Quick Project for Quilters Who Love Fonts Too Much.

A bunch of years ago, I took an excellent class on the Adobe InDesign program, which I use to self-publish my patterns. Typography, of course, was an essential part of the class. The teacher told us that his personal font collection ran into the thousands - that's thousands of alphabet styles, and dollars, too, since the good and the new ones tend not to be free. He explained: "I'm a font whore!"

 I'd never heard the term before (although it's been around), but oh my gosh, me, too! Well, wait a sec, that term is pretty rude, since persons who sell their bodies are usually not so enthusiastic about it. So I'll edit that to "font groupie," to reflect the enthusiasm factor. There have been many times that I loved fonts too much and threw them about promiscuously on my pages!

Then I read Walter Isaacson's excellent biography of Steve Jobs. After dropping out of college formally, Jobs nonetheless audited a college calligraphy class. When he developed his first mass market computer, he was determined to give civilians the ability to select fonts, a word that most people didn't even know. Thus Jobs turned typography from an obscure field for graphic designers and printers, to a steamy pleasure for the masses. Jobs was the personal computer age's first f.g.

The other relevant pop culture influence here is the Mary Tyler Moore show. Remember that giant "M" hanging in her living room? I thought it was the coolest thing. [Here's a lovely blogpost by a retired designer, with a picture of Mary's 'M', plus the bloggers' own fab artistic alphabetic wall letter collection: http://goodlifeofdesign.blogspot.com/2011/02/letter-letter-on-wall.html] Just as Jobs launched the font-loving trend, Mary (or her show's set designers) almost certainly launched the wall-alphabet trend.

So what we have at the top of the post are three quiltlets that celebrate font symbols and letters, aka "glyphs." These make excellent wall hangings - solo or in groups - as well as bookmarks, and even, sometimes, bracelets. It's the perfect gift for a literary friend. I trundled through the dozens of fonts on my computer to find suitable glyphs. My main criteria was that they had to be relatively wide - no thin, narrow stretches, or they wouldn't support their weight and would be a big pain to cut out and stitch.

The ampersand is a manipulated version from the font Blackadder. I smoothed it and stretched it. It's about 10" high and 4" at its widest.

It really does work as a bracelet. Here's the ampersand on (petite) Local Teen's tiny wrist.

And then there's the exclamation point.

 I can't figure out if I got it from the Binner D font, or from Gloucester MT Extra Cond - they're similar.  It's 8" high not counting the loop. The black cord loop secures the top to the stacked buttons in the bottom dot. The loop also serves as a wallhanger.

The question mark started out in either Harrington or Poor Richards. Aren't those font names enticing? They REEK of ink, of the Gutenberg Bible, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin.

Want to make your own quilted glyphs? I used a combination of black felt and solid quilters cottons. Here's the approach I used:

1. Choose a letter or character you like, and size it up in a graphic design or word program.* (see below)
2. Print it out (not mirror image). Trace the printout onto freezer paper (or print directly onto freezer paper, if you know how).
3. Press the freezer paper pattern onto your first contrasting color - for the ampersand, I used a red quilters cotton.
4. Don't cut into the red cotton yet - instead, press the wrong side to fusible web, so it is fully backed with fusible, with the freezer paper still on top.
5. Cut out the red cotton letter close around the freezer paper pattern. Remove the pattern
6. Press red cotton symbol to another contrasting color, in this case a dark blue-green cotton.
7. Press the blue's back to more paper-backed fusible web.
8. Cut around the blue-green fabric so a sliver of it shows beyond the red areas.
9. Press the red/blue combination to felt of your choice. (I chose black acrylic felt.) Use a press cloth, and a moderate temperature, so you don't melt the felt. Decide which areas of the felt to cut away, and which to leave in place. Trying it on a wrist will help you engineer a closure.
10. Stitch around each color with a zig-zag. I used a gold metallic thread from Superior, which goes well through sewing machines.
11. Optional: Stitch around the outer edge of the felt, if you want.

* Wondering how to resize and manipulate characters? Here's what I did. First, I typed the glyph into my favorite graphics program, CorelDraw, where I can easily convert it to curves and play with it. If you don't have a graphics program, you can resize in MSWord. Type the letter in the font you like. Select it. Bold it if you want it all a little wider. Select it again - you'll get a menu that allows you to enter the size. My MSW 2010 lets me size the glyphs from 1 to 1638 points, the latter being so huge it takes up about 8 sheets of paper. Size it around 600 points - it should take up most of a standard sized page. If it cuts off the image, try going to to 'page layout' and doing away with the margins. I don't have an Apple, but I'm betting that, thanks to Steve J., it's much easier to play with fonts in their system. Or, resizing on a copy machine may be easier than wrassling with MSW. Sigh! If only Bill Gates were a f.g!

Would love to hear about your passion for fonts!

Say 'Yes' to the Wedding Quilt, Part II: Blood, Fonts, and Tears

(In  Part I, we embarked on a  quilt-making adventure that morphed into an episode of reality TV's 'Say Yes to the Dress.' Here we find more eerie parallels.)

4. Count on the bride's taste being different from  yours. On The Show, the salesperson quickly learns to subsume her or his tastes to the bride's. Similarly, for quilters, taste in fonts. The Hebrew quotation that the couple wanted, from the Song of Songs, means ' This is my lover, this my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.' I have dozens of Hebrew fonts, many of which came installed with my computer, some of which I bought from a font company (Davka.com). I sent my bride four typeface alternatives, two curvy and traditional #1 and #4), two cleaner, and more linear (#2 and #3). I chose only chunky fonts, with no skinny bits, since I was planning to machine applique each letter.



Personally, I like #1 and #4 best – I’m showing my age! But, hands down, The Bride and Groom liked #3. I was very glad that I asked! (Hebrew students: Line 4 is nonsense Hebrew. I hope.)

5. Let her wear cowboy boots. Some brides on The Show are quirky. At their weddings, they plan to wear a red petticoat, a turtleneck collar, or in several cases, cowboy boots. The sales associate might raise an eyebrow, but she keeps her mouth shut.

My bride was actually not asking for anything wacky. But I wanted her to, in the sense that I wanted her to be personally invested in this chuppah. She had asked for collaboration, and that’s what I hoped to achieve. She’s an architect, so I asked her if she would be willing to design the central Jerusalem scene. In fact, I hired her to do it - I told her I’d reduce the price if she designed it. Urban landscapes aren’t my forte, and heck, as an architect, I knew she had to be a lot more building-sensitive than me. She accepted the challenge, and did a beautiful job, as I had suspected she would.

6. Jack things up. On The Show, when the bride likes a dress a lot, but isn’t quite ready to seal the deal, the sales associate will “jack her up” (!) with a jeweled belt, “hair jewelry”(never heard that term before), chandelier earrings, and, of course, a tiara and veil. Everyone is blown away, waterworks ensue, and the dress is sold! Similarly, I decided to jack up the Jerusalem scene. I added a ray of light, with lighter-value fabrics in a swath that goes diagonally across the medallion, to correspond with the ray of light going through two corners of the quilt. It gave the scene a lot more drama.

7.  If there are no blood spots and everyone cries (with happiness), you've done your job. This quilt took four months of hard work, and I loved nearly every single minute of it. My bride was a joy - encouraging, helpful, and appreciative at every turn. She was truly a dream client, and I felt honored to work with her. 

The only thing I didn’t love was my ever-mounting terror that I might somehow stain the bright white expanses. I became afraid to bring coffee or chocolate into the same room as it – quel sacrifice! While hand-sewing the binding, I actually did poke myself with a pin and shed a drop of blood on it, but managed to wash it out immediately. (And guess what? The same exact thing once happened in The Show, except worse, when the alterations lady poked the poor bride’s ribcage with pins, leaving several bloodspots down the sides of the dress. They got ‘em out, though, regrettably, they didn’t show us how…. did they hold the dress under a bathroom faucet, like I did with the quilt? But I digress.)

When it was done, I took a picture. 

Next, I brought the quilt to the mailing center, and watched with mixed emotions as the clerk carefully packed it up. I wanted to cry. It was like sending a puppy to a shelter. On the upside, I wouldn’t have to worry about drinking coffee or eating dark chocolate in my sewing room, anymore.

When the bride’s family received it, she, her groom, and her family, opened the box together. And, they told me later, they were overjoyed, and tears were shed. In a good  way. I was ecstatic.  I was even happier when they sent me pictures of the chuppah in action, during the wedding ceremony. 

I had had no idea that they'd be standing in front of a stained glass window with similar colors - and, what's really eerie, a ray of light coming from the upper right, just like my chuppah's central design. 

Hang on a second! I’m hearing a voice! Who’s talking?

CONFIDENT-AND HAPPY-SOUNDING MALE VOICE:  “When a bride gets the dream wedding quilt that she helped design, the bride, groom, and quiltmaker will all feel fine.”   

(Or “will walk in the sunshine,  Or, “will have no reason to whine.”)

Or something like that. 

(Note: If you missed Part I, it's here: http://gefiltequilt.blogspot.com/2012/10/say-yes-to-wedding-quilt-part-i.html

(For a discussion of the feather quilting on this quilt, go here: http://gefiltequilt.blogspot.com/search/label/feathers.)