Category: Journaling

thoughts on writing and recording life

Annie Mae’s Lace in the Garden

I love Queen Anne’s Lace.  Every year I get excited to see it emerging in our yard.  I’m always intrigued to see where it decides to show up.

I scatter some seeds and sometimes they actually germinate and I have blooms where I intended.  But there are many more along the edges of the flower beds, in the cracks in the driveway and between brick pavers. 

This year, there are more clumps than ever, and several of those are growing along the picket fence in the back.

I decided to pose the quilt Annie Mae’s Lace with this year’s blooms.  It was a dreary day yesterday, but I snapped a few photos anyway.

I wrote about Annie Mae’s Lace back in 2016. I was only posting one photo per blogpost back then, but the details of the making of the quilt are fully explained. Click here to read that post.

I’ve written about Queen Anne’s Lace before – a story about it during quarantine is here.

Another quilt with a sunprinted image of Queen Anne’s Lace is GBI Blues. That quilt and its story is here.

More sunprinted images (including some Queen Anne’s Lace) are assembled on my design wall right now. And, there are more in a box waiting to become something…

Iron Water

Remember the really pretty tatting I dipped in the walnut dye?  I wanted it darker, began doing some research and learned about iron water.  We have plenty of rusty nails around here, so soaking them in a jar with vinegar and water was not a complicated process.

I had attempted some rust dyeing in the past with less than spectacular results.  But I hadn’t mixed iron water with the walnut dyed fabric.

Below are images from baths in the iron water only, and some things dyed in walnut dye, then iron water.

Before: this is a bit of linen sheet and some old tatting previously dyed in indigo, some old tatting not yet dyed.
After: those same pieces after a bath in iron water only…no walnut on these pieces.
It’s always a delight to see how different threads take the dye differently. The monogram on this linen towel is stitched with cotton thread. The linen towel was only in the walnut dye, the tatting was in walnut dye, then iron water.
Here are the two sides of a bit of a damask tablecloth. These were soaked in the walnut dye a few days, then dipped in the iron water.
This linen towel shows how powerful the iron water is combined with walnut. This whole piece was not in the iron bath, just the walnut…but the residue on my gloves made these splotches. I find the spots interesting, not offensive.
The top doily here was dyed with walnuts, then composted. It was unintentional composting…as I was rinsing these new pieces, I discovered the doily in the leaves – left there from the earlier walnut dyeing day.

I am very pleased with the results of this combo…soaking in the walnut dye, then dipping in the iron water.  Lesson learned:  make more iron water.  I had experimented with a small quantity, so only small pieces resulted from this trial.  But more, more, more, to come….

This is the featured photo on the website, but for those who just read the email version, you would miss this….I always think I need to mix browns with blue, you know….but maybe some with green, too.

The recent blog post on walnut dyeing is here…if you missed it or want to refresh your memory on the before and after images from only a walnut bath.

Fired Works

I love pottery.  To think that people dig clay out of the ground, manipulate it and decorate it, and make something functional and beautiful just boggles the mind.

We went to a local exhibit of pottery this week.  An annual exhibit and sale, Fired Works features the work of 150 artists and is always a treat.

We don’t need any pottery; our collection is certainly adequate…but we love to go to this event every year, so off we went.  And, yes, we did buy some.

Most of our collection is of the Southern folk art genre, but the whimsical pieces delight me, too.  

As we examined the beautiful pots on display in this beautiful facility, I was constantly seeing images that related to quilt making.  The captions on each photo explain some of my thinking.

The design element of repetition is prominent in quilting. On each artist’s table you could see the power of repetition in color, shape, and texture.
Another display showing the power of repetition…and the neutral of black, white, gray with a pop of red and green.
This simple folk art rabbit looks like he could be a trapunto design with matchstick quilting!
These wavy lines with crackle texture and neutral color combination really impressed me!
You know how I love focus blocks of appliqué in my quilts….I think you can see a tulip block in my future.
This brown pitcher reminds me of batik fabrics. And a mix of dots and stripes is always good.
These earthy browns make my soul sing!
And this punch of green with browns – oh, my!
Oh, I visited this table again and again. The whimsical houses remind me of Pam Holland’s quilts.
The color combination of seafood green along with turquoise is not one that would have come to my mind until I saw this….and the pop of orange? Genius!
Improvisationally pieced squares in black and white?
And, who doesn’t love a blue chicken? That base of a black white diagonal stripe reminds me of how impactful a similar binding is on a quilt.

Welcome to Quilt Village

One aisle of bed quilts and large wall hangings.

I just spent three days with my quilting sisters.  We hosted our guild’s quilt show and had a blast!  Normally held biennially, it had been four years since our big weekend party.  Covid had forced us to cancel our show in 2020, so we were ready to get back to business sharing our love of quilting with others. 

We host the show to share our passion and educate others about the history of quilting, the art of quilting, and the availability of resources available locally.  The truth is that members of the guild are also inspired by this display.  We’ve seen most of these quilts before in meetings at our show and tell sessions.  But having them hang together for three days gives us a chance to visit, to examine things up close, to ask questions of each other, and to learn.  

Susan’s Sweet Dreams quilt was made with many vintage feedsacks.

It’s a lot of work to put on a show.  Planning has been going on for months.  Members submit entry forms for quilts, members share the tasks of organizing that information, preparing booklets, labels, ballots, ribbons, and a floor layout.  On Thursday, all that comes into play as we “hang the show”.

On Thursday night, members and our guests meet to bask in the beauty with each other.  We examine the quilts and cast our votes in several categories.  “Quilters’ Choice” ribbons are awarded by our ribbon queen Tess at our members’ reception. 

During the show, we love visiting with our guests.  Some visitors are not quilters, but friends of quilters, or folks who are interested in every art form they can find.  Answering their questions gives us a new perspective on what we do…seeing our work through the eyes of those who might not be quilters puts a new spin on things. Other visitors are quilters from other guilds in the area, and I love to chat with them and learn about their quilting and their stitching groups.  In fact, I wrangled invitations to visit a couple of groups soon.  You’ll hear about them in the future.

At the end of the show, more ribbons are awarded (viewers’ choices) along with the winners of our silent auction quilts and our raffle quilt.  More details of some quilts and their makers are in the captions of photos that follow.

Angie’s Roseville Album won many awards: Best Appliqué, Best Bed Quilt, Best of Show, and 1st place Viewers’ Choice.

Pam is telling visitors about her Wind Beneath My Wings quilt which included some vintage barkcloth.
Marie’s Heart Strings portrays an image of her homeplace. I love of Marie’s use of raw edges, hand stitching, and photos on fabric.
Donna’s Italy Dream won 3rd place in the Wall Quilt category.
Yvonne’s quilt, Betty’s Quilt, won Best Hand Quilting. Whole cloth quilts are always loved by viewers.
Starlight, a beauty pieced by Donna, shows Dewey’s astounding longarm quilting. (He’s the same genius who prepares our floor layout.)
One of many scrappy quilts in our show, Kathy’s Selvage Kites features selvages from her stash in the background of the stars.

Is This the Party To Whom I am Speaking? (above) is a bold graphic quilt…but the title comes from the fact that Kathy’s mother is a retired telephone operator. Kathy collected fabrics with images of phones to include in her quilt. The detailed shot at the left shows some of those.

Idaho Square Dance was made by a new quilter. Carol got interested in quilting after making hundreds of facemasks for Covid in 2020. She needed to do something with her scraps. This is one of her first half-dozen quilts. And, she does her own quilting on her home machine.
Heaven’s Home was begun by beloved member Jean and completed by her son and daughter. Duree finished piecing the quilt, son Dewey quilted it on his longarm.
This photo shows many of my sisters as we pose with a group of quilts we made for the Methodist Home for Children. Our show was displayed in their gymnasium.

I had several quilts in the show, won’t bore you with all….but a few with links to their stories are here.

We shared our Challenge quilts from the past four years and my Playhouse in the Chickenyard was fun for many visitors, especially the men who attended. You can read that story here.
My Miss Nellie’s Country Garden sported a Viewers’ Choice ribbon on Saturday afternoon. Her story is here.
I admit that seeing my own quilt hung in the show inspired me…to do more work using linen. The lighting on this shot of Paducah Journey shows how wool batting and linen fabric work together to create glorious texture.

Heart Project Update

Today is the last day of February, time to report on my heart project.

I did not stitch just one heart per day….nearly fifty are on this piece now.  One stage of the process is complete now…the appliqué.  Well, it’s complete until I decide to add something.

I do plan to add some buttons and to quilt it at some point.  But for now, it’s a linen tablecloth with some hearts appliquéd on it.

I did stitch a heart on the backside of the ragged spot and stitched around it on the front.  It may be left this way.  Or not.

I’ve been asked about the size of the piece.  It is now……33″ x 47”.  The original tablecloth measured 33” x 84”, a runner for a French farmhouse.  I removed one end and reattached it to make it a size that works for me.

I will let this project incubate for a while as I work on other projects. At some point, it will be quilted. I enjoyed the stitching on linen so much that I may decide to hand quilt this one. Time will tell.

Hearts on Location

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 little heart posed on a fencepost.
Hearts in Bloom posed nicely on a porch railing.
A closeup of the heart bearing Princess Priscilla Wears Paisley.
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.

Dancing Hearts was a fun Valentine’s Day project.

And…an update on the hearts on linen quilt….

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.

Red Hearts on a Quilt

If it’s February, then I need to stitch hearts.  

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.

Christmas Reds

I love to work on textile projects with the colors of the season.  That means that I now need to stitch on red.

I have a couple of big projects in progress, but they aren’t red.  So to soothe my soul, I reached back for this piece and began hand quilting it.  During the Christmas season, this has been a glorious practice for me.  I’m revisiting a piece I made several years ago – improvisationally stitching some Japanese fabrics in freeform hexagons on a linen remnant.  It needed color, I thought, so I added the red wool flower. 

I’ve learned that a piece doesn’t have to be finished to be enjoyed. This piece has been no exception… it’s hung about on chairs and falling out of baskets for several years when I needed an accent of red. Here you see it in a basket on top of a clock in the breakfast room.
The block from 52 Tuesdays proves how long this has been in the works…and my plan for quilting around the hexagons. This piece, still untitled, was appliquéd in 2015.

A couple of weeks ago, I layered it on a bit of felted wool and began stitching.  Two layers of fabric, a needle and beautifully smooth thread, and I am content.  The top layer is thin linen (used and washed again and again in its past life); the bottom is a lovely gray wool.  There’s nothing like pulling a needle and thread through delicious buttery wool. (I’m using Aurifil #12 and loving it!)

Ahh… Stitching peace in this season.

Another example of display yet unfinished is this holly on wool. Here it is draped over another quilt on the ladder in the den (the backside of Tree Farm). This is one of Maggie Bonanomi’s designs.

And yet another wool appliqué posing atop something else. Just to add a splash of red to the dining room wall during Christmas. Again, the wool pattern is from Maggie Bonanomi.

Sandhill Tree Farm

Sometimes on our quilts-on-location outings, I plan the colors of the quilts with the anticipated background.  But sometimes, I just grab some quilts that haven’t been photographed lately and head out the door.  On our recent outing to the state park with the cypress trees (that post is here), I carried along a quilt with neutral colors.  

The beauty of the browns and grays colors in this landscape made me glad I had grabbed this quilt.

I love neutral color combinations, but Sandhill Tree Farm is one of a very few quilts I’ve made in that genre. 

As soon as I noticed the colors of the park office, I knew that quilt needed to pose on those rocking chairs.  The color of the building’s siding was a great background for this one.  

Walking down Squirrel Run Trail, we found more neutral colors..and a splash of blue popped in occasionally.  There’s a plan for a quilt I could love…all neutral browns and grays with a pop of blue.  

Sandhill Tree Farm posed nicely on the railing of the deck near our picnic spot, too.

This graphic quilt was oh-so-easy to make.  I used the “pine tree block” within the Tree Farm pattern I designed a few years ago.  By the way, all my patterns are now free.  If I have printed copies available, I will pop one in the mail to you if you ask for one.  Otherwise, I can send a .pdf file to you via email.  Again, free.

This pattern layers three or more fabrics, then you cut them apart following a preprinted pattern on freezer paper, shuffle the fabrics, and reassemble.  The original Tree Farm pattern is more complicated because there are other more involved blocks included, but if you just use the pine tree blocks, it’s a quickie!

I arranged the blocks on the design wall so the blocks having darker backgrounds formed a sort of border.  A quick vine for a quilting design, and this one was done!

I love how the natural light comes though the quilt on the railing.  For this quilt, I chose one of my go-to quick motifs for quilting, a meandering vine and leaves. Normally draped over a chair in our bedroom, this quilt enjoyed the outing.

Check out the publications tab at the top of the page for patterns, including this one.

Dots in the Cemetery

This is the time of year Jim and I frequently ride past the cemetery.  We are keeping a check on our gingko friend whose leaves provide beauty against the blue sky.  

We decided it was time to go with cameras and quilts yesterday.  The color was nice, but the carpet of leaves I like for spreading quilts on the ground was a bit sparse.  It was crisp and cool and glorious.

I’ve written about our visits to Rose Hill Cemetery before.  The posts here and here include more images and some history of the place.

I carried several quilts, but Dots and Vines was one of them.  I posed her on a bench near the big gingko tree. 

Then I looked behind me on another bench and there was a serendipitous find – more dots.  Someone left her paint palette behind…just waiting to pose with my dots!  

We took more quilts…I’ll share those later.  And, I haven’t forgotten the story of my challenge quilt….it’s coming.