free motion quilting – Page 4

Flowers for Phyllis

I was recently asked to create an art quilt as a gift for Phyllis. I have never visited her home and don’t know her style. I struggled with the design until I realized that I know one thing Phyllis really likes; art by Mark Allen Ballard.

Mark is my drawing instructor and friend. He graciously granted me permission to use one of his creations in an art quilt for Phyllis.

I printed the image of the coneflower on silk fabric, layered it on wool batting, and added dense free motion quilting with a fine silk thread. Dense stitching around the image packs that portion of the design down, forcing the unstitched areas to puff up as if they are stuffed. Stuffed work, or trapunto, has been done for centuries, especially on wholecloth quilts, to add dimension and interest to quilts.

Once the silk portion was quilted, I added an inner border using a gradated blue fabric, leaving a larger border on the bottom. I wanted to add interest to that space, so I continued Mark’s design by adding stems and leaves stitched with a heavier green thread.

A second border was added using a delicious damask tablecloth hand dyed by Wendy Richardson. Over the years, I have collected quite a bit of Wendy’s stunning work, now I’m daring to cut into it more and more often. This piece was originally a blah white-on-white damask tablecloth. In Wendy’s studio, she had added many colors of dye which enriched the visual texture and just happened to incorporate some of the same colors as Mark’s drawing.
That layer was attached to a vintage cross-stitched quilt. I used Jude HIll’s invisible baste stitch to attach the layers within the blue border, then added blue beads while attaching the outer border. A raw-edged sleeve and label made from a vintage doily were attached to the back with the same invisible baste stitch. The quilt finished at 16” x 20”.

I have recently enjoyed incorporating pieces of art from unknown stitchers of the past, using vintage quilts and linens. This piece did that and more. I collaborated with Wendy by using her fabric, Jude by using her technique, and Mark by using his drawing. It was especially fun to share the stitching experience with Mark. He was excited about the prospect from the beginning, interested in the progress of the piece, and in reports of Phyllis’ reaction. His agreeing to add his signature to the label makes the gift a special treasure for her.

Fair Days

I’m home after three days at the Georgia National Fair where I shared my work as one of their Artists in Residence.

Though I’ve long recognized quilts as an art form, I’m still surprised to see the word artist after my name. This experience was affirming and fulfilling for me, and I hope it was informative and inspirational to others.

The photo shows my booth where I shared my quilting stories and demonstrated techniques. I had several quilts entered in the fair, and three of them were easily visible from my booth. Whether by design or coincidence, the fair organizers added opportunities for me to share more stories of making bed-sized quilts on a home sewing machine, improvisational piecing in the style of Gee’s Bend quilts, and Government Bird Goin’ for a Ride.

Jim and I enjoyed the opportunity to visit with former students, their parents, and now husbands, wives, and children. We saw former work colleagues and friends, made connections with other artists in textiles, photography, woodworking, drawing, painting, and sculpting. We made many new friends as people stopped to talk about quilts, my ragged lamp, and my Featherweight sewing machine.

I took the Featherweight because it is my traveling sewing friend. I take it to classes and work sessions at our local guild, I have taken it on a photo trip when Jim was taking a course and I would have time alone in a motel room. It is compact, light weight, and a work horse. Maybe everyone knows that. But everyone doesn’t know that it can be used for free-motion quilting.

One of the goals of my days at the fair was to share the technique of hand-guided, free-motion quilting. I chose the Featherweight because it is a simple straight stitch machine. That’s all you need. I wanted to erase the notion that you can’t quilt without a big, expensive, computerized machine. The Featherweight conveyed that message well.

Children were fascinated with the Featherweight. Maybe because it is so small and sweet it looks manageable. It’s certainly not threatening in any way. I stitched names into quilt sandwiches for Marin, Christopher, Alexis, Catherine, Mark, and more. Fragments of cloth, batting, and a bit of thread can bring smiles to faces of children of all ages.

I talked to men and women whose mothers or grandmothers quilted and they wish they had learned from them while they could. (I’ll be your substitute Grandma. I didn’t listen to mine like I should have either, but other quilters and I will be glad to step in and fill in the gaps. Send me an email (sandy@sandygilreath.com) with a question and I’ll link you to a tutorial online or try to answer you in some way.)

I talked with women who made one quilt, or started one, then became frustrated with a skill they didn’t have, and put it away. I talked with those who work full time and can’t work it in their schedule. My answers: “Relax, it’s supposed to be fun.” “Join a guild. Someone there will offer advice and assistance,” “Start with something portable, like English Paper Piecing.”

I talked with young families wherein the husband/dad wants to explore quilting. One asked if he could start learning with a $100 machine from a bargain store. My advice was to find a reliable used older machine. I fear that a new one made with plastic parts will be less sturdy and operate less smoothly than an old one. “I’m afraid if you have frustrations with tension or mechanics as you are learning, you might think you don’t like sewing; but what you don’t like is a cheap machine.”

I have almost all my baskets unpacked and things back in place in my sewing room. My brain is bursting with ideas generated by conversations over the past few days. Fun times stitching ahead!

Swamp Bird

The gist of a recent conversation with a friend:

Friend: Hey, have you been busy?

Me: Oh, yeah, a bit.

Friend: Sewing?

Me: Some, but I did have a few days last week when I accomplished less than usual.

Friend: Why the downturn?

Me: Exercising my Medicare card a bit. I can’t believe I’m old enough to have one, and I got it just in time for my annual doctors’ visits. And, an unexpected visit to another.

Friend: So what have you learned from the interruption to your life?

Me: That sometimes a few days to rest and reflect is a good thing. An interruption can allow you to shift your focus. Also, that I can see better without my reading glasses than I realized.

Friend: So what’s your latest finished project?

Me: An art quilt featuring a photo Jim made of a Prothonotary Warbler in a local swamp.

Friend: Tell me details.

Me: I printed the photo on silk fabric, layered it with wool batting atop a square of hand-dyed osnaburg fabric and used dense free motion quilting in the background of the image. The lines are about a toothpick’s width apart, roughly parallel, but it’s obvious that it is hand guided. I don’t use rulers. I want the finished piece to reveal that the project was handmade.

The yellow osnaberg layer was hand stitched to a bit of linen I dyed in the indigo vat, then that layer to a piece of commercial fabric, and then to a vintage quilt. All of these were attached using the seed stitch and varying threads. The beads were hand stitched, too.

The label on the back is a portion of an embroidered vintage linen napkin. That and the hanging sleeve were attached using Jude Hill’s invisible baste.

The finished piece measures 16” x 20”. Jim titled it Swamp Bird.

Friend: Anything else I should know?

Me: When you ride your bike, wear your helmet.

My Daddy Wore Overalls

There’s something iconic about a man in overalls. To me, it means he is unpretentious, hardworking, honest. Someone with whom I would want to spend time in conversation and in hugging.

There aren’t many photos of my Daddy in overalls. Though he wore them every day to work, when he came home, his first order of business was to take a shower and change into his “knock-about clothes”, khakis and a sport shirt. That would be his uniform until bedtime. And on Sundays, a suit, or at least a sports jacket and tie.

He wore overalls when he farmed. I heard stories of his walking behind the mules and plow in his overalls and barefoot. When he left the farm to begin building houses, he added work boots to his wardrobe, but kept the overalls.

The many pockets had designated uses. The partitions in the bib held his wallet and a fat flat pencil, you know the kind wood workers used. Another held a pocket knife, used for sharpening that pencil, among other things. One of those spaces sometimes held his wristwatch if it needed protection from the task at hand.

A long pocket on the leg of the overalls held his folding carpenter’s rule and a hammer hung in the loop. He could flip that wooden rule open to just the right length for a measurement and refold it in the blink of an eye. If you don’t remember those devices, or that they are called rules, not rulers, you are a young whippersnapper. See, just thinking of overalls has me using his words.

I can smell the denim. And the sawdust embedded in the fibers. Maybe a little tobacco scent, too. And I remember how heavy they were when wet. I was a tiny little thing, but one of my jobs was hanging clothes on the line.

Maybe all that is why I was so intrigued by the man in this quilted piece. I snapped this street photo the minute I saw him. Since then, I have come to know who he is and have secured permission to use his image in my art. He, like my Daddy, is worthy of long conversations and hugs.

The quilt measures 10” x 18”. The photo is printed on vintage linen fabric, hand painted, then quilted. I used cotton thread, using hand-guided free motion quilting on my domestic machine. It is layered with raw silk, a remnant of denim, and a worn reclaimed quilt fragment. The label is a vintage cocktail napkin. (I found this one with the rooster in an antique store ramble just as I had finished this piece. Perfect!)

The photo of my Daddy holding me is one of the few I have of him wearing his overalls. I guess it’s obvious why men wearing overalls pleases me so. And, I still have that chair.

Is It Fall, Y’all?

It’s still hot. The calendar says tomorrow will be fall, but temperatures still reach 90 everyday.

Nonetheless, I have some pumpkins out in my house. I love the fall colors. Maybe it’s the vivid blue skies when the humidity drops, maybe it’s the complimentary colors of the turning leaves and that glorious atmosphere. I wince whenever Tess, our guild’s Challenge Queen, requires a bit of orange in a quilt, but I don’t know why. I could just always put a pumpkin in.

In recent years, I have collected pumpkins from other artists including needle-felted beauties by a north Ga artist, wooden pumpkins a friend made, and several pottery ones from Shelby West and Charlie Bob West. But many of my autumn decorations are of the fabric variety.

Fall Baskets was made in 2008, using autumn colors of batiks and quilting cottons. This may be the first quilt I designed using Electric Quilt software. Now using EQ7, I sometimes turn to this software to audition such quilt features as block size and width of borders and sashing. This one finished at 45″ square.

This Sunbonnet Sue piece is one of the first times I made one block ( 9″ x 12″) and said “done.” Quilting, a binding, and it’s a remarkably fun way to welcome the season. The block is from a book by Betty Alderman. I guess it’s unnecessary to point out that the apron is a little brown check.

I have a few quilts with pumpkins on them. Some wool appliqued pumpkins, some needleturn appliqued ones, and even this fused one (sorry, I don’t recall the name of this pattern or the designer).

My favorite fall quilt is Stella: Harvest Princess, finished in 2004. It uses raw edge techniques in the manner of Rosemary Eichorn. Fall motifs were cut from a commercial autumn print or two, pinned to a base fabric, and free motion quilted with a flannel layer as batting. The technique was fun, the motifs whimsical, and the learning process was transformative. I use this raw edge appliqué method still. Looking at this piece for the first time in almost a year, I wonder why I don’t play with those decorative stitches on my machine any more, or use metallic thread very often. It was FUN to do this experimentation. It measures 25” x 16”.

There is more to Stella’s story – there was quite a learning curve for this one. I saw the technique on Simply Quilts, bought a book by Rosemary and studied her methods, cut and pinned the raw edge motifs in the fall of 2003. Then it sat in a basket for almost a year, waiting for my free motion quilting skills to improve to the point of completion. Finally I dared to load the machine with some invisible thread and give it a go. When asked at my guild how long it took to make it, my answer then was, “a day and a half, or a year and a half, depending on how you look at it; actual construction time, or time from beginning the process to sewing on the label.” That’s often the most direct answer I can give. I work in spurts on some things.

A couple of years ago, Jim and I spent a lovely fall day in Porterdale, GA, where we saw hundreds of pumpkins for sale in and around an old jailhouse. I took many photos, planning to make a quilt someday called Pumpkins in the Jailhouse. Maybe this year will be the year that gets done.

Portrait of Red Coneflower

A recently purchased linen doily reminded me of a mat for a framed portrait. I didn’t have a photo on fabric that fit, and wanted to stitch something on this marvelous piece of linen with the wide handmade tatting.

A simple coneflower is always fun to appliqué, and I had seen somewhere the idea of using a spool of thread as the vase. So, a few snippets of fabric, a good tv show in the background, a bright light at my side, and the stitching began.

Once the appliqué and embroidery were done (see the French knots at the base of the seed head?), it was time to find a base to set off the oval. The French General print in red was perfect. So, I layered wool batting beneath the oval, threaded up the machine with silk thread, and echoed the appliqué with free motion quilting.

Once I cut away the remaining batting from behind the red fabric, it was time to seed stitch the piece to an old quilt as the back of the assembly. A yellow and white pieced basket quilt from an antique store fit the bill, but the white was a bit stark. A scrap of red ticking came to the rescue, adding another layer of matting to the frame job.

As I neared the finish, I hadn’t come up with a title. But my original plan to let the doily serve as an inner mat for a portrait was still on my mind, so Portrait of Red Coneflower was simple enough. One more vintage doily (with a history and stains to prove it) served as the label.

The finished piece measures 16” x 20” and the hanging sleeve utilized a leftover strip of the red ticking.

Another Voice

Sometimes the process goes smoothly, other times not.

The secret’s out. My quilts talk to me.

Here’s what “Prom Dress” girl said to me as I worked on her over a few days. (this piece started with an old photo of my mother, so you may recognize her voice):

I’m wearing the white dress I made for my graduation, all stitched by hand. We didn’t have a sewing machine. The photo was taken on the farm beside the smokehouse. Are you going to cut away the building? So the focus will be on me?

You’ve printed the photo on vintage linen fabric. Have you decided if you will put it in a frame when you finish? I will fit nicely in a 5” x 7”.

What are you doing to my hair? Brown is the right color, but I never had long hair in my life. Oh, you put more paint than you planned. Ok. Maybe I should have had long hair, this looks pretty good. And, you are right, now you see a face in there. I did blend in with the background. We know the grass is green, but the black/white photo doesn’t reveal that. You could have planned to paint the grass. Or stitch it with green thread.

You plan to call this piece Graduation Day, right? So you have to leave the dress white. Because it was.

So you’ve cut an oval frame from that beautiful green silk Dupioni. I like that, but it doesn’t contrast enough with my photo, do you think? Oh, you’re making an oval “mat” to place in a rectangular frame. Even if you don’t put it in a wooden frame, you can make a cloth frame. I get it.

Ouch. You pinned me to a nice oval doily; guess you abandoned the silk like I said, then you saw that blue Irish linen handkerchief and started over? You get in such a hurry, then have to redo things. Think, first, ok? And now the blue kerchief and I are pinned to a black embroidered hankie, on point. Ok, but your design is getting bigger and bigger.

What happened to the pieces of the silk log cabin quilt that you cut as my background? Yes. I guess you can use them for something else. Wasn’t this supposed to be a quick project?

Now I’m getting a ragged edge. You are stitching me to the linen and the hankie using wool batting for dimension. Nice. Warm. Are you writing on me? Oh, drawing lines for stitching details on my dress. Ok.

Not bad. When you press me and the marker disappears, it will be good. And the pebble stitching on the blue looks nice, too.

Now what is that design on the black hankie? It’s ok, but aren’t those embroidered flowers sorta rough looking? Is it UPSIDE DOWN? Maybe you are right, maybe no one will notice. Go steam these marks out, though, ok?

WHAT? The marks aren’t disappearing? You used a regular pen? You goofball! Now what? Oh, I see the blue paint. Yeah. My beautiful white graduation dress has to be blue? So, now it’s not a graduation dress anymore.

And, the black hankie is WHERE? Well, you saw the problem before stitching the whole thing. So you have three corners to use in another project. Think you can remember to check right side up next time?

Whew! I’m back on the oval white doily you started with as my frame days ago. But on what? Oh, this is lovely brown linen. Just enough drama. You made it work, but you didn’t make it easy!

Oh, you are finally getting to use a piece of that cross-stitched quilt you bought, aren’t you? Its colors do carry the blue dress to the back. Wasn’t it hard to cut into that old quilt that someone spent many many hours stitching? And they quilted it by hand, too.

I know it has holes in it, but I can hear the ladies at your guild now. They aren’t going to like the idea of cutting up an old quilt. Yeah, you are right. The nice handwork that remains will be seen now. With holes in it, it would have been relegated to a closet, or to wrapping furniture for moving. Or, as you found it, languishing in an old dusty store.

And, you did change the name from Graduation Day to Going to Prom. No, you cannot call it Bossy Girl in Blue Dress.

Ok, I’m back. The sequence of steps would make more sense if I had photographed each layout, but when I’m feverishly tossing things about, auditioning colors and shapes, there is no thought of documentation, just doing.

Yes, I do have scraps of silk Dupioni, an old silk log cabin quilt, and a beautiful black embroidered hanky that are cut into bits. But each of them has potential in other projects. They are not lost, they are not forgotten, and, I confess, they are not well organized. Serendipity plays a big part in my fabric combinations. Something that is lying on the cutting table gets stirred to the top of the pile while I’m looking for something else, and the pairings that occur inspire dozens of other projects. Ideas come faster than I can sew.

This afternoon project wasn’t completed until four days after I started working with it. Interruptions come about because of life’s events, and because the design stalled and I needed to walk away from it. And, though this is not the “graduation dress” design I had planned, I can reprint the photo and go at it again if I choose. If something doesn’t work out, I don’t consider it a failure, but as lessons learned. I might be more careful in the future to be sure the embroidery is right side up. And, I’ll check to see that I’m marking with a removable pen when sketching quilting lines.

Photos: The finished quilt measures 15” x 20”. Wool batting, silk and cotton threads were used for quilting. Hand-guided, free motion stitching attached the photo to the blue linen, to the vintage doily, and that to the brown linen. Hand stitching was used to invisibly stitch the lace edges down and to attach the linen to the vintage quilt on the back. I used a modified seed stitch. The backing has a bit of lace stitched over a hole in the quilt, and a label made from a portion of a vintage linen napkin.

G’s Treehouse

A couple of years ago a friend of mine told me she was having a baby, a little girl. This beautiful mother-to-be loved a particular line of fabric which included birds and flowers.

I gathered together some of the fabric from the collection, made a tree, planted some flowers at the base, and constructed a birdhouse. I had a ball!

A note about the some fabric: just as I never follow a pattern exactly, I don’t think I’ve ever made anything solely from one designer’s collection. Though the collections are a great way to get coordinating colors and a variety of scales and patterns, I find they are often a bit static. I like to add a zinger or a focus, or just something different from another source. In this case, the collection didn’t have a fabric that said “tree trunk” to me, so I used a little brown check. Likewise, there was not the right blue for the birdhouse. And I’m confident that the leaves were cut from green fabrics from the collection and perhaps from others as well.

I cut the background to the finished size of the quilt (38″ x 65″), adding a bit in all directions to allow for shrinkage that comes with appliqué and quilting. The tree, branches, and leaves were all freely cut using the eyeball method on top of the background. Needle turn appliqué was used throughout. I like raw edges on leaves (as in After the Chlorophyll, Shade Tree Mechanic, and a few other projects) but this was to be a baby quilt to be used, and I didn’t want fraying to be an issue when washed. Nor did I want the little one getting stray threads in her hand or mouth.

Broderie perse (a fancy word for fussy cutting) was used with the flower centers at the base of the tree. The birds were larger than those printed on the fabric, but I mimicked the birds the designers had used when I made patterns for mine.

The tree bark was quilted with a dark brown thread, the rest with a matching thread that simply gave texture. The exception to this was some of the embellishing stitches around the flower heads. In some cases, there were details printed on the fabric that couldn’t easily be cut out and appliquéd, so I recaptured those with the quilting stitch using a heavier thread. All threads used were cotton, and the batting was cotton. That is often my preferred fiber for all components of a quilt, but certainly is the case when it’s for a baby. Seed stitch was used to embroider the seeds the bird on the ground is eating.

All quilting was done on the sewing machine, hand-guided, free motion stitching. A variety of motifs were used, including echoing, vines with leaves, curved crosshatching, vaguely parallel lines.

Now G is having a little brother. Hmmm….

Rescued Remnants

It’s been eleven weeks since I wrote about an adventure buying vintage linens. Only today is this piece finished, featuring pieces of an old tablecloth found on that excursion.

This quilt has been in development since I brought that pile in the house. Growing, developing, changing. Pink is not my “go-to” color, maybe that’s why it took so long for me to hear what the fabric was saying.

I know, people have been referred for psychological help when they said their quilts talked to them. But quilts do talk. If only you are willing to listen.

Here is the conversation as this process ensued: Vintage Tablecloth (VT) and me (SG).

VT: This basket motif wants to be the centerpiece of a medallion-like wall hanging.

SG: Ok. I’ll cut one out in an irregular shape and stitch it to a background. With wool batting underneath so you rise to be noticed.

VT: What background? The green pieces from the tablecloth without holes?

SG: Ok. Done. Centered, stitched on the machine with dense machine quilting to make the embroidery pop.

VT: Oh, I’m disappointed. I’m not featured as I should be. I need accentuating.

SG: Ok. I’ll cut you out from that background and put you on something darker.

VT: How about pink? See my perky little bow, let’s do pink!

SG: Noooo, I don’t like pink too much. Let’s try something else. Let’s pick up all those other colors. Here. I like this stripe.

VT: Ok. But horizontally, no. Vertically, no. Both too plain. I’m fancy.

SG: Agreed. How about mitering the stripe so there’s some geometric interest?

VT: Yes, Mrs. G, I know you have to get that in there somewhere.

SG: Done. Now on the green.

VT: uh-uh. I want pink.

SG: Pink? I don’t like pink. I don’t even buy pink fabric. Oh, wait, here is a gradated solid. I bought a pack of these pastels (Lord, what WAS I thinking? That’s not me at all.) But it does work with the colors in the ribbon. How about a pink border around the basket on the stripe?

VT: Yes. At last you heard me. Pink. Pink. Pink.

SG: Ok. There is now a border around the basket. It’s pink. And, can I let it be raw-edged, since that is the way I applied the basket?

VT: Yes. Sure.

SG: Done. Now that is going on the green background from the original tablecloth. Good grief, how many layers is this? I guess I should cut triangles from the green and frame the center rather than continue to build thickness. More cutting and fitting and sewing. But that’s what it needs to be.

Now I need to layer the quilt. Cotton batting this time, and look, I found a pink calico for the backing.

VT: Ok, I’m done talking. Have your way with me now as you quilt. Oh, I guess you will bind me with that stripe, too; since that seems to be the only fabric you can use for a binding. But will you not make it bias this time? Let’s be a little bit subtle with it, ok?

SG: Good idea. Especially since I’ve used almost all of the stripe and it will have a jillion seams anyway. But I’ll place the stripes perpendicular to the edge.

Quilting is done. I repeated the bow motif from the original basket. I drew a replica, resized, marked it on corners of quilt, and stitched with heavy pink thread. I quilted the remainder using a matching fine thread (silk) so the emphasis is on the texture, not the stitch.

VT: Your quilting worked out nicely. But now the center stripe is a bit puffy. Can you get it to settle down a bit?

SG: Sure. I’ll do the seed stitch with a matching thread. But it makes a mess on the back.

VT: Find something pink. You use vintage linens for the labels anyway. Just find one large enough to cover that center square.

SG: I agree that it needs to be pink. I don’t have any vintage pink stuff (nor pink dye). I don’t DO pink. But, you are right – any other color will be too high contrast. It is the back, after all.

VT: So, wait. You don’t have to finish today. Wait until you find the right thing.

SG: Oh, WOW. I saw this pink linen handkerchief at an antique mall. With lace. It was $3. More than I normally pay for a hankie to stitch on as a label. But I thought of you and bought it.

VT: Good girl. I’m worth it.

SG: Done. Label attached with seed stitch that just goes through to the batting. Sleeve attached the same way. You aren’t square, close though. (16” x 17″). And you speak “pink”

Bee Still my Heart

I see that today has been designated as National Honey Bee Day, begun to increase community awareness of beekeeping in the U.S. Such a holiday is a perfect excuse to share a few pieces of fiber art with a beekeeping theme.

After I sold my childhood home to Billy, a former colleague of my Daddy, I received a treasured package. Billy was doing some remodeling and found two of my Daddy’s high school science lab books behind the walls of a closet. His graduation from Sycamore High School was in 1932, so the Biology and Physical Science lab manuals predate that.

I never knew my Daddy could draw, but in these books I found his drawings of crawfish, birds, fish, chemistry lab equipment, and BEES. I was excited to find his handwriting, which looked exactly like it did later in life, but the drawings were a wonderful surprise. I scanned some of the images and printed them on parchment paper and framed them as Christmas gifts for family members, but the lab on the bees got special treatment.

I printed those two pages on commercially prepared fabric for printing, then used those as the background for appliquéd bee skeps, vines, leaves, berries, and bees. Cotton was used for the vines and leaves, beehives are a woven cotton, berries are made with silk ribbon, and the bees are appliquéd from felted wool. The quilting is hand guided free motion on a domestic sewing machine. Each piece of this pair finishes at 12” x 15”. In keeping with the school theme, I entitled this pair Beekeeping 101.

This reconnection with my Daddy’s history with bees spurred me to stitch several more quilts with bees and beehives. I modified a pattern from Maggie Bonanomi to create Beauty and the Bees in wool. The background is commercially handdyed and felted black wool. All the appliqué pieces are felted wool from recycled clothing, mine and Goodwill’s. The pink berries and tendrils are machine couched with my free motion couching foot, one of the most fun-to-use tools in my toolbox!

Still busy as a bee, I wanted a colony on blue. So I created a simple design using a single bee skep, and used needleturn appliqué on the Blackbird Design fabric that looks like a cross stitch sampler. I return to that fabric frequently, in different colorways, because it adds another layer of interest to any quilt while paying tribute to another one of my needlework loves – cross stitch. A section of this piece appears in the banner at the top of the page.

The Beehive on Blue was made to fit an oval frame (8″ x 10″) I found somewhere. That’s a shape I love and find those frames hard to leave in the store. So one came home with me, got a coat of chalk paint, and holds my quilt. It is honored with the presence of an original drawing of a bee by my art instructor and friend, Mark Ballard.

Fifty-Two Tuesdays has a block with a beeskep on linen. There’s one in Fifty-Two Wednesdays, and I’ve used this motif in a series of beginning appliqué classes. I’m certain it will reappear many times. I sometimes find interesting bee buttons or charms that need a home in a textile hive.

My Daddy, the beekeeper, would have been surprised that those lab manuals were still around, I think. He built this house in 1946, after having owned at least two farms, then living in another house in town. so why did he keep science lab manuals for fourteen years? I know if he could see my fabric beehives, he would pretend to think they were silly, printing his workbook pages and sewing on them. But secretly he would be pleased. As I think he would be pleased that I treasure such wonderful memories of those glorious mornings checking the beehives with him.

Note: more details about Beauty and the Bees and working with wool are here.

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