gypsy wife quilt - nicole calver's handquilted AMH version

i've got one more gypsy wife veteran who's sharing her completed quilt and thoughts with us today. Two things stand out to me about nicole calver's version of the gypsy wife: her brilliant use of all AMH (anna maria horner) fabrics, and her intricate handquilting. nicole's version is so brilliantly executed, it won her a spot in the sewvivor 2014 competition, season 3; which she just happened to win! amidst the crazy of sick kids, meg birthday party prep, and winter storms, nicole managed to take some new snowy photos of her quilt to share with us, and spent some time giving us some thoughtful answers to my questions about her gypsy experience.

what attracted you to the gypsy wife quilt or why did you make one?

The chaos. I love that it has a feeling of chaos, but an organized chaos if that makes sense!

I've never been a fan of samplers, but the combination of the repeating filler blocks and the stripes to tie everything together really made me rethink sampler quilts :)

how long did it take you to complete?

Hahaha! Complete!! I'm still not finished!

Instagram says that I started about 105 weeks ago and finished almost 8 weeks later so almost two months from start to finished quilt top.

The decision to hand quilt the whole thing has added quite a bit more time onto my finish date ;)

how did you go about making fabric selections?

Since this was going to be a quilt for me to keep, of course I went with Anna Maria Horner for the bulk of my fabrics. 

Mostly Field Study and Dowry, with a bit of Hand Drawn Garden mixed in as well. I also went with Carolyn Friedlander for most of the low vol prints.

I would start by choosing one key piece of fabric for the block I was working on and let the colours in that piece decide what other fabrics were going to make the cut. Pulling fabrics for a project has always been my favourite part of the process, so being able to make mini stacks for each individual block was so much fun for me! 

what was your favorite block to make or favorite part of the project?

I don't think I could ever pick just one favourite block, but Crazy Anne is high on the list! I love that block! 

As for my favourite part of the project, definitely choosing the fabrics for each block! Though I didn't think I would enjoy the hand quilting as much as I have!

please explain your quilting choices:

Before my Gypsy Wife I had never hand quilted before but had always wanted to. So with this quilt staying with me I thought it was the perfect chance for me to try my hand at it and not need to worry about how badly it turned out! And much to my surprise I wasn't nearly as bad at it as I thought Ii was going to be, haha! 

My stitches aren't remotely even and I still have a lot to learn, but I think all the mistakes and oddities are what helps add to the charm of a handmade item. (or at least that's what I'm telling myself!)

I love the look of chunkier thread and big stitches but also wanted to use my signature Brass Aurifil so I went with a 12wt and I've loved quilting with it! 

I'd say I'm about 65 -75% finished the hand quilting and hope to be done before this time next year, but I make no promises! And in my defense, I'm not so much hand quilting as I am embroidering. Some of those AMH prints were just begging for a fancier stitch ;)

what would you change or do differently if you could?

I don't think there's anything I would change. While making it I questioned some of my blocks and ended up remaking two of them, but overall, now that they're all together, they work. And the little things that bothered me with the blocks alone are no longer visible to me.

As for doing things differently, now that I have EQ7 there's a few blocks that I think I would have rather paper pieced, haha!

what advice or tips would you offer for others making this quilt?

Spend the time now, before starting, to make notes in your pattern book. Number your strips, It will help so much later! Use the resources that others have made available for this pattern. My copy came with quite a few mistakes so I made sure to correct those all before starting. 

When I started my Gypsy someone out there had a spreadsheet for all the blocks that I found super helpful. (clumsy kristel at the blog, work-in-progress girl.) I can't think of who it was but the printout was basically a list of all the blocks, where they end up in the quilt, sizes, etc... It was nice to be able to refer back to it when I needed as well as being a checklist of sorts for the blocks I had finished and still needed to finish. 

Most of all, don't stress over it. Seriously. 

There's so much going on in this quilt that no one will notice those two points that didn't line up, or the two fabrics that ended up side by side (i'm guilty of this and when I first realized that the two prints were going to be beside each other I wanted to remake one of the blocks. I didn't, and now I don't even remember where the two of them are!) Just have fun!

:) Nicole

wow, nicole! i am still so impressed with this version of the gyspy wife quilt. it's just simply beautiful. a few other ladies out there have also been working on AMH gypsies. the two ladies just seem to go together. still, there's enough AMH fabric out there to choose from, so yours need not look like another's. (see ashley's at wasn't quilt in a day.)

and i'm so blown away by nicole's handquilting/embroidery. if i remember correctly, she first did some stitch-in-the-ditch to keep everything basted in place, which has allowed her to take her time with the handquilting and still use the quilt. i like that idea very much. in fact, that's my plan for my own quilt.

you can check out nicole's numerous tutorials and published projects on her blog, snip's snippets, on instagram @snippets101, and even on the cover and inside of several issues of love patchwork and quilting magazine.

gypsy wife quilt - elisabeth woo's value study version

here's another unique look at the gypsy wife pattern. elisabeth woo, of robert kauffman fabrics, has created an energetic and fun take on the gypsy wife by playing down the strips in low-volumes and highlighting the blocks in a bright and bold color palette, with some really cute fussy cutting, to boot.

what attracted you to the gypsy wife quilt or why did you make one?

When I saw Catherine Mosely’s (@cathmosely) version of the quilt hanging at QuiltCon in 2015 with black and white strips and super saturated colors it was the first time I could visualize the quilt in my head! I fell in love with the idea of a background that would fade and leave the focus on all the blocks!

how long did it take you to complete?

I like to work on several projects at the same time, so I move a little slower. It took me 18 weeks of on/off focus from when I pieced the first block to when I finished the top.

how did you go about making fabric selections?

I selected my limited color palette (I like blue and oranges together), then just stuck to it and started sewing.

Crazy Ann block, lower left, and some others

what was your favorite block to make or favorite part of the project?

I think Crazy Anne was my favorite block, but I also really enjoyed making all the filler blocks. J

please explain your quilting choices

I was really stumped with what to do with this quilt once it was finished. I loved all the pieces but was having a hard time feeling connected to it, so I asked one of my good friends, Valori Wells (@valoriwells) if she would quilt it for me. I love her artistic quilting style and I feel like I’m looking at a page in her sketchbook. Seeing her doodles on it really made me love it.

puss in the corner block - with pugs!

what would you change or do differently if you could?

It was really challenging piecing stripes in the background (using Kona Snow + Kona White), but they end up looking very similar and you can hardly see the subtle stripe. I think next time I would try using two colors with a bit more difference so you can see the background striping a little easier (like Kona White and Oyster).

what advice or tips would you offer for others making this quilt?

Keep track of all those filler blocks!! J I actually accidentally made more than I needed to because I wasn’t counting that carefully. 

 thank you, elisabeth, for sharing your photos and ideas with us! to see more of elisabeth's work (like her killer farmer's wife sampler quilt) and a bit about life around robert kauffman fabrics, visit elisabeth on instagram @elisabew.

i have one or two more examples of the gypsy wife quilt that might still make a showing. in the meantime, look for the big kick off post for our gypsy wife quilt along coming on saturday, january 30th, and the first post about section one on monday, february 1st.

who's ready to get gypsy-ing?!

 as soon as my sewing room is finished, i'm in.
hurry up, construction fellas!

becky's disappearing four patch

well, it's friday and i've neither a finish to share nor did i have a friday sewing social with becky. i haven't settled in from summer enough just yet to start those up again. of course, becky's also pretty pregnant with her 6th son, so if we don't have one soon, we might not have any for a while. however, the other day i was organizing my sewing photos and came across these photos of a disappearing 4 patch block that becky was working on for her cousin's baby and thought i'd share them as a sentimental moment of nostalgia for those bygone sewing socials.

becky, who has only boys so far, had a few girly charm squares laying around that she'd had no occasion to use just yet. they were leftover from several charm packs that she'd already taken the "boy" squares out of for other projects. she paired them with some white charm square to make four patches, then cut 1" on either side of each seam.

 then she flipped the center pieced portions around and sewed them back together.

voila! simple, clean, and cute. and nearly as fantastic as becky's amazing smile.

here's a photo i stole off her instagram page of the finished baby quilt. just darling. nice work, becky!

a master's touch

 maybe you remember these quilt blocks i made several week ago to learn a few techniques during the online  ::angled:: class from rachel hauser at stiched in color? they were sent in to rachel so she could make a quilt to donate to a charity. originally, rachel was going to make one baby quilt from each style block if she got enough submissions. however, when i emailed her that i'd sent my blocks she said she hadn't got enough of each for individual quilts so she was probably going to combine some of them, maybe even put them all together in one big quilt. i'll have to admit that when she told me this, i was highly skeptical that would work at all based on the block assortment i had sent her alone. i could not see how my blocks would work together, much less how she could mix in whatever else she received.

but that's why rachel is a quilt master and teacher, and i'm not. just look what she did:

all photos courtesy of rachel hauser at stitched in color

 i absolutely adore this quilt! it has a homey, vintage feel - like maybe it was found in someone's grandma's attic or buried in a chest of heirlooms somewhere. at the same time, it has a very modern aesthetic to it, too. i think putting together such a wide assortment of blocks from several quilters lends to the scrappy, make-do vintage feel it has, as well as the black-and-white ticking stripe sashing she used.  some of the block styles, the colors, and various fabrics give it it's modern side. i'm posivitely stunned by what she made out of these blocks. never in a million years could i have dreamed this up. rachel is simply magic.

 i can see my two wonky star blocks and four butterfly blocks in this photo. play a little "eye spy" if you want to find them. here's a hint: none of them are touching each other but they are either lined up or in the same position as their mates.

 the envelope blocks, which i might have been the only person besides rachel to make, went on the back of the quilt, which is a softer, sweeter layout than the bold front. but it still has plenty of color and punch to it!

i really love how she threw in the typewriter block among all the envelopes. that coupled with a text print she put in the lower left corner turns the back into a writing themed spread. i like to think of them as notes of love and encouragement to the recipient of this quilt from those who contributed to it's making. it's so fun how both sides of this quilt have a strong and unique personality. because there were so many blocks put together, this turned into a generous throw sized quilt that will be going to a women's shelter. i hope the mother who gets this feels wrapped in the love of ladies who cared enough about her and her situation to make something warm and comforting even though they didn't know her personally. the whole time i was working on these blocks i thought of how they would be for someone in need and although i didn't know who they were, their story or situation, i knew they needed love and that God knew who they were even if i didn't. He'd see the quilt got to the right place. my part was just to make pieces of it and send them out.

again, i am so grateful to rachel for not only offering an excellent class but for giving the students a chance to put their budding skills to good use to bless the life of someone who could use a quilt.

birthday disaster coming right

 my birthday is in the summer and this year two dear, international quilting friends both surprised me with some beautiful handmade goodies. however, i was on an extended trip when they mailed the surprise packages. we've been gone before so i didn't fret about what was happening with my packages and was looking forward to the mail when i got home. since i stopped purchasing fabric earlier this year, going to the mail has not been nearly as fun. so i was doubly excited about what was waiting for me at home.

unfortunately, the person we'd asked to occasionally check our mail couldn't find the key. and our unwanted junk mail crowded the box so much the postal carrier pulled all our mail and left a note saying if it wasn't picked up in 10 days our service would be discontinued. this was two weeks before we got home.

so the morning i hopefully went to the post office to collect my treasures i was informed that all mail had been returned because they assumed we had moved. all mail. in dismay, i said, almost tearfully, "even surprise internationally shipped birthday presents?!" the postal worker at the window looked at me like i was short a few brain cells. "yes," was the ominous reply. unable to yet grasp the concept i tried again, "so packages sent from indonesia and new zealand were returned there?" again, the horrid reply, "yes."

can i tell you how very strongly and intensely i dislike junk mail?!  the reasons are plethora and this incident just caps it all.

i went home, empty handed and crying. those beautiful handmade goods, sent at considerable expense over oceans from other hemispheres were somewhere in mail transit oblivion. it was doubtful they would ever make it back. how was i going to tell my friends? it was a full-blown quilting disaster.

 surprisingly, the package from deborah in indonesia was the one that made it home safely and the cutest-ever dumpling pouch (in heather bailey fabric!!!) never found it's way back to liz in new zealand. i'd have bet on it being the other way around.

deborah had a friend returning to the states who kindly agreed to mail the package to me when they got state-side. so a few weeks ago this lovely mini of epp liberty hexies on linen showed up in my mailbox. i can not overstate how exquisite it is. this is something i would not have made for myself but i can't stop looking at or caressing when i walk by.

i just love everything about it. for starters, deborah is very accomplished at handwork so the craftsmanship on this is delicate and refined. the subtly-colored hand quilting is exquisite. i love the diminutive size of the hexies - less than an inch measured by sides. of course i'm over the moon about the liberty of london prints. some are my very favorites (betsy and mitsy) and other's i've never seen before. the liberty paired with natural linen is a match made in quilting heaven. the fact that deborah made it and that i happen to know she was stitching it whilst on a train traveling through england adds to it's value.

thank you, thank you deborah! again, i'm sorry for all the trouble but all's well that ends well. it now has a home on my sewing table, where i can look at it all the time, until i have a sewing room of my own where i can display it on the wall.

that's just one more reason i could use a dedicated sewing room.

the last bit

 are you sick to death of my penny patch? you ought to be. but i found some photos of the binding which i never used, so i'm throwing them up here. then, like binding finishes off a quilt, i'll be finished talking about this particular one.

i auditioned and even bought a few different bindings but had difficulty settling on one. finally, this clementine micheal miller "tiny tiles" won out because of it's vibrant hue (which photographs too vibrant no matter what settings i use) which matched the backing so well, and because of the subtle orange peel pattern, which matched my quilting choice.

some of the colors on the front are a little flat next to this deep tangerine, but there is enough variety in orange shades that i think it works. it's been on there long enough now that i either like it or am just used to it.

i'm pretty sure i completed the handstitching of the binding whilst watching a movie with my kids, probably bbc's version of dicken's "little dorrit." (really good mini series, by the way - i honestly think i like it even better than the book, even with the changes.) oh, wait! now i remember. everyone else was gone camping except s1 and i. he was watching bbc's "sense and sensibility" with me. really. after a dinner out and stop at the gelato shop, he spent some time hanging out with me while i watch elanor, marianne, willoughby, edward, etc. i stitched on one end and he snuggled up under the other. it was fantastic. see, that memory, sewn into the binding, had to be recorded because i'd already nearly forgotten it.

the last stitch taken in a quilt is always such a satisfying surprise to me. "yipee! i'm done! really, i'm actually done after all this time? yes, it's really a quilt now!" since i have a few finishes under my belt lately, i've noticed the setting of that final moment becomes part of the quilt and another memory added to it's story. some people have even playfully suggested naming their quilts after the movie they were watching when they finished it - common way to cross the finish line, i guess. that would work for me quite often. i suppose this one should be called "sense and sensibility" or "elanor" or something like that. but it remains just plain old "penny patch."

to back up a bit, i got the binding going one friday afternoon while sewing with becky (and boys). it took us another few weeks but we did get together again after our long put off first friday sewing social. she'd managed to get a new machine, too! (i may have encouraged that and her sweet husband may have obliged for mother's day.) now she has more harp space to work with and features to play with. not to mention that she's already working on something completely new - matching hst herringbone quilts for two of her boys. "oh, yes, that other one's done already," she says in passing.

 the 8 yr old was the only photographer available to me for capturing our sewing time. interesting angles and cropping, no?

becky's hst's, which i'm sure are already quilts by now. i need to text her about this friday. maybe i can get a top put together! and have something to show besides an over-advertised penny patch.

the end of an era

"taite" and her sister are finished! it's been a long time coming. one not-so-little girl has been waiting and waiting for this "taite" quilt over the course of two birthdays and more; another no-longer-quite-so-little girl finally gets her quilt for the foot of her bed and still wants it. there are a few photos of "taite" and her sister to share as well as the stories associated with her, so look at the pictures and skip the words or settle in for a read if you like that sort of thing.

three years (and some change) ago, i took my second quilting class and started my third full-sized quilt. i strong-armed two good friends into taking the class with me for the company, because they both were interested in making a quilt, and because, frankly, i was hoping to recruit some companions into my new hobby. mequell and jill were very good quilting company for the class. mequell, with the aid of a longarmer, finished her quilt shortly after the class was over. jill and i took a bit more time, getting together on fridays to sew . . . over the course of three years. we had plenty of stops and starts during that time, large gaps of months where we didn't work on the quilts at all. there were even some crazy home ec moments along the way which gave us some really good laughs. but all good things come to an end, even the making of beginner quilts.

 jill and i met at church when we were working in the primary (children's sunday school organization). she was the president and i was her horrid secretary for several months. then i was assigned as her visiting teacher for a handful of years and got to really know her. she is one kind and gentle soul, always with a smile on her face and hand ready to help. she has great style and a knack for vintage finds. she also makes a mean chicken pot pie. my life has been the better for knowing her. and now she's moving away! really, we finished these quilts in the nick of time to get them photographed together.

i can't say exactly why it took us so long to get these done. by the time the one month class concluded, jill was working on her quilting but i was stalled at an inner border on the top, which i was unhappy with. getting pregnant definitely brought work on this quilt to a halt for me. when i got back to it a year later, the borders got fixed and finished quickly enough, but i desperately wanted to stipple this quilt. so i had to pause again while i learned how to stipple on a few other projects first. there was no way i was going to just go for it with the stipple on this quilt! i'd waited long enough, waiting a little longer in order to get it right didn't hurt. several friday sewing sessions later, here we are. quilts do get finished if you work on them long enough.

 recently, we went to breakfast at a local coffee shop located in a charming agricultural atmosphere where we could get some good eats, chat far longer than it took to eat said goods, and photograph our quilt finishes. finally. (i wish we'd had mequell's quilt, too, but she was out of town.)

i wasn't particulary excited about the pattern selected for the class, but i took the opportunity to really make the pattern my own and as a good excuse to use a whole slew of heather bailey fabrics i was drooling over. heavily influenced by elizabeth hartman's use of white and white space in her quilts for the practical guide to patchwork (on the sidebar), i chose to add breathing room into the quilt by alternating the inner square and outer sashing of each block between five colors of the primrose tile print and kona snow. this added dimension and space to the quilt pattern. all the tiny squares for the middle ring are various other hb prints from either "nicey jane" or "pop garden." there was very little blue in those middle squares, so to add a bit more blue to the top and tie in the blue primrose tile pieces, i pieced the inner border from more blue-toned prints. the binding is red primrose tile.

 for the backing, i let my daughter, the recipient, choose the main fabric. she selected the bold, bright, and cheery "pop garden" paisley in yellow. it always reminds me of large shrimp. (recently i saw the pineapple print in yellow and really wish we had used that instead, but it is as it is now.) the rest is pieced together with other elements from the top: primrose tile in pink, a green "nicey jane" floral, kona snow sashing, and rows of the leftover squares.

it's funny how my perspective has changed as i've gained experience as a quilter. this quilt seemed tedious and rather ambitious for a first time quilt, or even a second, because of all those little squares and the seam matching. now, of course, it does't phase me a bit and i'm sure i could churn out another one pretty quickly. skills only grow when you push yourself, anyway, right? learning to strip piece the squares was helpful, but they still took a long time. all the endless pressing open of the innumerable seams wore me out. but all of that moved me along as a quilter.

when i see this quilt, it reminds me of taking the class with my friends, getting pregnant with baby #7 (which is the reason it didn't get finished at once), a daughter who wanted and waited for a quilt for literally years (mom, are you staring another quilt? is mine done?), and many a friday sewing social with jill. this quilt will always remind me of jill. i can't even say how much i am going to miss her.

 jill's quilt, unnamed as far as i know, is a pull of reds, light turquoise blues, and apple greens. even though it was her first quilt, she prefered to coordinate her own prints and did a fabulous job. her border is a light blue "nicey jane" print and the binding a green with white dot from bonnie and camille's bliss line. for the backing she used the blue border print from the front.

i didn't think these quilts were that tall, but i was barely able to hold them up by standing on my tip toes and stretching my arms out as far as they could go. jill, by height default, was the photographer any time i wanted the quilt held up for a photo. she did a lovely job. this was our first location photo shoot and we immediately realized a few things would have been helpful to bring along - like a step ladder. and maybe some kind of clamps or tacks for hanging the quilt. (any good suggestions?)

there is one photo i did not get on this morning of celebrating finishes and saying good-byes: a photo of the two quilters. jill, like most women, is camera shy, so i didn't make a point of getting a photo of her, but i wish i had now. while we were in the farmstand area, a lady came up to look at the produce list and i almost asked her to photograph us together with our quilts, but didn't. what a missed opportunity and how i am regretting that now!

linking up with my quilt infatuation's thursday threads and crazy mom quilt's friday finishes.