Category: Challenge Quilts

The Playhouse Quilt

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…

Little Girls Challenge

Our quilt guild’s annual challenge quilts were revealed last week.  You may remember the challenge this year was Little Girls.  Members were asked to turn back their inner clocks to days of their childhood and make a quilt representing some memory from those carefree days.

While I was working on my entry, I hoped everyone was having as much fun with their creation as I was.  Every idea that came across my mind prompted memories I had long forgotten and the actual construction of my entry made me giggle like a little girl.

As the quilts were revealed, it seemed that others experienced some of the same thrills I did.

As the Challenge leader this year, I made the ribbons. I had loads of fun painting these little girls on fabric, appliquéing their dresses, and attaching streamers from my stash of fabric and rickrack.

Our procedure is to bring our entries in plain brown paper bags with nothing that will reveal the maker’s identity. This year, contestants were asked to write a sentence or two telling the story behind the quilt. Volunteers hang the quilts and assign numbers to them. Members vote on their favorite and play “Guess the Maker” – using knowledge of individual styles of quiltmaking to assist in identifying the creator of each quilt hanging.

Votes are tabulated as the business meeting is conducted, then ribbons are awarded. Every maker then shares the story behind the quilt she entered while participants check their guesses of makers’ identities.

Quilts in this Little Girl Challenge were especially precious.

Carol shared that her two daughters had input into her creation…one said you have to include sequins..another insisted she include a very decorated birthday cake. Looks like I’m not the only one whose daughter has input.
Susan was able to attach meaning to the fabrics in a piece she made using English Paper Piecing techniques from a designer she recently discovered…aren’t those unending connections priceless?
Helen’s piece, With Love 2 Grandmothers, included photos of her grandmothers and won the 3rd place ribbon.  Helen even had a historical backing on hers – a collage of doilies and laces she collected at a flea market.
Gladys, our gal from Texas, couldn’t resist including a state map though she knew it would give her identity away – and on her tag she wrote of sandwiches from fresh tomatoes on the farm.
Marie may have embraced the little girl inside more enthusiastically than most…she made three entries.  One, Windows to the World, used photographs printed on fabric and pieced in a landscape variation of a log cabin block.  Assembled, they reminded her of window panes in her childhood home.  This quilt was the second place winner.
In another entry, Marie’s Starlit Cabin was a tribute to the memory of a quilt pieced by her grandmother and quilted by her mother. Marie carried the quilt and the love it held when she left home for college.
And Marie’s third entry was Lily Learns to Sew.  Last summer, Marie spent time teaching a young girl in the neighborhood who wanted to learn to sew.  Marie painted sewing notions on fabric using watercolor; then used rail fence blocks (the same block she and Lily included in Lily’s first quilt) to surround it.  And what little girl doesn’t love red polka dots?
Another quilter named Carol depicted memories of hopscotch with her friends. She used a coloring book as a basis for her appliquéd little girl.
Shirley’s entry depicts the love she and her mother share of growing flowers in the yard and of beautiful embroidery.
Sally’s Grandmother’s Flower Garden block is a tribute to her maternalgrandmother.  Sally even connected the background quilting to her lattices in her grandmother’s rose garden.
My piece, Playhouse in the Chicken Yard, was the lucky winner of the blue ribbon.  I’ll share details of its story and its construction in the next blog post.

Even members who didn’t get their quilt finished for one reason or another had stories to share.  Becky told of hanging blackout curtains over their windows during WWII and of coloring on the papers that their dry cleaning came in.

Marsha had memories of milk bottles being delivered to her house and hopes to make a quilt depicting that yet.  Life got in the way of her putting those milk bottles on a textile piece in time for the challenge.

Carol won the “Guess The Maker” competition. Her reward is a fabric covered Little Girls Journal where she can record memories of making this quilt or more memories from her life as a little girl.

Going in Circles

We left home to run a few errands and I grabbed some quilts.  The day wasn’t especially light filled, but I’ve learned that if I don’t have a camera and quilts, the perfect stage presents itself.  

We visited Seventh Street Salvage in their downtown location…and what did we see but a cart sitting in front of circles?  Well, well, well….I just happened to have a few circles in the car.

Even though I had written about 108, I wanted a photo of it in an outdoor setting.  I had grabbed it and a couple of other quilts with circles and thrown them in the car.  

After we did our shopping inside (the garlic/olive artisan bread is delicious, by the way), we got permission to snap some photos and brought out the quilts.

I love the stars in the circles, the repetition of them in mass (like quilt blocks that way), and I am descended from Wheelers, so there’s that, too.  The stars in the circles are impressive, as well.  I may need to find some quilts with stars to bring back to this spot.  And, make a quilt with stars inside circles???? oh, my, the ideas just won’t stop!

The lone magenta quilt is one I haven’t written about before, Going in Circles.  In 2018, our guild’s challenge was “2”.  We were challenged to make a quilt using only 2 fabrics.  As always, I explored several options, experimented with a couple, but decided to do something totally out of my normal “look”. 

I spliced thin strips of a multicolored batik in a modern sort of piecing layout with a Cherrywood solid fabric.  I drew intersecting circles all over, planning to quilt each defined area with a different motif.  But when I got the circles stitched, I liked the clean look of it, so decided just to add some pearls at the intersections.

To continue the clean modern look, I didn’t bind the quilt, instead faced it with more of the graphic batik.  The backing is a hand-dyed fabric in soft muted colors.  

This quilt hangs on a rack in my sewing room and I see it every day.  But writing about it makes me realize that I need to do more of this kind of piecing.  It was fun – and I love the graphic result!  

I’ve written about the quilt in the center, Dots and Vines, before, and linked to it recently.  But in case you missed it, its story is here.

And, the blue dots on brown is my previous post, 108.

Seventh Street Salvage has appeared before in photo shoots, too.  Here, and here.

A note about the photos. My signature appears on most of these photos, but it is a collaborative effort at our house. I have learned to take photos and do a bit of post processing. But sometimes Jim and I swap cameras depending on where we are standing and which lens we need….and sometimes we forget who took what. And now there’s the issue of a new camera whose photos won’t import on his older computer. But I don’t have some of the processing software he has …so on this shoot more than ever, we’ve passed digital images back and forth to make this wall and the quilts impressive! His masterful touch in the digital darkroom makes everything look good!

It’s Challenge Season

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 Queen is Retiring

I’ve written about my quilting sister, Tess, many times.  She is our guild’s Challenge Queen, Ribbon Queen, and Creative Genius of Quilting.  She has motivated all of us to be better at what we are doing, to try new things, and to enjoy the act of quiltmaking.

After coming up with twenty-five glorious ideas for our guild’s challenges, she has decided to retire from that role.  Her shoes are unfillable – not that her feet are big – but her store of ideas and her sense of humor that has led to such interesting titles for our challenges will be a hard act to follow.

Not only have her titles and descriptions been interesting, the ribbons she makes for the winners are always perfect.  Take for example, the ones above for our most recent Something Feathered challenge.  And here are a couple of others:

For the “Let’s Strip” Challenge, we had to use strips of fabric in some way in the quilt. Tess made the ribbons from strips, too.
In The “Charmed, I’m Sure” Challenge, Tess required that each fabric in the quilt be unique (a traditional quilt pattern with that requirement was called a “charm” quilt. So her ribbons were comprised of fabrics each used only once.

At the conclusion of most recent meeting, our president presented Queen Tess with a quilt made by guild members to show her our appreciation for all her hard work.  The quilt has 25 blocks, one representing each of the challenges led by Tess.  As she viewed the quilt, Tess could immediately recognize some of the challenges and she was heard to exclaim, “oh, that’s the Brown Bag challenge”, and “I remember baskets, and log cabins, and oh, there’s the fans!”  

The label on the back memorializes her status as Queen Tess.  I didn’t get a photo, but the label is in the shape of a crown.

I’m not sure what that next act will be…our guild is yet to decide.  Will we continue the annual challenge?  Will we have one leader?  Will we rotate the leadership about the guild?  Will a committee determine the challenge each year?  Will the winner of one year decide on the challenge for the next?  

In the aftermath of the meeting, Tess was already wrapped in the love of her quilting sisters.

In the absence of a volunteer in the immediate future (at a time when the guild wasn’t meeting because of Covid), I agreed to plan the challenge for 2021.  That doesn’t mean I’m locked into it forever…all the aforementioned possibilities need to be considered.  But doing it once shows me how challenging it is to think of everything to plan a challenge…to get the details right, to communicate it to all, and to inspire people to participate. Really, it’s more fun to participate in making a quilt following Tess’s guidelines.  But, I do understand that she’s ready to sit back and watch…and make the quilt that takes home the blue ribbon – without having had to make the ribbons.  

Something Feathered

Truth:  I have not minded staying at home for a year.  

Another truth:  Seeing my quilting sisters this week was glorious!  

Thursday was my quilt guild’s first meeting after more than a year.  It was hard to predict how many people would come – but it was wonderful.  It was great to see everyone, to visit, and to share a meal.  

Our guild’s annual challenge is normally hung in November…since we missed that in 2020, we did it yesterday.  This challenge was Something Feathered – the quilt had to include something feather related and a bit of yellow.  Challenge Queen Tess often throws a color component our way.

As I do every year, I spent a lot of time thinking of all the ways I could incorporate something feathered into a quilt.  Thinking of something wasn’t hard…narrowing it down to a challenge entry was.  I actually made several things with the challenge in mind…more on that later…but the quilts that were hung showed that others of many of the same approaches I did…cyanotype images of feathers, vintage linens with birds on them, feathered designs in quilting.

There were stories, too.  That’s what I love…the stories that are stitched into a quilt and into our souls.

Members vote for their favorite of the quilts displayed.  The winning quilt yesterday was Genie’s Cardinals for Cora.  Cora is Genie’s three-year-old granddaughter and when she visits, she exclaims with delight over “GiGi’s birds,” her name for the cardinals in Genie’s yard.  Now for generations, when people see this quilt, they will pause in their busy lives and think of a delightful toddler spending time with her grandmother.  Can anything be more beautiful?

The second place ribbon went to Marsha’s Murder Among the Posies. Marsha is like me in that she’d much rather shop in an antique store than a modern fabric store.  She loves to find vintage linens with a history and combine them to tell a new story.  Her quilt title was educational, too, reminding us that flocks of different bird species have different names.  For crows, a flock is a murder.

Third place went to Dewey for Doodles.  Dewey is a gifted longarm quilter.  He tells us that he was bored one day, having caught up with his quilting tasks on hand during a retreat, so he layered some black fabric, played with bold colored threads, and just doodled.  Beautiful!  We all wish we could so casually doodle like he does.

Sherry brought two entires.  The stuffed birds on the branch got my attention…so lovely.  She named this one Delora’s Birds; remembering her Aunt Delora who loved pretty embellished linens and who spent time doing crafty things with Sherry during her childhood.  Sherry  brought another entry, too- Sunshine on a Cloudy Day. Our display space did not show off Sherry’s birds on the branch well, so she sent me photos from home. Once she suspends it from her ceiling again, we will replace the photo with that image. Zoom in on the closeup image to see the bird’s feet…a marvel in engineering for Sherry’s resume!

Marie entered Winging It, a small piece made from an extra block from an earlier quilt.  Marie says when the Northern Rough-winged Swallows appear, she pulls that quilt out and drapes it across a chair in her den so she can enjoy the season inside and out.

Everyone was impressed with Shirley’s entry, Yankee Doodle Mickey.  Not only was this quilt large, but it was Shirley’s first “real quilt,” she says.  She used Disney fabric and incorporated feather stitching in some of the quilting.  We are very impressed, Shirley, and look forward to seeing what comes next from this beginner!

Helen’s entry, All Feathered Up and Nowhere to Go 2020, combined cyanotype images of feathers and commercially printed feathers to make an eye-catching wall hanging.  Helen likes blue almost as much as I do, so the blueprinting process on fabric was fun.

Angie’s entry is framed under glass, so please ignore the glare.  Entitled I Believe, it is a beautiful combination of appliqué and embroidery.

Page’s entry, A Winter Evening, is a cardinal ready for display during the holidays.

Kathy is ready for fall with Pumpkin Season.

Patti’s entry, Pandemic Flowers, includes a feathered design quilted into the border.  Patti says she gets the prize for including the most of Tess’s required yellow fabric.

Sharon’s quilt, To God Be The Glory, features a beautiful stained-glass dove and divine quilting.

Gladys, one of our most prolific quilters, ( I believe she made more than 100 quilts while staying safe at home during Covid), brought two entries for Something Feathered.  I’m A Feathered Star, and I’m a Wanna Be Feathered Star (the blue one).

My entry was this appliquéd image of a Singer Featherweight sewing machine.  As I said, I had plenty of feathered ideas and even stitched some with this challenge in mind.  But once I had fun with the featherweight and the play on words, I decided to let this be my entry.  I called it Threading My Featherweight.  Jim’s title suggestion, “Bob-bob-bobbin Along” was better – but I didn’t ask for his input until I had stitched a blue bird….maybe I’ll do another one with a robin doing the work and use his title.

I’ve written about our guild’s challenges many times before…they really have enriched my quilting life, and I’m sure other members share that feeling. Click on the challenge category in the sidebar to see more of these stories.

Endless Migration

A recent beautiful spring day was right for a ride-about. Not knowing our destination, I tossed a few small quilts in the car “just in case.”

When we stopped for our picnic lunch with this view of the sky and the trees, I was glad I had chosen to include Endless Migration, a challenge quilt from 2006. I had promised to write its details earlier when I did another post on paper foundation piecing here.

Our guild’s annual challenges always teach me something new. In 2006, our Challenge Queen, Tess, required that we do some curved piecing. As a rather new quilter, I thought about the possibilities all year (the challenge is announced in February, presented in November) but waited until nearly the last minute to engage in the sewing of my entry. If you know me, you know that this is a behavior in which I still engage…waiting until the last minute. Part of the reason is that I can’t keep a secret very long, so procrastination means I have less time to deal with that. But I don’t wait until the last minute to think about it…the whole intervening time between announcement and presentation, I have the challenge topic on my mind.

I loved the geometry of Mariner’s Compass blocks and had played with paper foundation piecing to accomplish a block or two of that type.

This quilt finished at 22″ x 25″.

I wanted to create an oval ring of flying geese around a tree of life motif. I had a tree pattern I liked, enlarged it to a nice wall hanging size, then made the oval to fit it. I did not have an oval the right size – this was before Cindy Needham created her marvelous templates, so I drew the concentric ovals on freezer paper by using two thumbtacks and a string. I drew in the flying geese as well, and it was to the sewing machine.

I loved (and still love) Fossil Fern fabrics. I had bought a couple of sets of the complete range of colors in 3″ squares, so I arranged lighter ones to fit in the sky portion and darker ones in the earth portion of my landscape.

The tree is a batik fabric fused to the background. At this early stage of my machine quilting life, I only knew how to stipple. So that’s the quilting done with invisible thread, I think.

The guild’s current challenge topic is Something Feathered. I’ve already made three possible entries and I have another one brewing…they are to be shared in a couple of weeks since we couldn’t meet in November 2020…so I still have time to make another, right?

Oh, and our picnic destination was Dowdell’s Knob where FDR often visited when he visited the Little White House near Warm Springs. Here you see he is holding Endless Migration. Another quilt’s visit to this spot is documented here.