A Gift to Linda and One to Evelyn Grace

I'm waiting around for a roll of batting.  I put the backing on the frame and then realized that I didn't have the batting I thought I had.  I will be quilting a Piecemakers Calendar Quilt from 1994.  I totally hand pieced this top (84" x 84:).  It took me roughly 5 years to finish it.  That was an extremely busy time for me, so five years was actually good time to complete it. 

I've been spent the time this week on hand piecing my Hummingbird Highway quilt.  It is coming along although it seems to be very slow, but what's my hurry.  Well, I do have a lot of fabric and a ton of ideas I'd love to complete.  

This week was also the week I gave away SunBonnet Sue.  My sister in the Lord, Linda, was the recipient.  We had such a great afternoon of fellowship over that quilt.  It was great to learn a little more about her. 

 This is Linda and SunBonnet Sue!  I hope it will bring much pleasure and enjoyment to her.

Thank you, Linda for your service and your hospitality. 

So I'm hoping my batting will be in by Monday so that I can get the Calendar quilt on the frame and start working on it.  I'm so looking forward to getting it done.  I have four more that I want to quilted up so I can piece some quilts that are already cut.  This should be a productive summer. If my DH doesn't keep coming up with plans to do other things.  Well, I suppose that will be a good use of time as well.

By the way, I remembered who the recipient was for the little birdhouse quilt mystery.  It was Evelyn Grace, a very tiny preemie baby.  Her parents brought her name to the church asking us to pray for her and so we did.  I think it has been roughly a year since and she is doing just fine, growing healthy.

Still counting my blessings,

d

 

Qult #3 Mill Girls and a Mystery??? (2024)

This quilt has a history.  The fabrics come from Massachusetts Mill in Lowell MA.  I purchased them in the late 1980s.  They were the leftover pieces from summer cotton shifts and aprons.  Shifts were light summer dresses for wearing around the house when it was hot.  At that time, I bought three paper grocery bags of scraps after these dresses were cut out.  The mill sold them for $3 a bag.  This was the third bag that I purchased.  The bag contained pieces that looked like pockets, I think they were actually scraps from the armholes.  At that time it was very difficult to purchase good fabric.  Although there was a good quilt shop not too far away, it was small with only a small amount of fabrics to choose from.  For me, to have a grocery bag of scraps was wonderful!!

The only "famous" quilter I knew was Georgia Bonesteel and I purchased a book or two to dream over.  I loved the old fashion quilts.  So, even thought I only had Georgia, I had the 30s style quilts in mind.  I loved Dresden plate quilts.  They just spoke to me of a different time, as did this particular bag of scraps.  I found the pattern for this particular book, that I loved to sit and look through.  I still have it and I still sit and look through it once in a while.

copyright 1984 or 1985 I think.  It's close.

I found the template, traced it on cardboard, and cut out a large pile of these wedges with scissors.  I machined them into plates, then hand appliqued each one to a background.  I made it to twenty, but I was beginning to run out of the colors I wanted in this quilt, so I never got to 25; I wish I had.

I completed the top with the borders and put it away.  Although I had a quilting frame my son had made in High School shop, I really didn't have the time to hand quilt like that. Those years turned into very busy ones for me.  In 2017, I purchased Phoebe, my priceless helper, a real gem.  After practicing on muslin pieces, I put this quilt on the frame.  It is the first quilt I every did on Phoebe.  There are some pics from back in 2018.  I was so proud of this quilt!  I took it off the frame and put it in a pile. Problem?  I had no idea how to bind it.  A year ago I thought I had figured out a way, but I just don't have the sewing machine skills to sew around all those curses in the border.  They were small and tight.

So having just finished SueBonnet Sue, I took this one out to see what I could do.  I hand stitched the border on, then hand stitched the back side to complete it.  It took forever and my hands were exhausted from the project, but it is done!!

 Back side of Mill Girls

 

 

I almost always take a picture of the back while it is on the line.  I've done it for years.  I love the way the light comes through and shows off the front.  Makes me think Id like to do one in pastels.  This is the pattern I have repeated the most and I've purchased a 1930s hand tied one that I will be quilting up soon, plus I have a yellow and blue one to quilt as well.

 

 

Mill Girls front

 

I've washed the quilt and hung it out to dry.  I'll run it through the dryer quickly later.  I will be keeping it on the end rail of my bed until summer.  It will be my summer blanket.  I couldn't be happier with this quilt.  It has such an old look to it.  There are tons of problems with this quilt, but I don't care, I love it anyway!

Mystery???

I was looking though my photos yesterday when I came across this quilt.  I was stunned to see it because I had simply forgotten I had finished it.  Here's the mystery, I have no idea what I did with it,  I don't know if it is in my possession or did I give it away?  I don't even know where to look for it.  

Just a fun little quilt!

Counting my blessing!

d

Second Quilt This Year - Happy!

 I'm finally back to quilting, that is, literally.  I'm not back to piecing yet, I have some quilt tops that have been hanging around for years.  My project this year is to get them finished.  I have one on my table that I quilted on Phoebe in early 2018.  It was the first quilt that I quilted on my new Q'nique system.  So, today, it is sitting on my cutting table waiting for me to finish trimming and putting on the binding.  My commitment is to finish off all quilt tops before I start a new quilt.  So, glad to be back after COVID and the distractions of the past couple of years,  

That said, this is the second quilt I've quilted this year.

SunBonnet Sue

This is a quilt that I didn't start; I only finished it up.  My mother hand appliqued all the Sues maybe in the early 2000s.  The fabrics, I think, come from the '90s.  We had beautiful florals and flower sack reproductions.  I think this is done with those.  My mother picked up quilting long after I did.  She actually loved hooking wool rugs.  She started that in 1952 or 1053, long ago.  She enjoyed hand work and as she aged, she picked up quilting,  She generally hand quilted.  Somewhere along the line, these were given to me.  I did find some little 2 1/2" squares in a quilt shop in Rumney, NH in the mid 2000s and went though my stash for other fabrics I could add to what I bought.  The top was completed at that time, but got put in a pile as hand quilting was beginning to hurt my hands.  

This was a totally complete top when I pulled it out of the tops pile and thought this is the next one to be done.  I finished it on April 25, 2024.  It will be given away to a friend as I have so many of the things she has done and I have plenty of my own quilts.  I hope Linda enjoys this.

 

Love my Phoebe!!

This is my new Q Zone frame.  My husband added the idler bar below the take up roller.  Absolutely love it!  It saves so much time and especially energy.  Also, this is the border to SunBonnet Sue.

 

This is how I chose to do the corners,  Basically, piano keys is my favorite border.

Boy, I came so close to not having enough backing for this quilt.  I added about 9" in order to be able to attach the backing to the leader.  I wasn't sure I had enough to be able to complete the quilt before the seam.  Some days things just work out well!!  Smile.

I want to give some credit to Kathy Schmitz of KathySchmitz.com.  She is known for her embroidery.  I fell in love with this pattern when I first saw it.   Sorry it is so dark, but it is not in a good place for photography.  I have it hanging on the canopy top rail, no canopy.  I lined it with white cotton so that it won't suffer sun damage. 

Birch Lane Table Runner  -  KathySchmitz.com

Work by dtang, Fall 2023

This is iron on, but hand embroidered.  I used my scraps to make it.  The background is linen toweling.  This was designed to be a table runner, but I wanted to hang it instead.  She did not quilt hers, but I wanted that quilted feeling and had a wonderful time doing it.  It was fun to make it my own and I encourage you to do the same thing.  Enjoy!

 Still counting my blessings!

d 

    

 

Progress on Dear Jane!

 I simply want to post my progress on Dear Jane.  I seem to be taking a break as Phoebe and new frame are working.  I am almost ready to post another picture of a completed quilt.  Will do soon. This is about Dear Jane.  I'm almost half way through.

I expect to get back to this soon. I will be alternating between this and my H. Highway birds. It's all hand work.  I'm also working on a sweater.  It all slows down each project, but that's okay.  It will get done.

Counting my blessing!

d

A Long Time In the Making!

 I'm quite happy that I have finally finished this quilt.  I'm not sure when I designed it, whether it was in Electric Quilt 4 (EQ4), my first quilt designing program or its sequel EQ5.  It was back shortly after the turn of the century.  Not only did I design this one, but I also dyed the fabrics.  It was the first time I had done that.  Back then, I was taking classes at Quilt University, a now defunct dot com.  This was the result of that first dyeing class.  I don't know exactly when I started working on or finished the top.  I do know it is hand pieced and hand appliqued.  I expect the two panels, the quarter inch yellow border and the final black border were sewed on by machine.  The circle star in the middle was intended to be a color wheel reference for my sewing room; more a wall hanging than a tool.  This quilt top lay dormant for many years,  I just plain didn't know how I was going to finish it.

That was the beginning of the century, this is March 2024.  Sometime in the last six years, probably after COVID and return to normal life, I put it on Phoebe and started quilting.  It's possible that was last year at this time while Phoebe and frame were still up in the family room.  We started on work to make the cellar into a studio for me mostly, and it has taken most of last summer until just a few weeks ago to get this place in order.  Now, realistically, this is still a cellar, it looks like a cellar and it feels like a cellar, but I love this space anyway.

 Back to the quilt.  I put the quilt back on the frame and realized I had very little work left to do on it, so I began.  Now, not being at Phoebe for a while, I was out of practice, but determined to finish it up anyway.  I didn't realize how out of practice I was.  I was working on a free motion border of feathers.  Thinking I knew how to do that, easy peasy, I actually had lost my feather skills that I had built up.  Yikes!  and because of that, I simply decided to plunge on as if I knew what I was doing.  But because of my ineptness, I decided to return to free motion quilting (FMQ) on my Juki to finish up the two panels.   Because I had quilted a table runner using FMQ, I was a little more practiced and really enjoyed the return to FMQ.

Quilting finished, I needed a binding.  Black and white gingham seemed perfect.  And to me, it is.  Now, some of the hand dyed fabric ran sometime through the years.  So when I washed it, I threw some color catchers in it the quilt.  I hung it on the line to dry and brought it in last night.  I sat in the living room under it to warm up and, although a little small, I slept under it last light.  So, for a long journey and a ton of mishaps,  I love my new finished little quilt.  Very proud that it finally got finished!

DiWorks - finished! 2024

I have three or four large quilts to finish up.  I'm so happy to have my new Q Zone Queen frame.  I have space on the frame for all of them.  One hand pieced top from 1995 is supposed to be a queen size quilt, but I never put the final border on it because I never had a frame I could hand quilt it on, it would have been too big.  So, that quilt is 84" square and I can finagle it on the frame and still have space in case I need to get at Phoebe to tune her.  

Right now I'm aiming for a Sun Bonnet Sue my mother hand appliqued.  I added patchwork sashing and large muslin borders that match the Sue backgrounds.  It is draped over my frame polls and is looking kinda pretty.  I ordered some backing fabric and it should be coming soon.  Looking forward to working on this quilt because I've had it so long and a finished quilt is always better than a finish top.

I'm hoping to be able to pickup and continue my Quilting Loft journal this year.  I love looking through it to see what I have accomplished.  Also hoping to have something of a record for my children and grandchildren to help them after I've gone Home.

Still counting all my blessings,

Jesus has been so good to me,

 

d

As Always, I've Got Things Going!

 So, this has been a very busy couple of months.  We decided to move my quilting area into the cellar back when I decided to buy a new frame for Phoebe.  We had a Gree mini split put in for heating especially in the winter months. Summer, the cellar is cool on its own.  My husband put in a partial floor for the frame and we have worked on covering the unfinished ceiling, a barrier between the insulation and us.  There have been some small issues that needed attending as well.  We will probably continue to move things around and clear out other stuff.  Phoebe is settled onto her new frame and I don't think I could be happier with everything thus far.

Meanwhile, I also have done a little sewing because I needed something to wear to my nephew's wedding coming up next weekend.  I haven't made any clothing in years, so this is an experience,  I've been watching some sewing and fitting videos I purchased a few years back and they have been an awesome help.  I have been working on pants.  I don't think they have ever been easier to fit.  How much I never learned even though I used to make all my clothes.  Internet is wonderful!!

I have found my creativity has sharpened over the last couple of months.  I really want to get to quilting.  Not only with Phoebe, but return to FMQ on my sewing machine.  I have all kinds of ideas.  I have a tone of beautiful threads I'd like to play with and small FMQ projects will be fun.  I also have a lot of quilt tips that need quilting. And I have enough fabric to last me long after I die.  I want to do a little hand quilting of orphan blocks.  And I find my head wonders though different scrap quilts.  I'm rarely ever bored. 

 Still counting my Blessings!

d

This was written back in June and I didn't get back until today.  I do love my quilting, sewing, knitting, space in the cellar.  Nothing eye catching, but I love it anyway,  Christmas is next Monday.  I love journaling...I need to add this to my To Do list and get back to it.  I do keep a written journal of my "making".  So, after the holidays, I need to come back here again soon.  It will be noted on my desk.  By the way, the Gree works great!!

I love counting my Blessings!

d

Finished Quilt...Great Day!!

I started this quilt in the winter of 2013/14.  It is hand pieced because I like handwork.  I finally quilted it on Phoebe a month or two ago.  I've been enjoying looking at it, but finally wanted it done. Well, here it is... 

I've just been calling it "Hexi Quilt".

62" x 60"

I love it!! it is so bright and cheery.  Love walking into a room and seeing it, it is so cheery!  I washed it and hung it on the line.  It is a perfect day for line drying a quilt, about 75 degrees and very dry still.  Maybe I'll call this my "Oh, Happy Day" quilt.😊

I'm also moving my studio into the cellar.  We installed a heating system down there a couple of weeks ago so that it will heat or dehumidify the area.  I love working down there, so I'm very happy.  I'm pretty tired from moving stuff, but I'm almost there,  

 

Also bought a new frame for Phoebe.  It is basically the same thing,  but I'll be able to adjust the height in years to come if I cannot work standing at it.  It's also a little longer so I can do a queen size quilt if I should choose to do so.  This frame also has a hard surface for quilting with pantographs.  Not really interested in using them, but I thought it would be convenient when pinning a quilt on the frame.  I haven't set it up yet.  This is not a finished space, but I don't care.  So looking forward to this summer down there.

Still counting my blessings,

d