Pandemic Grandson's Quilt

I made this quilt for our grandson born in the middle of the pandemic, January 2021.  Our son and daughter-in-law have a greens, a trees and leave motif foe the the baby's room. 

 

Recovered Porch and Deck Furniture

We bought rattan thrift shop furniture for our front porch and back deck and I recovered all of it with various shades of denim scraps and an old green patterned table cloth that I had on hand.  

On the back deck I repurposed, yet again, old scraps of denim that had had another life as covers on our furniture in our fifth wheel trailer. 

Below is the "before" of the front porch furniture.  

Tree Huggers Quilt

I made this quilt for a niece's daughter.  It's all free-hand "drawn" then appliqued by me and free motion quilted on the machine. 

Below is when I was laying out the applique pieces and deciding where everything would be positioned.

And below, I was still deciding on colors. 

And my little grand-niece enjoying her quilt. 

New Wall Art - "Dancing Colors"

I am transitioning from more traditional quilting to fabric arts more generally.  I just finished this one yesterday and mounted it on polystyrene.  I put a black cloth "frame" around it. 

I used my stash on this, which included ric-rac and bric-a-brac.  I had many colors and sizes of ribbons and hem binders and blanket bindings that I'd picked up in thrift stores over the years.  I also did free-motion machine quilting, pebble style in a couple areas, and added some Kantha-style large stitching and French knots.  A little international flavor, wouldn't you say?  A friend of mine who is one of the original team that sequenced DNA, our wicked smart friend, we call him, looked at this before I'd framed it out and started waxing elegantly in physics lingo about the prism and color spectrum and all.  We'd been imbibing over dinner and I want to just blame my failure to fully comprehend on drink and not lack of smarts on my part.  It was fun though.  I wish I'd captured his words for fun to add in here.  

This wall art was inspired by something I saw on Pinterest which came from a Flikr photo.  

Here's my work on the wall in our foyer. 

The picture, above, was done with the yellow topped straight pins holding down some of the ric rac. 

Mom's Quilt

Here is Mom's quilt that I completed in 2020 but had stopped blogging for a while.  

Like the one I did for my dad, I wanted it to keep my mom warm while she spent her days in a nursing home with remnants from strokes and Lewy Body Dementia.  I used old lace doilies I'd found in thrift shops or that were given to me by friends.  I also used some piece work some unknown woman had done but never made into a quilt.  I found those in a thrift store too.  I also added my own applique of a Carolina Wren since I was living in the Southern Appalachians when I made this quilt and the little fatty wrens were always serenading me and visiting me just outside my windows and on the porches and deck. 

The browns I used in this quilt were done partly because they were already in the pieces I found at a thrift shop and wanted to use but also because I remember Mom and Dad's bedroom out on the farm in Iowa was done in brown shades and I had always liked it.  It was part of the story of their life. 

I wanted this quilt for my mom to also be feminine and it did have the pink with the brown in the applique pieces, but I used a touch of turquoise in the trim around the edges to give it a little pop, and then I used printed flowered brown squares at the intersection of each larger square, and I hand-quilted free-hand flowers in all the brown strips between the squares. 

The binding I used for Mom's quilt is the same one I used for Dad's quilt.  I wanted them to be connected in this way. 

Here, below, is a look at my free-hand flower quilting.

On the applique'd piece below of the Sunbonnet Sue that I'd found in a thrift shop, I added the sun because there was just too much blank space in the upper right corner of that square.  Then I quilted in the sun rays.

Above is the backside of the Sunbonnet Sue showing my hand basting. 

You might also notice that I quilted in a baseball bat into the Sunbonnet Sue's hand.  That's an old family story that is probably not appropriate here.  

As with the quilt for my dad, this one for my mom is destined for a sister of mine after my mom is gone.  The one for my dad went to my sister, Karen.  This one will go to my sister, Barb. 

Below is a picture of the layers, the topper, batting and backing, taped with painters tape to the clean wooden floor in preparation for hand basting. Note one of the knee pads in the left foreground of the picture. It's careful, grueling work crawling around on top of this to baste it starting from the center and going out to all the edges. 

And below is a picture of when I was still piecing and before I hand stitched in all the vintage lace doilies.

More Quilts - A Flannel One For My Dad

After a long hiatus from blogging, I hope to catch up and resume with a fairly regular schedule .  I have done many quilts since I last posted. 

The quilt below is a twin bed size.  I started it using stash fabrics, most of which I bought in thrift stores.  When I was sitting outside our fifth wheel trailer under the awning, hand quilting this quilt, a lady quilter came over to our campsite to chat me up.  She wanted to know where I source my fabrics.  This quilt was all flannel pieces.  I proudly informed her that I purchased nearly all of it from thrift stores, estate sales, or repurposed it from old clothes (like most original quilters did).  Her face changed to thinly veiled disgust.  I guess it's not for everyone.  I have become a fan of Cas Holmes who recycles or upcycles (whatever word you prefer) into fiber art. She has gypsy roots. I really relate to Bohemian lifestyle, traveling (wandering) and living small, reusing things, being content. When I read about Cas and viewed her work I loved it. I keep finding  more and more of us out here and there in the world who work with found or existing items and fabrics.  

The quilt below was made for my dad who had had a major stroke and ended up in a nursing home. He was a tall gentleman, 6'3" and over 200 pounds and also had initial signs dementia so home care was not going to be an easy option and my mother who was relatively healthy at the time opted for nursing home care.  She and my dad had nursing home insurance that was so good that its not offered anymore as an insurance choice.  

Dad was hurt and very angry, fit to be tied, to be put in a nursing home.  He was hard to be around. It seemed even as if he was being tortured, so great was his distress. He had been a successful farmer and was locally involved in government and education for most of his adult life.  He had put seven kids through school or saw them launched in houses and careers.  It has a sad way to wind up what was an almost 92 year life, with the last couple in a nursing home.  I had trouble seeing him and I know it was a cop out not to spend more time with him at this stage of his life. He was in a nursing home that one of my sisters worked in as well as a sister-in-law so I knew he was as well cared for as possible outside of being in his own home.  

I loved him so much and thought of him though I was not there often.  We were traveling in our fifth wheel a lot and did not stay in Iowa full time to visit him as I'd done a couple years before with my sister who was dying of cancer.  Maybe because of the toll it took on me being the primary care giver to my sister during the day for almost a year, that I couldn't be around my dad all that much in his last years. 

So I felt a strong urge to do something for him.  Something that was within my capability and that took a lot of thought and a lot of my attention.  I made this quilt to go on his bed, to cover his body and provide him warmth and love, whether he was aware of it or not, and I don't think he was aware of that fact by the time I was finished with it.  After he died, I gave it to one of my sisters.  At the viewing for his funeral, she had it covering a table holding photographs.  

I look at the pictures of this quilt and remember laying it out on a bedroom floor in a friend's house in Maryland. I remember planning it, piecing it, layering the finished topper and the sandwiched batting to the backing, all of it carefully taped with painters tape to the clean, wooden floor and carefully crawling around on top of it to baste the layers together. This took several days.  I remember getting a couple calls from a niece reporting on my dad's condition as I was carefully moving over the top of this quilt with a curved needle and long stretches of thread.  

So this quilt was stitched with love, carefully planned, neatly done.  It is one of my favorites and I'm really proud of my work. 

                                            

Latest Projects

From the Ellicott City Sew-Vac Sew Fair in November, I learned to make fabric bowls using the stiff and tough kind of interfacing.  The lady demonstrating these showed how you can use machine quilting to make the texture more interesting.  I thought it would be a good way for me to practice machine quilting.  They say if you practice machine quilting for even just ten minutes a day for six months you will acquire the desired control and skill.  Or begin to.

Here are some projects.  I did though I only quilted one and didn't get pictures of it after having quilted it.  Forgot.

It was fun piecing this together inside the bowl, cutting strips of different widths, fitting them together, finger pressing seams down before sewing, working the fabric, establishing rapport with it as I made it curve up and down the sides yet link to it's mates.  One of the fabric artists at the Sew Fair called this making the fabric "mind" like making children mind.  That was cute and we all laughed.  But I prefer to think of it in the win win model of establishing rapport.  More Zen-like for me.

So the basket above got quilted in the pebbles style but I forgot to take pictures and gave it to a friend, filled with examples of my first two batches of homemade soap each individually wrapped up with rustic brown bags and tied off with either twine or vintage fabric ribbons I'd bought at thrift stores over the last couple of years during my travels.

And the baskets below I haven't quilted yet.  This blue one in the picture below needs to be reworked before I quilt it.  The small circle on the bottom is a little off center.  I plan to pull those threads and re-attach it, then quilt it with the machine using wavy, swirly lines inspired by the fabric on the outside.

And this bowl, below, was the first one I did and actually probably turned out the best.  I liked it as it was and was afraid to ruin it by quilting it.  I didn't trust my beginner skills and this is ironic but probably not that uncommon among other budding artists, or any other new endeavors.  How do you learn if you don't try?  And the whole reason I started working on these fabric bowls was just that it would give me fun, small projects where I could practice machine quilting rather than just doing pieces of scraps in a quilt sandwich.

 This one I'm leaving in my friend's condo in Ocean City, MD.  I am putting some of my homemade soaps in it for her as well.  Over the next few years I hope to make more of these bowls and more different kinds of soaps.  They will all make nice gifts.  I have to stop worrying about whether people will like them, whether the soaps will just get thrown away unused and whether the bowls will end up in the trash or at a thrift shop.  I see so many homemade items in thrift shops.  Most deserve being there.  I keep telling myself not to worry.  My stuff may end up there too but I'm still on my journey of creation.  I am evolving.  My work is evolving.  What do I care what happens to the steps along the way? It's OK if they fall away after I've moved on.