Category: Journaling

thoughts on writing and recording life

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.

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.

Cypress Trees, A Covered Bridge, and some Quilts

Glorious fall days are made for exploration and photography.

One day last week we took a ride to George L. Smith State Park, loading the car with cameras, quilts, and picnic paraphernalia. The cypress trees here are gorgeous any time of year, but now their leaves are golden and red.  And the tannin in the water enhances their reflections, so the beauty is doubled.

Above is an image of a cypress “knee”, a structure thought to be a buttress to the tapering trunk in soft muddy soil. Cypress trees growing outside of a swampy area do not form these knees.

I loved photographing the natural beauty and the covered bridge is a great background for a few quilts.

We photographed quilts inside and outside the bridge and perched them on other spots in the park, too.

Dots and Vines is a graphic quilt you’ve seen in other posts.  It may be my most photogenic quilt – I grab it most every time I head out the door.  I love its bold colors in contrast with the weathered wood.  

Likewise, Heaven in a Wildflower has posed in other settings, too.  Like Dots and Vines, the blocks of solid color are especially vivid in natural surroundings.  Note to self:  make more quilts from solids.

The quilt above is not one I made, but one I was given.  My dear friend Mary Ellen is a most prolific quilter and sent this star beauty on blue to me.  She’s the inspiration for all these quilts-on-location shots.  She and her photographer husband Bruce live in Minnestota and they set the bar for photographing quilts in rustic locations.  I’ve written about her photo journey before here.

We weren’t the only ones enjoying this serene spot on this glorious day; I caught this flash of color out the window of the bridge.

And it was picture day for a some four-year-olds from a nearby preschool. Here they wait in line to head to the playground.

This has been a busy week.  I took more quilts on this trip so there will be more posts to follow sharing those.  And, my guild had our Little Girls Challenge this week – so that’s coming, too.

More details on the Dots and Vines quilt can be found here.

More details about Heaven in A Wildflower are here.

And, we’ve visited other covered bridges with quilts here and here.

Going Nuts

One of the things I do in the fall is collect acorns.  Every year I find myself coming home with a few perfect specimens after every day’s walk.  I add them to this bowl…eventually it is filled and I admire it through the winter.  In the spring, I throw them out.  In the fall, I begin again.

I don’t know exactly what the fascination is with acorns.  I grew up with pecan trees.  I gathered plenty of those in my childhood.  That was the source of my Christmas money every year.  Oaks and acorns came later in my life….

I’m still collecting acorns this year…but my latest fascination is with walnuts.

A few years ago, I attended a Folk Life Festival at a historic site in Tifton, GA.  Among the many delights there was a woman using walnut and indigo dyes to make the most beautiful yarn.  I was captivated.  From her I learned that walnut doesn’t need a mordant; that you collect the walnuts while in the green hulls; that they must ferment first, then be boiled before you can dye with them.

I followed those instructions and dipped a few things, but it was a lot of trouble.

I’ve experimented with brown commercial dyes before (that post is here) but the walnut gives a more pleasing color to me. I love the surprise of the varying richness based on the fabrics I use and the time it soaks.

This year, I gathered some black walnuts in their husks, put them in a bucket of water, covered it, and began the fermenting process.  After a couple of days, I thought, “I wonder what would happen if I dipped a piece of fabric in there as they fermented.”  A friend had brought me a pretty white cotton napkin and I submerged it among the walnuts.  In a few days, I had a nice bit of brown fabric.

I found another napkin, damask this time, and some laces…added those to the bucket for a few days.  Look at how gorgeous these are!  

I had a few pieces of vintage linen that I wanted to see what happened.  So I cut a few pieces of those, added a worn white cotton tea towel, and a skein of white embroidery floss.  I left these just a couple of days…not wanting to completely obscure the checked pattern in the linens.  Oh, my, I’m loving this!

The images above are before and after of dipped fabrics.

And of course you aren’t surprised that I photographed some of the browns with some blues. Earlier confessions of my love for this color combination are here and here. And, if that’s not enough, type “brown” in the search bar…there are more!

Now in the pot are a few more treasures.  I don’t remember exactly what I put in there, but do know that some old pink rickrack is getting new life.  Stay tuned.

And there are a lot of hickory nuts around here, too. Hmmmm….

As I wrote this and revisited the photos from the Folk Life Festival, I guess that’s what encouraged me to play with indigo dyes, too. There’s a whole category in the sidebar for that!