Tag: heart

Red Hearts

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.)

Dancing Hearts

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.

Loving Blues

My latest quilt project is finished and has been on an outing already.  Loving Blues rode with us to 7th Street Salvage today.  Coincidentally, perhaps, everything we liked was either blue or white.

Catherine graciously permitted me to pose my quilt in several spots, and oh, what fun we had!  Blues posed on a mantel,

on a group of bathtubs (love the blue oars, too),

on a dry sink (I’m really in love with that pump!),

and outside on a precious little structure.  Those blue tin tiles are fabulous everywhere, aren’t they?

Once home, Blues posed with the treasures we brought home.  The blue sphere is a duckpin bowling ball.  The pins and balls on display reminded Jim of playing this game at Indian Springs State Park during his childhood.  The coloring on this ball meant that it was coming home with us! (and yes, those are blue metal tiles you see in the corner.)

The sun was out for a few minutes, so we let Blues swing in the breeze. 

Yes, the vest I am wearing had scraps that found their way into this quilt, too.

Quilt details:  It measures 40” x 60” finished.

This has memories stitched together, some fabrics held my memories, some held memories of other hands, other lives. All fabrics were either vintage linens I had purchased, many of them overdyed in indigo, or bits of clothing from my closet and Jim’s.

There are fabrics from several of Jim’s shirts, some from shirts of mine. The V is made from a homespun cotton fabric I bought at Elco Antique Market in the 1980’s, my mother made a jumper for me and I wore it for years. Now some of that precious find lives in this quilt.

I changed the name.  That earlier post was called Loving Hearts, and I thought that would be the finished title.  But, no, the quilt said it was about Loving Blues.  Ok.  The label is a big heart cut from an overdyed linen tablecloth remnant with beads added.

Like memories that vary; some bring smiles, some bring tears; these fabrics differed, too.  Some light weight linen from my breezy summer shirts was soft and stretchy.  Others, like the ticking used to make the letter “E” and the handwoven toweling used for the “L”, were thick, made to be durable for centuries.  That made quilting interesting.  I chose a meandering vine with hearts.

And the pins and silicon tips I mentioned in this earlier post –  they are great!  I feared that they might make maneuvering the quilt under the sewing machine a bit trickier, but, no problem!  And the pinching motion necessary with safety pins, which is hard on arthritic hands, is gone.

Princess Priscilla

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.