Sisters Quilt 4 Wordless Wednesday

Hubby and me at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt show in July.

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Sisters Quilt 3 Wordless Wednesday

Sisters Quilt 2 Wordless Wednesday

Two quilts today, with close-ups!

Sisters Quilt 1 Wordless Wednesday

Yesteryear - Old Quilt Collection vol.3

Today's quilt selection is near and dear to my heart. It is a heritage quilt, of sorts, since it is made by my husband's mother.  It is a traditional Grandmothers Garden Flower Quilt. My mother-in-law called it her "12 year quilt" because it took her twelve years to finish it!  She gave it to me, several years before she passed away.  I am not sure what year she finished it, but it is probably about 25-35 years old and I take extreme care to preserve it for future family members.

The hexagon piecing is all done by hand---and then it was hand quilted.  Some of the fabrics our daughter recognizes, as they are leftovers from fabrics that grandma made dresses for her and her sisters. (That makes some of the fabrics 40 years old--from the 70's!) When referring to certain hexagonal pieces, there is always the comment: "Ohhhhh, I remember this one!"  Those comments add to the value of the quilt in my eyes.

Each flower is different, each center a pale yellow, with all the flower blocks on a white background.

The quilt is on our bed during the summer months, since it is extremely lightweight.  I am not sure what kind of batting that she used, but it is very thin.  I just love it's light weight--perfect for hot summer nights.

You can see the hand quilting stitches in this photo.  I like looking at them and imagining my mother-in-law sewing on it every night.  (I'm not even sure that she sewed at night, but she was a busy lady and that's the way I imagine she spent her evenings--she loved to sew!)

Thanks, Sarah Pruitt, for this awesome gift!  

Love you! 

Yesteryear - Old Quilt Collection, vol. 2

The second old quilt in my collection was a castaway from a senior living resident.  He had several old quilts that his mother had made, and since he was downsizing, he wanted me to take several blankets including this particular quilt to the "Goodwill" or "just get rid of them".  I did.  I got rid of the quilt to my house! 

Although it has a few stains, and has deteriorating thread, I love the pattern and the hand work that it represents.  It has a white center with colorful fans and a wide blue band for a border and backing.  It is intricately quilted, which I love!!  I don't know if you can see the patterned quilting in this blue section, but if you click on the picture, it will open a window with a black background and maybe you can see it better.  The edging sports a quilted feather border with separate quilted section of braid creating a border around the white interior portion. 

Between and around each fan, there are quilt lines one inch apart creating small blocks, or diamonds.  You can see the cross hatched pattern better in this picture of the top.  The fans are stitched with a separate pattern.  

The fans with yellow centers, are quarter circle size and added in a different way than I have seen before--point to point. I call this quilt my "Kissing Fish" quilt. (Can you see them?)  Also top of the fan block is not circular, rather, it is pointed.   (I have some fans that a lady gave to me--not quilted--that I will show you in a later Yesteryear--Tuesday--post.  Watch for it! )

Kissing Fish

These last two pictures show the fabrics used.  They are obviously old, but not sure from what decade!  Anyone venture a guess?   

Next week, another old quilt!  It's a Grandmother's Garden pattern.  See you then, for another Yesteryear gem!

Yesteryear - Old Quilt Collection, vol. 1

Not only do I love to make quilts, I own three that are quite old.  Those of you who love quilts can appreciate the work that has gone into each of these hand pieced and hand quilted beauties.  

This first one is the oldest, although I'm not sure how old, nor am I sure of the patchwork block pattern name.  Anyone recognize this block? Maybe a variation of Flying Geese?

This quilt was purchased at a Missouri flea market from a woman who owned a bed and breakfast. It was being retired because of it's deteriorating condition. I don't know if she just used it for display or actually used it for bedding.  I admired it's hand work and recognized the old feedsack materials used.  The quilt backing is made of the original advertising logo white printed sacks (circa late 1800's to early 1900's),  with printed words and brands. Used before grain sack/bag makers started printing them with patterns (circa 1920's).  I couldn't get a good picture of the backing, since the words are pretty washed out.  I don't know if they were bleached for the making of this quilt or just worn away with age.

    

I have tried to research these fabrics, many of which are now quite faded, but I haven't been able to identify any of them as to decade. (Just got a reply from another collector who things these fabrics are from the 30's.) I think it would take an expert.   Anyway, I love this quilt and only have it for display purposes, now.

BTW, it is hand quilted about 1/4 inch on both sides of every seam. A common straight line way of quilting  to secure all the layers and prevent the seams from shifting.

Each Tuesday for a few weeks, I will be reviewing these old quilts from my collection.  I hope you will join me for the Old Quilt Collection series as I revive my earlier Tuesday article tradition: Yesteryear!

P.S.  Several other previous posts are available on Yesteryear topics--just enter "yesteryear" in the search box. See you next Tuesday! 

Book Review on Embellishments

I recently found a book that I recommend on quilt embellishment. Fabric embellishment has been one of my current interests, so much so that I have taken up art quilts and opened a new Etsy shop to showcase my little embellished quilts.  Embellishment provides character to the usual fabric patchwork design of quilts.

Gallery page from Quilt & Embellish in One Step

The book is Quilt & Embellish in One Step! by Linda Potter, published by C & T Publishing.   Ms. Potter gives simple instruction for hand quilting with perle cotton instead of regular quilting thread. Her method produces larger stitches than the regular hand quilted stitch.

The thicker twisted perle cotton is intended to be easier to use than embroidery floss and to sit on the top of the quilted surface as embellishment, instead of tightening the sandwich layer providing the usual quilted puffing.  Also, besides coming in a large selection of gorgeous colors, perle cotton has long staple cotton fibers that are sturdier for the constant use that a quilt gets; sturdier than some other yarns and threads. I have never tried hand quilting with perle cotton, but I want to.

Ms. Potter also uses applique as seen here (sorry for the lousy pictures, I still don't have a new camera!)

This concept, when applique or beading is added, is the essence of Ms. Potters style.  Her style is not especially abstract but what I love is it is:

non-traditional and creative!

If you are interested in embarking on the new adventure of quilt embellishment, you might want to add this book to your craft library. 

Linking today with Inspire Me Monday 

Quilt Show!

Went to a quilt show today with a friend and saw some AWESOME  quilts!  The theme was "Red and White~~A Quilter's Delight!" and those of you who know me, know that I love embroidered Redwork, so you can imagine what I feel about red and white quilts!!  Here are a few of the quilts that I snapped with my phone camera (sorry these are not very good pics, but you get the idea):

Love this design!

Machine embroidery/quilting

I wanted to remember this pattern!

Then there were the colorful quilts:

Applique in the middle 

Love the side design!

Complicated, appliqued and gorgeous!

Hope you can see the artistry in the quilt stitching in this one:

So sorry that the pictures didn't come out better!   I had a wonderful eye full and came home with tons of ideas!  Yay!  Now to see if I have any time to work on any of those ideas ;)

Monday's Inspiration Project!

Two weeks ago I asked for my readers' input on choosing some fabrics for a project. Most people didn't like the bright pink option for my Spring project, although I did. Sew . .  I took their advice--thanks to all who commented-- I  left out the bright fabric from my project.  I will use it in another project!  Here is the original inspiration post. Actually, in leaving out the bright pink, I played off of the focus piece of fabric with the ice blue in it and used that color for the flower blossoms--although I don't think it shows up well on my monitor--hope it comes out better on yours!

Although I am not completely finished with this mini art quilt, because it needs "a little tweaking",  I thought  might share it anyway with the Inspire Me Monday linky today.  Here is the nearly finished mini quilt.

I'm going to add another small "branch" to the bottom left corner!  It looks a little bare in that portion of the piece!   May add a few more embellishments too!  Later this piece will be available in my new shop, AbigailJayneArt.  Love to have you visit in April when I open.  (should be between the 10th and the15th.)

Thanks to all my readers for participating in this little project! 

 I appreciate you! 

Emerging Foggy Spring

March, being the month of early Spring, was the month that I signed up to present a challenge for my favorite Etsy team.  This Spring challenge for the Blogging Business Artisans was called  Emerging Foggy Spring  (which is the title of my finished piece too!) and I wrote the challenge this way:

I am proposing that we try something this month that is a little softer.  I call it - Emerging Foggy Spring. Let's explore color in terms of tint. In color theory, a tint is the mixture of a color with white, which increases lightness. We often create with bright color and ignore tints of color. Create a project with muted tints leaving lots of white space, if you can. This project is to challenge your thought processes about color, using tints. Don't be intimidated by the absence of bright color. Get creative!

So here is what I came up with, and mind you, I didn't even have a clue what I was going to do, back when I signed up for presenting this challenge.  I have been thinking about it quite a bit, and today I got an idea.  

I started with a bunch of scrap fabric and made a crazy quilt block.  I decided to explore the WRONG side of the fabric.  Many fabrics have a whitish reverse side, where the color has only bled thru in the screen printing process. The pattern is not actually woven into the yardage. Thus it has a tinted look.  

At first, it was a bit daunting to my brain, sewing wrong sides together, since I am used to sewing with the right sides facing each other.  As you can see, I actually did the bottom two strips and the top right hand corner with the "right" side up to facilitate the design that I had in mind.  

Here is what is looks like on the "wrong" side --that I am not using--more colorful and not the stuff of this challenge:

Next, I made a quilt sandwich with it, adding the batting and backing and quilting a scene to it.  I used different colors of thread, from black to gray to white, to create the tree's depth in the fog, but it is hard to detect in this photo. (WOW, do I need a new camera--not just this phone camera--broke my good camera!- Maybe you can click on the photo and zoom in and see what I am talking about.)

Anyway, using the right side up in the bottom strips has created a more "real" look in the foreground.  The flower field then fades into the fog with the next strip being reversed to the tint side.  I also have the sun peaking thru the clouds at the top right using the "right" side of the fabric for the sun's brightness.

The actual quilting process shows the tree, flowers and swirling fog of the scene on top of the muted fabrics. 

Reverse of my quilt sandwich

I haven't decided yet how I will bind the little mini quilt, but I am quite proud of the way that it has turned out for a simple afternoon's work!  

P.S.  Linking today with Pink Saturday! 

Free Motion Quilting

I had a few questions, yesterday, about free motion quilting.  As I said yesterday, not all my readers are quilters, so I thought I might give a little illustration about the process.

Have your friend stand next to a table and hold your  pen straight up and down in one position so the tip is on the table.  Tell her not to move her hand nor the pen -- Except for a second so you can place paper under the tip. :) Now, you move the paper to make a drawing of something simple.  It's harder than you think!  Next, imagine moving a 45 by 74 inch quilt sandwich around under that pen until you have drawn on every inch of your "large 45 by 74 inch paper".  Oh . . . and you have to manipulate your large paper, all crumpled up, under your friends arm, between  her body and the pen!!

Sewing this way takes practice!  It is not like sewing a straight line.  You can "doodle"  all you want with free motion quilting.  Here are a couple of blog sites and books that have examples and other explanations if you are interested.

Book by  Don Linn

I have this book and use it, but there are a few others that I would like to have:

Dancing with Thread by Ann Fahl

Freemotion Quilting by Judy Woodworth 

and sites that I like: 

SewKindofWonderful.blogspot.com
Freemotionquilting.blogspot.com

Have a great day!

Mundane Life?

At the first of the year, many of us reevaluate our lives.  I have been thinking, seriously, about all the tasks that fill up my life and where I am, that I really don't want to be.  Yes, I often get serious and tell myself that I am not where I had wanted to be, even where I had purposed to be, even as late as last year.  My goals for last year were not all accomplished and are still goals.  Am I at a standstill?

Just what did I fill up my life with, last year?  Well, besides the family sporting events and gatherings, house sitting for friends, running my online shops, blogging, and church activities, most of my life was filled with everyday activities.  You know, making breakfast, lunch and dinner -- when I couldn't convince hubby to go out to eat!  Then there was the laundry once a week and grocery shopping, and don't forget the dishes!  I didn't finish my children's book, nor work in my personal scrapbook, as I would have liked, adding all those photos that I gleaned when I visited my mom's house.  But--stick with me here--it's not all mundane.   There was creativity in my life. Yes, not all of my creative projects were finished and are still in the "unfinished" box.   The question is, will those projects stay unfinished?  Will I let my mundane life take over my creativity?   Emphatically, NO!

Here's a quick look at my unfinished projects as a way of reminding myself--and letting you hold me accountable--what needs to be finished! (And these are just a few from my box!)

Hubby's Lighthouse quilt

My "Doily Bubbles" quilt

My children's book illustrations

Besides all my projects that need to be started and finished:

More apron styles for my wholesale line

More yo yo's to make!

And new coaster designs!

Well, all I can say is:  "I better get to it!"  

How about you, what's in your unfinished box?

Holiday Weekend Project Incomplete

Well, I didn't complete my goal for the holiday weekend! I had wanted to finish an entire quilt during the long weekend, but other things seem to always get in the way of one's plans!  I had in mind a 'crayon box quilt',  anyway that's what I call it.  Lots of primary colors all surrounded by black lattice work with a black and colorful backing.   "Should be a fun project" I thought.  And I did have enough supplies to finish it in one weekend! 

My fabric scrap pile had been getting higher and higher!  So I sorted out some larger pieces and some strip pieces like in the photo below.  I tried to stick to "crayon" colors--brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink etc.--for the larger pieces.  Since I was using my scraps, some of these are relative with small gauge prints, like the one pictured here for brown. 

squares and strips 

I then added strips of fabric in a simple log cabin style around the squares to frame them.

Here's one that was completed.

I got the top all together, and, wouldn't you know, decided I wanted the finished product larger.  So that meant adding some more blocks.

So I picked out some suitable fabric pieces but got side-tracked by a friend on Sunday.  She had some other plans, which were fun, but didn't allow me to finish.   Then on Monday, Veterans Day, I realized that I have a big craft show coming up next weekend, so I shelved the quilt project in favor of  more expedient inventory projects.

Oh well, there is always another day . . . . 

What have you shelved lately?