urban bee corridors

i’m super stoked on bees.
recently  i went to a workshop called “how to grow a pollinator garden” put on by master beekeeper jennifer bach. i learned all kinds of fascinating things about bees. there are 20-50 thousand bees in a hive, almost all of them female (3-10% are male "drones"). did you know that the male bees are born from unfertilized eggs? does that seem possible? they are literally genetic clones of the queen. they hang out in “drone congregations” high up in the atmosphere.  when a queen is ready to mate (only once in her life) she flies way up there and zooms past the drones, and whomever’s fast enough to catch up with her she mates with (12-30 of them) and then she keeps the sperm in her body for the rest of her life, using it as needed to fertilize eggs for the next 5 years. she only mates with drones from other colonies, so essentially it’s the genetic coupling of two different queens’ dna that produces the next generation. fascinating.

 

i also learned that bees in urban areas can often be healthier than bees in agricultural areas because they aren’t as likely to be exposed to pesticides and vast areas of monoculture crops – which are bad for their health. that’s pretty sad, but it renewed my sense of the importance of growing backyard and patio gardens, to provide a sort of urban bee corridor.
they recommended letting 10% of your plants like basil and lettuce go to seed so the bees can enjoy it too, plus then you can collect seeds for replanting. another good tip was to try to plant a diversity of flowering plants that bloom at different times, so the bees have a consistent source of nectar throughout the year. they also appreciate having a source of water nearby when they are feeding, so if you set up a water dish or feature try putting small stones in it so the bees can access the water without getting wet. i’m definitely inspired to plant more flowering things and hope to lend a hand to our pollinator friends.
i also learned that bees leave pheromones on a flower when they sucked out the nectar, and those pheromones evaporate at the same rate that the plant takes to replenish the nectar - so it's a kind of marking signal that says to other bees "don't bother with this one." awesome.
one more interesting tidbit- when the queen hatches a new queen, the old queen takes half the hive and leaves the house to her new protege - this is when hives "swarm" - the hive lands somewhere, usually a tree - and waits while the scouts go out and find possible new hive locations. when the scouts come back to the hive they report what they've each found, and each bee in the hive communicates with the bees immediately around her, and they come to agreement about which is the best new location by essentially "voting." i'd like to learn more about this process. some people are referring to bee hives as a "super organism" - meaning the hive has an intelligence and ability that is beyond the sum of its parts.
at the workshop they had honey tastings provided by local beekeepers - and the jars were labeled by which month/season they were harvested - i was amazed at how completely different honey from spring, summer, fall, and winter seasons taste - even here in hawaii where seasonal changes are relatively subtle.

i was catching up on overdue presents and other personal projects that had been on hold for the past month while i focused on our eat local campaign. The bees inspired me, and i went home buzzing with enthusiasm that came out in the form of these potholders for my friend -and fellow birthday buddy - cathy.
it’s been a while since i’ve done paper piecing – since the dragonfly quilt- but it came back to me and gave me an excuse to dig into my box of scrap fabrics, which was one of the few things i shipped from oakland to hawai'i when i moved. i whipped these out late one night and am quite pleased with how they turned out. cathy’s an amazing cook (among many other things), and i hope these bees will bring her inspiration as well.

week three: 'ulu quilt

they say you have a year to give a newly married couple a gift. i've taken that advice a bit liberally and this gift is maybe a year and a half after the actual wedding. but hey, it's handmade! and what a great opportunity to continue celebrating your marriage.

so i read somewhere that the 'ulu (breadfruit) tree symbolizes marital bliss. i have never been able to find that reference again, so the specifics of why that is are lost to me, but i have a lot of respect for the 'ulu; its abundance and versatility made it a great companion for polynesian voyagers to bring on the long canoe journeys across the pacific. if you've never had the opportunity to eat 'ulu it can range from potato-like (and makes great chips, mashed, steamed, baked), to sweet-fruity dessert-like, depending on the variety and ripeness.

anyway, the seed was planted (so to speak) in my mind >2 years ago to make an ulu quilt for my friends jake and nicole's wedding. what better wish could you give someone for their wedding than marital bliss?

i chose the fabrics at fabric mart, a store in our neighborhood with a dizzying array of aloha prints. this is also the store i got my lovely curtain fabric and the camouflage water-repellent fabric i used to sew a cozy for our little bbq grill (these projects apparently happened when i was in blogging hiatus-mode). they've got pretty great prices, and i have to say i respect them for having a website called fmart. 
i misjudged the amount of fabric i'd need for the wall hanging quilt i was making. well, no. what actually happened is that i was bullied by the filipino aunty in the store into buying less than i knew i needed for the project because it was the end of the roll and she was giving me a deal on it. and i guess because i'm chinese i totally played into that. my thought process went something like "well, it's about 3 inches less than i really want for this quilt, but it's a deal..." so i made do.

the process of cutting out a pattern for hawaiian quilting is really fun - like cutting a fabric snowflake. i decided to do the breadfruits in a lighter green to accent, and made up a hexagonal quilting pattern that i think makes them look real. other than that the process is pretty tedious, pinning and then hand-appliqueing and hand quilting inside and out of your design. this is the second hawaiian quilt square i've done, the first was a lehua blossom for my mom. 

while i'm counting this as one of my 52 projects in 52 weeks, it obviously did not take me a week to make.  it took me quite a while to complete, and i'll dispense with excuses about that and suffice to say i'm excited to send it to them. so if you're a friend who has gotten hitched in the past, um, several years and you haven't gotten a gift from me yet - don't lose hope. 

watermelon baby quilt

aryn's done it again. she created this beautiful quilt top - in watermelon colors - for our friend claire's newly arrived baby, celia. celia arrived early and healthy, six weeks early in fact, so the quilt wasn't quite ready for her upon arrival. but with a little pushing it was ready for her baby shower - which turned out to also be a celebration of her one month birthday.

i love aryn's choice of fabrics and combination of colors. so well done. she hired me to do the assembling, quilting and finishing parts of the quilt, which was fun for me. baby quilts are a great size to work with! i want to make only baby quilts from now on. so all you people who are waiting for your wedding presents from me... take note.

i wanted to do something subtle since the pattern of the fabrics is so vibrant on its own, so i did some stitching in the ditch around all the blocks and then chose one of the stripes of fabric in each square to do some stippling on - in corresponding pink or green thread. i think it came out really nicely - it's subtle on the front but allows some of the pieces to pop out, and the back is a fun maze of swirls and lines.

for the binding i split the difference between aryn's method and mine - she does a turn over of the backing fabric and machine stitching; i do a bias tape binding and finish it by hand. So i turned over the backing fabric as binding and finished it by hand. it's time consuming, but i like the hand stitched touch.

Finally, we made a little dedication on the back for celia, and aryn wrapped it up and hopped over to the baby shower. done and done.

if you like piecing quilt tops but hate the assembly and quilting parts, give me a shout - quilter for hire. cultivatingdomesticity(at)gmail(dot)com

also have to give a shout out to my mom for making this awesome thread-catching pouch that hangs off the side of the sewing table - by the grace of gravity and a sand bag - and handles all those pesky little threads you snip off during the course of quilting that always end up all over the carpet and jamming up your vacuum cleaner. and it's so pretty on the outside and soft and furry on the inside, thanks mom!

quilting for hire

just before leaving for oklahoma i finished up this gorgeous orange and blue quilt aryn made for adrionna's birthday. aryn pieced the top together - and it's stunning - and then handed it off to me to assemble and quilt.


i have to admit it took me a while to get around to it, and we had to move all the furniture out of the living room in order to spread it out entirely, but once it got pinned together it went very fast. i love the piecing aryn did with the backing - it adds a great dimension to the back and then comes across to the front on the binding, which i really like. i'm definitely steeling that idea for my next quilt.


once i got the quilt sandwich assembled and pinned together, i quilted long, wavy lines from top to bottom throughout the quilt. this was all on aryn's suggestion, and i have to admit i started out skeptical that wavy lines would look good on a horizontal and vertical striped surface, but it turned out looking fantastic. i chose a goldenrod-colored thread that blends nicely into the oranges and stands out a bit on the blue.


i tried aryn's method of binding, which uses the extra backing of the quilt to fold over to the top and machine stitch it all the way around. i usually cut a bias strip of binding and stitch it by hand to the front, so this method was much quicker. i didn't do a perfect job of it, but i think i'm the only one who's sweating my misstakes, so i let them slide.


the quilt looks quite nice put together.


and it was received with great enthusiasm.

hawaiian quilting

while i was in hawai'i over january i decided i wanted to try my hand at hawaiian quilting. quilting has a rich history in hawai'i, intricately wound up with the social and political forces that have shaped what hawai'i has gone through in the past century. as i understand it, the quilting craft came to hawai'i with the missionaries. prior to the fabric quilt influence, bedspreads in hawai'i were made from kapa - tree bark, beaten and felted together and decorated with inked stamp designs. when hawaiian women picked up the fabric quilting craft, they created a unique quilting technique and design that is readily identifiable as particularly hawaiian.

hawaiian quilt design motifs reflect nature - often plant forms, and they radiate out from the center in a geometric design. this effect is created by folding and cutting fabric like you would a paper snowflake - which unfolds into a multi-faceted design. hawaiian quilts are hand appliqued - meaning you stitch the snowflake design by hand onto a background, and then the quilting is done by hand as well, often echoing the shape of the center pattern, like ripples of water.
because the craft was taking form in hawai'i amidst serious political and social upheaval in the form of first missionary and then capitalist influences, there is an interesting story to be told in the quilts made by hawaiian women.
during the period of the illegal u.s. overthrow of the sovereign hawaiian government, you saw many quilts in hawai'i incorporate the hawaiian flag into their design. because loyalty to the sovereign hawaiian government (and eventually hawaiian culture itself) was forbidden during that period, many of these "beloved flag" quilts were made to be reversible, with the flag motif hidden underneath. the most exciting thing i learned today is that queen lili'uokalani made an incredible quilt during the 10 months she was imprisoned in 'iolani palace, following the u.s. coup that deposed her and her efforts to lead her people to reinstate their sovereign government. in the center of the quilt are the words, "imprisoned at 'iolani palace ... we began the quilt here ..." it's worth clicking to take a closer look at the details, she embroidered dates of the events of the overthrow, her close friends and supporters' names, the hawaiian flag and kalakaua coat of arms. i love acts of creative acts of resistance - and this beautiful work blows my mind in a number of ways.

so i really can't follow that historical legacy with my own modest first attempt at hand quilting, but that is what this blog is about - so here goes.
i chose the lehua pattern for my quilt block. lehua is the red blossom of the ohia lehua tree - which is one of the kinolau, or body forms of the fire goddess pele. the ohia lehua tree is one of the first plants to grow on recent lava flow beds. i wrote my honors thesis about pele and the hawaiian struggle against geothermal energy development, which my mom helped me with editing, and i was making the quilt for her so i figured she's appreciate it.
cutting out the design like a snowflake was really satisfying - an entirely new technique for me. however, i was running late to catch my flight back home when i chose to cut out the design (i know, not the best time to do craft work, especially with a new project - but i really wanted to have some handwork to do on the long plane ride) so i ended up breaking one of the cardinal principles of snowflake cutting - leave the middle corner intact. so when i unfolded my design on the plane i realized my parts were all disconnected since i hadn't placed the middle point on the corner to cut. oops. marty helped me problem-solve that situation by creating the star-shaped space in the middle of the flowers while allowing them to "high five" on the edges.

i actually think this ultimately improved the design, though next time i'll know to take more time with my cutting. the applique piece actually went pretty quickly - i was probably halfway finished with it by the end of the flight, but hand quilting the rest of the piece took me another month. you're supposed to measure a finger's width between your echo lines when you're quilting around your design, but i couldn't seem to keep my lines that far apart, so i ended up doing a whole lot of close together lines, which took a while.

i was also learning to make those tiny tiny stiches by hand. the book i was reading said expert quilters get about 10 stitches in per inch. i definitely was not achieving that level of accuracy, but i did make a lot of stitches.

here's what the underside of the quilt looks like with those stitches.

ultimately i made the quilt square into a pillow, since i wasn't about to hand stitch an entire quilt, and i think pillows are more functional and comforting than wall hangings.
mom got it in the mail this week and was very excited. in fact, my coworkers say they could hear her phone excitement from the other side of the room.

this is the card i sent with the package. thanks to hannah for the fabric.

dragonfly quilt complete

the dragonfly quilt is finally finished!
i spent a fair amount of time the past week doing the finishing stitching - both by machine and by hand and i'm so pleased with how it turned out. allow me to share some pictures with you.
i decided to outline the paper pieced dragonfly squares to set them off a bit.


here's the initials piece in context:


marty and i designed a stitching pattern for the middle based on the thunderbolt design of payton's home and the colors of the four directions. i initially did this by machine, but took it out in favor of hand stitching.


here's some of the stippling stitching i did with the free-motion darning foot on my bernette - very fun, it makes the dragonflies pop out in a nice puffy way.


as per marty's suggestion, some of the dragonflies and other bugs got little bee-line trails stitched behind them.
other blocks got outlines inside them.


even the back looks exciting. you can really see the stitching that i did in darker colors to match the quilt top.


here's the bias binding, stitched by hand on the back side, of course.


i was convinced to sign this quilt, something i've never done in previous quilts, but it seemed like a nice idea.


i made two quilted potholders for payton's mama as well.


the quilt and potholders got packaged up and sent out today - hope they like them!