Recent Encounters with Quilters

In the last 6 weeks or so I have been out of town 4 times - Beach Week for our family the 2nd week in June, a 5-day cruise with DH's brother's family the last week in June, a great-nephew's christening July 11-12, and now I am in GA to help middle daughter with her new baby daughter. I am feeling like I will never get caught up on email, blogs, Yahoo groups, etc. However, I have a quilting friend who is way busier than I am and she posts blog entries much more frequently (EH, you know who you are), so I am finally posting a contribution to Blogland.

In the last few weeks I have had two encounters with Quilters - Capital "Q" because both of them have published patterns that I have used or had some relationship to. First of all, a few weeks back I had a whole Friday all to myself - doesn't seem like such a big deal for a retiree, but trust me, it is! I wanted to get some serious work done on new granddaughter's quilt. Her parents picked out Squarin' Around after looking at hundreds of patterns that I showed them in books, magazines, and my stash of singles. We finally settled on some of the fabrics from the "Backporch Bouquet" collection from Maywood Studios, with other fabrics added in. I made a few blocks, which don't look anything like I thought they would when I looked at the pattern, and took them to the beach with us so they could see what I had done so far. We tweaked the fabric selection a bit so I was ready to roll the Friday after the beach trip. I cut out enough pieces to get started on and began sewing them together, did the trimming of the blocks, etc -- and had real trouble getting them to come out right. Such trouble that I felt like I could only use about 10 of the first 20 blocks I made. By the afternoon I was wondering what my problem was, and what I could do differently and was getting pretty frustrated and worried. In desparation I googled the designer of the pattern - Karla Alexander - to see if I could find a link or email address for her. I did find her listed on a webpage with a place to send her an email message. So I did that, describing my problem. As I was thinking about which of my MANY UFO's I wanted to work on while I waited to hear from her in the next few days my phone rings - and it is Karla!! This was not more than 5 minutes after I pressed "Send!!" She said she had just turned on her computer and saw my message so thought she would just give me a call. She gave me some good advice about the situation and encouraged me to continue. I am still amazed that she responded so quickly. Too bad she lives in Oregon and I live in VA - I am the Program Co-chair for my guild and I'd suggest her in a heartbeat for a program but I don't think our program budget could swing airfare for a trip from Oregon!

A couple of weeks ago I had a message from Christine Thresh, who designed the Going Around in Circles Again quilt that our daughter Allie made for the niece of her employers. She was very complimentary of Allie's work on the quilt and we emailed back and forth a couple of times. I was happy to hear the compliments, and gladly forwarded her messages to Allie. Pretty cool!

Allie's "Going Around in Circles Again," the Final ALA Biblioquilters Block and Progress on the Simplified Log Cabin

Allie has now finished her "Going Around in Circles Again" quilt and it is probably on its way to the recipients. This photo shows her quilting really well. I don't see how she does all those lines so evenly spaced, even with using the walking foot, on her domestic sewing machine!
Here is another picture showing the quilting up closer and closer still I wish I could see the quilt in person, but she made it for the niece of the family that she works for, and it is probably on the way to her and her new hubby now.

I finished the last of the 5 ALA Bilbioquilter blocks a couple of days ago. I like the design, and I like the look of stars, but I don't think I can do them very well. I can add the flying geese pieces on the sides OK, but sewing the blocks together so that my seams don't eat the points is frequently a problem. I always have to sew at least one seam again to get it better. If anyone has suggestions for that problem I'm all ears!
I've also been working on the Simplified Log Cabin and now have 9 rows pieced It is 11 blocks wide; I'm thinking I will make it 13-14 blocks long and hope to be working on it some more today. I love the fact that the border is a part of the piecing, so when I'm thru it is ready to sandwich. I' m thinking I will use a batik for the back - maybe see what I can find in a wide piece so that I don't have to piece it. I think I want to learn how to use a Handi-quilter at some shop where I can then rent time on the machine to do some quilting myself. There is a shop about an hour from here that does that, but you have to buy a set of leaders. There also at least 2 shops in the Atlanta area that have Handi-quilters so I might be able to work in a day or two of lessons and practice with an extended trip to see kids and grands there.

Allie's Quilt Top is Finished

DD Allie just sent me more pictures of her "Going Around in Circles Again" quilt. She has now finished appliquing the circles and has it sandwiched, and will start the machine quilting on it in a couple of days. Tomorrow is market day for her - she goes to the Greenmarket in Union Square in NYC for Hawthorne Valley Farm, where she was an intern during the summer of 2007. On some Saturdays she goes to the Inwood Greenmarket too. In between these times she will be quilting away. I think she will be outlining the circles but don't know what else she will come up with. I think she has done a great job with adapting the double wedding ring pattern to make it her own.

Allie's "Going Around in Circles Again" Quilt

Allie is working on a new quilt - this one as a belated wedding gift for the niece of the family she works for in New York. She wanted to do a version of the double wedding ring, but different. Here is what she has so far. She is using a pattern called "Going Around in Circles Again" using scraps of blues and greens. The circles are paper-pieced, then machine-appliqued onto the background fabric. Here is a closer view - with some of the pins in. Here and here you can see the design even closer. I believe I recognize some of my fabrics! When Allie comes to Virginia she stays in our guest/sewing room and sometimes some of my fabrics make their way into her bags. She has been having more time to work on it recently since it is very definitely winter still in the Hudson Valley. I'm hoping she sends more photos soon!

More of Allie's Quilts

Allie, our youngest daughter who works on an organic farm in Ancram, NY, sent me photos of her most recent quilted wall hangings. They are a set of three carrots that go along with other vegetable designs she has been making recently - see my earlier post. She has an exhibit of her quilt projects this month in the cafe area of the farm store at Hawthorne Valley Farm in Harlemville, NY. She hung the quilts last Thursday, and had sold these three before she got them all hung, with the understanding that they will remain with the rest of the exhibit until the end of the month. Now she has also sold 2 of her cow designs (Hans and Bodo) and one person has asked her to do a vegetable design of her choice for her. As you can imagine, Allie is very excited about all of this. I'm hoping she will send us some photos of the whole group of quilts.

"Monsieur Beauregard" ~ and Other Allie Quilts

Last weekend DH and I went to Columbia County, NY to visit Allie, our daughter who works at Thompson Finch Farm in Ancram. She is our youngest, and the only quilter. In between tending and harvesting strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, apples and the other garden produce this summer and fall she has also been busily working on some more quilted wallhangings. I mentioned some of her pieces in a previous post but now she has more. The model for "Monsieur Beauregard" is a Beauregard sweet potato that graces her doorstep. Here she shows the original and the quilted piece. She used some Paris street scene fabric for the background and painted over it. If you look closely at the larger view of it you can see the design in the background. She also painted the fabric for the potato to make it more the real color.

Another one of her quilted wall hangings is "Hans" The model for this one was Hans - a bull at Hawthorne Valley Farm in Harlemville, NY. Allie worked at this farm last year, and still goes to the Inwood Greenmarket in Manhattan for them sometimes. He died prematurely and Allie created this quilt in his honor. Here is a close-up of the work on it.

She made "Lily's Peas" for a friend who used to work for a food magazine - this was made to resemble a photo in the magazine. Here is a close-up of the stitching on it.

Another one of her quilts is this rolling chicken coop modeled after one on a farm she worked on this spring. I think my scrap pile was raided for several of these blue fabrics - but what a wonderful use of them! The background fabric has text on it about chickens, painted to blend with the blues.

Another quilt she made is this one of dried tomatoes - again painted and quilted to emphasis the colors. She says the title of this one, "Plump Thing with a Naval," is a translation of the Spanish word for "tomato." I am amazed at the way she quilts the lettering of her some of her titles in cursive writing!

My Guild's Quilt Show and Allie's Quilts

My Guild, Rockbridge Pieceworkers Quilt Guild, has a quilt show as part of the Rockbridge Regional Fair in July. I joined the guild in August 2006, but was not ready to put anything in last year's show. This year I put two of my quilts in the show - the T-shirt quilt and the Butterflies and Hydrangeas quilt . Neither of them won a prize, but it was neat to see them displayed in a public place. The quilting group that I lead at our local Senior Center also put a quilt in the show that several of us worked on, so that was neat for those ladies to see their handiwork on display.
For me the best part of the quilt show was that our youngest daughter entered 5 of her quilted wallhangings in the show. I am showing them here with their labels so you can see what she said about each one. She is in her second year of working on organic farms in the Columbia County, New York area. "Flame," "Chocolate," "Bodo," "Wiltsie Bridge," and "El Corazon." She has painted on some of them, and I think just did a terrific job on them. She has an art background, but has only been quilting for a couple of years.

Allie just recently finished a quilt for the daughter of her current employers that they commissioned her to make for their daughter's wedding. Here is a picture of her and my hubby with that quilt - She designed the quilt herself, cut out all those orange flowers from some batik fabric and machine appliqued them on, machine quilted the quilt and included some botanical designs in the quilting and has a quote from Khalil Gibran quilted in cursive writing around the border - Quite an amazing job I thought! The couple did not see the quilt until the reception, where it was hanging up for all to see.

Where to start with an update?

It's not that I haven't been quilting, although summer and summer trips have intervened in that a bit. Since my last posting, we went to Cincinnati for a weekend to see the Atlanta Braves play the Reds, one of our daughters and her husband visited for a weekend, we went to Anaheim for a library conference and stayed to be tourists for a few days, we had a week in Hatteras Village on the Outer Banks, and we went to Richmond to see the Richmond Braves play. Next week I will go to Atlanta for the arrival of #4 grandbaby - my oldest daughter's 3rd baby is expected to be delivered on Sat, August 16, unless she decides to arrive earlier.

In between these trips I have been doing some quilting. The only one that I have finished is a rag quilt for my second great-niece, but I don't want to show it until I have given it to her, which will happen sometime while I am in Atlanta. I have finished all but about 6 blocks of the Orange Crush Quilt, and have started putting the rows together. Here is a possible arrangement for it - and a picture of the one corner that I have sewn together - I'm thinking that for the border I want to use a narrow strip of the black and then a wider border of the green, with a few of the leftover blocks centered as shown on each side of the quilt. However, since this is not for anyone but us, it is now on the back burner with several other quilts.

At our July guild meeting we had a workshop on the New Orleans Puzzle Quilt. Here is what I did during the workshop - this is 1/2 of it. It is also now on that same burner since it is for us too. We had to sew all of our strips together for this project before arriving at the meeting so that we could get this much done during the workshop. It can be finished to have all these points and used as a table-topper or wall-hanging, or could be finished by filling in around the corners with trapezoid-shaped pieces to square it off. I'm thinking wall-hanging, but we'll see.

Since we are having a new granddaugher soon I am working on a qult for her now. Her parents have requested something with red, purple and black - and nothing babyish. After much searching online I found a fabric that has all of that in it and have now added considerably to my stash in those colors. I am using a Fons and Porter Love of Quilting pattern, July-August issue - "Glory Days" - but using lots more fabrics. Here is what I have done so far on it, photographed on the usual blue carpet. I think I will not use the goldy cream that is the center of one of the stars -- it goes with the focus fabric, but doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the quilt. Those 9-patches are easier to make than the stars -- can you tell?? Our guild had a quilt show last month - I'll talk about that in my next post. And I will try to make that soon - at least before I head out to Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon. I have to plan my computer time more carefully now since we use the computer to watch and/or listen to the Braves on MLB.com - and we watch every game they play!

Allie's Green Batik Quilt

Our youngest daughter, Allie, has been visiting us since mid-November. She had been working as an intern on an organic farm in the Hudson Valley of NY, and after a visit with us left this past Friday to go back to work on that farm for a few weeks before moving to a nearby farm where she plans to work this coming season. During the last couple of weeks that she was with us she decided she wanted to make herself a quilt using some of my batiks. She was living in my sewing room, surrounded by my stash and I think it must have been calling her name! She likes to make up her own designs in her quilts, and her knitting. She has two quilts in progress that I have pictures of on my Quilting Links webpage - http://mamanance.info/quilting/index.htm#family She hand-pieced and is hand quilting them, but this time she wanted to try out my Brother. She started on it Jan 7, and finished all but sewing down some of the binding by the time she left here Friday. She had never machine quilted but practiced a bit with the walking foot and with free motion, and, as I guessed she would chose, she liked the free motion better, so did a meandering stitch all over it -- and seemed very happy with the results!