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.
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.
I’m still in a red mode with Valentine’s Day on the horizon.
Lately I’ve been finishing some projects that have been in progress for a while…I miss playing with art quilts and story quilts, but finishing some of these has been satisfying.
The one that I finished yesterday is Yoko’s Garden. Several years ago I was inspired by some deliberately irregular polygons that Yoko Saito had appliquéd in one of her quilt books.
I cut some freehand hexagons from a collection of Japanese woven fabrics I had in shades of taupe and appliquéd them to a remnant of an old linen sheet. I love the soft neutral palette, but felt it needed a zinger, so I added a flower using a bit of a red cashmere coat I had felted. For several years, this piece has been spilling out of baskets here and there when I needed a touch of red.
This year in December I needed something to stitch with red in it. I picked up this piece, layered it on a bit of wool (not wool batting, but a piece of felted wool) and began hand quilting. I enjoyed that process through lots of tv time in December and January, added a binding and label, and I have a finished piece. The final piece measures 15” x 20”.
Hearts were cut freeform and positioned randomly.
Progress on red hearts is going well. Here, on the 8th day of February, you see the first 8 hearts. These are scattered over the linen tablecloth. I’ll fill in with more small hearts and add some embellishments, too.
I’m enjoying planning embellishments keeping in this beige/brown/red color scheme.
And let me just say, stitching on linen is so delicious!
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.
I’ve been baking. Among the things I’ve explored lately are teacakes.
The word “teacake” transports me through time. When I was a college freshman, living a new quasi-independent life, but homesick at times, I went to the campus post office to find a package waiting for me.
When I think of teacakes, I am transported to a memory. A college freshman, living a new quasi-independent life, but homesick at times, I went to the campus post office to find a package waiting for me.
The package was from Aunt Nellie. A shoebox full of tea cakes. They were wrapped in waxed paper, layers and layers of tea cakes. The box was heavy – full of love.
My suite-mates and friends on the hall in the dorm were as excited as I was. A couple of us went across the street from campus and bought a jar of peanut butter. Part of this memory is that we had to put on dresses – because girls were not allowed to wear slacks in town. We could wear “pant suits” (not jeans!!!) to class, but if we left campus, we were “representing the school” and had to dress appropriately.
Back to the tea cakes. They were fabulous! I ate Aunt Nellie’s teacakes all my life and loved them – but these were especially memorable. Because that box was filled with love from home ( I now realize she must have been missing me terribly in those days) and shared with loving friends who impacted my life forever!
I don’t always put peanut butter on my teacakes, but sometimes I do. And that was a critical element when the box arrived from home…I had to share them with peanut butter!
I don’t have Aunt Nellie’s recipe – when she died, my mother asked if there was anything I especially wanted from her house. I had a long list including her “receipt book”. The book was a spiral bound calendar from some insurance company. But she used it to write down her recipes. When I got it, I immediately searched out the teacake recipe. It said; sugar, flour, butter, egg, soda. Nothing else.
That was all the information that she needed…a reminder of what ingredients to include. That was insufficient information for me.
The recipe I used is one from the White Lily Baking Company’s website, with a few modifications of mine. I omit the nutmeg and add 1 teaspoon of almond extract. (Update: Since writing this, I’ve made them using lemon extract instead of almond and they are the best yet! Lemon tea cakes don’t need peanut butter or nutella – they are great on their own.)
The photo at the top has teacakes on one of Aunt Nellie’s plates.
On Valentine’s Day, I made some teacakes that were heart shaped….and we upped our game adding Nutella instead of peanut butter. Oh, yeah!
And speaking of hearts, I’m still making stuffed ones. I’ve added a few more red ones to the big bowl. And, I baked heart-shaped buttermilk biscuits on Valentine’s Day.
Note: My Aunt Nellie was such an important figure in my life that I’ve written about her again and again. She’s one of the Spinster Sisters, and she’s featured in Miss Nellie’s Country Garden. I mention her every time I talk about geraniums and often when cooking. Typing “Nellie” in the search box will keep you busy reading for a few minutes, at least.
Everyone knows I love my blue fabrics, but this time of year, red always shows up in something. As Valentine’s Day approaches, red is on my mind.
I began making red hearts before Christmas this past year. This small bowl held the first grouping. As is the case with many explorations, I couldn’t stop until I played with more and more fabric combinations…so the little bowl grew, too.
No self-respecting lover of vintage linens can ignore the beauties that are red. The collection above includes tickings, vintage woven pieces, and a lovely cross-stitched tablecloth.
My shelves that hold commercial fabrics has plenty of red, too. I especially love the reds from French General. ( I used this collection almost exclusively in Miss Lily’s Baskets.)
Hearts are a favorite motif of mine, so there are hearts made of things other than fabric around the house, too. Above are a compressed wool one, an enameled bit of jewelry, a metal one, and a pottery heart.
In the photos above, you see the two sides of the collection of hearts. The usual “fronts” on the left, the “backsides” on the right.
Remember GBI Blues? This stack of delightful reds makes me think I need to work on a companion, GBI Reds. Uh-oh, we all see where this is going, don’t we?
I’ve written about hearts many times before. WordPress has changed some ways to label things, so I’ve added a category for “hearts”. If you click on that word in the category list on the right, you’ll see a listing of all posts about that topic. (I haven’t updated everything yet, but “hearts” and “red” are current.)
Old spools, old quilts, old ticking, old buttons, memories in old clothes. What’s not to like?
Put them all together in a new format. Unroll to see fresh delight every time.
It seemed a perfect place to collect some old reds and make a Valentine’s project.
The old quilt was soiled and tattered, tan and white with red accents. I love that the indigo dye subtly changed the backgrounds, but left the reds RED.
The unfurled piece measures 7” x 30”.
I love the rolled format for story quilts. The first one I did is the one above. And, I’m working on another one now. It has hearts on it, too.
I have a friend Paul who has a way with words. He peppers daily conversation with phrases that keep you on your toes. When I get an email from him, I savor it because I can revisit the conversation with him without strugglng to remember exactly how he “put it”.
Paul gave me permission to share a recent email message. You can see what I mean.
Sandy,
For reasons I don’t fully remember, I’ve refused to buy Jean a Valentine gift. I’ve insisted on making something and have persisted doing so for several decades. These gifts are often something which might make a grade schooler’s mom roll her eyes. Roll them enough to hurt. Carved pennies, personalized mini-street signs, repainted toy horses and many efforts I can no longer recall. It can be surprising difficult to get inspiration and that solution often comes at the last moment.
Several weeks ago, a valentine’s themed dishtowel at Ingle’s found its way into my cart. I had no thought of how to use it.
On Valentine’s eve, when I should have been working, I noticed A Beekeeper’s Daughter among my favorites. Loving Hearts quickly made this year’s solution clear. A trip to the local Walmart provided the needed supplies. It also created several “deer in the head lights” experiences as small children rounded corners at top speed, stomped past the thread display far too close to my recently operated on foot and disappeared around the next aisle before I could think of something mean to yell at them. They knew what they were doing. I froze in terror with no clue which way to run.
At the end of the next work day I hand stitched my version of a Loving Heart. Jean seemed satisfied.
Thank you for the last minute inspiration.
Paul
Here are photos of some of Paul’s heart projects.
Paul: I made three stepping stones and a big mess on the shop floor. Paul: Because Jean often comments about pinto/paint ponies each time one trots across our television on an old western, the repainted horse is the effort which pleases me most.Sandy’: When I saw this, I did a music search and enjoyed listening to some Italian arias!
And, if you are wondering, yes, my Loving Hearts quilt is finished. Once I attach the label, a blog with photos will be posted.
I looked up from the sewing machine and saw another heart on the wall. I hadn’t exactly forgotten this one, but she is old.
I made her in 2005 in answer to a challenge at my local guild. Tess, our Challenge Queen, had directed us to make a quilt including hearts. A great idea since we are the Heart of Georgia Quilt Guild.
I was new to the world of quilting and to the challenge notion. This was my second opportunity to enter that competition and appliqué was the newest tool in my toolbox.
The pattern came from a book by Robyn Pandolph and many of the fabrics I used came from her designs, as well. Those were the days when I used fabric from one collection. And followed a pattern. As already stated, I was new at this quilting thing.
New at giving titles, too. I named this one Princess Priscilla loves Paisley.
Well, I sorta followed the pattern. I remember the challenge specified hearts, plural, so I added the hearts in the border. They are low contrast (I love that touch of subtle in a quilt) and asymmetrically placed. (Oh, how I love that!)
And the doll nestled among all those quilts is just one I had to bring home with me a few years ago. She’s happy bouncing around the house posing on quilts.
Speaking of posing, Priscilla went to Tifton recently and posed in front of Plough Gallery there. Don’t you just LOVE these blue doors? And, the hexagons in the paving on the walkway?
And the art in the gallery is nice, too! More stories from this place to come.
So the obsession for blue hearts outgrew the bowl. Bowls, actually; several are full.
It seemed the natural thing to do was to make more of those hearts to put in a quilt. I continued using bits of vintage linens, remnants of old clothing filled with memories, and remnants of overdyed linens.
I cut free-form hearts and stitched them to bits of background fabric and placed them on the design wall. Then a couple of days of trimming and filling in blank spaces with other beloved blue fabrics, and a quilt top was born.
Now it’s pin basted together, ready to quilt.
One of the old remnants I used included dozens of hearts like these and at least 40 of these birds. I found this gorgeous tablecloth last summer when I wrote about tattered treasures here. I didn’t appreciate the work some woman had done until I cut it up and stitched through the fabric myself.
It is a heavy cotton fabric, densely woven; what my mother would describe as “tough as pig iron” to stitch through. I realize now that the phrase makes no sense regarding stitching, but that’s what she said.
The woman who stitched all these crosses must have had sore fingers. Maybe she was a friend of Margene‘s, devoted to needlework, determined to finish.
The tablecloth was used, though. I know because of the stains and holes I found in it. That’s a good thing. I love stains and holes because I feel less guilty about cutting the piece apart and reusing the decorative stitching. And, I like knowing that the piece has stories embedded in the threads.
There are other stories in this collection of threads, as well. I bought some indigo and white homespun fabric at Elco Antique Market more than 30 years ago. My mother used it to make a dress for me. Now parts of it are in this quilt. Some of Jim’s shirts and some of mine have found their way here too.
And, those of you who make quilts are wondering about those blue dots and straight pins. I’m trying something new here, pin basting without having to close and then reopen safety pins. I like the pinning part. I’ll report on the removal process once the quilting is done.
A later post has been added with photos of the finished quilt and my verdict on the pinning dilemma. It’s here.
