Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

This is one of my most favorite quilts, and was done with my beloved stash of Hoffman, RJR, SSI, and Kaufman fabrics, to name a few. It was made and donated for a raffle for the West Wind Art Gallery, sometime between 1997-2005. I'm thinking 1999, but am not sure. It does not appear in my Jewels of the Platte show before 1998, and I'm not sure it ever was shown in public. If it was, I'll eat cabbage.
If you have never seen a tree quilt quite like this one, it's because I designed it on graph paper and calculated the cutting it would take prior to making it, and I looked through all the references available to me including 3 books on tree quilts in my personal collection. I did teach a free quilt class on the block, however, for the Silver Fox Quilters, a senior class I taught as a gift to the community.

 

[Dabs]

This is one of my most favorite quilts, and was done with my beloved stash of Hoffman, RJR, SSI, and Kaufman fabrics, to name a few. It was made and donated for a raffle for the West Wind Art Gallery, sometime between 1997-2005. I'm thinking 1999, but am not sure. It does not appear in my Jewels of the Platte show before 1998, and I'm not sure it ever was shown in public. If it was, I'll eat cabbage.
If you have never seen a tree quilt quite like this one, it's because I designed it on graph paper and calculated the cutting it would take prior to making it, and I looked through all the references available to me including 3 books on tree quilts in my personal collection. I did teach a free quilt class on the block, however, for the Silver Fox Quilters, a senior class I taught as a gift to the community.

Tis very very pretty!!
Has a Christmasy look to it

 

[freedombecki]

This is one of my most favorite quilts, and was done with my beloved stash of Hoffman, RJR, SSI, and Kaufman fabrics, to name a few. It was made and donated for a raffle for the West Wind Art Gallery, sometime between 1997-2005. I'm thinking 1999, but am not sure. It does not appear in my Jewels of the Platte show before 1998, and I'm not sure it ever was shown in public. If it was, I'll eat cabbage.
If you have never seen a tree quilt quite like this one, it's because I designed it on graph paper and calculated the cutting it would take prior to making it, and I looked through all the references available to me including 3 books on tree quilts in my personal collection. I did teach a free quilt class on the block, however, for the Silver Fox Quilters, a senior class I taught as a gift to the community.

Tis very very pretty!!
Has a Christmasy look to it

Thanks, Dabs. I made the pattern as a Christmas treat for my Silver Foxes quilters free quilt society, and its "original" name was "O Tannenbaum". I backed it with one of the most beautiful Alexander Henry Christmas fabrics ever printed because in my remote shop, many local quilters were still preferring cutsie calicoes rather than art-inspired prints. The local jet set quickly traded in all prints for the new tie-dyes and balis when they began being printed. So my art prints went unused, but I loved them and used them every time a fabric went for more than 2 years with no takers. I can't believe what people passed up, but then, I had great art teachers in jr & high school and electives in junior college days. No middle schools existed back then in our area.

Oh, yes, and there's a reason for that. I took a psychology class one time that mentioned it's good for people's minds to change the decorations around the house frequently. By making a quilt with an enchanting fabric on the back, it gives your mind that needed break, as we tire from looking at the samo-samo all the time. No matter how pretty a quilt is, it becomes old hat in 6 months. That's when you turn it over for as different a look as you can possibly have.

 

[freedombecki]

After I finished the 6 pillow tops for seniors or veterans last week, I kind of took a break. This morning, I got back in the groove with quilting more large squares for support pillows that help those with physical problems support a part.

Of course, a mere pillow will never, never take the place of a good caregiver who moves the supports around as needed and provides a kind word for someone who is unable to do for themselves any more. That's the most important thing. If someone in your life is in a care facility, your presence could be like the highlight of a boring experience for them, and never underestimate what good it will do for them, please.

Anyhow, here's a quilted pillow sans the stuffing and in the next post, I will show the top that took another hour to quilt. It's ok. It was bluebonnets and red white and blue, done in honor of our veterans everywhere. I'm not sure who the charity bees will give it to when I turn it over. I try to give in lots of 10 or close to it, so I can make notes in my work journal that looks like a nutty artists' scratch pad sometimes. Hey! It IS a nutty artists' ... oh, never mind. Just sorry you can't see the whole top. All I have is an 8.5x11" scanner and shyness around a complex digital camera with a disc that is like a nightmare sales routine and a few helps that are so confusing my husband had to figure it out back when. He can't do that any more, even, and I'm still shy of cameras. *sigh*

The pillow that you can't see in its entireity is a red and white pinwheel on one side, and some sturdy printed cotton upholstery satin on top of a piece of striped mattress covering material (popular in the style industry about 10 years ago,, or was it 20?)

 

[freedombecki]

I totally love this bluebonnet pillow top. After you spend x amount of hours piecing (which I did sometime back), You get to sandwich, baste and quilt it before adding it to a back you also quilted, and then to get a pillow, stuff. The pillow is not stuffed yet. One of my fellow bees asked me to make a few pillows, that she had tons of stuffing that would make good support pillows. So, hopefully it's all to a good cause. If you put your arrow cursor over the images below, you will see a little explanation of what you are seeing in work detail..If you click on them, a larger image pops up (for anyone who's a newbie here and is not acquainted with transferring pictures from your own collection in "My pictures" on your computer)

For those who like thrift and duribility, a good batting for the sturdiest quilted pillow tops will always be a good old, clean turkish towel whose threadbare and holey areas have been trimmed away, and the thick parts are left to lend an extra lush layer for a pillow.

 

[freedombecki]

Took 2 finished quilt tops, 6 quilted pillow front and back, sewn together with small openings for Charity bees to stuff with firm stuffing, small bits and batting excesses, soft but firmly wadded into shells as they work. Every work day, one support pillow gets stuffed with things that would normally be tossed away or needlessly stored, and one more pillow case for Tall Pine charity giving. I hope the girls who do quilting and tying enjoy the tops, made with love.

 

[freedombecki]

I have to admit something. I was wondering why I had a slight obsession about completing the double four-patch quilts and pillow tops. Of course! My only quilt I ever owned and didn't have to hand down to somebody else is probably in a box around here someplace, I just haven't found it since we moved. We finally did unpack the pictures, and my husband went through them and found pictures of my quilts and separated them out so they could go in my little book. I had forgotten, Grandma's quilt was shown in one of my shows in which we had an extra space for one more quilt.

And it was a double four-patch! No wonder I worked hard doing those double 4-patch charity quilts, it's been a part of our family's warmth and grass-cover-for-Washington-Park-Casper-Muncie-Band concerts programs for over 30 years!

Grandma made the quilt of left overs from her and all her sewing bee friends' polyester pant suits that were the rage in the 70s, but the patterns always had leftovers because ponte di roma knits are 60" wide, not 45" wide, which all the patterns may have been calling for. She and Aunt Janice worked for weeks hand quilting that quilt for me. Years later, when I quilted my first quilt, it was a one-patch and took 4 months to quilt. Whew! After that, it was strictly machine quilting, I'm telling you!

 

[freedombecki]

And I found one of my pals having his own flame thread, and I knew he was USAF. I promised myself I'd make a charity quilt in his honor, and this morning, I cut quite a few strips and sewed a light and center blue strips together for log cabin centers, which will in the next step, be sliced and have the second light added to an adjacent side to the first light. The 6th photo shows that the seam is pressed away from the center. It makes the lay of the finished product easier to place on a cutting mat and square up with a large square ruler. It takes 24 squares to make a nicely-sized child quilt that will carry the child to his 18th birthday unless he has giantism. My efforts this morning will be the basis hopefully for several, and I have chosen Air Force Blue as the color theme, naturally. That will become more obvious when I start adding the dark fabrics. I like to have a fabric different in shade and pow-power at the center, so I usually do red centers. But in deference to the USAF hero who got himself flamed it's all gonna be blue. Here are the strips that came from sewing 2 1.75" strips together 20 times or more.

 

[freedombecki]

Here are the others plus the blowup of one that is turned to its reverse side, showing how to press away from the center color. After this, I'm going to have to do some tasks around the house and run some errands.

Anyone who likes is welcome to show a picture of a family quilt at any time. I'd just forgotten all about my grandma's quilt because I haven't seen it for a while, and it's possible it got stored at my shop in Wyoming. lol

 

[daveman]

And I found one of my pals having his own flame thread, and I knew he was USAF. I promised myself I'd make a charity quilt in his honor, and this morning, I cut quite a few strips and sewed a light and center blue strips together for log cabin centers, which will in the next step, be sliced and have the second light added to an adjacent side to the first light. The 6th photo shows that the seam is pressed away from the center. It makes the lay of the finished product easier to place on a cutting mat and square up with a large square ruler. It takes 24 squares to make a nicely-sized child quilt that will carry the child to his 18th birthday unless he has giantism. My efforts this morning will be the basis hopefully for several, and I have chosen Air Force Blue as the color theme, naturally. That will become more obvious when I start adding the dark fabrics. I like to have a fabric different in shade and pow-power at the center, so I usually do red centers. But in deference to the USAF hero who got himself flamed it's all gonna be blue. Here are the strips that came from sewing 2 1.75" strips together 20 times or more.

(((hugs)))

Just lovely.

 

[Dabs]

You have so many beautiful patterns Becki.
Have you ever made one with the fleur di le design??
It's a symbol......it's French...meaning French Lily.
I have many things in my living room with that design....I love it

 

[Dabs]

My bad on spelling...it's Fleur De Lis

 

[freedombecki]

You have so many beautiful patterns Becki.
Have you ever made one with the fleur di le design??
It's a symbol......it's French...meaning French Lily.
I have many things in my living room with that design....I love it

Yes, somewhere, I've made up a fleur de lis, but where? I wrote a lot of book manuscripts of designs and designed at least 100 applique designs, and I do remember doing fleur de lis's, but I can't put it together with any of the hundreds of pages and thousands of designs in my manuscripts. I'll try and think back to when that was, or if I'm confusing that with someone else's design. Nope. I always start with graph paper on my appliques. hmmm.

Let's leave it at this: I don't know. I may recall by tomorrow what the deal was. And I love fleur de lis, the story of one of France's Louie kings who was dying, saw the beautiful lily near a stream, where the water revived him. After that he decided he would be a good boy in honor of God who saved him, and the fleur de lis was named in his honor which is loosely transcribed to "the flower of Louis." But where did I design one for a quilt applique? <still drawing a blank>

 

[freedombecki]

And I found one of my pals having his own flame thread, and I knew he was USAF. I promised myself I'd make a charity quilt in his honor, and this morning, I cut quite a few strips and sewed a light and center blue strips together for log cabin centers, which will in the next step, be sliced and have the second light added to an adjacent side to the first light. The 6th photo shows that the seam is pressed away from the center. It makes the lay of the finished product easier to place on a cutting mat and square up with a large square ruler. It takes 24 squares to make a nicely-sized child quilt that will carry the child to his 18th birthday unless he has giantism. My efforts this morning will be the basis hopefully for several, and I have chosen Air Force Blue as the color theme, naturally. That will become more obvious when I start adding the dark fabrics. I like to have a fabric different in shade and pow-power at the center, so I usually do red centers. But in deference to the USAF hero who got himself flamed it's all gonna be blue. Here are the strips that came from sewing 2 1.75" strips together 20 times or more.

(((hugs)))

Just lovely.

Thanks, Daveman. Today I worked on cutting the strips into twosies, and got enough for 20 squares to the second light color. The smallest squares will measure 1.25" after being sewn down from 1.75" cuts. Also, the strips finish close to 1.25" also. Quilters use quarter-inch seams (on a good day...) In pictures, here goes from my computer and scanner to here:

 

[freedombecki]

This second group of pictures shows something I always do early on in making a Log Cabin Style quilt. Although the squares will later be arranged into a "Hero Star" arrangement due to the nature of this particular project, it is wise to follow the panacea of caution when you're really excited about a quilting project for as good a cause as one of our wounded warriors is.

Do a couple of practice squares after you get all your strips cut. Then measure it when it is done and answer to yourself: Are all of the squares square? Is each of the 4 sides of the square the same length? All of these should measure 9.25 inches, which is why on an 8.5"x11" scanner screen, you cannot see the entire square.

I just wanted to show on the first day of actually starting the real work of the log cabin-arranged hero star quilt, what one of the 24 segments would look like. The star itself will use 20 light and dark log cabins, but the 4 that separate the star points on the upper and lower corners need to be a light color all the way around, so I have already cut centers lighter than the center on the two squares, I just haven't sewn a stitch on the light ones. Since it is an annoyance once you have the 12 light-and-dark center and star points made, I think that will be the first thing on my agenda tomorrow morning or whenever. I greatly prefer having the 4 light squares done before going forward. Also, there will be 8 points attached to the top and bottom in sawtooth quilt arrangement in order to accomplish the task of making the quilt longer than it is wide. I generally add 2 borders, and have already cut out the first border of the same fabric the centers are made of. It's just not quite dark enough to be a dark on the outside nor light enough to be a light in most instances. That makes it perfect for being a border strip, because not only does it separate well, it also pops the centers. On my quilts they're usually red, but for an Air Force blue quilt, sorry, no red. I make plenty of flaglike quilts etc. to make up for one Air Force blue quilt, believe me!

One of the fabrics on the second block is 70 years old and possibly more. It came from a little piece of fabric, and I ooched and scooched it to get the dark parts of the fabric in one piece or else I was going to start sewing dark pieces together to ensure it shows as a dark. It came from a shirt factory of miscut collars "from the 30s or 40s" according to the antique store owner. Nobody else wanted them, and she handed me a huge, huge sack of them. I try to use one of the pieces every time I do a project, to honor our mothers who lived through the war time, saving a scrap here and there. This one's owner passed before she got to finish it. I thought, perhaps one of her sons died in WWII (we lost hundreds of thousands of America's best), and she lost her love for quilting. Silly me for speculating! It just makes me think of American women through the years who spent their time and effort doing for others always, never flagging in their enthusiasm to go a good deed for someone who needed a good deed done them.

So, here's my second day of real work, and tomorrow, I have a lot of dark strip cutting that needs to be done:

Have a happy and good day, everyone.

 

[freedombecki]

Afternoon results, 3" light added, 3" dark added, 4.25" strips dark added! And I found a scrap no longer available--just a little piece, and it will be the only like it on the first picture that has a 4.25" light color strip to help tomorrow get started. I used to count 30 hours in doing a small quilt like this one, but now, who knows? I'm more organized because I now cut all the strips at the same time before I sit down to sew, except for the 2 I did in the above posts. I like to make samples just to be sure I'm staying true to the 1/4" seam allowances standard in the quilt world right now. If the price of quilt fabric keeps climbing, that seam allowance could drop, but that's not a good thing when stitches are too large to accommodate or a machine that stretches fabrics is used.

The afternoon works on the USAF Blue charity quilt:

 

[freedombecki]

Oh, BTW, thanks for dropping by, Daveman, USAF, Ret.

Two more pictures of the afternoon's progress and a trip down memory lane to a show I did for city hall entitled "Jewels of the Platte II" probably 1997 or 1998. It was a few weeks before a house burned down in Natrona County, and the "Tell Them I'm a Child of God" quilt (furthest right, small boys and girls in applique) was given to the family. I heard they had 3 small children, all survived the fire, but the house was totaled by it. I took it down to the Fire Station and told them to give it to the family, who'd be needing stuff. Think I took two other quilts, too, but it's not clear to me which ones, and I may not even have pictures of them. If I do, they're not known to me. I have a hunch which ones, but it's only a hunch, and I have no pictures, but I do have a pattern that I developed when I saw a quilt made that with a little thinking could have been a lot more organized-looking.. Anyway, 4 of the 5 quilts hanging have blue in them, and to that time I hadn't made many blue quilts. That changed later.

The afternoon & nostalgia...

I am editing this because I forgot to name the quilts below:

1. Aesthetics of Victorian Applique Album Quilt, a blue Victorian era quilt I made with designs probably circa the early 20th century, with a primitive phone, a couple wearing turn-of-the-century Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, etc. There's even a Carousel Horse, and it's part of a book I wrote for my student called "Aesthetics of Victorian Applique Album Quilt." (hahahaha try saying that after eating a couple of crackers.)

2. Color Wheel. It is of 100% Jinny Beyer designed fabric from her first "Jinny Beyers Basics" fabric, and the background is also from the same collection, pale taupe-etched cool whitish colored material, then reused in the first border with staggered rows of squares top and bottom.

3. JoAnn's Dutch Doll quilt. Actually, it's my design, but a lady named JoAnn came into my shop one day and saw my teensie weensie little embroidered doll work, done in machine embroidery for classes, and demanded that I make a big one so she could applique it onto a quilt. I assured her it was dubious that it would look as nice as the little ones, bad idea, etc. After she left, I sat down and drew one up. By nightfall, I'd done one square, and by the next day, I had done and sewed a dozen dolls and made a large, child-sized quilt with it. I improved the square, made some copies, and called JoAnn to tell her I had done a square, named for her insistent saying I could do the design, and she'd like it. She came in the next morning, and I had the small quilt top done and was working on another. She bought the first pattern for $1.00. In the upcoming few weeks, I had designed a modern dutchman in a suit, made 10 charity quilts and given all of them to the handicapped day care center in town. That's why I made the dutchman. My Grandpa was dutch, and it is a gentle reminder of him, but was only used when the Dutch Girl was his partner. She was the best seller. I hardly ever sold any of the Dutchman, don't know why. In that part of the country, people like Cowboys and Cowgirls, so they would buy the Western couple every time, except some people just liked the Dutch Girl. She was done Sunbonnet style, and now I think I know why I got that silly pm from one of the mods. This must be boring as hell to someone who has to read it.

4. The 4th quilt was the first serious pieced quilt I designed, and I named it after a song I love called "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" because the tan planks surround the blue pools of water. I decided not to sell the pattern, because it had a fitting problem at each and every stinkin' corner. I had to ooch and scooch for weeks to make it right. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

5. "Tell Them I'm A Child Of God" is the name of the little quilt nearest the wall. Think I explained that one somewhere today.

 

[freedombecki]

My bad on spelling...it's Fleur De Lis

Dabs, I'm thinking I may have designed a Fleur de lis for a class to do blackwork machine embroidery my first or second year in business... I made a 50- or 60- page booklet for students of all kinds of small decorations, and am thinking that MAY have been (also may not have been) when I did a Fleur de lis. That was 20 to 25 years ago. I think I kept copies of all my designs, only trouble is if I didn't bring a complete copy of the machine embroidery book here when we moved, all that stuff is up in a file somewhere in the office of my business 1300+ miles from here.

Rep coming your way. That's a great picture.

 

[freedombecki]

Sharing pictures of pieced corners--for the USAF blue charity quilt:

 

[freedombecki]

Each square has 3 more rows to go, I just did all I could in one day.