A friend called to remind me that I had not yet written about my journal quilt from my time at home during Covid. Shes right – so here it is.
Ive kept a daily journal for years. And Ive always loved to start an entry with home all day. But with dashing here and there running errands, going to meetings, and just out and about, those at-home days were sometimes hard to find.
In the Spring of 2020, things changed. Every day was home all day.
Soon I decided a visual record of these days should be part of a Covid journal quilt. It was easy to review my journal entries and tabulate things. The legend is included on the quilt a yellow (his favorite color) backslash for Jim, blue forward slash for me to clarify our days at home. I included January and February of 2020 for comparison of our normal days before the pandemic.
My beginning plan was to document the days we were spending at home. An old linen calendar provided the perfect stitching background. ( I just happened to have a calendar from 1986 – a year in which the days of the week and dates were the same as 2020 – in my stash. And later, a 1971 tea towel provided the right day/date combination for 2021.)
As time went on, I continued to think of other things to include in this journal quilt. Our time spent working in the yard, playing chess, binge watching tv all were candidates that made it into the quilt.
I made the blocks not knowing how I would put them together. I ended up attaching them to a bit of a vintage quilt remnant 10 ½ wide and rolling it up on a stick. It measures 64 long when stretched out.
The title came from our daughters remark when I told her we didnt mind being at home. I was feeling guilty that we were actually enjoying the solitude while so many people were frantic that their schedules were disrupted. She replied not everyone can be quarantined in Eden.
I included our days at home through April 2021 past our vaccinations and including many days of out and about again. Since then, the Delta variant has added more days at home. Maybe I need to find more calendar tea towels
This was a block made in the process of creating Dots and Vines (story is here). It seemed appropriate to have an image of the virus that started all this.
As I unrolled the quilt to make photos, I found this vintage fabric remnant tucked inside. I planned to add some of these motifs to the quilt. As usual, it’s never really finished. (This remnant is from a little girl’s dress I found in a thrift store.)
Yall know I love brown. My grandmothers tea leaf pattern china with its brown and white scheme, all kinds of treenware (usually a shade of brown), and vintage linens (often with a bit of brown stain somewhere) bring brown into view everyday. Oh, and my brown cows stroll around in the breakfast room.
I like brown plants, too. I see beauty in the fading stage of a flowers life as well as in the emerging beauty seen in spring. So this time of year brings even more brown into my camera lens.
Some recent photos celebrate the fading stage. Enjoy some brown!
This hummingbird doesnt mind that its perch is drooping and brown. He can still rest quite comfortably here.
This withering zinnia is the same color combination as Granny’s china and my creamer cows.
A Pearl Crescent finds something to like on this even more withered zinnia.
This praying mantis caught a ride on the “trash can to the street journey” one day and I brought him home to the porch.
Pink is never my favorite color, but the withering pink here captured my attention.
This red zinnia is aging (aren’t we all?) but look at the color scheme revealed! I see French General red fabrics with their companion browns and grays.
My sewing basket has a brown collection in it, too. A long-term project at hand right now is one with brown irregular hexagons. Im hand piecing them with a modified English Paper Piecing process I remove the paper before stitching them together.
Some plants in my yard are confused. As I write this and share the glories of withering plants, I have three fresh-from-the-earth Queen Annes Lace plants scattered in the garden. One is blooming delightfully now; others are ready to bloom. It’s like they are reminding me that “green is beautiful, too.” Yes, it is!
I’ve written about the beauty of brown before. Type “brown” in the search box in the sidebar and you’ll find more.
Keeping a journal gives meaning to life. Reading old journals makes one pause to examine the life. Making a journal in cloth creates a quilt with a story.
2017 was a busy year for travel we first spent three weeks driving to Arizona and back, made this pilgrimage to Paducah, then traveled to Florida to photograph nesting birds in their season. West, north, south…a lot of miles for two people who love to stay at home. I didnt document all those trips in cloth, but on the trip to Paducah I had such a plan in mind.
Jim and I have been to the spring quilt show hosted by the American Quilters’ Society several times. We enjoy the spectacle of the quilts, the people, the food, the music shops, the antique stores, the riverfront, the Land Between the Lakes and other picturesque environs.
The background of this quilt is mostly linen. Included in the quilt is a bit of every piece of fabric I bought on that trip. (For quilters reading this who havent been to a big show like this one, its a shoppers paradise. Every major quilt vendor is there: designers, pattern makers, fabric companies, sewing machine makers, thread companies, merchants of accessory tools, and many quilt shops are represented.)
On the far right, the melons beneath the star are Indiana Homestead hand-dyed cottons, the hexagons to the left of them are Japanese woven fabrics. In the left border, the colorful triangles are my beloved Cherrywood hand-dyed cottons. Other purchases show up in the schoolhouse, the stars, and in the square-within-a-square blocks throughout the quilt. Shot cotton fabrics are used in the dark areas of the border.
There were crows everywhere we went on this trip, so they got a block.
I love the blue barns in Kentucky, the chapel at Pattis 1880s Settlement, the vintage indigo clothing in Bell Buckle. I found a way to include all of them in the quilt.
On our way north, we spent a night in Mentone, Alabama and took a side trip to Bell Buckle, Tennessee. Our route home included a night in Berea, Kentucky. We fell in love with this place in 1990 on a trip to Ohio and wanted to revisit it. We then traveled through gorgeous countryside toward Waynesville, NC for our next nights stay. We had lunch in one of the most beautiful small towns in America, Bardstown, Ky, and had to agree with that evaluation. Buttons on the map designate overnight stays.
Most of the quilt was free-motion quilted on my Juki. But quilting linen is a different experience from quilting cotton fabrics. The overdyed linen I used for the skies in the barn and chapel blocks was lightweight and would have wanted to pucker, I feared. So I quilted those blocks by hand. I added color to the ocean areas of the maps with watercolor and painted the date and initials with a fabric ink. So I pieced, appliquéd, painted, embroidered, assembled and quilted by hand and by machine like 52 Tuesdays, I tried everything!
The label is a vintage doily attached with many vintage buttons.
The finished quilt measures 49″ x 54″. I used wool batting and 50 wt cotton thread for quilting.
Patricia Hampl, writer and memoirist, says to write about ones life is to live it twice. True. But to make a quilt about a memory if to live it again and again every time I see an image in a journal quilt, I remember the experience behind it.
Earlier related posts include these….just click on blue underlined word to go to that blogpost.
On our most recent ride about, we found ourselves in Pitts, Ga with cameras in hand to photograph sunflowers and old buildings. We did that and bought goodies from Oliver Farm, too. Sunflower oil, okra flour, brown rice grits were among our purchases.
The sunflowers didnt disappoint and the old buildings served as great backdrops for the quilts that went for the ride.
But it was the dirt that thrilled me. I got right out in the field with the sunflowers. The blooms were as high as my head and about the size of my head, too. But the dirt oh, the dirt! We were in a county neighboring the one where I grew up. And the dirt in the coastal plain region is very different from that of the piedmont where we now live. This is the dirt that I used to make mud pies and gopher houses and embed in my skinned knees.
I didnt have to take off my shoes to know exactly how that dirt would feel between my toes. Those little rocks of limonite mixed with the sand speak home to me. Hopscotch, skidding bicycle tires, carving a trail with a stick all those memories are tied to this dirt.
We succeeded in photographing sunflowers and old buildings, but found other treasures, too.
In a cypress habitat, we found some other interesting vegetation to shoot, but it was the road that entranced me. That dirt again oh, and the beehives!
Jim has always said he can feel his blood pressure drop when we visit Turner County. Well, theres that; life is slower. But these dirt roads just feel like Sunday afternoon drives and going to visit relatives.
My Daddy farmed before I came along so he walked behind a mule in dirt like this. Barefooted. Yes. He plowed without shoes. I can understand why. I wanted to take my shoes off and walk out in a field. I didnt. But maybe next time….
Oliver Farm has self guided tours where you can read about the old buildings in Pitts, Ga, and find your way to fields of sunflowers in all stages, a cypress habitat, and lots of fresh air.
One of my favorite types of story quilts is to print a vintage photo on fabric and enhance it with stitch and color. Im frequently asked to describe the printing process I use. Here it is – I use an inkjet printer, by the way.
Commercially prepared fabric is available for purchase and Ive used several of them. In the photo above, you can see that I wrote the names of some projects where I used each type. That reminds me of how that product worked and if I want to use it again. Some proved to be difficult to stitch though by hand, so I reserve those for machine stitching only.
If I plan to transfer a color photo and do all stitching by machine, I love to use the prepared silk fabric. It produces clear images with brilliant colors, and quilts up beautifully.
When I am transferring a vintage photo like the one in Four Brothers, above, I like the vintage look of an old piece of cotton or linen, so I prepare my own fabric.
A good source of linen is a vintage tablecloth (stained and ragged is okay) or napkins. This photo shows what a bargain such napkins can be. For $5, I bought six linen napkins, each larger than an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper. This is less expensive than the packages of prepared fabric.
First, I press the fabric (here I used a piece of a linen bedsheet – gray, so you can see the paper against it), then cut a piece about 9 x 12 ( a bit larger is okay).
There are many brands of freezer paper sheets available, I have used many and have no preference – this is just what I have on hand today. I know I can cut my own sheets of freezer paper to 8 ½ x 11 from a roll; I find the precut sheets to be easier to handle.
I iron the freezer paper (shiny side down) to the fabric.
Using a ruler and rotary cutter, I trim the fabric exactly along the edge of the paper. A sharp blade helps prevent ragged edges – I dont want loose threads to get caught in my printer.
I load the fabric on the freezer paper carrier sheet into my printer, taking care to be sure that the fabric side will be receiving the ink. I often print black and white images (even if the original photo is color) to give a vintage feel – then highlight some feature by painting it.
Here is a man in overalls fresh from the printer tray.
I sometimes put more than one photo on a page, depending on the desired finished size of my photo.
I paint the selected portion of the photo while the fabric is still adhered to the freezer paper. This adds stability and seems to help prevent bleeding. I use some of the surround space to test my paint or markers, as you see above.
I use the same process to print words on fabric. Yes, that’s printing on linen that’s been overdyed with indigo.
In my next post(s), Ill discuss my painting and quilting processes for these art quilts.
The story of the quilt pictured at the top of the post, the man with the bicycle, is here.
Ive written about my quilting sister, Tess, many times. She is our guilds 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 guilds 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, thats the Brown Bag challenge, and I remember baskets, and log cabins, and oh, theres the fans!
The label on the back memorializes her status as Queen Tess. I didnt get a photo, but the label is in the shape of a crown.
Im 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 wasnt meeting because of Covid), I agreed to plan the challenge for 2021. That doesnt mean Im 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, its more fun to participate in making a quilt following Tesss guidelines. But, I do understand that shes ready to sit back and watch and make the quilt that takes home the blue ribbon – without having had to make the ribbons.
Earlier this week, we found ourselves roaming around some of the mountains in north Georgia. We ended up having a picnic lunch beside a creek at Smithgall Woods State Park. The parking area was bounded by these fabulous trees – some species of pine, I think – so I was glad I happened to have some quits in the car.
This tree quilt is one of several I made many years ago, adapting a pattern by Caryl Bryer Fallert. The tree is appliquéd to a batik background fabric which still pleases me. The quilting is minimal stippling with an invisible thread (the early part of my quilting life, remember?) and I never gave it a name or attached a label. I actually made a couple of these as gifts; this one is still hanging around. I think seeing it perched on a fence under those trees is worth the years of storage. It measures 40 square.
I had another quilt in the car; one Ive written about before. But it is a showy quilt and wanted to nestle in the branches of one of these trees. So we tossed Remember Me up on a limb and snapped some photos. Details of the story behind and construction of this quilt are in an earlier post here.
My loyal companion helping with placement and photography. Life is oh-so-wonderful with him!
We weren’t the only ones enjoying a bite of lunch in this bucolic setting.
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 guilds 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 guilds 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 wasnt 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. Thats 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 Genies Cardinals for Cora. Cora is Genies three-year-old granddaughter and when she visits, she exclaims with delight over GiGis birds, her name for the cardinals in Genies 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 Marshas Murder Among the Posies. Marsha is like me in that shed 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 Deloras 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 Shirleys entry, Yankee Doodle Mickey. Not only was this quilt large, but it was Shirleys 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!
Helens 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.
Angies entry is framed under glass, so please ignore the glare. Entitled I Believe, it is a beautiful combination of appliqué and embroidery.
Pages entry, A Winter Evening, is a cardinal ready for display during the holidays.
Kathy is ready for fall with Pumpkin Season.
Pattis entry, Pandemic Flowers, includes a feathered design quilted into the border. Patti says she gets the prize for including the most of Tesss required yellow fabric.
Sharons 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. Im A Feathered Star, and Im 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. Jims title suggestion, Bob-bob-bobbin Along was better – but I didnt ask for his input until I had stitched a blue bird .maybe Ill 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.
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.
We went to Lakewood last weekend and I found a few vintage treasures.
Some delicious homespun fabrics and a cow came home with me.
The definition of homespun fabric is fabric made at home; fibers spun and/or woven at home. Synonyms include plain, unpolished, unsophisticated, simple, rustic. Well, those words fit the life I love.
The simplicity of design is part of their appeal, I think.
The wear and the stains in these fabrics speak to me of people who used them in their everyday life.
These homespun fabrics were in Shelbys collection. Shelbys son and daughter-in-law were delighted to sell them to me, seeing that I appreciated these pieces of history as Shelby had. I didnt know Shelby, but I like her.
Who else do you know who would delight in finding that the vintage fabric they bought was patched? I was thrilled to discover this more stories in the cloth.
And, this worn French tea towel came home with me, too. Look at those vibrant stripes after washing a gazillion times!
Kristine was not at her booth yet – we were early browsers – but her treasures spoke to me
old clothespins in a BLUE bucket…what’s not to love?
I came home with more than the fabrics I bought, though. I always find ideas to send my brain spinning doors, buckets, buttons, even a beekeeper .
I’ve written about visits to Lakewood before: The button lady post is here. Why I love beekeepers is here. And another cow is here.
