Anyone Can Make A Quilt Like This!

I haven’t written a blog post for quite a while. I’ve been super busy getting ready for – and taping! – my new Craftsy class! It should be online within a few weeks. I’ll be sure to tell you more about it soon, and I’ll have a free class giveaway, too!

But, in the meantime, I thought I would share this little quilt with you. Anyone can make a memory quilt like this!

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Three of the blocks were obviously made by Annie, who was probably about 3 or 4 years old at the time. The clown applique block was from a book of applique which I used to make many bibs and t-shirts for the kids. It is fused, and not even stitched around the edges. My Mom put it together and did some very simple machine quilting.

Let’s look at those three “original” blocks!

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I have no idea if that is a swimming pool, or a yard, or… next to the house.

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This is obviously a Christmas tree. What I like best is that the blond, green-eyed girl has white teeth painted in her red smile!

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And here we have a pretty detailed bicycle, although I have no idea what those other objects are!

So folks, don’t always worry about coordinating fabrics, or consistent block sizes, or workmanship. While this quilt will never win any contests, it is still most decidedly a treasure!

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Argentum

 

Argentum is the Latin word for silver. That seemed an appropriate name for this little quilt!Stewart_Argentum_full_2

It’s a miniature – just 16.5 inches square, and was completed in 2014. It was juried into the Road to California contest, and was shipped yesterday. It’s already been in two other shows; it won 1st Place, Miniatures, at the 2014 IQA Houston show, and an Honorable Mention, Miniatures, at the 2015 AQS Paducah show.

It was made from silver gray silk/cotton Radiance fabric on both the front and back (I have a story about the back…) The machine embroidery is from Zundt.

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The design is for two colors – the first, a satin-stitched design, and the second, an outline around all the satin stitching.

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Here you can see the corner design stitched four times around the center, and you can see the metallic outline stitching, on this sample in gold. I skipped the first color – the satin stitch portion – and stitched only the outline. Done with antique silver metallic thread, it creates a very light, airy filigree look. (See other things I’ve done with this design here.)

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The same four designs as above, stitched only with the silver outline, then turned on point, form the center of the little quilt. The corner design was stitched individually in the corners,

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then stitched side by side, mirror imaging each time, to form the border. Just this one machine embroidery design, stitched multiple times, was used in this quilt. I used water-soluble stabilizer so there would be no stabilizer remaining in the stitching to make the quilt stiff.

Okay, the machine embroidery was the easy part! Next came the applique of teeny-tiny bias strips. These are less than one-eighth inch wide, too narrow for me to make a stitched, turned tube. To make these tiny strips, I cut bias strips of the silk/cotton fabric about one inch wide, pressed the fabric in half lengthwise, then stitched one-eighth inch away from the fold with very short straight stitches. I pressed the narrow folded edge over the stitching, so that the stitching was just on the under side of the fold and didn’t show on top. Then, I trimmed the fabric very close to the stitching, so that the raw edge was hidden under that less-than-one-eighth-inch-wide fold of fabric (that’s why I needed those very short stitches, to prevent fraying.) This fold wouldn’t stay pressed for me (it was too much bias and way too narrow) so I used a toothpick to apply just the tiniest bit of water-soluble glue to hold that fold in place, then pressed the glue dry. Finally, I hand-appliqued those tiny little strips to the quilt top using Superior Threads Kimono silk thread. (The scallops along the binding were appliqued on after the quilting was done, but before the binding was applied.)

Next – time for quilting. The back is the same fabric as the front, and the batting is Hobbs Tuscany wool. First, I stitched in the ditch of every bit of the silver embroidery with monofilament in the needle and silver metallic in the bobbin. The rest of the quilting was done with the silk Kimono thread in the needle and Superior Bottom Line in the bobbin.

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I finished all the quilting. The little parallel lines are about 14 per inch! Almost done! Ready to soak and apply the binding, right? Wrong!

After I soaked the quilt, look what I found on the back!

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(Yes, this is the back.) See that red spot? Did it wash away? No! Aaargh! I could have just placed the label in an odd place on the back and covered it, but the red showed through faintly on the front. What had happened?

Just before I made this quilt, I had made a quilt for a benefit for Libby Lehman from red, orange, and turquoise silks. Apparently, a tiny thread of the red silk stuck around, and floated onto the back of this quilt after I had soaked and as I was blocking it. Red silk bleeds terribly! So there, on the back of my little quilt, was a bright red splotch! Tiny, but obvious. I asked for advice on facebook, and tried some of the suggestions, all to no avail. Finally, I decided I had nothing to lose, and poured Chlorox 2 directly on the spot. After several hours, it lightened slightly. I rinsed the quilt, and put the peroxide bleach on again. I repeated this several times a day for almost a week! Finally, the spot was light enough so that only I could tell where it was, and I was afraid that I would irreparably damage the fabric, so I called it quits. Even I can’t find the spot now!

Whew! Onward… I blocked it one more time, marked where the binding would go, appliqued the little bias scallops, and applied the binding, which is just over one-eighth inch wide.

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Because it still needed a little something more, I used the silver metallic thread and stitched by hand an outline stitch just inside the binding. I added the sleeve and label.

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See, no red spot! 🙂

This was at Houston, and will give you a better idea of the size.

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You can read about the flower pins I’m wearing in this post. And, of course, I made my top! It’s StyleArc’s Gina Tucked Top.

Wish my little silver quilt good luck at Road to California!

Update 1-19-16: This was part of the e-mail message I received today – “Your entry #12256 titled “Argentum” has been awarded “Excellence In Machine Quilting” by our judges.  You will receive $1,500.00 in prize money.  This award was graciously sponsored by Primitive Gatherings.”

Woohoo!!!

 

 

A Red Dress: Part 2 – Houston Quilt Festival

So many of you commented about my new red dress, which I made for the award ceremony at the Houston Quilt Festival! Well, I’m home from Houston after a very enjoyable week, and it’s time for an update. We arrived in Houston on Tuesday afternoon. Part of the prize for the top winners is travel and hotel accommodations. Here I am, ready to go to the convention center for the awards! Makeup, nail polish, Annie Pennington brooch and earrings (of course!) – the works! 🙂

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Here are those red shoes!

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The presentation of the awards is fun, with all of the category awards given first. The blue ribbon winner in each category is revealed from behind a black curtain on the wall of the auditorium, with spotlights focused on that quilt. The eight big awards are given last. My quilt, Blue Plate Special, was awarded the Master Award for Thread Artistry, sponsored by Superior Threads! After the awards are all given, attendees get to get up close to see the winning quilts, and talk to the makers. And, yes, the top winners get flowers! 🙂

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On Wednesday, there is a luncheon at which the top winners all give short speeches, then Preview Night is from 5PM to 10PM. This is the way my quilt was displayed.

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I spent a lot of time in front of my quilt for the next four days, talking to thousands of people.

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You can see all of the prize winners here. I was also awarded an Honorable Mention for my quilt Crystal Garden, but that’s a post for another day.

Here is Blue Plate Special

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The quilt is 73″ x 73″, and was completed this year. It is white cotton sateen on the front and back. It all started with the dark blue print strip of fabric that surrounds the central star, and forms the border corners. That strip was left over from a quilt kit I cut out for my Mom to piece! The fabric was a print stripe, and this section wasn’t used, so I kept it. The colors for the quilt all flowed out of that little print strip. And the corners are the size they are because that’s all the fabric I had! Those strips were appliqued on, then I used a decorative machine stitch – little satin stitch dots – to accent the edges. All the rest of the color on the quilt is digitized machine embroidery. The more solid-looking, darker areas are machine embroidery applique, done with old Cherrywood fabrics from my stash. The free-standing lace border and the large swirl designs are from Zundt; the rest of the embroidery designs are from OESD. Except for the lace, the embroidery was all stitched on the quilt top only. After the embroidery was completed, I layered the top, batting (Hobbs 80/20 bleached), and backing, then did all the quilting free-motion on my APQS George, which is a sit-down machine. The quilting was done with The Bottom Line thread in the needle and bobbin. I usually like to use silk thread in the needle, but I didn’t think this quilt was going to be good enough to justify the expense! To make the lace, I embroidered segments on water-soluble stabilizer, joined all the segments together in a big loop, then soaked the stabilizer out. I soaked this for a couple of days, with several water changes, because I don’t want any stabilizer to remain in the lace. Then, after the lace was complete, and the quilting was all finished, I stitched the lace to the quilt, using free-motion stitching and monofilament thread. I hope this quilt does half as well at the other shows in which I’ve entered it!

Now, it’s time to get back to work on my quilt to enter into next year’s Houston contest.

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The deadline is only about six months away…

Mark’s T-Shirt Quilt

Mark’s birthday is today! Happy birthday! This is what I made for him for his birthday three years ago. He knew what I was doing, because I had to get the shirts from him, but he didn’t get to see how I put them together until his big day.

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If you know Mark, you know he has some rather eclectic interests, which are reflected in some of the shirts he chose for me to use! 🙂

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Included are shirts from his high school, his sons’ schools, items from his professional work, and, of course, Texas!

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In case you can’t tell, he went to Baylor, which is well represented in the quilt. 😉

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I cut the shirts apart, then backed the parts I wanted to use with a lightweight fusible interfacing. Because I didn’t want huge empty, solid areas around the smaller designs, I cut the blocks into a variety of sizes. The right side column is made of smaller motifs, some special fabrics, and a machine-embroidered Texas. It was all put together with yellow and green (Baylor colors!) sashing.

The back is fun, too.

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Instead of using a single fabric for the backing, I pulled yellow and green fabrics from my stash, cut them into big blocks, and patchworked them together. This is something you could do for any quilt, but it’s especially nice for a lap quilt or snuggle quilt, in which the back will frequently be seen. The blue fabric is Texas State Flower fabric, left over from the wall hanging I made him years before.

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This Baylor print fabric is one of the strangest fabrics I’ve ever used!

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It was from – get this! – a pair of boxers he’d gotten back in his college days! I doubt that he ever wore them. The fabric was a very poor quality, poly/cotton-ish, and loosely woven. But the really weird part was that the green motifs were printed with this rubbery stuff! It was hard to quilt the areas where this fabric was on the back, because the rubbery stuff didn’t slide on the machine bed. Fortunately, this was not a contest quilt!

Quilting was simple and quick. I outline stitched the shirt motifs, did a free-motion wavy line instead of stitch-in-the-ditch of all the seams, and did a loose meander pretty much everywhere else. This quilt was meant to be used, and I wanted it to be soft, not heavily quilted.

About a year ago, Mark had to retire one of his favorite shirts that he couldn’t bear to give up when I made the quilt. It was literally falling apart. So I cut it up, and appliqued it to the back. I re-quilted the quilting lines from the front, using monofilament in the needle so there wouldn’t be double threads, to secure the fabric to the back. I guess I can add lots more old shirts to the back as the years go by!

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I think he likes it 🙂

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An idea!

I love figuring things out. I like the problem-solving aspects of sewing. I like making things work, using materials and techniques in new ways to achieve a desired result. I like it when ideas swirl in my brain. My brain has been pretty quiet the past few years, with not too much swirling going on. But I had an idea for a quilt I’m working on, and I tried it, and it worked! It feels good 🙂

Machine embroidery finds its way into much of my work, both garments and quilt, and sometimes in new and unusual ways. I particularly like using machine-embroidered free-standing lace on my quilts. These are designs that have been specifically digitized to be stitched on a water-soluble substrate, then, when the substrate is dissolved, the threadwork remains. Not every design can be used like this. Well, any design can be stitched on water-soluble stabilizer, but when the stabilizer is dissolved, all that will remain is a wad of thread! FSL designs have a great deal of supportive stitching, and retain their shape when the stabilizer is removed. I’m quite partial to Zundt FSL designs, and all of the samples below are from Zundt.

With free-standing lace, the back of the design will be visible as well as the front. When I attach the lace as an edging or insert on my quilts, the back of the lace can be seen on the back of the quilt. And the back is half the quilt! I want the back to be pretty.

This is lace from the first quilt on which I used FSL (free-standing lace). Here’s the front…

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Pretty, right? But here’s the back…

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Yuck, I used white bobbin thread, and it definitely detracts from the look. (My quilting tension, with dark blue thread in the needle and white thread in the bobbin, on a white backing, leaves a lot to be desired, as well! But this was one of my first show quilts.)

Using the same or matching color thread in the needle and bobbin solves the problem. Front…

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…and back.

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With silver and light gray, I was able to use only light gray thread in the bobbin with good effect. Front…

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…and back.

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I almost always use Superior Threads Bottom Line thread in the bobbin for machine embroidery. It’s the perfect weight, it creates no lint, and it comes in lots of colors, so I can match the bobbin thread pretty closely to the top thread.

Here’s another sample, front…

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…and back. I changed bobbin thread, using light gray for the silver metallic sections, and purple for the rest.

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Okay, now let’s say I’m using a lace design with lots of colors, and I can’t use the same bobbin thread for the whole design without having the back look ugly. And let’s say that I’m making edging for a big quilt, and need to stitch this design 80 or 90 times! That’s a lot of bobbin changes. But we do what we need to do! And that’s what I did for the lace on Gloria’s Garden.

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You can see on the back that I changed a lot of bobbins!

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I’m working on a new quilt. A big quilt. And I want to edge it in lace. And the lace has a lot of color changes. Here’s the front of a section. Lace 6 front

Here’s the back of that section, which I stitched with green bobbin thread.

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Yuck, right?! Not pretty at all! So….(here’s where the idea comes in!)…I thought, why can’t I use monofilament in the bobbin? I’ve used monofilament in the bobbin for quilting, although not often, and it works just fine. So I wound a bobbin, stitched out some designs, and…

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Wow! Look at that back!

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It’ll be great for my quilt! The monofilament bobbin thread even makes the front look better, I think. I used Superior MonoPoly Reduced Sheen Clear. It stitched beautifully on my 15-needle commercial machine. I haven’t tried it on a home combo machine, but I have no reason to think that it wouldn’t work well. I like to dissolve away all the stabilizer in my lace so it has a nice soft hand. The final product with MonoPpoly is just a bit stiffer than if it were stitched with Bottom Line, but not much. An added benefit is that you can wind a LOT of monofilament on a bobbin! I think I’ll do it this way a lot!

Now I know that I’m probably the only person in the world who makes FSL to edge large quilts! But many of you make bookmarks and Christmas ornaments and small FSL items. This technique would be great for that! Try it and let me know if you like it!

Victoria Meets Woodstock

Once in a while, I make a quilt that is not exactly my style!

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“Victoria Meets Woodstock” (35.5″ x 42″, made in 2009) started with a gorgeous hand-dyed cotton sateen fabric panel from Bryerpatch Studio. It was originally intended for this little quilt I made for Mark’s office door (Mark’s Little Quilts) but I decided the fabric was too pretty to use as a background, and that I needed to do something special with it instead.

So, I embroidered designs from one of the Martha Pullen Kent State book/embroidery CD sets. Not the white or light-colored embroidery as shown on the antique garments, but black embroidery on bright swirling colors! Lots of black free-motion quilting, stitched with fine silk thread, creates the appearance of black Victorian lace.

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I had made a black scalloped, machine-embroidered Zundt free-standing lace border, but the quilt ended up too small for the border.  So I used that black lace on a jacket I made for myself! This is not the best picture of me, but it shows the jacket well!

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I have worn this jacket so much! It’s a texture-y poly knit, it’s comfortable, it goes with everything, it washes well, and it looks good – what else is there? I made it from the t-shirt pattern in The Sewing Workshop’s Trio pattern. Of course, this doesn’t look at all like that pattern! I changed the pattern to have a front opening, V-neck, and long sleeves 🙂 I made facings for the neckline and front opening, then stitched that unused black lace on top.

Okay, back to the quilt…Instead of the black lace, I machine-embroidered individual little free-standing lace flowers (again, Zundt, from the Adorations 3 collection) in the colors of the fabric, and stitched them on the outer edge. If you look at the full photo of Victoria Meets Woodstock at the top of this post, you can see that I matched the colors of the flowers to the colors of the outer edge of the quilt, so that the color flow continued into the flower edge!

I had used those same FSL flowers in Gloria’s Garden. The design is one of the dark purple flowers in the upper left hand corner of this photo.

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Again, back to Victoria Meets Woodstock! I like my quilt backs to relate to the front – after all, the back is half the quilt! I found this wonderful flowery stripe that was perfect!

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I usually bind my edges in some way, but in this case, I used the backing fabric to make a bias facing.

And check out the label!

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This quilt won 2nd place in the Wall Quilts – Machine Quilted category at the 2011 AQS Knoxville show. That was the only show into which it was entered – I forgot about it until it was too old to enter into any other shows! It’s hard to imagine forgetting about a quilt this bright!

Learning Something New – Day 4

I’m still taking advantage of the Craftsy sale, and taking classes. Actually, this post is about the first class I took this week, not the fourth, but I was so thrilled with the class that I wanted to make a sample, and I wanted to be able to show it to you!

This is the class I took:

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I’ve admired Cindy’s work for a while. She has much the same quilting style as I. What I love most are her wonderful quilts using embroidered and cutwork linens as the top! I discovered that her method for quilting around the embroidery is exactly the same as I use to quilt around my machine embroidery! And like her, I quilt a lot of repeating lines, both echo quilting and parallel straight lines, as a counterpoint to flowing, focal motifs like feathers. But I learned other, new tips, and had to try them out.

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I wanted to try using linens, so I found this little silk embroidered handkerchief in my “stuff.” I layered it over shimmery gold silk/cotton Radiance, then over batting and backing, and quilted it with Superior Kimono silk threads in several colors. Then I added a crocheted doily to the plain center of the hanky after it was quilted.

The new techniques I tried are making parts of the feathers “hide” under the edge of the hanky, so it looks like the hanky is floating over the quilting.

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I also used the fill pattern in the center of the handkerchief for the first time. I’ve seen it before, but the instructions were great, and I was able to do it easily. I love this Art Deco repeating fan shape!

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Another technique suggested in the class was the use of beads to secure and embellish. She suggested fresh-water pearls for crochet work.

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Wow! The color is perfect (even with inexpensive pearls from a hobby store), and the pearls don’t get lost in the crochet the way smaller seed beads might.

Because I’m a detail person, I added tiny rickrack piping to the outer edge.

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There’s only one thing I wish I’d done differently on this little quilt. I wish I’d used wool batting instead of 80/20 cotton/poly batting. I didn’t have any scraps of wool batting, and I didn’t want to cut into a big piece, because I have a big quilt ready to layer, and I didn’t want to run short. The wool batting would have made the feathers puff more. But even so, I’ve very pleased with this. Thanks for the help, Cindy!

If you’d like to try this class, click here on my affiliate link.

Our Whole Life

Mom and Dad were married on August 2, 1952, on a very hot day, in an un-air-conditioned church in St. Charles, MO. Legend has it that Mom’s veil caught fire from a candle during the photography or reception (I don’t remember; I wasn’t there!)

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For their 50th wedding anniversary, in 2002, I made them a photo-transfer memory quilt.

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I used ideas from the book The Collectibles Quilt by Wendy Etzel, 1995, RCW. The book got me started with the idea of a photo transfer bookcase quilt, and I took off from there. (Wendy still has copies of her book available; you can contact her at wendyetzel@verizon.net . The exact pattern for this quilt is not in the book.)

This was the second real quilt I ever made. The first was My Texas Star, half a year earlier. I think this was also the second time I tried free-motion quilting!

I managed to get photos of 5 generations of family, and made enough photo transfers to create 52 “framed” photos on the bookshelves, including my parent’s wedding picture and their wedding invitation.

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The titles of some of the “books” are the names of my grandparents, my parents, my sister and me, and our children. Other “books” are titled with significant events or interests in our lives.

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I added a machine-embroidered a Peace rose (I don’t have a close-up of that) which was my maternal grandmother’s favorite flower, and created a basket made from woven strips of fabric, with a piece of crocheted work spilling out of it. This was made by my father’s aunt, who was born deaf, but crocheted exquisitely.

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(I didn’t cut up a good piece of crochet work; this was damaged, and I used the un-damaged part in the quilt.)

When they saw the quilt, Mom and Dad were both speechless and teary-eyed, and my father said, “This is my whole life!”

The quilt was hung next to some real bookcases, and causes visitors to do a double-take! It has been the backdrop for many family photos.

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Yes, that’s a papier-mâché-and-feather bird head, but that’s another story…

The quilt was displayed at Dad’s memorial service. I think it’s just about the best gift I ever gave!

Arrowmont

My daughter and I will soon be going to Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts to take a week-long workshop together. Arrowmont is a lovely old crafts school nestled in the Smoky Mountains, hidden just off the beaten path in Gatlinburg, TN. This will be my fifth visit there.

The first time, in 2004, I think, Annie and I took a class in glass fusing. What a wonderful time we had! The next year, she and I tried enameling.

Two years later, in 2007, David joined us, and we took a class in woodworking. It was a blast! Learning something new with grown children, focusing on the task at hand, in beautiful surroundings – well, I highly recommend it!

This is the coffee table David made. After he got home, he finished it, and it was one of his most prized possessions. When everything else in his life fell apart, this was one of the few things he took great care of. It is now in Annie’s living room, and she cherishes it.

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This was Annie’s wild and crazy table! She included every technique we were taught 🙂 Unfortunately, it sustained some water damage in a closet and had to be discarded.

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And this is what I made. It was supposed to have a quilt made to go behind the wavy lattice, but that hasn’t happened, and the table is still unfinished.

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The surroundings are so gorgeous! The entrance to Great Smoky Mountain National Park is just a couple of miles away, and there is a little scenic drive even closer.

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In 2008, Annie couldn’t make it, and David and I took a workshop in bead-making. Hot glass and torches. These are some of the beads he made.

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Because they needed to cool overnight in the kiln when we left, the instructor shipped them to us. Sadly, they never made it here. I wish so much I had some of his Arrowmont beads! Aren’t they beautiful?

David had taught himself some lampworking before we went, and fortunately Annie and I do have some of the beads he made at home. She made me a pendant with one of those beads (but of course I can’t find the photo right now!)

I made some beads, too. So what did I do when I brought mine home? Added fabric, of course! I made a quilt. This is “Monochrome.”

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It is 45.5″ x 60″ and was made in 2009. It is truly a mixed techniques quilt! It includes English hand smocking (because I needed some hand work to do while my husband was in the hospital for a week), fabric manipulation (inspired from a costume in the stage production of “Phantom of the Opera”), foundation piecing, machine applique, digitized embroidered motifs and free-standing lace. And glass beads above the tassels! It includes cottons, necktie silk, machine embroidery, monofilament, and silk threads, perle cotton, seed beads, glass, purchased tassels, and cotton batting.  Embroidery designs were from EmbroideryOnline, Zundt Designs, and Martha Pullen/Zundt.

“Monochrome” won 2nd place in the Computer-Aided Machine Embroidery category at the 2010 Houston Internation Quilt Festival, and an Honorable Mention at the 2010 AQS show in Paducah.

Here’s a close-up…

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And the beads (click on these images to see them better)…

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Now, it’s been seven years since I’ve been there. Annie and I will be learning about wood-turning. She’s done some, but I never have. If previous years are any indication, it will be a fun, memorable, relaxing, and creativity-inspiring week!

A Very Good Dad

Happy Father’s Day! I was blessed to have a very good father. He’s been gone for 20 months now, but I smile every time I think about him.

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I’m a lot like Dad (except for the receding hairline!) and I know he was always proud of me. As a farmer, he could have wanted sons to take over the farm, but never once did I feel that he’d rather have had sons than two daughters. He always supported me. I don’t think he really “got” the heirloom sewing career, except that he knew I always liked pretty dresses. But he didn’t really care – if I was happy, he was happy.

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Then I started quilting. When my first quilt was not just accepted into Houston in 2004, but I got a phone call that it had won a ribbon, I asked him if he and Mom would like to take me down there in their motor home.

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When we walked into that huge show, he said in amazement, “My mother would have loved this!” And indeed she would have!

That was the beginning of 18 trips with them to Houston and Paducah! I think Dad thoroughly enjoyed those trips. I am still amazed at how cool he was driving that big old motor home through Dallas!  Once, at a truck stop getting fuel for the motor home, I got out and went into the convenience store. The trucker at the next bay looked at Dad, looked at me, looked at Dad again, and said, “Good lookin’ woman you got there.” Dad didn’t blink an eye, and replied, “I did all right for myself, didn’t I?” never letting on that I was his daughter, not his wife! He was so pleased with himself!

Mark went with me a few times, but he was working, and usually it was just Mom, Dad, and me. I had quilts in all but one of those shows, I think, and I was fortunate to win ribbons at most of them – and big ribbons at some. Dad would go to the award ceremonies, and to the preview nights. All he wanted to see was me with my quilt. The crowd noise really bothered him with his hearing aids, and the huge venues and concrete floors bothered his back. But he delighted in taking Mom and me!

This picture was at Houston in 2012. My world would change a lot in the next year.

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This picture was taken at Paducah in 2013; it was shortly after David died. This was the last quilt show Dad went to, and I think this is the last photo of me with him.

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Happy Father’s Day, Dad! You were a good man and a great father! 🙂