I’ve written before about how special my quilt guild (the Heart of Georgia guild) is to me. I recently celebrated my 20th anniversary as a member and the sisterhood just gets stronger. I spent this past weekend with those sisters at our biennial quilt show. If you are local, I hope you had a chance to attend.
This year’s show displayed nearly 200 members’ quilts. And the 58 quilts hanging on the rails above the floor level were made by our guild for residents of the Methodist Children’s Home. Each resident receives a quilt when he/she moves in and keeps it for life. Our guild makes many quilts for this endeavor.
Quilt Show weekend is a special time for us. We work together to present some of our latest work to friends and family – and to visitors who may be quilters, but not members of a guild as well as those who want to become quilters. We want our sisterhood to grow!
I’ve written about several shows in the past and included photos of fabulous quilts. I’m doing that here for this latest display, but this time I remembered to take photos of some of the work that goes into getting it all together. This year, our quilt show leader was Helen. She did a fabulous job of organizing everything, but it’s not a one-person job. Everyone helped!
Here is Dewey demonstrating use of his longarm machine at the show. Yes, he loads all that in his trailer, brings it over, sets it up to demonstrate, and allows visitors to try it out!
Before the show can even be laid out, someone has to collect all the information on the quilts and plan the layout. This year, and for the past several shows, that person has been Dewey. Dewey is our quilting brother. A gifted artist at the longarm machine, Dewey is also quite the handyman and quilt show designer.
Dewey arrived and started setting up the poles (he had help from a quilter’s husband) and identifying which quilt would hang where. This is after two weeks’ work developing a layout on computer and then on the butcher paper. Here Kaye is checking her quilts in. Each quilt is labeled and in a pillowcase. Data has already been sorted to assign a number to each quilt so it can be hung in the correct space.As all those quilts come in, members resort by number to put them in place.Here you see some quilts ready to be hung and stepladders ready.And, the quilts are up! I took no photos in progress, I was busy on a ladder.Sherry was busy (with some helpers) in the weeks ahead of the show making ribbons for the awards. These are the three ribbons to be awarded to recipients of votes by all viewers who attend the show. There were 18 more ribbons made to give to winners of votes by members on Thursday night.While Thursday night’s votes were being counted, members and friends enjoyed food and conversation.Julie’s farm-themed quilt was a big hit!Carol’s Montana quilt was beautiful! By the way, there were many many beautiful quilts here…I shouldn’t share them all….just a representative sample.Kathy’s scrappy quilt was fabulous…I had to share a closeup of her feather quilting on her longarm machine.Deann won a ribbon for best hand quilting….for a different quilt…but my photo of this quilt shows the stitches more clearly.Sheila’s masterpiece, Mimi’s Garden, won best appliqué and was quilted by Dewey on his longarm.This is my Celebration quilt. It took home a ribbon for best quilting on a home sewing machine.
After everything was set up and ready, we welcomed visitors from 9:00 – 5:00 for two days. Then on Saturday afternoon, all this process was reversed. Quilts were dropped (gravity helped that process go faster than putting up), folded, reinserted into those pillowcases, resorted by quilter’s name, checked out, and carried home.
We’ve had a few days to put everything away at home and reflect on the fun we had. We are already thinking about the next quilt (it’s probably in progress) and planning how to make the next show better. I hope wherever a quilt show fits in your life; as a participant or a visitor, you make time to experience it.
I’ve written about this quilt before, but didn’t have good photos of the quilt or the risque fabric involved. Recently, one of the grandsons loaned the quilt to me to use in a couple of talks I was giving to quilt guilds.
The story always brings smiles to other quilters, and I have renewed determination to make a quilt for myself where I include some of this fabric.
I love toile fabrics, and selected this to make quilts for two little boys some twenty years ago. And, yes, I still have some of the fabric left. I don’t think of myself as a hoarder, but a collector of stories. And fabric holds stories. Especially fabric like this that has had a few years of life.
The fabric line from Moda, called Tom and Huck, features scenes of boys painting a fence, fishing, swimming, opening a treasure chest; things you expect boys to do. I made a few blocks, pieced them together, and had two cuddle quilts for grandsons.
I selected different scenes to feature in the largest blocks and named the quilts based on that scene. This quilt is Mimi’s Boys Working, the other is Mimi’s Boys Fishing.
Years later, one of the grandsons made me realize that a new line of fabric had put swimming trunks on the diving boy. Until then, I didn’t think about my boys being embarrassed that I had made them quilts with nekkid swimmers on them.
A little web research turned up an image of the later line of fabric complete with trunks. I guess I have to approve, because the trunks are blue. This later line of fabric was released by Marcus Bros, not Moda. I don’t know the ins and outs of fabric production, competition, and copyright, but I bet there’s a story there.
While this quilt was on loan to me, I took it outside for a photo shoot at a local library.
More details of this quilt are in an earlier post here.
And speaking of stories, I’m reminded of one about my Daddy diving into the water at a Sunday School party and his trunks coming off. It seems the adventure was unplanned and he borrowed swimming trunks from a chunkier friend. Thankfully, he was a skillful swimmer and could stay under water long enough to retrieve them.
On our country rideabouts I like to discover old houses. Those that have been kept in good repair or remodeled are appealing and happy, but I also love those that have seemingly been abandoned. I can imagine stories and people that once inhabited those now bare walls.
I occasionally snap photos of these houses for future reference for stitching or sketching.
This is actually not abandoned…an old church now used as a community center of sorts…but we’ve visited it with cameras more than once. It’s so serene.
I’m not alone in loving these houses. On some social media sites, these have recently been called “lonely houses”. An enchanting phrase that describes the essence of these places.
But there’s one house en route to one of our antiquing hot spots that’s only lonely sometimes. If we pass by at just the right time of day, this house has visitors. The four-legged kind. How fun is it to see these horses eating on the porch.
The horses don’t like to pose in perfect lighting conditions for a photo shoot, but on this day we happened by at feeding time and I got a couple of shots.
An update on the red hearts on linen…
Since my last post, I’ve abandoned the ‘one-heart-a-day’ plan and have been stitching several down during tv time each night. Almost all the ones I had pinned in the last photo you saw are now stitched in place. I’ll probably add more small ones…but it’s nearing completion of the appliqué stage.
You know when we head out the door with a picnic lunch and cameras I grab some quilts, just in case a photo op appears.
Recently, we had several of those days – bright sunshine, moderate temperatures, no other obligations. Since it’s February, I brought quilts with hearts on them…and then I thought, I could bring some of my stuffed hearts, too.
Here are some images for your Valentine’s Day.
Hearts rested on the stacked stones at the base of a building.
This fountain at Tatnall Square Park in Macon has quotes at its base.
So these three hearts found a place to rest near love.
Sometimes displays in stores go along with my theme…an antique store in Woodbury, Ga.
I’ve embedded some links to details of quilts in the photo captions above, but if you want more, you can type “hearts” in the search box, or click on the “hearts” category in the sidebar.
I’m on schedule with the hearts on linen..Feb 13 had 13 hearts stitched in place.
I thought it was time to plan the rest of the layout…so here are more pinned in place for stitching.
This linen tablecloth has a story. I could cover it with a heart, but I love seeing the history in fabric. I’m thinking of featuring this inside a heart somehow.
Somehow, every year, the second page of the calendar sends me to needles and thread with hearts in mind.
This is not the time of year for me to be taking great nature photos to use in my Good Morning Girls text messages. Yes, I’m still doing that…today is day 665, by my count. During December, I sent photos of Christmas ornaments, our Santa collection, and amaryllis blooms. This January had warm days with some still blooming plants in our yard, but things are a bit bleak outdoors now. A few daffodils are up, but I needed a photo scheme for February.
I’ve wanted to learn more about photographing indoor vignettes…some “sewing still lifes”, I guess you could call them. So yesterday, I pulled some hearts out to shoot. I found some jewelry, some buttons, and some fabric hearts I had made.
As I played with the red hearts and the companion fabrics I pulled to use as background, I began a plan for a heart quilt.
I made a blue one a few years ago, Loving Blues , by stitching hearts on blocks, then assembling them.
This toile heart is posing on the linen tablecloth I plan to use as my background fabric. See the red border already in place?
This time, my plan is to start with a linen tablecloth from Europe. It has a red border woven in, so that’s convenient…and I won’t have to assemble blocks when I’m done with the hearts.
I’m planning some appliqué, some embroidery, and some who-knows-what for the hearts. I’ll use many of my vintage fabrics, but I have some nice commercial prints that I’ll likely include. I’m thinking one heart per day in February…but these plans may change. They often do. I won’t bore you every day, but I will keep you posted.
And I’ve begun with a heart made from my sister’s red and pink toile drapes that she moved with her from house to house over some 40 years.
I suspended this favorite February pendant of mine over the back of a quilt with red in it. I’m liking this kind of play with the camera.
Here’s the story of my Challenge quilt for Heart of Georgia 2021, Playhouse in the Chicken Yard.
Participants were to channel the little girl inside, search our memory banks, and make a quilt reflecting some aspect of childhood.
Even though I wrote up the challenge description, I had no idea what my Little Girl quilt would be. I had ideas….so many ideas. That’s not unusual for me. My first thought (and most pervasive for many months of the year) was a little girl in a swing.
I started that…sketched a little girl, even made an image on fabric, painted the skin color, selected fabric to appliqué her dress…and then….
As I remembered the trees where Daddy hung my swings (there were several over the years), I recalled my parents making me a playhouse. On the eve of my 9th birthday (it was on a Saturday that year), they sent me to spend the night with a friend. I now realize they had to scurry to get things done. They enlarged a storage room in an unused building on our property to create a playhouse for me. They added a cabinet, a stove, a bed, some dishes, and curtains to give me space of my own.
What a delightful surprise for my birthday gift! And now that I recall it, the time they took to arrange the surprise makes it even more special.
At some point in time, I came to realize that my playhouse wasn’t the romantic little image of a miniature house that some girls had in their yards, but I never thought about that. It was mine.
You can see from the shape of the building that my playhouse was in a chicken house. Earlier, there had been chickens running around, but that venture had been abandoned. Daddy stored lumber in one end and I occupied the other. My quilt has chickens running around as a nod to its original purpose…and to the fact that my mother still referred to that portion of the yard as “the chicken yard”. Thus, the title of my quilt was born.
When a guild member asked if the chickens got in the way of my playtime, I explained that these were “ghost chickens” on the quilt.
My original sketch didn’t have a little girl in it. I think my idea was that she was inside playing. My husband and daughter insisted that there be a visible little girl. So after the house was stitched down on the pieced background, I had to remove the back layer of fabric and insert a tiny door with a little girl entering. The space was so small that I chose not to appliqué this feature, but to paint it.
In my stash, I found the farm fabrics you see above. I knew those funky chickens had to roam around on my quilt.
There was a cow in a pasture to the left of the chicken house…but no room for this fabric on the front…so I put it on the back of the quilt.
I pieced the grass and sky (fabric overdyed with indigo) by machine, hand appliquéd the building, used raw edge appliqué for the tree trunks, leaves, and chickens.
I worked really s l o w l y on this project because I was having so much fun. I spent an entire day stitching samples of hair to decide how I would create the stringy blonde pigtails you see here.
Another day found me reviewing Sue Spargo’s drizzle stitch to add details to the tail feathers of the chickens.
This playhouse is still part of my life. When we sold the property, we knew the buyers planned to demolish that building, so Jim rescued the door to my playhouse. Our friend and expert craftsman, Tommy, built a stepback cabinet using that door as the back of the cabinet.
He built it so the elements of its construction are visible. He even placed the hook used to secure the door where I can see it as I arrange my collection of small things.
The cabinet is in our breakfast room where we see it every day. I hang small seasonal quilts above it – so made this quilt the width to fit on that hanging rod. Here you see the quilt is at home above the door.
Sometimes quilters like to “play chicken” with a spool of thread…you can see here that I won, but just barely.
As I planned this quilt and began working on a drawing of it, many childhood memories surfaced. I found myself planning another quilt (larger than the 29” restriction on this year’s challenge) with more Little Girl memories. I’ve already begun translating some of those memories to fabric. And, I might eventually finish the little girl on the swing…
A friend called to remind me that I had not yet written about my journal quilt from my time at home during Covid. She’s right – so here it is.
I’ve kept a daily journal for years. And I’ve always loved to start an entry with “home all day”. But with dashing here and there running errands, going to meetings, and just out and about, those at-home days were sometimes hard to find.
In the Spring of 2020, things changed. Every day was “home all day”.
Soon I decided a visual record of these days should be part of a Covid journal quilt. It was easy to review my journal entries and tabulate things. The legend is included on the quilt…a yellow (his favorite color) backslash for Jim, blue forward slash for me…to clarify our days at home. I included January and February of 2020 for comparison of our normal days before the pandemic.
My beginning plan was to document the days we were spending at home. An old linen calendar provided the perfect stitching background. ( I just happened to have a calendar from 1986 – a year in which the days of the week and dates were the same as 2020 – in my stash. And later, a 1971 tea towel provided the right day/date combination for 2021.)
As time went on, I continued to think of other things to include in this journal quilt. Our time spent working in the yard, playing chess, binge watching tv…all were candidates that made it into the quilt.
I made the blocks not knowing how I would put them together. I ended up attaching them to a bit of a vintage quilt remnant 10 ½” wide and rolling it up on a stick. It measures 64” long when stretched out.
The title came from our daughter’s remark when I told her we didn’t mind being at home. I was feeling guilty that we were actually enjoying the solitude while so many people were frantic that their schedules were disrupted. She replied “not everyone can be quarantined in Eden.”
I included our days at home through April 2021…past our vaccinations and including many days of “out and about” again. Since then, the Delta variant has added more days at home. Maybe I need to find more calendar tea towels…
This was a block made in the process of creating Dots and Vines (story is here). It seemed appropriate to have an image of the virus that started all this.
As I unrolled the quilt to make photos, I found this vintage fabric remnant tucked inside. I planned to add some of these motifs to the quilt. As usual, it’s never really finished. (This remnant is from a little girl’s dress I found in a thrift store.)
Our guild’s annual challenge quilts are due in November. I’m getting ready to start on mine. Yes, I know it’s almost October. The topic is announced in February and I’m often not sure what I’m doing until late October. Not that I haven’t been thinking about it, I have. I think of it ALL THE TIME once the topic is announced…collect zillions of ideas, plan several carefully, pin images to a secret Pinterest board, select some fabrics, draw some sketches, maybe even start a few projects that end up scrapped. But the serious work of making that quilt is often a last minute thing.
This year’s challenge is to make a quilt that reflects some aspect of one’s childhood. The memory of being a little girl. So many fun images come to mind…easy things to piece, like a hopscotch grid. Some ideas are more difficult to depict in cloth. But the fun is in remembering and in making an image of that memory.
One member of guild made her Little Girl quilt really early…as soon as the idea went out. But she couldn’t keep the secret. She took it for Show and Tell in the spring of this year and resigned herself to making another one as the November meeting approached. That may be my issue, too….the inability to keep a secret. Maybe that’s why I don’t start earlier.
Marie enjoyed playing in her mother’s button box when she was a little girl – so she dipped into her mother’s sewing memorabilia and creating this quilt, Exploring the Button Box.
I have dozens of ideas for my Little Girl challenge…but one keeps nagging me. The hardest to implement in fabric is the one I can’t stop thinking about….of course. It’s a secret, so I can’t reveal more now…
One of my earlier challenge quilts was little-girl themed. in 2010, the challenge title was Bushels of Baskets. Though I love basket quilts and have made plenty of those, I chose in 2010 to do something different…I made this doll, Annie Ruth, and let her hold a sweet little handmade basket I had bought at a local craft fair. She still oversees the activities in my sewing room. Perhaps she will inspire brave new Little Girl ideas in the next few weeks.
You know I love to make quilt labels that extend the interest from the front of the quilt to the back. But a label doesn’t have to be a separate design element. On Annie Ruth, I just wrote the pertinent information on her backside.
As this year’s challenge leader, I have other duties – making appropriate winner’s ribbons and prizes – so I have lots of opportunities to express my Little Girl ideas. I’ve been working on those ribbons and having a blast doing it!
The day was sunny and clear – perfect for a big thick quilt to dry on the lawn. So I gathered some old ones that had been waiting for an outing and draped them on the fence to air.
This pattern is called Chain and Bar, according to Jenny Beyer’s Album of Patchwork Patterns, designed by Clara Stone, published in Practical Needlework, ca. 1906.
These are specimens from Jim’s family. Two grandmothers made quilts in styles distinctive enough that he and his sister can specify the household from which they came. But they don’t always know which generation the maker was from.
Most are tattered and need repair before they can be washed. But what treasures they are, and what stories they tell.
My research tells me this block is a variation of a Cogwheel block. I find a similar block published in 1931. These compass style blocks take on many forms as each “ring” can be combined with portions of other similar blocks.
One grandmother’s quilts are heavier than the other’s. Granny used a thinner cotton batting than Grandmama did. They may have processed both at home, or one used ginned cotton while the other used some straight from the fields.
Some of the fabrics are delicious and vibrant colors, others have faded to be unrecognizable, still others have disintegrated completely.
I personally love the backs of these old quilts, too. Homespun cotton on every one – and, interestingly, in many cases that fabric has NOT disintegrated.
I am in the process of repairing these pieces of history so that they can travel on through the generations. Sometimes that means more labor intensive work than others, but it’s a joy to join these women’s work with my own stitches.
I am adding a label to each quilt that tells what we know of their history and maker – but the fabrics and stitches tell a story, too. The rust circles on the back of this one tells me that this quilt lay under a mattress at sometime, against bare bedsprings.
And, the one quilt that was ready to wash is now drying between two layers of cotton sheets on the grass – the bottom sheet to protect it from grass stains, the top sheet to protect it from birds flying over.
This was one of the first few blocks I made for the 52 Tuesdays quilt. It seemed like a good idea to get a photo of the quilt with the subject that inspired this image in the background.
It was a dreary day, even drizzling cold rain, as I propped the quilt on a swing in front of the building. The hayrake and bicycle wouldn’t be included in this photo shoot, but a warm fire beckoned us inside for a few more photos.
Becky, the owner of the Farm House, was gracious as always to allow us to pose the quilt and shoot a few images.
Having a quilt in tow is a bit like carrying a baby with you, or a cute puppy. Conversations are easy! Everyone, at least in the south, has a quilt story to share. It often starts off with “my grandmother…”. I love hearing those stories.
52 Tuesdays in front of The Farm House, the subject of Tuesday #4
Judy, who works at The Farm House, said seeing 52 Tuesdays triggered fond memories of her grandmother’s quilts. That’s another reason for dragging my quilts around all over the place.
Other photo shoots at The Farm House are described in these posts:
