Christmas Tree

Hi all,

I have not forgotten my poor blog. Just have not had time to post for a while. But I thought I would post pictures of my humble Christmas tree in honor of the season. And in the new year the Sapphire Quilt will be back in full force! :)

Our little snow day!

Bow tie blocks explained...

This is a traditional 9 block with alternating colors as you may see in an Irish chain quilt or Rag quilt with two alternating colors. A very simple block, although you can make some beautiful stuff using this block. To me, simple is good.

But in order to spice my latest quilt up a bit, I used a bow tie block (OK, so they call it the Double Necktie Block). In order to make this 9 block into a "bowtie block", you just add small triangles to the corners of adjacent blocks, as shown in this picture. It is really a simple procedure, but it is a time consuming extra step. But worth it, I think, for something a bit different.

It makes the resulting block look like two bow ties stacked on top of each other. I got this block from my favorite site for finding quilt patterns, the Quilter's Cache. Every time you load a page on that site it plays a new song, so just to warn you to turn down your volume if you are checking this out at work!! :)

OK, well, hope that you are fully inspired to try this block for yourself. And have fun experimenting!!

Sewing for the holidays...

It is that time of year again, and you craft-ies know what I mean. The holidays. Compound the normal holiday season with 5 November birthdays and you have a real gift giving problem! And every year I get inspired to give at least one or two folks a quilt of some kind for thier gift. So this year I have a few coming down the pike, so I have not been able to post much, since that would ruin the surprise (Also, the election and my guest posting on http://www.letters-and-surveys.blogspot.com/ has taken up all my blogging time!! Thank goodness that is over!)

So, one of my gifts this year was for my sister's birthday, and since that is over, and the gift has been given, I can now safely post.

This one was so fun. I started out by getting the fleece backing. It is super soft and cozy. I waited and waited for my Jo-Ann's coupon to arrive so I could get 50% off the cut. Once I had the back I was puzzled as to what to do next.

I searched around for a cool pattern, and at the same time kept my eyes out for fabric that would match. I wanted to keep it monochromatic, since when my sister and I went to a quilt show she seemed to really like the monochromatic quilts.

So I got on ebay and searched for navy blue fabric...and what to my wondering eyes did appear, but someone who had perhaps made their own monochromatic navy blue and white quilt and was trying to sell the leftover remnants. So i bought about 6 different fabrics that all matched perfectly right from the comfort of my couch. I love technology!

Then I wanted to find a different type of pattern. So I decided to try the bowtie. You can see it here in my first attempt at laying out the quilt top.

My first pattern attempt was not exactly right, though, since I did not have enough of the blue fabrics to make it big enough, so I went ahead and changed it around.

By changeing the pattern around a bit and alternating the blocks with white strips and blocks it made for an interesting top and allowed me to have enough fabric to finish! Always important. :)

Somehow the lines and blocks really seemed nice put together this way. And the bowtie block added a level of detail that I really liked.

I did not quilt this one to finish. I used embroidery thread to connect the backing to the top. I have never tried quilting a quilt with a fleece back in the traditional sense. I just use the knots to tie the two parts together.

So happy birthday sis! Hope you like it.

So now on to Christmas and my next round of projects. This is a fun time of the year!!!

Mums the word!

Here are some updated pix of my mums. So pretty, what more is there to say!

Shop Hop

I just inadvertantly got to be part of a Shop Hop at the Quilting Frame today. Have you ever been to a shop hop? Well, I was dropping off a quilt to be quilted at the Quilting Frame, and a lady was there for the shop hop. What I gather is that you have a "passport" and you get it stamped at all the shops who are part of a hop. Sort of like an international tour of different sewing locals in the area. And at each shop you can purchase a square...Well, the kit to make a square. Then you can make a quilt with all the squares collected at the hop. Very cool. I wish I had found out about it sooner, so I could have hopped, but it is a bit time consuming of a process.

But, getting back to my story. I went into the Quilting Frame, and Sandra was helping a shop hopper. They were admiring a beautiful quilt that I think had been made to show what the hop quilt would look like. So I started looking around and we eventually all started chatting about the quilts and the hop. And then I pulled out my quilt and the ladies started looking at it. They started telling me about what happens when you cut on the bias. We were all worried that my quilt would be out of whack because I cut some triangles on the bias. So we pulled out the quilt and started measuring and checking it and looking at the backing. Three people, one a stranger, but all three quilters, just enjoying each other's company. It was so nice.

So my quilt is set to be quilted. But I could not show it in this post, so I am showing pictures of my garden. I built a new flower bed and planted some mums. They are huge. And looking very pretty.

So that is what is up in the Sapphire quilt world. More to come as always!

What we can learn from my Grandma and the women of Gee's Bend

Have you ever saved an empty bread bag for later use? Have you ever felt guilt when throwing away an aluminum disposable pie plate or a plastic milk jug? Have you ever eaten questionable food as opposed to simply throwing it away? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you were either raised during the depression or you are part of the new "Greenwave" that is crossing our country these days. But there is more than just the environment at stake for all of us, and the new "greenies" may not fully appreciate that fact, while my Grandmother could really care less about global warming as she tucks her breadbags away. She was reducing, reusing, and recycling before the three R's were cool. (Actually, in her day the three R's were Reading wRiting and 'Rithmatic, but that never made much sense...)

You see, the depression taught my grandparents and the people of that generation something. I realized today that people younger than me (close to 30) are not being exposed to the Depression style way of life. That is, my parents were raised by Depression era parents. I was impacted by Depression era grandparents. But my kids (if I ever have any) will not know their great-grandparents enough to understand this mindset of scrimping and saving.

My Grandparents learned as young children and teenagers that debt was a dangerous thing. If you didn't have a nest egg, in cash, you were at risk. They saved extra money, made their clothes last, walked to the theatre, and saved such things as bread bags for a second or third use.

But I was raised in the 80's, not the 20's and 30's. In the eighties, everything was about bigger and better. If you don't like what you've got, throw it away and get a new one. Oh, and don't bother fixing things. In fact, these days you can't get things fixed. You have no choice but tossing them. So we have been trained to borrow and spend and borrow some more and don't worry you will earn more later to pay the creditors back. Want a car, get one! Want a house, get one! Too small, get a bigger one! And so it goes, and so we are where we are economically today.

I heard an NPR story on the way in to work today about an economic bubble that burst in Japan that taught them the same lessons Americans learned in the Great Depression. I found it so profound as the man in the story talked about how everyone was in the "buy buy buy" mode...but it took 20 years for him to pay off that debt after the crash. And I thought to myself, how long will it take me to pay off my debt? My education, my home...I don't think 20 years will cover it! So what if we have a crash? It is enough to make me want to start stashing bread bags in a drawer.

So this brings me to the quilters of Gee's Bend. A couple of weekends ago, my mom and I went to see an exhibit of these quilts at the Knoxville Museum of Art. It was great. These are some cards I bought there which had the prints of some of the quilts on them. You see, the ladies of Gee's Bend would take what ever fabric they could get...old jeans and courderoy pants with the knees worn and that could not longer be used, or old shirts, sheets, anything that could be found. It would be patched together, mostly in a "log cabin" or "housetop" pattern. But the word "pattern" is used loosely, as you can see. Squares and strips is how they come out. All colors, with variations in the fabric from where knees had bent, pockets had been removed, creases had been made.

Batting was cotton lint that was leftover from processing of cotton in the cotton gin. The lint would be stretched and spread over the quilt back and then the top was added.

Then let the quilting begin. Women gathered around the quilting frame and stitched while they sang, told stories, and talked about all the things women talk about. Then, after a bit of finishing, the quilt was complete and ready for use. You see, this project was not a gift or a hobby, but it was the way that a woman would keep her husband or children warm on a winter night.

But the quilters of Gee's Bend knew about not wasting, not borrowing, but usually having just enough, or a little less than enough. Mostly about being happy. The video at the museum showed one of the matriarchs talking about this...she said that no matter how little they had they were happy, but that nowadays, no one seems happy.

And I guess we're not. Who can be happy when the world can crumble so easily. When retirement and investments can be lost, debt will take 20 years to pay, and cars run out of gas. But when you have nothing and no where to go, what is there to worry about? You can just sit with your family, stitching and singing and letting the world worry about itself.

So we have a lot to do. We need to be green to save the planet, we need to save money and get out of debt. But mostly, we need to love each other and worry more about the next stitch than the next dollar.

New Gadget

This is a new gadget I got for my birthday. It is a device for cutting quilt peices that makes quilting a WHOLE lot easier. As you can see, you use the grid on the blue mat to measure your peices. You simply measure the amount you want and cut the strip with the cutter.

It looks like a pizza cutter. It cuts so easily through the fabric to make the peices that you put together later. Isn't that cool? No more measuring with a peice of cardboard, marking it with a pen and cutting crooked lines with a scissors. I can get my least favorite part of quilting over with much faster with this new method. Thanks mom for the birthday present! :)

Final Pinwheel quilt

Just wanted to share the final pictures of the quilting on my Pinwheel quilt. It came out great, I think, thanks to the Quilting Frame. I used a rainbow thread, which you can't tell in the pictures.

A Hand-Me-Down Quilt

This quilt top was given to be by my Grandmother, who received it from her mother, who had received it from a friend. I don't know who made it, but it was all hand done and must have taken ages. I guess it was done before the time of TV and women's rights, so maybe that is how the woman who made it had time to do it that way! :) Jut kidding of course, since there are many dedicated quilters out there today who do quilt by hand and make such beautiful peices.

I received the top and decided to finish the quilt. I unfortunately used polyester batting, which I found out later can damage out quilt because the polyester wears at the old cotten and causes tears. I also found out from my local quilt expert (at the Quilting Frame) that red fabrics are the most delicate.

When I received the quilt top it was stained and smelly, so I washed it in the washing machine. It has needed at least one or two more washing since after some use. That has been a bit rough on it, and even with some patching, it still has some tears at seams and in the old fabric peices. But I plan to be more gentle with it in the future, using it less and displaying it more. Also, I plan to work on repairing the rips.

Quilt Rack

I got this quilt rack for $10 at the Bethel Flea Market last week. I was very excited to have a good way to disply my quilts while still keeping them handy for use. And what a steal.

I am not sure if this was hand made, but it looks beautiful. Now I just have to find a better place for it.

Elephant quilt

Some nice pictures of a quilt I did a while ago for my aunt. It is a Batik Elephant print that I loved right off and the back is flannel. It makes for a cozy blanket that is not too heavy. My sunt took a great picture of it on a pretty summer day in Pennsylvania.

I quilted this one by hand, tracing out the elephants. It is a subtle addition, but I think it makes it look nice. I worked on it on the long trip to granma's and as I sat in the den watching TV waiting for Christmas morning. And it almost got done in time. As I sit here in my warn TN living room looking at this summery pictures, my mind can't help but go back to that cold day with maybe a snowflake or two falling outside, sitting with Grandma behind me stroking my hair and other bodies of sisters, brother, dad, pap, aunt are all around because there is not much room in the den. :)But it came out great and now sits with other relics of world travel in a place of honor in my aunt's living room. I am honored that she has placed it there.

Thanks for the pics Aunt Deb!!

The next project

This quilt is the culmination of something I have been wanting to do for a long time. I first made a similar quilt for my sister in law (picture in a previous post). I loved the pattern, and am finally getting the chance to re-create it.

This is also a bit of a "patchwork" quilt, only in that I used scraps of material and leftover peices to finish out the quilt. I loved being able to find peices of other quilts I have made that were left over and to use them again. They will now be contstant reminders of the quilts that I have made and given away to loved ones. It is like an ongoing connection.



Finally, I am going to use a technique on this quilt that I have wanted to use for a while but have not been able to try. Basically what you do is take scraps of material and sew it all together in a big peice. Then you take the peice and treat it like any other fabric, cutting out the shapes that you need for what ever you are working on. I am going to take this home made fabric and edge the rest of my quilt with it. More pictures will follow. For this part of the project I have also used the edging of the fabric, where it tells the name or maker or colors used. We saw this at a recent quilt show where someone had made a whole block out of the part of the fabric that is usually thrown away or hidden inside a seam. i like the idea and have been saving the edges for just such a project as this one, so I will put some better pictures of that part of the fabric up as I continue working on this project.

Beacon quilt 2

I am posting my pictures of the final quilted version of the quilt I made for my boss. I will be giving it to her on Monday. I hope she likes it. I like the way it came out with the quilting. It ended up not being as big as I thought, so it is more of a big lap quilt. It almost seems decorational vs. for warmpth. But it is very usable and nice.

The quilting is in the shape of stars. They don't show up obtrusively, but are nice background patterns.

I am happy with the final product. I hope my boss is as well.

flowers...a change of pace

Just some views of my little garden. I have been having some fun with a pot garden this year. I did not ever have a lot of success with my flower bed. I got phlox to grow there, which is great, but nothing else ever took. With the pots, you can move them around in the sun or out of it as needed. THey take a lot more watering, but otherwise I like them that way. Also, I used Miracle Gro Potting soil this year, which was great. It really did make everything grow bigger.

But I love the three pink flowers. They are my newest. The balloon flowers are quite pretty and really do look like a baloon bursting open. Also you can see my lilac growing behind it. I had to put it in a bigger pot this year, since I still haven't found the right place to put it.

Flowers are fun as a change of pace from quilting. You get to be outside and yet you can still be creative and enjoy the process of planning and working toward a beautiful end result. Of course, these little attempts are no where near as beautiful as BRD's garden, but it is an attempt.

More thoughts on emotions and fabric

Well, I was just thinking some thoughts this morning that I wanted to put into my blog for future thought. And I promise this will be the last time I talk about my dear dogs that I have lost in the past. I am sure, though, that there will be more dogging in my blogging in the future, but we will remain focused on the living from now on.



However, I was thinking about our two very special pups that are buried at the back of our barn and were placed there by our own hands. We have another special pup buried much closer to the road (the site of his demise) and he was buried not by our own hands (thank you daddy!), but that is a story for another blog, maybe one with the theme "Lessons I learned as a not quite grown up adult".



So anyway, I was thinking about the dogs we had lost. Both had tragic and untimely deaths. Both were found by us, in our yard. Both were DOA, with no need for a trip to the vet. So, if this has never happened to you, I guess I need to talk about the emotions that hit you at this time. First you are shocked, but I will say that in both cases there was no doubt that death had occurred. One look was proof of it, which is strange. I did not think either was sleeping or hurt. It was definitely death. And after about 1-2 minutes of pure shock and sorrow, it is like your body turns to find tools. A wheelbarrow, a shovel, and (here is where this becomes relevent to my quilting blog) a blanket or quilt. Yes, that is one of the necessary tools. You need it to cover the body, contain the body, lift the body, and cradle the body.



And this is where I hope this post leaves the morbid and enters the philosophical. You see, we use sheets for our dogs to lay on, so I could have easily grabbed an old sheet to do this job. or even a tarp or garbage bag. And I am sure some would have. But it was my impulse to grab blankets or quilts that meant something. With our first dog, I grabbed a white blanket that was embroidered with hearts and had been a wedding present to us years before. Our dog had sort of adopted this blanket already, I will grant. She would lay on in often, but none the less is was a special blanket with special memories to it.



For our more recent loss, it was the same impulse. And again I went to a quilt special to that dog. I had made a simple quilt out of a large remnant from a quilt I had made for my mom. It was a cozy gray cotten with flowers on it. The other side was a cheap peice I had gotten at Walmart because I liked the pattern. I outlined that in a purple fabric that may have been a dress I cut up to salvage the fabric. Or it may have just been another bargain buy, I don't remember. I had been using this blanket to protect our couch from doggy nails, but somehow our dog sort of adopted it. But my husband shared it with him, as he liked it as well. So when I went to reach for this tool of burial, I reached for that purple quilt.



So now the dogs lay wrapped for burial in the special fabrics. I am a realistic about animals and death. I know that neither dog recieves any comfort now from those blankets. There is no magic power in them. But I do recieve comfort from knowing that they are there. Is that silly? After each died, I immediately knew that there was no more I could do for them. THey were out of reach. But I could feel better knowing that I demonstrated their value to me by burying something else of value with them. Call it a memorial or a marker, I don't know. But just as I discussed in the last post, the emotions and the fabrics become tied. They are all wrapped up in such interesting ways. Maybe I was simply burying my memories as well. I don't know.



Why does this kind of thing make us feel better? I would really like to know. I know God is teaching me about grief in all of this. How much more potent are these thoughts when it is a family member, spouse, or friend that dies. How much more difficult to handle. What we do for the dead, we most certainly are really doing for ourselves. But it should make us think about what we are doing for the living.

Well, goodbye pups, and since I know that you will never read the internet, this goodbye is for me, too. But it is time for you to leave my blogs. But you will never leave the fabric of my life. You are already woven in.

Pinwheel blog #2

WEll, today I am sharing some special pics...THis is my craziest quilt ever. I started this one a while back and already showed some pictures of the top, but I have added a bit and gotten the back ready to go, so this one should be done soon.

This one is special because, as I said before, my mom gave me the fabric I used for the pinwheels. I loved how they came out. I began thinking about what I wanted for the back and whether or not the front was really finished. I decided that the front needed another outline and the back should be a pinwheel print, if I could find such a thing. The internet is so beautiful sometimes, and I searched for "pinwheel fabric" on google. Sure enough, I found it on ebay!

But what freaked me out was that I was going to have to buy this fabric "unexperienced". By this I mean that, although I could "see" it online, I had no idea what the texture, quality or colors would really look like, especially along side the rest of my quilt. Picking fabric can be tricky, and I have even brought fabrics home that I matched in a store or to a sample and found that they don't really work together. Needless to say I was nervous. But when the fabric came, I found that it would work. The background blue was not perfect, but the pinwheels themselves were great and just the right color. I decided that this was just going to be a crazy quilt.

There are numerous precedents for crazy quilt color combonations. Quilts made from patches have no rules at all when it comes to color. Other quilts use contrasting and coflicting colors on purpose to enhance a pattern. And I have seen some local quilters who seem to have just liked a fabric totally apart from how it might match the top of their quilt (or maybe they had a lot of that fabric left and did not want to waste it...) and so they just put the two together with a devil may care kind of attitude. Yes, we quilters can sometimes really walk on the wild side.

So I guess you would say I fall in that last category. So together the fabrics went. And then I went to a quilt show with my mom and went to a booth with the greatest African print fabrics. All the right colors to match my quilt. So I ran out to the car, got my quilt top, which I had brought along hoping for just such an occasion, and attempted to make a match. With such wild colors and patterns it was harder than I thought! But you can see what I ended up with. I like how it goes and that it makes it even crazier.

It also makes the memories even sweeter. This quilt will forever remind me of my dear dog Duke, my mothers love and comfort when I lost him, the healing up of my grief from losing him through the making of the quilt, the fun and inspiration of attending that quilt show with my mom and sister, and the excitement of trying out new things when it comes to quilting. Quilting is truly a way of "making" memories!

Anyway, I digress. The last stage of this journey involved some fabric I bought for another quilt (the Beacon Light, see below post). I needed one color to outline the back, as I felt it would make the two sides go together just a bit better. I searched around my leftover fabrics, and came across this yellow. I had tried it before with the other fabrics and had not thought it went very well. But when I held it up again, I realized that the triangles on it really complimented the triangle shape of the pinwheels. Success! My final cuts and stiches were made, and now the whole thing is ready for the Quilting Frame.

I will always treasure this crazy and fun quilt.

Another favorite

This quilt is one of my favorites due to the colors and pattern. And again, lovely models down front!! The back is blue fleece, so it is so cozy. And it can hold up to use, which is what I want for all my quilts!! THe fabics are a mix, a few from yard sales and a few from JoAnn's, but they come together to make a very interesting mix. One that can't be replicated because of where the fabrics came from. That is a cool thing when you make a one of a kind peice. I wish I could replicate it though, cause it came out so good. But I will just have to find some new cool fabrics and make a slightly different version.

Gram's quilts

Another of my buffalo robe quilts. Isn't the model a beauty? I made this one for my Grandma to curl up in on cold Pennsylvania nights while sitting in the den waching TV with her TV guide in hand. :) I loved the rich purples of the orchid print fleece fabric.

When I was making the foot pocket on this one, I inadvertently made it kind of small, both because my Grams has petite feet and because I only had a little fabric left. Well, it made the perfect little "pillow pocket". I folded up the blanket and folded it into the pocket and it made a pretty pillow. This is a great way to keep your couch from being covered with messy unfoled blankets. When you don't need it, it makes a great throw pillow to use. Then, in the middle of a good show when you are starting to feel a chill, there is no need to go to the blanket closet. You just unfold your pillow. This one really came out great and was the inspiration for some others I have done this way.

This quilt was one of my first...I made it as a Christmas gift for Grandma one year. On each square I used iron ons to write the names of all the family members on that side at the time. It made a mini family tree with Gram and Pap at the top. Sorry to Jeff, who was not in our lives at the time. I need to go back and add him in on Deb's square. But the great thing is, this can be done. I really liked these colors and the lattice look of the patterns.

Thanks to Gram for the pictures of these quilts !!