In 1952, he was four years old and wanted to fly a kite. In this photo, he watched as his Daddy held the string and the kite climbed higher and higher. The air was crisp, the wind pulling the string quickly. At the moment the photo was taken, the boy sensed disaster on the horizon.
He was right. Shortly after the shutter clicked, the string broke and the red kite was gone. As the little boy grew, more kites flew and did not fly away, but the anxiety born that day was ever present when the kites were in the air.
When asked for appropriate titles for this art quilt, he said, Childhood Trauma, or Hold Tight, Daddy, or Don’t Let Go, would all be appropriate. In truth, he barely remembers the day, and probably wouldn’t remember it at all were it not for the photo. This is exactly the kind of experience I love to capture in cloth. A memory. A story. A moment frozen.
I printed the photo on a piece of vintage linen from an old tablecloth and added color to the boy’s jeans and cap with watercolor crayons. I had overdyed some old linen in the indigo vat that looked a lot like a winter sky, so I cut the foreground image from the photo and stitched it to the blue. 
I appliquéd the kite using a bit of French General red fabric, and hand embroidered the kite string and tails. When I added machine quilting stitches, I used dark thread to emphasize the fence posts and trees.
I finished the piece by attaching the fabric photo unit to an old quilt remnant, adding borders of ribbon and a coarsely woven red checked fabric. Hand and machine stitching were used for this step. 
The piece finished at 16” x 22”. A vintage doily serves as the label.
I love to sew with red and green fabrics during this time of the year so I often start a new project for my sewing serenity during the season. In the days of Christmas 2008, I began work on what became Pomegranates and Poinsettias. I was spending quite a bit of time with my mother-in-law, Sadie, during a time of failing health for her.
sampler background (as does everyone else who sees this quilt), and when I decided to add buttons for the berries, she giggled like a little girl. Imagine, putting BUTTONS on a quilt.
It’s a beautiful fall day, the sky is blue, gingko leaves are at their peak of golden, so we head to the cemetery. Isn’t that what all families do on a glorious day? They do if they live where we do and have a more than 200 acres of serene beauty to stroll.
My latest art quilt is the result of last Saturday’s stroll. Jim took the photo of Galadrielle, an angel at the foot of Duane Allman’s grave. I printed it on vintage linen fabric, added some stitching though layers of wool batting, more vintage linen, raw silk, and an indigo-dyed remnant of an old quilt. A few buttons and a bit of angelic lace came out of my treasure bins for this project.
I used free motion machine stitching to define the shape of Galadrielle and add dimension and detail. Hand stitching was used everywhere else. Some unknown sewist had done some hand stitching on the remnant I used as the base. Her hand quilting and cross stitch has a new life. The worn quilt has been cut up and used in several of my favorite pieces. I’m loving the blue ones best! I wonder if this unknown colleague did her hand stitching while visiting with friends, or perhaps while listening to the television (or radio, in her day) as I do.
On this Black Friday we wanted to drive backroads with the camera and maybe find an antique shop or two. One goal of photography was some country Christmas scenes. The treasure of the day was a church decorated with Christmas wreaths on every window. And, this church has a chimney. I’ve never seen a church with a chimney. An old cemetery surrounded by a white picket fence is well maintained by a local boy scout troop.
We had lunch at our favorite locally owned restaurant in Monroe, GA, across the street from this pocket park. The focus of this park is an old bank vault (left when the downburst of ’93 destroyed the building). Two treasures here: the safe itself and the fact that the town preserved it and made a park there.
Visits to a few antique stores generated minimal purchases. The highlight for me was packages of old bias tape and rickrack, all cotton, all unopened, bearing original $.19 price tags. I could imagine the vendor thinking, “nobody will want this old stuff.” And, I’m thinking, “WOW. What fun is this!” The wicker item had a tag saying “lampshade,” but I thought “bee skep”.
Yes, we did some shopping on Black Friday. But we didn’t elbow anyone out of the way, never stood in line, didn’t get frustrated, and had no traffic snarls to navigate. Back roads and small businesses, that’s the way to do it.
Ethel teasingly dubbed herself the complainer, said she called Queen Tess 65 times. She doesn’t like square quilts, doesn’t like the fan block, and doesn’t like yellow. But Ethel is not a quitter, she’s a quilter, and her resulting piece is one of my favorites (the blue in the center is to dye for).
Linda combined this guild’s challenge with a project she was entering in a Windows and Doors exhibit at the Ashe Arts Center in West Jefferson, NC. Working from a photo she had taken in Nimes, France, Linda pieced the doorway panel. She added asymmetrical borders to bring the project to the 36” requirement for our guild, including pieced fans as butterfly wings and some yellow flowers blooming on the vine.
Sharon made, not one, but two quilts. One was made with fabric she bought in Japan while visiting her son and his family. The other, Ocho, RibBonz, and Shadow–3 FANtastic Cats, was inspired by several quilts on Pinterest. She has two cats name Ocho and RibBonz.. Since she needed three fans, she had to make three cats, and Shadow is the name she gave to her imaginary cat. She was asked to explain about one cat’s tail. He’s scared, she said.
Marie machine pieced and hand quilted a beauty including linen and cotton fabrics. Her title was Did you mean these fans? An M&M’s button on the label depicted her reference to the popular tv commercial. Dewey confessed that this commercial was his inspiration, too. His quilt exists only in his mind as he’s been busy building a new quilting studio.
Susi’s first place winner, Fantastic Frolicking Felines, brought smiles to all of us. Look how much fun these dancing cats are having. I think Dewey had fun, too, quilting this beauty. He added the thread-painted musical notes as he quilted the entry for Susi on his longarm machine. Susi adapted a pattern from Amy Bradley for this crowd pleaser.
In 2010, my photographer husband Jim captured a magical moment at sunrise with cows in the mist. I was captivated by the photo from the moment I saw it and immediately framed and hung an 8” x 10” print in our house.
I pieced four fan blocks (paper foundation piecing because they are tiny – 2” blocks) to create the windmill. To create the base, I photographed a toy windmill I have as part of my decor (complete with cows on my hutch in the breakfast room) and printed it in various sizes to test the scale. Using that photo as a pattern, I painted the windmill base using India ink, appliquéd the fan unit (the windmill) and had my quilt.
Then I remembered “yellow” requirement. Yellow, like the sun. Got it. The photo was taken at sunrise. So, a rising sun was appliquéd, then the quilting came into play. Green grass, blue wind, and continuous curves in the outer border all were quilted with 100 weight silk thread. Now I’m a fan of fans.
Our guild’s challenge quilt is due in three weeks. It’s secret until then, so I can’t show photos of it now, but I can say I’m excited about what I’m doing. 
I cut the largest square I could from the focus print (20” finished. (I know – it must have been a generous half-yard cut)), then cut smaller squares from the fish fabric and the others. 20” finished was a nice measure to use as the reference. It was easy to patch together units using 1”, 2”, 4”, 5”, 10” components.
As the project grew on the design wall, I had fun finishing a fish. Where one had been cut off, I could find missing components of that fellow somewhere else in the smaller squares and place it close by to make his image extend into the other spaces. I even discovered a batik striped fabric that mimicked the background of Mably’s fish and inserted that.
As the “squarequarium” grew on my design wall, I began imagining quilting lines. I could stitch even more of the missing parts of fish bodies, add bubbles in the water, and enhance fish fins and tails. Oh, my, how fun was that?
I sewed quickly to get the piecing done, layered it with cotton batting, and began dancing with my sewing machine. I used some heavy threads on some of the solid spaces, enjoyed stitching lots of free-motion quilting motifs, and especially enjoyed adding the octopus and starfish.
A solid blue fabric on the back made the stitching details noticeable. Susan said she liked the back of this quilt better than the front. So for her next birthday, I stitched a fish on blue fabric for her beach house.
Neither of them ever married. This photo was taken sometime around 1912. They were 18 and 15 at the time. Within ten years, their mother would be confined to a wheelchair, their older sister would die in childbirth, leaving two young daughters to their care.
During WWII, the teacher was offered “script” as her paycheck (a promise for money from the state someday), so she traveled further to work in a naval ordinance plant. The younger worked as a switchboard operator and in so doing, connected many families to news of their beloved ones. She was the first in town to get the word that the war was over, running down the stairs of the downtown office to spread the news.
Details of quilt: A vintage photo (circa 1912) of two unmarried sisters was printed on a remnant of a vintage linen tablecloth. Hand-guided, free-motion machine quilting was used to add detail, lace collars and beading were added with hand stitching. The linen background for the photo was attached to a vintage linen log cabin quilt made from silk. A vintage cotton doily was used for the label.
I’m home after three days at the Georgia National Fair where I shared my work as one of their Artists in Residence.
I took the Featherweight because it is my traveling sewing friend. I take it to classes and work sessions at our local guild, I have taken it on a photo trip when Jim was taking a course and I would have time alone in a motel room. It is compact, light weight, and a work horse. Maybe everyone knows that. But everyone doesn’t know that it can be used for free-motion quilting.
Children were fascinated with the Featherweight. Maybe because it is so small and sweet it looks manageable. It’s certainly not threatening in any way. I stitched names into quilt sandwiches for Marin, Christopher, Alexis, Catherine, Mark, and more. Fragments of cloth, batting, and a bit of thread can bring smiles to faces of children of all ages.
I talked with women who made one quilt, or started one, then became frustrated with a skill they didn’t have, and put it away. I talked with those who work full time and can’t work it in their schedule. My answers: “Relax, it’s supposed to be fun.” “Join a guild. Someone there will offer advice and assistance,” “Start with something portable, like English Paper Piecing.”
