Regeneration {Finished Quilt | PQ 16.1 Mythical Creatures}

The initial time I read through this year’s first Project Quilting prompt, 16.1 Mythical Creatures, I thought I might be stumped. Then, I carefully read through the post a second time and an idea formed in my mind. They key for me was in careful reflection of the wording of the first rule:

RULE ONE:  Find inspiration in a mythical creature.

Once I detached any sense of needing my quilt to be REPRESENTATIVE of a mythical creature and instead be INSPIRED by it, I knew right away that I would use a phoenix as my inspiration. A phoenix, a mythical, immortal bird that rises from its own ashes, symbolizes transformation and renewal. With its cycle of death and rebirth, it embodies an ability to transcend challenges and emerge stronger, forming resilience and empowerment. Adopting the perspective of a phoenix encourages a shift in perspective to see events as catalysts for positive change, encouraging us to rebuild and reinvent, let go of old beliefs/burdens/failures, and burn away what no longer serves us to make space for new growth.

Regeneration – Fabric Pull

This year, my husband and I are both starting new jobs. One week ago today, we were fine tuning our preparation for his return to an office desk job. So, on top of our normally coordinated and planned hours long conversations with family, there was a real effort on our part to find calm, serenity, and to generally prepare him (and ultimately both of us) for getting up early and heading to work.

On Monday, after initiating our new morning routine, I got to work on this prompt by making my fabric pull. I surprised myself by starting with a look through my prints, and I fell in love with what I found: black prints that shimmered (silver fleck) and sparkled (gold fleck) and prints that look like flames or sparks from fires. Clearly, this quilt was meant to use my print stash and would contain very few solids.

Regeneration – Working Out Piecing Plan

In my mind, I had a clear overall vision for this quilt top. The phoenix’s death and rebirth cycles remind me of an hourglass and how the grains of sand in an hourglass change as soon as the hourglass is turned over resetting the timer. That idea excited me, because an hourglass is also a classic quilt block. So, besides the quilt forming an overall hourglass shape, for the background/sides of the quilt top, I planned to piece hourglass blocks using the black prints.

For the hourglass itself, I wanted to improvisationally piece curved shapes shifting from red to orange to yellow in what I hoped would build up to look somewhat like flames. What I wasn’t sure about was if I would cut the improv panels once to make half-square triangles or twice to make hourglass blocks. I was working fast, and I failed to photograph my sample blocks, but I quickly concluded that the improv panels worked best cut once to create half-square triangles. For the size I was working with (aiming for 5″ finished blocks), the double cut improv panels reformed into hourglass blocks lost the curve details that I thought were going to be important to pull off the idea of flames inside an hourglass for this quilt.

Regeneration – Monday Piecing Progress

By the end of the day on Monday, I had made and trimmed all of the background/black hourglass blocks for the sides, the untrimmed black HSTs, I had started the red slab improv piecing to create HSTs, and I was playing with the idea of a pile of embers at the bottom of the hourglass using black and brown fabrics.

Regeneration – Tuesday Piecing Progress

On Tuesday, I wanted to start work on the bottom of the quilt to see if the idea of the embers at the bottom of the hourglass was going to work out or not. First, I made all of the pure yellow improv slab HST units, then I started incorporating orange into the mix. After getting the lower HSTs in place, I stepped back to look at the embers, and they felt too rigid and flat. I wanted to cut shapes into the embers – flames popping out into the foreground – to show the transformation occurring.

When my husband came home from work and saw my progress, he gave me several good ideas:

1. add curve piecing on the center black background units so that the hourglass is a real hourglass shape with a narrow waist, and
2. consider inserting a “flame” in the foreground of the embers, not just on the edges.

Both of my husband’s suggestions were great, but I struggled with the shape and method to get what I wanted for the foreground flame in the embers. I first started out with a shape that was way too rounded (lower left). Once I realized the shape was what was bothering me, I reworked the same method and changed the shape (lower right). Then I realized that changing the order of piecing would yield exactly what I was looking for, which is the unit that is shown in the quilt top just above the two earlier attempts on the design wall.

Regeneration Piecing GIF – Wednesday Piecing Progress

I did not not make as much piecing progress on Tuesday as I would have liked because, like many other Californians, I was glued to the news about the Santa Ana winds and the wildfires spreading across Los Angeles. We live many miles away from LA, but we dropped off the custom Jeep camper that my husband just spent 2 years meticulously designing and building for us at a dealership a mere handful of miles away from the Palisades fire. As I was working on Tuesday, I kept coming back to the thought that “it will be what it will be;” clearly our camper is *very* inconsequential in the face of the loss of life and the utter destruction the fires are making on the landscape and the resulting traumatic impact on tens of thousands of families. Thankfully, late in the week, we were able to go and safely pick it up and drive it home.

Wednesday morning I knew that I needed to get serious about finishing the quilt top if I were to have a chance of finishing the quilt within the Project Quilting week deadline. By late afternoon, I had all of the improv slab HSTs finished, and I was able to make and trim the individual blocks, piece the rows, and get the quilt top pieced before heading to bed (hence the not so great evening lighting photos in the GIF above).

Regeneration – Seam Side of Pieced Quilt Top

Thursday and Friday I spent prepping, basting, marking, quilting, trimming, and binding the quilt. Because there were so many seams in this quilt top, I chose to sew around the perimeter (about ⅛”) to secure all of the seams. I pressed all of my seams open except for one that worked best being pressed to the side, and I thought a photograph of the seam side of the pieced quilt top would be an interesting perspective to capture prior to basting.

Regeneration – Basting

Prior to basting, I used my Hera marker and marked out some additional diagonal lines in the black background hourglass shapes. My plan was to quilt a diagonal crosshatch over the black side pieces, and to consider for a bit longer what I wanted to do for the embers and hourglass quilting. Initially, I thought I might quilt pebbles over the black and brown embers piecing, but I ultimately opted to also quilt the same crosshatch motif over them.

After completing all of the crosshatch quilting, I knew that I wanted to free motion quilt a flame motif over the yellow, orange, and red improv piecing. So, when I went online to research FMQ flame shapes, I ended up getting distracted once again by the fire reports out of Los Angeles. I did eventually regain my focus long enough to find a few ideas that I practiced drawing out by hand and then taped to the wall in front of my sewing machine to reference while I quilted.

Regeneration – Quilting Detail

I ultimately used 4 different 50wt Aurifil threads for the quilting: 2692 (black), 2115 (lemon), 1104 (neon orange), and 2260 (red wine). Before filling in the majority of the hourglass with the flame motif that I had selected and practiced, I started by quilting in candle flame shapes for the areas that cut into the embers and the lighter areas in the upper portion of the hourglass.

Regeneration – Quilt Back

You might be wondering why I chose 5″ finished blocks for the quilt top. I wanted to make this quilt a functional size, but I also wanted to keep the size small enough to fit on a single width of fabric backing. After quilting and binding, the quilt measures 40½” square and the quilt top comfortably fit on 1¼ yards of Kona Cotton in Burgundy.

Regeneration

I shared a photograph of the pieced quilt top with a friend who told me she could see the phoenix in the quilt top. Puzzled, I told her that I did not see a phoenix and explained my goal of piecing flames inside of an hourglass shape. She then explained to me that the flame cutting into the top of the embers is the beak, the lower yellow piecing are the wings, and the upper orange and red piecing is the tail. What a gift to have someone see something different and explain it so well!

Photo by M. Fuchs, 2024 fire aerial support

I enjoyed making my first quilt finish of 2025, but I am feeling deeply conflicted about my choice of inspiration and finished quilt given the fires in Los Angeles. Fire is something that every Californian thinks about these days; there is no such thing as a “fire season” any longer, and fire is a natural disaster that has affected almost every Californian in one way or another in recent years. Last year, there was a fire that started less than a mile from where we lived. My husband photographed the impressive aerial support that was able to keep the fire from reaching us.

On Saturday morning, we went out to the recovering burned area near us to photograph my quilt. Many thanks to my husband for his willingness and patience holding up my quilts for these quilt in the wild photographs. While writing this post and thinking about my hopes for this year and for everyone currently suffering from the horrific LA fires, I chose to name this quilt Regeneration.

Regeneration – Backing

My wish for us all is that we can eventually dig through the ashes of a life changing event to uncover a germinated seed that grows into something precious, new, and beautiful.

Regeneration and Yvonne

I’m going to try and remember to take a photograph of myself with my finished quilts, per Debbie from A Quilter’s Table’s prompting. I hope you join us in documenting yourself with your finishes! As Debbie suggested, “Let’s make this the year we get maker photos with the quilts we make.” And maybe, if we can consistently do it this year, it becomes a lifelong habit.

Regeneration

Thank you, Trisha and Kim, for such a great start to the 2025 Project Quilting season. I had a great time thinking about the prompt and making my ~40″ square baby quilt in response this week. Linking up with 16.1 Mythical Creatures, Finished or Not Friday, Beauties Pageant, and Needle and Thread Thursday.