Tag: quiltmaking

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!

Trees at Smithgall Woods

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 I’ve 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.

School Days

One of my projects completed in 2020 was this School Days quilt made of wool and entirely hand stitched.

I had a delicious length of wool in a subtle plaid (thank you, Mary, for this glorious gift) that I wanted to use for the background.  I love the schoolhouse block, but it’s traditionally a pieced block.  I didn’t want to cut up this wool and sew it back together, I wanted to appliqué.  So I refashioned the traditional pieced block into an appliqué pattern.

The lines in the plaid meant I wouldn’t have to mark anything if I made the schoolhouses the right size to fit within the repeat of the plaids.  So a little measuring and planning, and I was ready.

I selected 20 different wools from my collection and ironed freezer paper templates on to the squares.  From that point on, I had a perfectly portable project needing only needle, thread, and thimble to work anywhere.  

I even laid the houses out on the background to get a pleasing distribution of color and pinned a swatch of fabric in each house’s position so I would know what went where.

I stitched each house to the wool using a whip stitch and thread (usually perle cotton #12) to match the house.  

When that was done, I layered it with a piece of hand-dyed linen on the back, pinned it in place, and began quilting.  I didn’t use batting – I thought the bulk of the wool-on-wool quilt was enough with a lightweight back.  I used 12 wt Aurifil thread for the quilting and found it a delight to pull though the  buttery wool fabric.

Again, I had nothing to mark, just stitched along threads in the plaid. It was sheer delight to have one spool of thread, a pair of scissors, a needle and thimble, and pick up and sew.  Relax, relax, relax.

Having no batting meant no where to hide the knot, and “popping” wasn’t easy either.  So, in another connection to past methods, I left the tails loose as if the quilt were “tied”.  But my ties are on the back, not the front.

When it came time to add a binding, I didn’t.  Add one, that is.  I cut the backing 1” wider than the top, folded over, folded over, stitched down.  That’s the way our grandmothers did it, and now I know why.  It’s lots easier than cutting, pressing, stitching by machine with mitered corners, then hand stitching down.  I will continue the latter process on most quilts, but bringing the back to the front on this one was a pleasure.

This was one of the quilts I carried on our photo trip to Indian Springs.  Some of these photos were made there, some in our front yard.  The finished size is 36” x 48”.

Garden Dance

Tawanda made an appearance in my last post.  I referred to her as my outdoor spirit doll.   Now she’s an element of an art quilt.  

We’ve been sheltering in place now for several weeks with no antiquing adventures to replenish my stash.  But, oh, how my collection has grown.

Since friends are at home, they’ve been cleaning closets and drawers and I’m reaping the rewards. One day the mailman brought a box from Alabama.  Susan had sent a box of tea towels, doilies, and dresser scarves her grandmother had passed along to her.  She kept the one she and her daughters would use, but sent others to me.  

This hankie’s image looks like the clematis blooming on our fence.

A friend is moving to another city and won’t be taking everything she has acquired over the years. She thought I could use a collection of women’s hankies. Oh, yes, indeed, I can.

This pile of blue from the fabric samples made my heart skip a few beats.

And Helen had a box of discarded drapery and upholstery samples.  Silk, linen, cotton, and wool.  Yes, wool.  I was amazed, too.  Lovely, lightweight, sheer wool.  I can’t wait to see how that behaves in the dye pot.

More drapery samples sorted by color…inspiration for a red quilt, I think.

And Joyce, a new friend who was at the last guild where I lectured has a box waiting for me filled with beautiful linens.  She no longer quilts, having moved on to a new focus in sewing, but has acquired beautiful pieces.  Once Joyce’s friends saw that she could give new life to their linens stored away in hiding, they shared with her.  “More than I can use in my lifetime,” she says.  So she is sharing with me.  Now that’s something to look forward to when this stay home order is lifted – a drive to collect that box!

Garden Dance celebrates Tawanda’s exuberance with Spring and all the treasures I described.  I sketched her image, transferred it to fabric, then collaged bits of embroidery from one of those silk samples I mentioned, vintage crochet, some recycled denim clothing.  A few buttons, and a lot of hand stitching brought it all together.  That pop of color at the top right is a piece of trim I bought in Paducah one year.  It was a dusty bolt of unused drapery trim, stained and hopeless looking – and containing some polyester, I’m sure.  But for some reason it spoke to me; maybe the many, many yards of something for little money.  But it loves new color.  I’ve painted some of it and the bit you see here has taken a dive in the indigo dye pot.

Tawanda is a sculpture made of rebar and cement and she’s nearly 20 years old.  She was one of those purchases that I thought, “I shouldn’t spend this much money on yard art, but I really want to take her home with me.”  She was at a local garden center and I think I saw her dancing there on a couple of visits before I succombed to her charms.

As is often the case, I used an old quilt remnant as the base for this collage. Notice the patch some previous owner had made – I was thrilled that I found a place to include it.

She has brought a smile to my face on countless days over these years and I’ve never regretted that expenditure. It seemed it was time to memorialize her in a quilt.

Her name, Tawanda, comes from the movie Fried Green Tomatoes.  if you are familiar with the characters in that production, you understand.

The quilt finishes at 12″ x 16″. Here you see the label attached to the “front” of the old quilt which is now the backside of Garden Dance. The faded homespun backing is one of my oft-used vintage backgrounds. I wonder if the woman who made this scrappy quilt years and years ago would approve of my use of her work. If she was a Tawanda herself, I think she would say, “You go, girl!”

Cousins

Jane and Susie were not just cousins.  They were first cousins.  They were not just first cousins, they were double-first cousins.  

Their mothers were sisters, their daddies were brothers.  They were two years apart in age, and shared not only all their relatives, more than the average common DNA, but many experiences.  This early photo (about 1940) conveys the closeness they shared.

This photo was taken at the home of their paternal grandparents.  Many family photos were set on this porch, on these steps, actually.  Imagine a Sunday afternoon after church, adults visiting on the porch; maybe other cousins playing in the yard, neighbors dropping by.  These two almost sisters (later, they would have other siblings, but not yet), forging a lifelong bond.

I printed the photo on vintage linen, and added red French knots as buttons on Jane’s dress.  The bow in her hair is a found earring.  

Layering the photo on wool batting before densely quilting the background adds dimension to the girls. The oval “mat” is a vintage linen embroidered placemat layered on commercial quilting fabric. Beneath all this assembly is a layer of thin cotton batting. Shells (repurposed from an old necklace found in a thrift store) were attached using red seed beads to anchor them.  I hand quilted all the layers together using a seed stitch with tatting thread.  This thread is a new discovery for me (found in a bag of sewing supplies from an estate sale).  I’ve never tatted nor made lace, but the size 80 cotton thread created for these crafts is perfect for a lot of the hand stitching I do. 

Note to quilters:  that seed stitch leaves a messy backside, so when I use it, I don’t have the final backing on the quilt.  I attached another layer, the piece with red cross stitch on it, using the invisible baste stitch I learned from Jude Hill.  That’s really a seed stitch, too, with just a dot of thread showing on the top, the longer stitch on the “back” nestled in the batting, not coming through to the other side. 

That backing with red stitching is a section of an old tablecloth.  I found it on an antiquing plunder and was drawn to the cross stitch, of course.  The tablecloth has some stains and had a hole in it – making it less than desirable as a tablecloth.    But I rescued it and put it to work.  It’s very desirable as a component of art quilts!

The final quilt measures 16″ x 23″.

A Wonky Star goes to College

It has been too hot in recent days to be dragging quilts and cameras around and staging photographs.  But last week, Jim and I had cabin fever and decided a “ride-about” was in order.  It seemed a good idea to throw in a small quilt, just in case.

We ended up on the campus of my college alma mater and decided to snap a couple of photos.  This Wonky Blue Star quilt posed on the banister of an antebellum home that’s now part of the administrative buildings for Georgia College.  When I was enrolled there; oh, my, 50 years ago, this house was used as a dormitory.

I lived in this house for a couple of years. At one time my bedroom was the corner room you see here behind the rocking chairs.  

The view from that window, across the street, was the old governor’s mansion, seen here with the blue quilt posed on that fence.  This building was used as the president’s residence some years, and the site of several festive events for students.  My mother was especially entranced by those beautifully decorated rooms.

As I peeped through the fence to the immaculate lawn, I remembered how pleased she was to attend an outdoor reception there one spring day in my freshman year. Mama would love this campus even more now.

It was hot, as expected, so our time out of the car was brief.  But the sidewalks were busy with students on the way to class – or somewhere.  Enrollment has doubled since I was a student there and there are some changes to the campus.  But all of them are good.  Historic buildings are preserved and the classic beauty of the place is intact.  The energy of people going about the business of learning is always exciting.

The Wonky Star quilt is one I’ve made several times in several sizes.  I’ve taught it as a quick technique to create a block or a whole quilt, as in this case.  You need thirteen squares of fabric the same size and some simple cutting and sewing directions to make a quick quilt.

Here, I chose a big print that I was reluctant to cut into tiny pieces and a contrasting background fabric.  A simple wavy line of machine quilting meant that this was a really quick project.  This one measures 33” square finished and works perfectly as a table topper.

In the next post, I’ll share other Wonky Star quilts and the instructions.

Dipping in the Indigo

I recently gave a talk to a guild about using indigo fabrics in quilts.  I shared old quilts and new ones I had made.  I included purchased indigo fabrics from Africa (again, both old and new ones), commercial reproductions of indigo fabrics, and fabric I had dipped in the indigo dye bath myself.

Once home, I rearranged quilt displays so I could visit with these pieces more.

And, with warmer temperatures outside, I knew it was time to resurrect the dye pot and get busy.

So for the past couple of days, I’ve been dipping. Yes, even a lampshade.

This is a tablecloth my mother crocheted for me in 1985.  It was beige.  I would see examples of this in antique stores and think how beautiful these objects would be if they were blue.  

So I bought one to test my theory.  I dyed this one on Tuesday and I liked it so well that I dared to dye Mama’s handwork on Wednesday.

I dipped a lot of other fabrics each day, too.

Napkins are always a favorite.  The group pinned together is 9 matching linen napkins that had never been used.  All the same size, I think they will be great backgrounds for appliqué.


A printed black on white linen skirt takes the dye beautifully.  And, one of the most delightful pieces I dipped is a piece of Moda’s new line of barkcloth.  It’s 100% cotton, but beefier than quilting cotton, and dipped and washed and dried, it is soft and buttery and ravels beautifully.  Raveling well is important to me.

I’ve joined a new online group with Jude Hill, her latest adventure in soulful stitching.  Ragmates in this journey with me can expect to see some of this dye lot in future explorations.  I’ve written about Jude before in many posts, but she is the one who convinced me that I could explore indigo dying.  Thanks, Jude.

Portable Magic

In my most recent post, I had a photo of this quilt and promised details about it soon.  The project I called Portable Magic was a sample I made after agreeing to teach the paper foundation piecing technique at a local quilt shop.

I feel like Ginger Rogers when I’m paper foundation piecing.  You know, she did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.

The technique of paper foundation piecing in quilting is like that.  You truly are working with fabric that is upside down and backwards to normal piecing procedures. The technique is a go-to method when you need really sharp points or have awkward angles that would be tricky to piece traditionally. 

I had been asked to teach the technique years ago, but was reluctant to do so.  Most traditional patterns that use this method involve curved piecing, too, which would be a whole different lesson.  A three-hour class was not long enough to get folks comfortable with both techniques.

When I saw the pattern called Book Nerd by Angela Pingel, I offered to finally teach the class. (pattern available here) This book block had enough pieces to teach the technique, but not so many that it wasn’t doable in a few hours.  And, curved piecing could be saved for another day.


This quilt, Portable Magic, was the result.  I didn’t make 24 book blocks, as the pattern depicted.  I made five blocks and pieced them in a rather improvisational manner to make a child-sized lap quilt.  I inked the word “read” in the corner, rather than appliquéing those tiny letters.

My finished quilt measures 42” x 50”.  That’s a nice size for a class sample because you can sometimes use just one width of fabric for the backing.  

Speaking of the backing – this fabric was a fun bit of yardage I bought probably 15 years ago.  I loved it.  But it was one of those pieces I just couldn’t cut up.  So I hung on to it until the right project came along.  This one seemed perfect to me.  I pieced the back just because I like pieced backs.

Dewey Godwin (jdquilts.com) did a great job quilting it for me.

My spin on the paper piecing technique involves a lot of holding the paper and pieces up to the light to get the positioning just right before stitching.  I precut the pieces, oversizing them a bit – that helps get the angles right, making positioning easier, too.

The title came from a quote from Stephen King, “Books are a uniquely portable magic.”  I used a vintage doily for the label. 

As I mentioned when describing Miss Nellie’s Country Garden, I used a wider binding than usual on this quilt.  This finished at 1/2″ wide and I used one of my favorite fabrics for binding:  a stripe cut on the bias.

I used the paper foundation piecing method to stitch the flying geese in an oval in Endless Migration.  I now realize I haven’t shared the story of this challenge quilt before, so I will.

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.

Loving Hearts

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.