Grandchildren's quilts: #2 Victoria's "Sue's Heart for 9-patches"

Christmas 2003 (Continued): The concept for Victoria's quilt began in "P.S. I Love You," a delightful quilt book. I love the reproduction feedsack fabrics—they always seem so bright and cheerful. I used a couple of white-on-white fabrics for the background fabric. Each 9-patch used one of the white fabrics and one of the reproduction 20's fabrics and were strip pieced. I used the fusible interfacing technique to create the heart appliquest. I made hearts in a big range of sizes with all kinds of pink fabrics. The largest one was centered on the top border and then floated across the top and down the two side borders, gradually decreasing in size as they got closer to the bottom (the last ones were about 1").

Across the bottom of the quilt, I used the 20s fabrics to applique three traditional Sunbonnet Sues and two Overall Sam figures. I was able to find some classic Sue & Sam patterns from the 20s--I just wish the photo showed those too.

The quilting is meandering done by my friend and professional long-arm quilter, Kathy Moran. She did echo quilting around the hearts and Sue and Sam in the borders.

Victoria liked her quilt and that was the most important thing to me—but it sure is nice to feel good about what you create, isn't it?

Grandchildren's quilts: #1 George's "No Flies On Me"

Christmas , 2003: I made quilts for the grandkids that year. Unfortunately I did not get photos of all of them.

This is George with his "No Flies On Me" quilt. The pattern is "Plaid Pigs" by Nancy Barrett, a great quilt designer and teacher from OKC. I am not into plaid or pigs or country but there was just something about this quilt that I fell in love with when I saw the sample. I was lucky enough to take a class at Oklahoma Quiltworks with Nancy for this quilt.

I pieced the quilt per directions using the "window method" of fusible applique with a satin stitch to finish the appliqued pigs.

I wanted this one to be a cross between a quilt and a comforter so I used a hi-loft polyester bat. It really gave a lot of dimension to the quilting so I was pleased with the results

Personally, I really like the way the quilting ended up... I used six strands of embroidery floss, cut 24" so I got about 18" of quilting from the length. I made "flight paths" for flies around the pigs--but never "landed" on them (hence "No Flies on Me"). Using this strategy, it was OK to cross quilting lines but I stayed in the block and block border for each one. Towards the end of the floss length, I stitched on an oval black bead. Then I did two Turkey stitches on either side of the bead to make dimensional wings on the flies. For most of them, I used black floss but for a few of the blocks, I used dark brown and a couple I used a medium brown floss. All the flies beads were black.

Because it is family tradition that toes=piggies, socks=piggie blankets and shoes/slippers=piggie houses, I had to play with that part of the quilt too. So part of the borders had footprints walking around the blanket and part of the quilting said "piggy blanket"—too bad you can't see that in the photo

... and of course, we tickled the piggies before they went under the piggy blanket! That was the most fun!

Going back in time...

I thought I would take a few minutes to post some of the things I have made in the past...

Of course, one of my pride and joys was the wedding dress I made for my daughter Josalyn back in 1991. The base layer was traditional satin, a layer of tulle and a layer of lace... the tulle and the lace were both iridescent. She had an outdoor wedding and the sun shining on her just made her glow.

The umbrella in the photo is a photographer's prop—she carried a traditional bouquet. She did not have a traditional veil but had a hairpiece. She had the top half of her hair in a twist/bun. We put a satin scrunchee around it and the scrunchee had some of her lace attached which served as her veil.

In 1996, my sister Gale and I made a wall hanging quilt to celebrate our parents' 50th wedding anniversary.

Each family member drew around their hand and signed both their full name and the name that they usually go by. It was mad as a surprise but getting Mom & Dad to let us draw around their hands without explaining why was probably the most challenging part of the project.

Mom & Dad were in red with the center heart having their wedding information. Going around the quilt counter-clockwise from there in were the families of the five children—it worked out great for the colors. We wrote the names in dimensional paint using a lightbox so that it was "their" handwriting. We "quilted" it using heart-shaped studs and for the married girls, we used large star studs on the ring finger. It's a good family memento now that both Mom and Dad have passed away.

In 2005, I entered in a quilting competition for the first time... and won second place for hand-quilted wallhangings. This was a birthday present for Billiam and is a non-traditional size (I call it a recliner quilt). He wanted it "wide enough to go from arm to arm [of my overstuffed recliner] and long enough to go from my chin to wrap around under my feet" and that's what he got... 36" wide X 78" long.

Every stitch was done by hand—I still don't believe that I even put on the borders by hand! The quilting goes down the middle of each half-hexagon making Y's on the backing. The border is quilted with fall-color variegated thread maple leaves—the first time I'd done any hand quilting that was not straight lines.

Well, that's a couple of my past projects... hope you enjoyed looking at them.

This is the applique quilt that I made in the Fall of 2008 as a fundraiser for my Chamber of Commerce. The flowers, borders and backing were all batik fabrics and I was very pleased with how it turned out. I must have tried at least 15 different patterns and styles—I really wanted to do a stained glass quilt but these flowers were too small. Originally it was going to have different flowers in each block but I just fell in love with these roses.

Size: 48"x48"