Amelie's Quilt-Finished!

Those snow days last week were very productive for me.

Amelie's Quilt has been mailed to California for my little great-niece.

I started this one a year ago at the Charity Sew-In day with the Whacky Ladies Bee.  Donna Sontag lets us meet in her shop, Whatever's Quilted, where she taught me to use her Accu-Quilt to make scads of 5-inch squares.  I used fabrics in lots of different widths to make rows, which I alternated with white sashing strips.  

The backing is a coordinating print, and I made a label from a novelty fabric with hummingbird hearts.

I still have to put the binding on the other quilt I made that day, which will be donated to charity.  It looks almost the same.

And for your daily dose of cute...here is my little granddaughter, Layla.  She is happy, even though her quilt is not finished yet!

Charity Quilt Tops

I was able to make two charity quilt tops from the colorful squares and strips I cut and sewed recently.

I will try to quilt them the next time we go to the mountains, where my long arm machine is located.  But since it is in an unheated basement, they might not get done for awhile.  We are going back to Florida February 8 for my husband's last round of radiation, so they may have to wait until we get back in March.

Just for fun I have been doing some painting on some heavy brown craft paper that was lying around the studio.  I started out just painting some circles and applying color with acrylics.   The first layers looked pretty awful.

Here is how they look now, with lots more paint, ink, watercolor spray, oil pastels, and gesso.  Just playing!

Since these are just on a brown paper substrate, I'm not sure how many more times I can get them wet.  These are sort of a preliminary to painting in acrylics on mounted canvas.  They may end up 
adhered to a journal page before I mess around with them any more!

Last weekend we visited my brother-in-law and his wife in Maggie Valley, NC, outside of Asheville.  They live in a log cabin high on a hill.  There were lots of photo ops of the beautiful countryside, especially when we woke up to snow on Sunday morning!

We are expecting some snow and maybe some ice tomorrow here in Raleigh.  They have already closed schools before the first flake has fallen.  It will be interesting to see how much we get here.  Our mountain home in northwestern North Carolina may get a couple of feet!  We have a web cam on the house, so we can experience the deep snow from a distance.

Charity Quilt WIP

I did a little sewing on the charity quilt squares that I cut with the Accu-Quilt cutting system at my bee's sew-in last week.  My theme fabric was the patchwork print.  I also cut a few coordinating squares.

I decided to make a top similar to the ones several other members of the bee were making at our sew-in.  They basically are 5-inch patches of different lengths.  The ones from guild kits had white sashing strips, and also put some of the white strips in between the patches.  I decided to use the white sashing between the rows only.

I have several boxes of strips left over from other projects, so it was easy to chain-piece onto the strips that I had.

I have many, many more of the the multi-colored patchwork squares, so this quilt top will be growing.

I also have a new project that I did not want...a quilt repair job.  More on this later.  All I can say is...

"My Grand-dog ate my Handwork!"

Reversible Holiday Table Mat

I recently made a small quilt to use on our dining room table.  It is reversible, so can be used for either Thanksgiving or Christmas.

I started out by making a "Lucky Star" block from Atkinson Designs.  I am making a large quilt using this pattern for my friend Marcia, and wanted to practice.

The green outer border is flannel.  I did freehand machine quilting with my Janome 6600 domestic machine.  I used a variegated poly thread everywhere except in the gold background.

The feather is just done freehand, no drawing or pattern used.

Here is he other side.  I used one block from a fabric designed to make pillows or a cheater quilt.

I did not feel like binding it, so just made a pillow-case type block by turning it, hemming up the opening, and top stitching the edges.

I hope you are enjoying your fall, and thinking about your holiday projects!

Beautiful Customer Quilt

I finally finished quilting Carolyn Ormond's sampler quilt.  What a stunner!

The edges are both angular and circular.  She should have fun binding it!  I decided to use white thread and do mostly background quilting to make the dark motifs pop. 

Some of the shapes were too large to be left unquilted, so I added some lines to enhance the motifs.

It was a pleasure to work on such a pretty quilt!

The mountains are starting to change color.  We had some pretty rides last weekend.

We continued to work on the landscaping.  I moved a lot of dirt and gravel around as Charlie filled in with the tractor.

Just a few steps and the Great Wall project will be finished.

We will eventually paint, stucco, or add cultured stone to the cinder block, which is now painted with dry-lock.

We were all tired after the weekend...even the dogs (we had our grand-dog Roo with us.)

New Baby Quilt Top

I have had these blocks on the design wall for a couple of weeks.  Now they are sewn together.

Most of the fabrics were left over from my great-nephew Lucas's quilt that started with ten-inch squares.  I added some pinks for this version, which will be for his cousin Holly.   I originally wanted to just make half-square triangles, but half of those ten-inch blocks looked a little too large for a baby quilt.  I cut each HST in half again.  I lost a lot of the fabric that way when they were squared up, but I like the look much better.

These could have been set in hourglass style with the darks together and lights together, but I opted to set dark against light.  It makes a pinwheel set on point.

I auditioned several fabrics for inner and outer borders, and finally decided to just use this dark butterfly print.

The dark background makes the bright colors pop, and the colors in the print echo the fabrics in the blocks.

Lately I have been trying to use up my fabric stash instead of purchasing more.  The last few quilt backings I have made have been pieced.  I spent a good part of the afternoon piecing the backing for this quilt from coordinating fabrics.

I had to ask myself, "Why didn't I just spring for a few yards of fabric instead of doing all this piecing on the back?  But it will make the back of the quilt more interesting and colorful.

Now I need to find time to go out to Clayton to visit my Gammill at its foster mother's house.  We set it up out there to make my home look more spacious as it is on the market.  I sure do miss it!  We thought we had found some buyers last week, but the offer did not come through.  It's a process!

Another Baby Gets His Quilt

 

 

Here is my sister's new grandson, Lucas, enjoying his quilt from Great-Aunt Jeanne.  I think he really likes all the bright colors!

 

We are up at our place in the North Carolina mountains for Mothers' Day weekend.  The weather has been a little iffy...but not a total wash-out.  In fact, we have had lots of good rides across the tree farms on the mountains.

 



I wish I could capture the intoxicating scent of the Christmas trees after a rain.  It smelled so good!

When we were last up here just two weeks ago, the trees had no leaves, and there were no wildflowers yet.  Now we have leaves and flowers galore.  I took a little nature trip along our creek, searching for flowers. 

There were a few trillium plants. 

These are ferns in the "fiddle head" stage, before they unfurl.

 

The lady slipper orchids have come up, but they are not blooming yet.

 

 

These common yellow wildflowers grow in abundance everywhere there is sunshine, including here next to the dam.

 

 

These little guys are called bluets.  They look kind of white in this picture, but are actually a light blue or lavender color.

 

 

I bought some Knock-Out roses for my sister's birthday, and got a few for my little flower bed up here.  Poor Kasey had to ride in the back with six ouchy plants competing for space.

 

On the way home we will stop at our son Dave's house and enjoy a visit.  It will be Emily's very first Mother's Day.  Happy Mothers Day to all of you!

The Rest of the Story

In my last post, I told the story of the little log cabin quilt that recently came home to me after thirteen years.  Here, as Paul Harvey would say, is "the rest of the story."


As I mentioned, my father and mother were both excellent dancers.  In addition to ballroom dancing, they participated in square dance and round dance after moving to North Carolina.  In fact, they met at a school dance back in junior high, and were sweethearts ever since.


Here is a picture of my father next to the portrait he painted of my mother wearing his favorite red dress.  As I recall, he painted this while she was still living.  Dad looks like he is wearing a tuxedo with a snappy vest- perhaps to the wedding of one of my younger siblings.  The note on the back says 1996.  Mom was taken from us way too soon from cancer in 1984.

I actually got to wear this dress once.  Charlie and I got married while we were still college students.  I had a great job working at the student bookstore on campus at North Carolina State University for about three years.  Shortly before his graduation, Charlie landed a job at the university business office.  That Christmas, the chancellor invited the entire business office and their dates to his lovely home for a party.  I made a panicked call to my mother because I had nothing appropriate to wear.  She brought me the red dress and, I think, even took a few stitches in it to make it fit me a little better.  When we arrived at the door, Chancellor Caldwell greeted us himself, and seemed confused about which one of us was the business office employee!  But he gave me effusive compliments on my "beautiful Christmas dress."


As I wrote previously, Dad brought me the dress in 1998 to see if I could make a quilt from it.  The first attempt was a colorful wall hanging, but it was evident that he really wanted a snuggle quilt.  So, with lots of fabric left from this floor-length gown, I began again. 


You can imagine how hard it was for me to cut into this dress the first time! I remembered the gown as being sort of a polished cotton, dark red with a border print.  Of course, the garment was around thirty years old when I started the  project, so it may have faded a bit.  But it was a shiny, thin fabric, sort of a silky polyester, perhaps. And it definitely looked more orange than red.  I used a French-fuse interfacing to back the parts that I used.

The blocks are Album Blocks, and the orange center of each is from Mom's dress.  The rest of the block fabrics are hand-dyed or commercial cottons. 

Here is the second quilt made from Mother's Dancing Dress.

This one has been hung on the wall over Dad's bed, used as a lap quilt, tucked over his recliner...but always lovingly used.  The other quilt got packed away when he sold his house and moved to Boone, and was not unearthed until he moved out last spring.

A final funny end to the story:  when my sister Katy went up to Boone to get Dad out of the nursing home, she went by his apartment to get a few things that he would need.  The first time I visited Dad at her home, he was still mostly bedridden.  She made a point of mentioning that she had brought his quilt, thinking how pleased I would be.  Unfortunately, the quilt she retrieved from the apartment was a blue Wal-mart patchwork bedspread!  Oh, well, he's got his paintings and his books and his quilt with him now.  And he is doing much better, and that's all that counts!