Alicia's Attic

Sara Nephew

Sara Nephew was born and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was an art major in high school and in college. Sara got a job as a commercial jeweler after graduating from college with a liberal arts degree, and began to learn diamond setting, as well as continuing her work with painting and cloisonné enameling.

Country Life
 After she married Dale, the couple moved to Seattle, WA, where Dale had a job with Boeing. Sara continued to work at home, making original design cloisonné and gold and silver jewelry, selling her work at art fairs and by word of mouth. The couple eventually bought three acres in the country in an area called Clearview, north of Seattle. Sara planted gardens for vegetables, raised chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys, milled her own grain and baked bread from scratch, even made her own soap. Quilting seemed like another country kind of thing to do, as well as a way to decorate their thirties-built home economically. And with three little children, quilting, with a sewing machine and lots of beautiful fabric, seemed much more child-friendly than a jeweler's torches, kilns, and acid. She joined the local guild and began to learn.

Starting a Business
 Sara started a business making quilts when it became obvious that two of the children, now in high school, would be in college at the same time. Perhaps quilting could bring in a little extra money. "Quilts for sale" quickly changed into wall hangings for sale, because they could be produced faster and also sold faster. Her specialty was miniature Log Cabin designs. After making 50 or 60 in the space of a couple of years, Sara was looking for variations, different ways to use up the baskets of wool and cotton one inch strips she had piled up in her workroom. She bought Jeffrey Gutcheon's "Diamond Patchwork," which tells how to turn any quilt square into a 60° diamond, and how this can produce beautiful designs. So Sara tried the Log Cabin block as a 60° design.

60° Triangles
 The wall hanging stayed very small, because it was so difficult to "set in" the foundation-pieced Log Cabin diamonds. But it looked great! Sara thought, "What if these were triangles?". It was like a light bulb turning on in her head! She hit the stationery store, buying isometric-equilateral paper with thousands of little green-lined triangles, and two each of all the sizes of 60° plastic triangles, so she could make her own tools. Tape two angles together and draw lines up from the base, and you have a tool to rotary cut 60° triangles out of strip sets. That was the beginning of Sara's first book, Quilts From A Different Angle, published by That Patchwork Place. This was followed quickly by, My Mother's Quilts: Quilt Designs from the Thirties.

And More
 Sara has since authored eight more quilting books based on the 60° triangle, and six more on other quilt-related subjects, 16 books so far. Many of her books have been published by her company, Clearview Triangle. She also is the manufacturer of five isometric (60°) rulers. Sara's quilts have been exhibited in many places. She has been featured in magazine articles, and her quilts have been in books by other authors. Her quilting career has taken her to teach all over the US, Canada and Australia.

On The Road
 I enjoy getting to know people in my classes. Everybody has a story about the work they do, where they are from, what kind of life they have. People are interesting.

But traveling a lot to teach isn't always fun. One of my first trips out was to Spring Quilt Market in Boston, to help publicize my first book. That Patchwork Place was having me give a demo of my cutting techniques in the Schoolhouse series (lectures for shop owners).

The first night we were in Boston, I ordered the fisherman's platter in the hotel restaurant. Went to bed early that evening, but woke up about 11:30 with a very uncomfortable feeling - food poisoning. After a while I left the room so I wouldn't keep my roommates awake. Every hotel has restrooms in the lobby. About four in the morning I asked the bell cap if they had a doctor for the hotel. Over the phone the doctor diagnosed food poisoning and that enough time had passed so that it was probably almost over - I would be able to go back to sleep. I went back to the room and my roommate Marsha McCloskey fussed over me and got me a can of coke to settle my stomach. Then it was time for my demo.

I was an accomplished rotary cutter by then, hadn't cut myself in years. But I proceeded to run the rotary cutter right into my thumbnail, in front of a room packed with people. Luckily it didn't bleed too much and somebody had a band aid, and I was able to finish my demonstration.

On the way home our flight from Chicago to Seattle was cancelled. Marsha and I ran from one end of the airport to the other trying to go home by way of Denver, but when we got to ticketing, only one of us was guaranteed a flight from Denver to Seattle. We decided to stick together, and went back to the other end of the airport. When we finally got a plane, it sat on the ground for six hours with all the passengers belted in before taking off. We arrived in Seattle in the wee hours of the morning. My husband had been calling the airport hourly for the whole evening, but by the time I called and said, "I'm here!", he was no longer capable of driving safely, so Marsha offered me a bed at her house for the rest of the night.

Australian Adventure
I am a bit obsessive sometimes, can't get an idea out of my head. When I was teaching at a conference in Canberra, Australia, a group of us toured the nearby Botanical Gardens. (We were there for a couple of weeks in September, which is spring for Australians.) I didn't get enough photos, and wanted to go back. One night I had about an hour or so between the end of class and the evening lecture, which that night was featuring me.

Because the temperature had dropped (it varied between freezing and 70 degrees on that trip), and because I didn't have a coat, I decided to layer my clothes to keep warm. Looking decidedly unconventional, I walked the four blocks to the gardens. The sign at the gate said the gardens were closing in fifteen minutes. Whoa! But a lot of cars were still in the parking lots so I figured a few pictures of that Bottle-brush Bush wouldn't take very long. Twenty minutes later I found myself back at the entrance. Most of the cars were gone and the gates were really, really locked!

The steel fence was high enough to keep a kangaroo from jumping over. The gates went all the way to the ground. I couldn't roll and squeeze under. And there was no one in sight. While I was wondering who would give my lecture, I ran back and forth near the gate looking for a solution to my problem. Finally I found an emergency phone. The person who answered was not at the gardens and didn't have a key, but he said his wife was still there, and she would be leaving eventually. Within about five minutes a truck drove up to the gate, and that person did have a key.

I had hoped to get back to the college without too many people seeing my eccentric "layered" look, and I did, but for a while I had visions of my picture in the newspaper (in Canberra) with the headline "Visitor almost freezes to death, locked overnight in the Gardens". Was back in time to change clothes and give my lecture with a few moments to spare. As for the photos, it was a brand-new camera, and I subsequently found that the "Automatic" switch had been turned off, and none of the photos I took in Australia turned out.

TECHNIQUE:
A tailoring technique, the wet press cloth, can help ensure success when sewing 60° triangle quilt designs. Press with a dry iron while you are sewing pieces together. But when a whole block is assembled, place the block on the padded ironing surface right side up. Wet a piece of white cloth and wring it out. (Pieces of old 100% cotton sheets are great.) Place the wet cloth over the block and run the hot iron over it to dampen the whole block. Remove the cloth and use the hot iron to dry the block, pulling at the corners to straighten as necessary. This is like "blocking" a knitted sweater, because it flattens the block and shrinks out the bulk in the seams. Then it's easier to deal with the extra seams produced by the 60° angle. After the block is pressed, turn it over to see if any of the seams on the back have flipped over in the wrong direction. (Usually they go the way they should.) Correct as necessary, pressing from the back.

Alicia's Attic