Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[beautress]

Blue Dear Jane quilt

 

[beautress]

What were the "Dear Jane" quilts? The image of the book below brings it to light:

If you've ever seen one, you will see unbelievable details (or not)

 

[beautress]

All those loverly quilts ^^^ and all I've done lately is sew pink log cabin quilts. I must have 200 fabrics just pink to cut from. lol Some are growing smaller and smaller, though, and some after making 4 pink baby quilts, have yet to be cut. I keep finding more pink fabrics. hahaha I was buying but not using. Oh, I'm aching to make a blue quilt. In the meantime, I'll see if I can find ANYTHIING like my pinkies of late.
Too much yellow..

Right for all-pink, but I didn't make any pictures...It's a really good idea, though..but she made short work of the centers by using 2.5" squares if the strips are 1" That saves a lot of cutting, but well, I like all 1" squares and 1" strips when finished. The heart and pictoral aspect is way good, however.

I counted 8 different fabrics, light and dark, which are separated into sides on this quilt. My scrappy style has about 200 different fabrics or more to make a quilt with 20 or 24 blocks, and the lights and light mediums do not take sides, because I mix 'em up. Once in a while, a log cabin square done scrappy is lighter or darker than the others, but if you "play cards" by putting blocks in an odd number of stacks, you will get a random setting, which adds to the curiosity of your scrappy style of construction. The heart quilt above uses this or a similar approach to mine, except for the lazy big centers. Just a little extra work makes the lazy go away, trust me.
Again, this nice little fields and furrow arrangement cannot be made with my method, but a dime to a donut, it's a lot faster not to think when piecing, plus this method probably is cheaper to do, since you only have to buy the correct amount of 8 different fabrics, repeating 3 of the 8 in 3 borders. Also, all of the blocks are exactly the same, which lessens the pressure to make a square that LOOKS haphazardly random, but pretty at the same time. I have ripped things out that nobody else would dream of doing if it doesn't look random enough or if it looks the least bit contrived. How contriving is that??? lmao!!!

Only one other thing--I would proudly put any of the above super beautiful and also amazing quilts on any bed in my home at any time. I'm just being my usual picky, picky, picky self when it comes to making random scrap quilts. It's easy to make yourself misunderstood when you get too deep into scrappy. Hopefully there's a scrappy quilter or two who've visited here, caught me comparing easy with hard, and thinking I must not like easy quilts. Not true. I love the ones I post, because they are tried-and true good, and probably prettier than anything anyone could ever buy in a factory-produced quilt. And pink is one of the loveliest, most affirming colors in the whole world which makes pink quilts very special, and it's no wonder men like to see their girls wearing pink. It's a fabulous shade of a watered-down red, and it can go either to the yellow side, which I call cerise, or it can go to the blue side, which I call hot pink. Natural pink roses can be either pink to the yellow or pink to the blue, and when they fade... well, you'll just have to go visit an established Japanese rose garden sometime when the roses are waning and before they are lobbed off by caretakers of the garden. You'll see the fading follows the yellow pinks or the blue/lavender pinks.​

 

[Erinwltr]

Blue Dear Jane quilt

That top blue quilt is beautiful.

 

[beautress]

Blue Dear Jane quilt

That top blue quilt is beautiful.

The Dear Jane Quilts were revived about 15 years ago when someone found the intricate original Dear Jane in a trunk or something, I think, Erinwltr. Thanks for stopping by! Quilting is my passion, hobby, and I even own a quilting store in Wyoming, but it's not a very profitable business. The business has costs of employees, notions, and thousands of fabric bolts, but needs a population base of about 300,000 people. The town my store is still in is more like 57,000 people, and in slim times when I ran the business myself, the town shrunk down to about 40,000 after a boom and bust situation in the oilfields. I'm fascinated with what dedicated quilters do. I'm pretty dedicated myself, started today off with organizing 15 log cabin squares and put together three rows of 6 log cabins in royal blue solid color fabric, narrow 1" finished strips. Have you ever been to a quilt show or worked on a quilt?

 

[Erinwltr]

Blue Dear Jane quilt

That top blue quilt is beautiful.

The Dear Jane Quilts were revived about 15 years ago when someone found the intricate original Dear Jane in a trunk or something, I think, Erinwltr. Thanks for stopping by! Quilting is my passion, hobby, and I even own a quilting store in Wyoming, but it's not a very profitable business. The business has costs of employees, notions, and thousands of fabric bolts, but needs a population base of about 300,000 people. The town my store is still in is more like 57,000 people, and in slim times when I ran the business myself, the town shrunk down to about 40,000 after a boom and bust situation in the oilfields. I'm fascinated with what dedicated quilters do. I'm pretty dedicated myself, started today off with organizing 15 log cabin squares and put together three rows of 6 log cabins in royal blue solid color fabric, narrow 1" finished strips. Have you ever been to a quilt show or worked on a quilt?

No, never worked on a quilt, but my grandmother used to make them for the family. I still have one to this day that I carefully use daily. I have been to 4H displays at our local yearly fair and the quilts are just amazing. I love them. But never been to a quilt show, though.

 

[beautress]

Your grandmother's quilt sounds wonderful! 4H quilt displays can be pretty good for the young girls who are learning to make them.

Houston, Texas, has one of the largest quilt shows in the world in October every year. They show local, state, and quilts made half way around the world. International Quilt Festival There are literally thousands of quilts shown there.

I've been reviewing the 2018 Houston Quilt Show. Unfortunately, other shows get mixed in, so I tried but it's possible some of the quilts came from elsewhere, or even a different year than 2018.

 

[beautress]

Been churning away at log cabin, fireman quilts , and I have on my recent completion list 2 crib-7 years old quilts, pink for girls; 2 firemen log cabin quilts for great big boys, a baseball court-house steps, a fall-colored jelly roll long stripes quilt, and a red great-big girl's quilt, log cabin with a gorgeous red delicious apples border with a small tomato red wildflowers print. I've probably made a dozen red log cabin quilts (all red, no lights at all) This one is just the best one so far, that's all. It had to be the apple border. Well, back when there was a red one with a hoffman red rose border that was out of this world, but this one, it just says "Mommy, why is SHE getting the pretty one??? (Oh, no!) I think I'll make an all-purples one, an all-greens one, and an all-blues one, too. I'll make them all the same size, and let them all fight it out. /dervish grin. I'll see if I can find anything around like these all-one-color, all-different textures quilt.

Well I found a couple of monochromatic quilts, but they're still not all-darks like mine, which lets the textures do the talking. This is not quite monochromatic since it encompases blue and periwinkle or purple, and it's not all darks either, plus it's wonky in shapes, too:

This one comes close, except it uses light and dark to distinguish background from pointed figures:

​

 

[beautress]

AGain, close but no cigar...at least this is mostly a green-blue monochrome, except it still clings to a pattern sequence. Mine are totally random in placement but use the conventional log cabin square, 7" per square:

 

[beautress]

I guess I'm the only person in the world using all-one-color log cabins, randomly placed and close in shade, and the products play in medium lights, huges, and medium darks, and textures speak because they're all mixed up on purpose. They're like a symphony, they harmonize, but they don't overplay, and the randomness brings an occasional glint and shadow area in which textures play up and down games with the eye. *sigh.* I may be able to dig up one square as a picture, but it won't be easy to find.

 

[beautress]

Hero Star Quilt

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I completed the borders on a quilt I used to call "Hero Star", except the one I made this past week has 4 light-colored centers and 4 light-colored corner squares, with the red star points representing the solar flares around the star. In the light areas, instead of using exclusively red and white, I used blended pale pastels of every description on it, and put a 3" border of red 1x3" strips on top and bottom, with a cute pale zoo print around the outside edge to separate the tips of the star points from the red strips top and bottom. I found a huge red dot print, which reminded me of Minnie Mouse's favorite outfit, so I put that all the way around the outside border. I know I outdid myself on the one upstairs waiting to go to the charity bee's closet. It measures only 33" by 48" but that's a good size for a crib, and it's also a good size for a senior wheelchair quilt. Hopefully, it will be sent where it is needed the most when someone quilts the top. I like to make them pretty so the quilters will enjoy participating in completing a work of art for a poor kid or lonely shut-in.

Yesterday, I took 7 baby quilt tops to the recently retired fire chief, who is son of my friend EJ who died recently. EJ had been a volunteer fireman in the county for 44 years, so his step son took a liking for what firemen do, and in his time, the county was hiring firemen for real wages, and he was really good and knowledgable about fires and running a fire department for a huge Texas County that now hosts 17,000 university students. 120,000 prison inmates, and probably 60,000 county citizens. Most of them work for TDOC (Texas Department of Corrections), lots of farmers, ranchers, and tall pine tree growers, teachers for the university and all the children of this community

I already have enough blocks for another quilt or two made up of red and pastel log cabins, a quilt or two in 6" sqares made of six 1x6.5" strips that will be arranged in North/South and East/West strips that yield a woven effect sometimes. One reason why my quilt won't quite go there is because no two squares are alike most of the time, and there are as many squares with light and dark values not to mention strip texture variations. So two quilts are done, And one is about 4 hours away from being a finished top.I wish I knew how to use the new desk copier, but it has been gathering dust for a year. I think I lost most of my ambition when my husband died June 13, 2016, and my friend EJ dying june 24 this year didn't improve anything here. The stack of quilts I just turned over to his step son the old fire chief, 4 of them had Fireman printed fabrics on them--red vintage fire truck fabric, safety caution signs, and three pieces of firefighters, firefighting insignias on red and firefighting insignias on blue. Two days ago, I finished a red quilt that went into the pile. Now my Charity pile has 3 quilts on it, with 2 more in the closely-finished category. I'm glad I found an old "Hero star" because I'm making another one that has all squares complete. Oh, wait. there's also another made up of all red-and-pastel mix light and dark colors in it.


Well, my allergy meds have me sleepy, so after my nap, I look forward to putting another quilt together, even if it gets put off till tomorrow. Hope drop ins will bring a picture of their family quilt and show it. WE love all kinds of quilt, and i have a library that allows me to name quit squares. So early nighters.




​

 

[beautress]

I found a sample of a 1" strip quilt made the year I completed 110 tops for Charity bees. Maybe in 2020 I can manage to do that again, with 100 tops as my goal. It's hard when you're a widow, to stay inspired. My husband was an inspiration for 44 years of our marriage. He made life so easy I could do art quilts all day every day when I wanted to. He was also my photographer up until his dementia symptoms made handling a camera a trial by confusion for him, bless his sweet soul to heaven.​

 

[beautress]

Completed the purple-sashed charitybee quilt today. Finished two over the weekend. They're all light log cabins with blue centers and blue sashing, green sashing, and today's purple one. The stack now has 8 in it.

Edit out: ~

 

[beautress]

Walked by the sewing desk this morning to see what I was working on, and nope! Nothing!
As the artist stared at his blank piece of canvas, he thought, "today is the first day I can start painting the best picture ever painted!" ~~~ And sometimes that takes a day or two to figure out, So next time I go to the desk, hopefully it will be with a no-fail plan to make a fatherless child a small quilt he can cling to in his abandonment from an estranged being he may never meet, his real father. Sad, sad, is our contemporary life of people with no givens, no rules, no parameters, but still bound to animal behaviors established in our dna to recreate life when the opportunity presents itself, without thinking about the consequences of creating a home scenario for small ones who will love attention they are given and food, and warmth, and comforting arms, and a father to set the limits--or not. And when or not happens, you have a fatherless child, a kid placed into this world with no limits on his behaviors, so he gets the impression that no one is looking until vigilant eyes see that now-grown person taking away his possessions and deciding whether to do something about it. The rest is future--go to jail or get out of jail free cards, limited supply.

So when we put 40 hours into making a child's quilt, we can ony pray, "Dear God, please let this quilt make up for this child's meager life in which he has no prospects for someone who cares enough for him to set limits so he can make something out of the rest of his life." We put an "amen" on the end, hope the recipient of the quilt will be placated for a while his mother tries to scare up options for him... or not. It's in God's hands, and the best we can do is to leave it there, while those who should have cared to know if his night of pleasure resulted in something he should take care of. The best hope we can have is that each child who has a mother can have a father who keeps tab on his own actions in the creation process. With no religious counselling, we are a lost people because when caring breaks down, so does a life of fulfillment. And a 40-hour task may bring only an hour of joy now and then and a little warmth in cool weather or a picnic cloth in warm weather, but a few minutes of possessing something all one's own may be all it takes for a small one to have something to defend so he can carry on his life to the next level. And my prayer is that it is a good thing for him.

Emily Dickinson said it so well: "If I can ease one heart the aching, I shall not have lived in vain."

 

[Erinwltr]

Walked by the sewing desk this morning to see what I was working on, and nope! Nothing!
As the artist stared at his blank piece of canvas, he thought, "today is the first day I can start painting the best picture ever painted!" ~~~ And sometimes that takes a day or two to figure out, So next time I go to the desk, hopefully it will be with a no-fail plan to make a fatherless child a small quilt he can cling to in his abandonment from an estranged being he may never meet, his real father. Sad, sad, is our contemporary life of people with no givens, no rules, no parameters, but still bound to animal behaviors established in our dna to recreate life when the opportunity presents itself, without thinking about the consequences of creating a home scenario for small ones who will love attention they are given and food, and warmth, and comforting arms, and a father to set the limits--or not. And when or not happens, you have a fatherless child, a kid placed into this world with no limits on his behaviors, so he gets the impression that no one is looking until vigilant eyes see that now-grown person taking away his possessions and deciding whether to do something about it. The rest is future--go to jail or get out of jail free cards, limited supply.

So when we put 40 hours into making a child's quilt, we can ony pray, "Dear God, please let this quilt make up for this child's meager life in which he has no prospects for someone who cares enough for him to set limits so he can make something out of the rest of his life." We put an "amen" on the end, hope the recipient of the quilt will be placated for a while his mother tries to scare up options for him... or not. It's in God's hands, and the best we can do is to leave it there, while those who should have cared to know if his night of pleasure resulted in something he should take care of. The best hope we can have is that each child who has a mother can have a father who keeps tab on his own actions in the creation process. With no religious counselling, we are a lost people because when caring breaks down, so does a life of fulfillment. And a 40-hour task may bring only an hour of joy now and then and a little warmth in cool weather or a picnic cloth in warm weather, but a few minutes of possessing something all one's own may be all it takes for a small one to have something to defend so he can carry on his life to the next level. And my prayer is that it is a good thing for him.

Emily Dickinson said it so well: "If I can ease one heart the aching, I shall not have lived in vain."

Did you write the first two paragraphs?

 

[beautress]

Walked by the sewing desk this morning to see what I was working on, and nope! Nothing!
As the artist stared at his blank piece of canvas, he thought, "today is the first day I can start painting the best picture ever painted!" ~~~ And sometimes that takes a day or two to figure out, So next time I go to the desk, hopefully it will be with a no-fail plan to make a fatherless child a small quilt he can cling to in his abandonment from an estranged being he may never meet, his real father. Sad, sad, is our contemporary life of people with no givens, no rules, no parameters, but still bound to animal behaviors established in our dna to recreate life when the opportunity presents itself, without thinking about the consequences of creating a home scenario for small ones who will love attention they are given and food, and warmth, and comforting arms, and a father to set the limits--or not. And when or not happens, you have a fatherless child, a kid placed into this world with no limits on his behaviors, so he gets the impression that no one is looking until vigilant eyes see that now-grown person taking away his possessions and deciding whether to do something about it. The rest is future--go to jail or get out of jail free cards, limited supply.

So when we put 40 hours into making a child's quilt, we can ony pray, "Dear God, please let this quilt make up for this child's meager life in which he has no prospects for someone who cares enough for him to set limits so he can make something out of the rest of his life." We put an "amen" on the end, hope the recipient of the quilt will be placated for a while his mother tries to scare up options for him... or not. It's in God's hands, and the best we can do is to leave it there, while those who should have cared to know if his night of pleasure resulted in something he should take care of. The best hope we can have is that each child who has a mother can have a father who keeps tab on his own actions in the creation process. With no religious counselling, we are a lost people because when caring breaks down, so does a life of fulfillment. And a 40-hour task may bring only an hour of joy now and then and a little warmth in cool weather or a picnic cloth in warm weather, but a few minutes of possessing something all one's own may be all it takes for a small one to have something to defend so he can carry on his life to the next level. And my prayer is that it is a good thing for him.

Emily Dickinson said it so well: "If I can ease one heart the aching, I shall not have lived in vain."

Did you write the first two paragraphs?

Yes, I did, Erin. I wrote everything originally except for my quote of Emily Dickinson's amazing words which has inspired me since I first read it. Those words didn't do less than stun me, and I adopted them as a cause celebre for doing nonstop charity quilts. I see sad things in our society. I hope the way I expressed it was unoffensive to anyone, as it is just my take on the sadness of not living life according to the recommendations of the good book, which are unknown to children of atheists who for their reason hate religion, churches, Christians, and anyone else they blame for their hidden issue. I have a feeling there is considerable anger toward any church that produces a leader who molests a child, not to mention the child who was molested deciding that because an official of a church hurt him, that church and all churches, that priest, and all ministers, and what they taught other people is all bad.

That's why discipline of order should never go unnoticed, particularly, when two parents, armed with their child's testimony, bring their rage and fury to proprietary members of the church. If their issue goes unaddressed, the chips fall where they may. This makes everybody sad, but many more people are never molested, but instead are comforted when they have losses, loved when their good works are known, and treated with dignity and respect when they grow old and lose faculties of excellence formerly their light in the world.

Bad things happen to good people. The best way I should look at them was written in the good book many years before I came along. It says something like "The sun rises and the sun sets on the just and the unjust" and in another, I can't even quote it poorly, but it gets across the point that it rains on the rich and the poor alike. In more primitive times, wealth was a sign that God's favor rested on that person. Today, depending on the company one keeps, wealth makes someone like Donald Trump the worst person in the world, whereas it makes George Soros practically the giver of life in some circles.

I never view wealth as a character trait. How one uses one's wealth is seldom obvious, but it is easier for a person of extreme wealth to make an error that is immediately a reason to use a Marie Antoinette as a candidate for beheading via the guillotine. That's a bad way to deal with feelings, and so are kangaroo court decisions. Just my humble opinion.

 

[beautress]

Pretty!

 

[beautress]

As usual, I can't find a quilt that is like the one I finished yesterday for the stack--which was in yellow with aqua between the log cabin squares. I can't even find one in the simple 2 colors, because todays quilters love the royal blue an yellow effect, and aqua blue is so pretty with warm pinks-oranges-reds, that yellow hardly ever comes up when one does something to decorate a nursery with, which I try to keep in the forefront of my tasks. I found a light-aqua sky with yellow baby chicks for the sets on my yellow log cabin squares, that I make just for the joy of working with 2-dimensional textures in a monochromatic setting of one of the colors available in cotton quilt fabrics. So I'll just show some aqua and yellow log cabins, and if I could just find one like mine, I would show it, it's just that I do things so contrary to what other people do, they're just not very common to find another person who is challenged by the things never done before or not known. Someone out there does them, they probably just never put them online. I have this terrible history of never having made a decent photograph in my life, and can turn the prettiest thing I ever saw like fog coming in on little cat's feet over the Golden Gate Bridge into a blase dull gray mass with two sticks coming up out of it. Bleh! So I gave up on ever trying to be good at photography, because I'd rather be making a quilt top into a piece of unappreciated fiber art that only quilters understand, and we're what?--one one-thousandth of the population, and nearly all female, too. lol

What I found this morning online that is half there:

A yellow square with uneven logs unlikely measuring 7.5" unfinished.

Rare aqua log cabin but no yellow on opposite sides but made most interesting by a generous 4 dragonflies beautifully appliqued around the lights in the barnraising arrangement of log cabin squares:

Yo, Aqua like my chickie skies, but what is it with aqua and barnraising arrangement of the squares???? ...

This looks like cuts I did last week, except all my strips were 1.5" wide...

Well, I'm gonna faint. Somebody did ONE quilt in Aqua and yellow like some I've made in the past....the year I did Yellow and one color group on the opposite sides...
And here it is, scrappy yellows with scrappy aqua blues:

 

[beautress]

This mornings quilt was started couple of days ago, after I finished the yellow and aqua log cabin quilt. I found a whole box of red strips cut into the right size log cabin strips and another of mixed pastels.e was it ever fun to do red and pastels again. I arranged the pastel and reds in what in half-square triangles is called "broken dishes." BRB with a pic.

This broken dish quilt uses straight diagonal
half-squares, light plus dark:

My reds log cabin top look like this, kind of, except use
log cabin squares rather than half-square triangles.
Below, I found one albeit in different colors.
This one has a modern beat about it:

About 3 years ago, I did a yellow series log cabins combined with monochrome halves in 6 colors of the rainbow, at least. I have boucoup red strips in my cuttings from the past 3 weeks, and two boxes of yellow strips. I guess it follows, thatI should cut some aqua strips and fill a box, and make aqua and yellow quilts and red and yellow quilts now. I did two in purple in yellow last week, and with morning's and yesterday's completions, there have to be four or five in my charity pile now. I have till the third Tuesday to get ten done if I challenge myself good. Who knows? Ten a month could quickly become a total of 60 tops or more this year. We'll see how it goes. I was hoping to have a boyfriend right now, but the only guy I saw that I reallly liked never came back to karaoke night, so I was thinking maybe he just was a drop in and left for the winter. We live in an area near Lake Livingston that is famous for everybody in Texas going boating in during summer months. The shorebirds are prolific, and one year the pelicans from Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana visited Lake Livingston for a good old-fashioned rendezvous, I think. I sing on Friday nights if I'm up to going out. The trouble with being an old lady is that old men brag about their girlfriends who are 40 years younger than they. Us old gals have a hard time competing with beauty. It's too bad, because we're faithful, true, hard-working, charitable, and full of inner beauty and loving hearts. The bad thing is, men are dominated by visual images, not innate ones. We have about a 3% chance of catching a guy's eyes if we lose weight, dye our hair with cancer-causing dyes, and spend a fortune on wrinkle-erasing creams. IOW, we have to be phoney. I hate it. /general complaints finé. Ah, bein' a girl sucks sometimes.​

​

 

[beautress]

This mornings quilt was started couple of days ago, after I finished the yellow and aqua log cabin quilt. I found a whole box of red strips cut into the right size log cabin strips and another of mixed pastels.e was it ever fun to do red and yellow again after 3 years ago yellow series log cabins. I arranged them in what in half-square triangles is called "broken dishes." BRB with a pic.

This broken dish quilt uses straight diagonal
half-squares, light plus dark:

My reds log cabin top look like this, kind of, except use
log cabin squares rather than half-square triangles.
Below, I found one albeit in different colors.
This one has a modern beat about it:

​

Here's one that could be done quickly with the starts I have in a clear plastic box:

I love the brick border and the triangles formed in the rows.
It just couldn't get better, no?​