Happy 100tth Birthday, Elsie!

Elsie turned 100 on April 4th 2020.  She is healthy, still walking everyday.  She started going to church as an infant at Lawrence Street Church and is still an active member.  She loves her family, church family, friends and her flower gardens.  She is a delightful woman and she has been a welcoming friend to me as I started attending her church about five years ago.  I'm so glad to know her.  I wanted to honor her Happy 100th, so I made a quilt for her.

Elsie's eyes are a beautiful blue.  Blue is not, for some reason, one of the easiest colors to work with.  I have difficultly with remembering specific shades of blue in order to purchase them for quilt making.  I have a drawer full of blues that don't look good together.  So Elsie's quilt is made from a charm pack and matching yardage. 

My photography is not the greatest on these pictures.  This is closer to the colors, but it looks very blue, the darks are not quite this dark and the beiges are cooler and lighter.

Elsie was so surprised.  She has never made a quilt herself...my grandmother said the same thing.  Elsie is a knitter and is still knitting.  I'm sure she has done countless baby clothing gifts through the years.  One day I'll ask her what she likes to knit.  Meanwhile,  Happy Birthday, Elsie!

Riley's Mellow Yellow Quilt 2019

This is Riley's Mellow Yellow.  Riley is ten years old and is a drummer and plays a marimba.  That is a beautiful sounding instrument that plays like a xylophone but the keys are wooden with a beautiful resonance because of the pipes below the keys.  She is very talented.  She also enjoys performing in musicals in a local theater.  That's a lot of work and time invested by a young person.  It has been so much fun watching her grow in theater.  She is really becoming a very confident young woman.  Mellow Yellow is a 1960s song by Donovan that I thought would sound nice on her marimba.  I hopes she listens to the piece and learns it.  

This is a close up of the plates.  Both ends of each blade are pointed.  Different size blades make different size plates.  This was time consuming, but not difficult.

 

  The border looks like a garden fence to a sunflower garden.

I forgot to take a finished picture of the back of the quilt, but this is a piece of the fabric.

I meandered through the quilting adding leaves along the way.  Apparently, the details were difficult to photograph!

This is the finished quilt washed and ready to use.  Word has it that Riley loves her new quilt.  Blessings to my youngest grandchild.

I'm very proud of you, Riley!
 

Counting my blessings...7
Love,
Grams

Adia's Follow Your Dreams Quilt 2019

  Adia is an athlete.  She loves running in particular.  Although a beautiful young women, she is not a real girly girl. She is an excellent soccer player, teammate on an excellent team.  She's got places to to later in  High School.  She is also a tenacious gymnast.  She would practice things that she was not old enough to do and accomplish those fetes.  She learned to do a backwards hands-free flip long before she should have been able.  She is a no fear kind of person!!  I wanted a pattern that reflected that aspect of her personality.  This is a kit that I purchased.  The day I first saw it, I thought of her.

This is my 1915 Singer with Sphinx decals.  This is the sewing machine I used to piece Adia's quilt.  This is a treadle machine that runs beautifully.  I chose to use it because like Adia, it is unique.  She is the only one to get a quilt made on an old Singer treadle.

I used Phoebe to quilt it.   Not sure what I would do without her.  This is not computerized quilting.  It is free motion and patterns that I love to combine. The unseen borders are piano keys using a ruler.

Adia's favorite color is purple.  That's why I chose this backing.  

Adia's quilt after washing and hanging it on the line outside.  Adia follows a big sister that is also very good at everything she does.  Because of that, this quilt is named, Follow Your Dreams.  She had such a big smile on her face when she opened it.  She was 11 years old when she received it and is 12 now.

I'm very proud of you, Adia!!

Counting my Blessings...6

Love,

Grams

Sweet Jessie Berries Quilt 2019

Jessie.  Jessie is sweet.  She is thoughtful and kind.  She's a girly girl, but she is also one mean softball pitcher.  BUT, she is always concerned about those she plays with and against.  I watched her share popsicles with a team that had lost so badly.  She wanted them to know it wasn't personal.  She is not one for leaving others out.  It is a natural gift of friendship.  She's special.  When I saw this quilt, maybe nine months before I decided to make all these quilts, I wanted it for Jessie.  I kept hesitating.  Would she like it?  I knew I did, but would she?  I asked her what her favorite color was and she said red.  That answered the question for the time being, but sometimes kids change their minds.  Jessie had just turned 12 the beginning of December.

 

 This quilt had a lot of ruler work.  It was the best way to work around all the small pieces of the green "leaves" and the little red squares.  But all the Jessie berries were free motion quilting.

 

Here is a sort of picture with Pheobe, my quilting mate.  The fabric in this quilt has sparkles.  I think the sparkles represent Jessie well!

Here is Sweet Jessie Berries in all her glory...kinda like Jessie!!  She all washed and ready to go.

I'm very proud of you, Jessie!!

Counting my Blessing...5
Love,
Grams

Jonny's Lean Green Drumming Machine Quilt 2019

Jonny is a multifaceted young man.  Math is a part of his being.  He is involved with a robotics team in his local area and is very creative in this area.  But Jonny is also a drummer.  This was a surprise to me considering his father has next to no interest in music.  He is the only one of my sons that isn't interested.  But Jonny now drums on anything available.  He also is very creative in his personal expression of himself.  I love it!! Looking forward to what he will be!  Jonny's favorite color is green.  How could I not make him a green quilt.  I chose Storm at Sea as the pattern.  One problem, I really didn't know how to put the colors together.  I learned a lot.

It was a struggle, so thankful for a design wall!  It was work.  I had to take pictures of it as I was working to see if the pattern was working.  Sort of.

Another picture of Phoebe.  She looks so pretty with the green quilt!!  My frame has only two rails, but I'm not sure I would trade it for a third rail.  My quilts come out nice and squared.

 

I quilted this with meandering and sea creatures.  I mostly remember the fish swimming around in the waves.  

I smile every time I see this quilt.  Jonny was 13 when he received his quilt and is 14 now.

Jonny's quilt washed and ready for use. He was please that it was his favorite color.

I'm very proud of you, Jonny!!

Counting my Blessings...4

Love,

Grams

Nora's Sing Your Song Quilt 2019

 

 Nora is very creative.  Along with crocheting, and sewing for her dolls and her own PJs, she also has made quilts.   She also is a gymnast, now helping and teaching at the gym.  Nora is also a singer with a beautifully clear voice.  She is taking guitar lessons.  Some day I expect her performances to be stunning.  Her quilt is called Sing Your Song.  She is my most girly girl.  When I chose this quilt, I wanted something feminine.  Because of her natural ability, I chose for her a little bit more technical pattern.

Little rosebuds on either black or white background.  The block is both pieced and appliqued by machine using a buttonhole stitch. 

The quilting is free motion, not computerized.  Phoebe is a simple long arm with stitch regulation.  Although I love doing ruler work, my most favorite thing is free motion,  It is so creative in nature.  The Nine Patches are in the ditch ruler work, then free motion around the the green applique connected continuously through the white. 

The outer border is all musical scores.  Amazing Grace is one of the songs.   

 

The finished quilt on the clothes line after washing.  I like to wash all quilts before gifting to give them that ready to wrap-up-in look.  Nora turned 14 three days after Christmas.

Counting my blessings...3
 Love,
Grams

Anna's Dreams Quilt 2019

Anna is my oldest granddaughter.  She is a mover and a shaker.  She loves physical activity.  She used to sit on my lap at my sewing machine when she was very young.  I have no sisters and no daughters.  She was my first little girl.  Clearly woman are not the same as men.  I learned so much about women from her just being a little girl.  She's not a little girl any more.  She graduates from High School next year (2021).  Anna is aiming at becoming a doctor.  The full choice is not yet made.

So Anna's quilt is called Anna's Dreams.  She does have big dreams that I hope she sees them come to fruition.  Anna's Dreams is one of her favorite colors.  Turquoise.  It is a panel quilt.  I saw it on a fabric web site maybe five years ago and asked her if she liked it.  She did.  And I ordered it.  I thought I would get it done sooner, but I needed to learn Free Motion Quilting on a home machine first.  It took me a while.  Then I started piecing it and realized it was just a small lap quilt.  Now what?  I had ordered material for backing at the same time and realized I needed it for the front.  So that was what I did.  There was a lot of fussy measuring and cutting involved with the inner border fabrics.   

I needed an extra inner border to separate the original border from the outside border, but I didn't have any more the the lighter aqua in the center.  I found a piece in my stash and it worker out well, I think.

Because this was a panel quilt, I wanted the quilting to be the focus.  Although I chose matching thread, the backing made the perfect place to show off the quilting.  This ended up being done on Phoebe rather than my sewing machine and was done from the front.  I was so pleased with the quilting when I took it off the frame.  I felt like a kid playing!The back of this quilt is actually Aqua and soft lime green. Anna finally receive this quilt when she was 16 and now she is 17.

I'm very proud of you, Anna!!

Counting my Blessings...2
Love,
Grams

Bryson's Optic Illusion Quilt 2019

Bryson is our oldest grandchild.  He is a man now.  He will be starting his senior year in college this fall.  I cannot believe he is an adult already!!  Bryson is tenacious.  He wanted to solve a Rubics cube.  It took a while to learn, but he did it.  He entered competitions, and practiced more.  He can solve the puzzle in around 10 seconds, sometimes less.  Not easy.  When he first entered High School, he introduced himself on stage in a talent show, then solved the cube in front of the student body. He did it again just before he addressed his graduating class.  He spoke about the value of failures.  He really is something especial.  He spent six weeks or so in China in a study program just before Christmas 2019.  His quilt is called "Dr. Tang".  Let's see where he goes!

This is the beginning.  It was a rough quilt to work on because it was hard to look at.  I had to keep taking pictures to see my progress and to double check if I was doing it right.  I downloaded this  pattern from the quilting website, Craftsy.com (Bluprint)

Yellow is Bryson's favorite color.  I had to make sure I used it.

It was very important to make this quilt masculine.  I think it worked out that way.  In the center, the quilting is a diamond shape sort of.  I went through the centers of the black patches.  I did in-the-ditch stitching around each border.  The yellow is done in piano keys and the gray borders are echoed zig zags.  All quilting is ruler work.

I'm very proud of you, Bryson!

Counting my blessings...1

Love,

Grams