One Hen, Two Ducks- The Secret Origin Story

When I was a kid, I went to camp most summers.  I love camp- as a kid it was Girl Scout camp, church camp, space camp, ski camp, day camp.  More recently it's been science camp or quilt camp.  Mmmm camp!  One year at ski camp up in Oregon, we were taking a hike on an off day to some pretty cool waterfalls.   Waterfalls were of great interest to me, having grown up in the mountains of the desert southwest where such things are rare.

The notation scrawled on the back of this photo informs
 me that these are Ramona Falls and the year was 1993.

Anyway,  along the hike, one of the counselors taught us this crazy-silly poem I call "One Hen, Two Ducks".  I later taught it to my sister and we've been teaching it to kids ever since.  I even taught it to the audience at an open mic night once at a different camp a few years later.


One hen.
One hen. Two ducks.
One hen. Two ducks. Three squawking geese.
....Four corpulent porpoises.
....Five limerick oysters.
....Six pairs of dynal varsey tweezers.
....Seven thousand Macedonian warriors all in full battle array.
....Eight brass monkeys from the sacred, ancient crypts of Egypt.
....Nine empathetic, sympathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates with a marked propensity for procrastination and sloth.
....Ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who haul, stall, and quo the quey of the quivey all at the very same time.

It's meant to be taught one line at a time, with each number getting to be successively more of a mouthful.  I don't even know what some of those mean (if anything).  Once you've learned it, if you say it really fast, you can almost get the whole thing in one breath; I usually run out of air at the end of nine and have to gasp to finish ten.  It always makes people laugh, and when I finished the one-block wonder quilt with all its fabulous hidden animals, I remembered all the crazy things in this poem and thought "One Hen, Two Ducks" would be a good name for the quilt.  No one else (aside from my sister) got the name though, and I received show comments once in which a judge said she liked the quilt but was still looking for the hen and ducks.  But now you too know the story!

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming.....

I promise I'm not starting a new project.  I really promise.  My UFO list is doing its job and preventing me from starting anything new.  But I was so excited when the pattern I asked my local quilt shop (the Savage Quilter) to order came in that I had to just show the picture.  Its an Amy Butler pattern for a weekend-size travel bag.  I can't wait to start on it (after working on some UFOs) and pick out fabrics.  I've never made a bag so hopefully it'll go together easily.  Looking at it today I was reminded how long it's been since I actually sewed something with pattern pieces.  I mean, I make things from patterns, but they're usually instruction style things rather than pattern pieces.  I guess it's been a while since my clothes sewing days.

Anyway, here it is!  Check it out.  Of course I'll check back in when I have progress on it.  http://www.amybutlerdesign.com/products/patterns_display.php?id=22

One Hen, Two Ducks-The End

The class at Asilomar with Maxine Rosenthal was absolutely great, and I was able to piece together all the hexagons while I was in the class.  Once I got home I finished piecing the black edges and started quilting it on my mom's old Voyager.

I love machine quilting, and I especially love the look of bright machine quilting that stands out from the background.  Sadly, I'm not very good at this particular skill. Time after time I quilt with bright colors on a dark background in order to make my quilting visible.  Alas, this accentuates every mistake, every jerked stop and start, every little knot, and every imperfection.  Most often I look at my quilting and think Blech!  However, for this quilt, I started the quilting on the brightly colored hexagon part using a lightweight thread which more or less matched the top.  I free-motion quilted large leafy vines parallel to the long rows of hexagons.  Since the top is so busy and the thread matched, you can hardly see them.  However, by the time I got to the black part, I was quite practiced at the pattern and felt brave enough to use bright contrasting threads. In the end I think it turned out pretty nice, and the bright contrasting quilting in the black area is my very favorite part of the whole quilt.  I always imagine that these are part leafy vine, part centipede.  

Technically the quilting is still not very good- I got marked unsatistfactory on stitch length, tension, and smoothness  by the quilt judges at the MQS show, but  I'm trying to practice practice practice!

Here's the whole quilt, it's called "One Hen, Two Ducks".  I added the skinny partial borders for a balancing bit of asymmetrical color, and bound it in-you guessed it-brights!  It's pretty big (100x73) and will go well with my window on the ocean quilt on my matching twin beds whenever I have a guest room.

One Hen, Two Ducks-The Beginning

My mom and I are both crafty quilty people and decided in 2009 that we should go to quilt camp, AKA Empty Spools Seminars.  We recently went a second time since the first time was so much fun, and there'll be more on that along the way.  The seminars at quilt camp can be broadly divided into two semi-overlapping categories, 1) Make-A-Quilt, and 2) Design-a-Quilt.  While almost all the classes include both construction and design exercises, some are clearly geared one way or the other.  For the first time around, I chose a fabulous class in the first category.  The teacher was Maxine Rosenthal who has authored several books on the one-block wonder pattern, which was the focus of the class.

Before the class, we all selected a large, multi-colored print and purchased six repeats.  Is it any wonder that I chose this fabulous Secret Jungle panel by Laurel Burch whose color scheme can best be described as "bright"? I actually bought extra repeats so I could have a complete panel to put on the back of the quilt and one repeat I could cut up and use for accents.

The instructions for the construction of the quilt are pretty straightforward, and described in detail in the book, so I won't go into it here. Basically, you line up the six repeats on top of each other, carefully cut them into strips and then into 60 degree triangles.  The six resultant matching triangles are then assembled into two half hexagons which are pinned together.

Once the hexagons are all pinned together, the fun of arranging them begins.  It's amazing how much color and movement and variation can be created.   You actually get much more variation if your initial print has more contrast variation (lights and darks), but my panel was mostly all medium contrast so the main impact is the color.  Here's a picture I took in the class as I was organizing my hexagons.  The great thing is that since the half-hexagons aren't sewn together, once you have them arranged, they can be sewn together in rows with no set-in seams.

During assembly; see all the unattached half-hexagons at the bottom.

Rows once they've all been sewn together.

The traditional one-block wonder uses only the hexagon blocks cut from the six repeats, but you can also make and incorporate hexagons which look like solid cubes, open cubes, partially open cubes, etc., and by playing around with the placement of lights and darks you can significantly alter the perspective.

Finally, I decided to place parts of my original panel intact among the hexagons; the day part of the panel on one end, and the night part on the other.  See the intact zebras in the day portion and the bird in the night portion nestling amid the surrounding hexagons?

Once I'd finished sewing all my rows together, I was pretty amazed that it all came from one base fabric, but it seemed a little too chaotic even for me.  To finish the whole thing, I made several rows of black and incorporated some leftover hexagons and machine-appliqued cutouts from my extra fabric panels.  The leftover hexagons all had black edges since they had come from the edges of the panel which had a black border.  They hadn't really fit in with the rest of the twirling hexagons, but made lovely pinwheeling plants in with the rest of the black strips I added (sorry about the weird picture)

Stay-tuned tomorrow for the quilting and final pictures!

QNM Small Projects

I'm a long-term subscriber and avid reader of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine;  it's a really great compendium of quilting news, new techniques, artist profiles, fabulous quilt photos, and a few patterns.  One of my favorite unofficial regular features in the magazine is what I always think of as the "fun-small-project-of-the-month."  They almost always publish a small project showcasing some technique that's new or fun or different.  I love to try these since you can test something out without committing to a giant undertaking.  In addition, although I like making large involved quilts, I'm also a sucker for the make-it-in-a-weekend type projects.

The first project-of-the-month I tried was a thread-painted portrait of my mom.  It didn't turn out too well- she said something uncomplimentary and I've teased her about it ever since.  In any case, I'm not showing it here.

However, here are two more successful projects which came from QNMs small-project-of-the-month section.  The goal of the first one was to make a "village-scape" using only a few little shapes.  The idea is that you cut out a bunch of fusible-web lined squares and rectangles and L-shapes and small triangles, and then lay them all out so they look like a small European village on a mountainside.  When I saw this project we'd just gotten back from a vacation in Spain where we saw several of these villages, so my Mom and I thought we'd try it.  We even incorporated a couple of photo transfers from our trip.  My mom made one in black and white, and I made mine in sort of beige tones.  It's one of the only muted color schemes I've ever used, and even then I couldn't resist adding the pops of color in the flower baskets.  After lining up all the pieces you just fuse them down, cover with tulle and quilt over it.  Easy-peasy for a pretty cute effect.

The second small project involved weaving pieces of fabric like on those old woven valentines we used to make out of red and white construction paper.  My sister, our cousin, and I each made one of these mini wall hangings (they're about 16 x 18 inches or so).  I don't quite remember all the instructions, I think we cut out and wove the fabric and then fused it down on fusible interfacing or something.  Anyway, it was quite easy and gave a fun abstract landscape sort of look.  I accented mine with fabric flowers/buttons.

Patriotic Lone Stars: Part II

Having decided to make Mike a real lone star quilt, I set about trying to figure out how to do it.  I decided to make it a largeish wall quilt so he could hang it in his office.  In retrospect, I'm quite glad I didn't decide to make it bigger because even with the easy techniques, it was a lot of points to match up for this precision-challenged girl.  It makes me even more in awe of the precision piecing on display at the big quilt shows. In the end, I think mine turned out pretty nice, the saddest part was that while quilting it (on the long arm), I got a bunch in the backing fabric, so there's forever an ugly ripple on the back.  That's a mistake I hope I won't have to make twice.

Anyhow, Jan Krentz has a great book for traditional fancy lone stars, I initially got it from interlibrary loan, and then decided to just buy it (Lone-Star Quilts & Beyond).  I used her strip piecing method to make the star points, that definitely made it easier, and I encourage anyone considering a traditional lone star to use that method.

After piecing the star points, I took these (out-of-focus-cell-phone) pictures to see which arrangement my quilting buddies liked best.

The third one won out, so I pieced the rest using sparkly white background fabric and some USMC accent fabric in the borders.  I designed four patriotic applique/embroidery patterns which I sewed onto the white background blocks by hand before piecing them into the quilt.  Mike's a Marine, so I did my best to capture the Marine Corps emblem in one of them.

For the label, I printed (on fabric) a picture of Mike at a display of Christmas lights- I liked the big flag and it seemed to fit with the theme for this quilt.  

Here's the final quilt.

Proud to be an American, 2009 49"x 49"

I think Mike liked it; I gave it to him for Christmas in 2009.  I certainly like the colors and it was fun to do a traditional pattern.  He hung it in his office until he retired, and now it lives in our entryway.

Patriotic Lone Stars: Part I

In honor of the upcoming holiday, I thought I'd share these red-white-and-blue Lone Star quilts I made.  Although I'm not usually a traditional quilter, I am actually quite fond of the lone star pattern.  I was initially scared off by all of the diamond shapes, which I always assumed had to be pieced using set-in Y-seams.  As it turns out, there are easier ways, but I'll come to that tomorrow.

Three or four years ago (in our very early quilting days), my mom came across a pattern somewhere for a "wannabe" lone star wall-hanging made of half-square triangles.  Instead of having diamonds, the lone star is made up of little parallelograms which are much easier to piece and approximate diamonds from afar.

We had a lot of fun laying out the half square triangles on the top bunk-bed at my mom's house- It was tricky to make sure we were sewing the right sides together-one wrong seam and the pattern was totally awry.  I've always loved that pinwheel print in the quilt border, I wish I had some more of it; alas all that's left is a few tiny pieces in the scrap bin.  Anyway, the main lesson I learned from this quilt was to watch my print choices; the wretchedness of those mis-matched center stripes still gives me a headache.  Alas, making the easy version didn't assuage my desire to make a real lone star.  This quilt hangs now in my quilting room where it mainly serves as a pin-board on which I hang other works-in-progress.

Sorry for the work gloves and pile of fabric in the picture.  I'd take a new photo, but three other projects are currently pinned haphazardly on top of this one.  As an aside, the blog name "I'm working on a project" is, as Professor Dumbledore once said, "optimistic to the point of foolishness."  I've never worked a single project in my whole life and in common with most quilters, the UFOs in my quilting room outnumber the finished work.

Back on the subject, in 2009 I decided to make a quilt for Mike; when I asked him what kind of quilt he wanted he pointed at the wannabe lone star and said he wanted one like this one.  I figured it would be the perfect occasion to try out the real thing.  So- tomorrow, the real lone star.