality was that this quilt pattern kicked my arse.  There’s absolutely no wriggle room that a patterned fabric can sometimes afford you because your eye is fooled by the fabric pattern.

When I finally got around to handing it over to Raylee (of Sunflower Quilting) to work her magic I was convinced I’d made a hash of it all.

Raylee was very encouraging and supportive, held my hand and told me it would all be ok. She was right.

We spoke about how to quilt it and unlike the last quilt I’d given her I had a fairly set idea on what I wanted to see.

I wanted the quilting to make it look like the blocks just seeped across the fabric and materialized across the middle.

You know, like when you see liquid mercury move across a plain… easy right.

I’d never seen a quilt where this was done so I had no idea how to make that happen. I also had never read a rule book on what judges look for when assessing a quilt. But I had an idea and for once I wasn’t afraid to try it.

You see dear reader I’ve had an epiphany. It’s this simple: try it. Nothing ventured nothing gained and what’s the worse that can happen?

So Raylee and I talked at length about how we’d make my mercury idea come to life and to her credit not once did she tell me I was nuts.

We settled on a quilting idea and then she made it come to life. I knew that I wanted minimal quilting on the feature blocks to make them really stand out, so we talked about using extra wadding in that area and just stitching the blocks in the ditch. I thought this was a great idea, so we ran with it.

We chose to echo the colours and shapes of the blocks and mimic the pattern across the background. Raylee used thread colour and changes in the density of the quilting to convey the movement of colour into the middle blocks.

We talked a lot during the process about how it was working out. We looked at the quilt in progress and assessed where we were going and was it working.

The quilt was finished and because of other commitments I didn’t get to see the completed quilt in person until it was submitted for judging. I didn’t really get a great look at the quilt until it was hanging in the Exhibition and in that moment, standing in front of it, surrounded by people I trust and admire, I fell in love with it.

The quilt hadn’t won an award or placed. In fact there was some fairly strong feedback about the fact that the middle of the quilt was not quilted and therefore it wasn’t technically strong. There was talk about the puckering of the points and that the extra wadding wasn’t enough (a case of more is better).

But you know what, for all the things that the quilt “missed” it has taught me so much more and is one of my favourite quilts I’ve made to date. Last year’s quilt gave me the confidence to follow my bliss and this years quilt has given me the excitement and drive to work on perfecting my craft.

I love that the quilt works from a distance because the different coloured threads look like the blocks are reflected on to the background; like a reflection on the surface of water. While this idea may not have been exactly right this round, I’m going to try it again and I’m going to have more fun with it.

I love that this colour palette is all me. It’s not a bundle I picked from a store, it’s not one line of fabrics – it’s all me. I spent the time selecting and playing and I’m really in love with these colours together.

I love that this quilt demonstrates the journey that I’ve been going through in my head and I love that it’s not perfect.

I was so lucky to be able to speak to the judge about it after all the Exhibition judging had been done. I asked her if I should go back and try and fix the missing quilting across the middle and she gave me some of the best advice, “No. Move on, you’ve tried something and now it’s time to try something else.”

She’s right. I tried and while it may not have been technically wonderful it’s still a pretty amazing quilt and I’m in love with it. Totally smitten.

This quilt is going to hang above our bed. I will see it every day and it will continue to make me smile and remind me that it’s all about the journey of improvement – in whatever direction that takes you in life.

Pattern: Freeflow by Lee Heindrich of Freshly Pieced.

Quilting by: Raylee Bielenberg of Sunflower Quilting

Quilt Pattern: Custom Quilting

Thread used for Quilting: Rasant (numbers to be advised)

Fabric for Background: Kona Cotton Water

Fabric for Block: Kona Cotton Pacific, Kona Cotton Jade Green, Kona Cotton Candy Green, Kona Cotton Ice Frappe, Kona Cotton Wisteria and Kona Cotton Tulip

For those of you wondering about the name of this quilt, it is the title of a favourite song of mine sung by Marianne Faithful: “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” (click the link to hear it). I turned 37 this year and shortly after I started making this quilt. At the time my Mum was going through a phase of singing one of the lines from this song to me whenever we talked and the name of the quilt came from that. However, while quilting Raylee and I noticed a certain… subtlety… that the quilting was giving the quilt and it now has the nickname “Madonna” (click the link for a hint why).