A Birthday Banner

When my sister planned my Dad's 90th birthday party, and my sister-in-law and her husband agreed to come and provide the food (pictures at http://cherylandnorris.blogspot.com/2014/08/dads-90th-birthday-celebrated-with-lots.html ) I started to feel pretty bad - what was I doing for the party?

Since I am a far better quilter than cook I followed a model set by Dorry, and made a celebratory banner.

That above photo taken during set up doesn't show the banner's details so here are a few photos I took while working on it.

Each background piece was cut 8x8.5 inches. The font is sized so the largest letters fit with a good margin.  I fused the letters in place, edged them in a tiny buttonhole stitch, then rounded the lower corners with a template.  The two spaces in the message were filled with pennants - one has a trombone while the other is a print Dorry gave me of New Zealand postage stamps because Dad has collected stamps his whole life.

 

The letters were quilted on wool batting on a single piece of backing (Thank you Sherrye those glittery daisies were perfect for this application!)  The variety of dense quilting fills I used made the letters stand out in 3-D.

 

I took this next  photo for Joyce before I had the binding on so she could see she would have no trouble coordinating the party decor with my work.

 

I bought a handful of new fabrics to have a few very contemporary prints in the mix, but mostly I used my stash, looking for bright colors and good contrast with some masculine feel.  I selected lots of shirting stripes along with a couple of prints that reminded me of my father's pajamas.  I used shirt buttons Alice of the Mountain Jam Circle gave me to trim out the tops of the letters.

I attached the binding by machine on the front as I usually do, then wrapped it to the back and machine stitched in the ditch - which I have never done before.  You are looking at the back of one letter on the top, and the front of the one with the striped fabric. 

Attaching the binding went easily once I figured out I just had to use a lot of pins to make sure the edge stayed where my stitching could catch it.  I was having trouble picking the binding color till Flickr Friend "Pinkdeenster" weighed in - thanks for the push, the green stripe is perfect!

The hardest part of this project was working with the wild combination of colors and prints.

Austen Family Album Week 14 - Home Comfort

Not so sure about the outcome of my fussy cutting this week - I thought I'd try to place that interesting print in the four squares in the corners, which meant switching the pieces that make the center to the lighter value. But I'm not going to remake it!  The upper right corner appears dark - that's just some trees moving around changing the light while I was taking the photo.

The block's story came with the sad truth about what happened to the mentally disabled in Jane Austen's era: her older brother was placed in a home for his care and was not much discussed. Our author applauded that decision over placing him in an institution, something that was still encouraged when she was teaching special ed not many years ago.

Four Identical Little Memory Quilts

When my family was going through my mother's clothing to sort what some of us wanted to keep and what should be taken to the local thrift store, I came across a blouse made of a fabric I instantly recognized. My father had brought it back from a trip to Egypt decades ago.  I had personally not seen my mother wear the blouse, but based on the frayed parts around the collar and sleeve seams, she had worn it quite a bit. Because I lived away from the area, I asked my geographically closer siblings if they had seen our mother wear it, and they did.  The blouse was a great example of her excellent sewing skills, but, with its large boxy shape and kimono sleeves, was out of style and too worn out to be useful as apparel -- indeed, based on its location in the closets, she had not worn it for some time herself. The blouse seemed too precious to me to turn over to the thrift store, where no doubt, it would be thrown into a stack of items for sale by the pound to the industrial rag industry.  The fabric is a very fine Egyptian cotton plain weave - what was a quilter to do?

I turned into not one but four quilts, one for each of my siblings.  I thought the hieroglyphics lent themselves to this classic strippy design with a simple on-point nine patch block. A current fabric line called Legacy, with Egyptian motifs in blue and gold gave interest to the setting triangles, and very thin cuts of a classic stripe separated the original blue and white cotton from the pieced areas.  The size of the quilts (about 25 inches square) was determined by the length of the strips I cut from the fronts and back of the blouse.

I had long ago planned to make an Egyptian-themed quilt and collected several prints in fat-quarter and full-yard pieces.  The two largest of these wound up on as backings.  Carl got this one, because his living room has long had a print of the mask of King Tut on display. 

These quilts were finished several months ago, but the other three waited in a dark closet for a couple of months here in North Carolina, while Carl's quilt went on display in the "Something Blue" exhibit Dorry curated for Art Space in Herndon Virginia.  Dorry has sent Carl's quilt on to him.

Jeff's quilt got this camel print for the backing. I thought it would appeal to his wife, Joanna.

Joyce and Roger's quilts got another print from the Legacy fabric line - I thought I took a photo of the two quilts with the back of one and front of the other showing, but I can't find it right now. Here's a swatch of the print -

Some parts of the sleeves of Mom's blouse are already in a quilt that granddaughter Jenn made for her sister Lyn last year (pictured at this link) and I have a few more of those sleeve pieces in my collection yet. My family members do not have to display the little quilts on their walls - they can use them on a table, or put them in a drawer, but I feel much better that the fabric that my Dad personally brought back and that my mother worked with and wore might stay in the family for a few more years.

A different kind of project

Since our weather turned so wintry overnight, it was a good day to start on a project I've had in mind for a couple of years.

This box was one that my grandmother Faye had and gave to my mother. It now belongs to my oldest brother, but I took it from my father's house for the time being. (The stencil reads C.M. Dunn & Co. Booksellers, Stationers & Jewelers, Cincinnati, O.)

The box contains letters and papers of Faye's father's - my great-grandfather Calvin.  The box was one of three or four my grandmother moved from Indiana to Illinois in 1928. She had them stored in the attic of the Elburn bungalow when I was a child - no special climate control or preservation, so some of the letters are very faint and difficult to read.

This photo shows the lower tier of letters - I had already taken out the top level and started to sort them.

Calvin lived from 1845 to 1923. What I'm doing so far is organizing the materials by date - when I can determine it - except for letters from Calvin's first cousin on his mother's side, Eli W. Hause.

So far I have found mostly letters from the 1860's to the 1880's, with a few from the 1890's and one letter that I believe was sent to Calvin's grandmother, dated 1806.  The paper is all still good - they didn't use acid in paper-making in those days, so I can still take the letters out of the sometimes very tiny envelopes to unfold the pages without the paper tearing. I don't have to remove all the letters from their envelopes: Although the early postmarks do not include the year, Calvin often wrote the dates he received and answered letters on the envelopes, sometimes including the year. In cases where Calvin had not made his usual notation, sometimes my father, who examined and cataloged the stamps on the envelopes, wrote in pencil what the date of the letter was.  These notations are a huge help with this initial sorting.  The strings and rubber bands you see in the above photo grouped the letters by the stamp and its condition, rather than by subject or year. But that stamp information occasionally helps me to make out the often obscure handwritten two-digit year on the letter inside.

This picture shows the fist level sorting job about two-thirds completed as of this evening.

The 1860's letters from Cousin Eli are being culled out because he served with the 52nd Indiana Regiment (the same unit Shepherd Whitcomb served with), having joined up in early 1864 at the age of 18.  I learned that Eli joined up against his father's wishes - and like many of his fellow Civil War soldiers, he's very interested in the cause of preserving the Union but would rather the slavery question not be part of it. Eli enjoys winning at cards with his fellow soldiers and seems to tell Calvin about any of the young women that catch his eye - though it appears he is too bashful to speak to them.  I'm very interested in young Eli's first hand experiences, and plan to use his letters to continue the family history I'm telling along with the Civil War Block of the Month quilt.

Interlocked

Soon after Joyce's daughter Tanya announced her engagement, I started working on ideas for a quilt for her wedding, now less than two weeks away. Since Tanya's generation doesn't really read blogs - especially not blogs written by aunts, I think I can post photos of the quilt, almost ready for giving.

I put it on a clean sheet on the driveway to take the photos - the leaves kept blowing around and getting on the quilt, so I had to make my photo session quick.

The blocks are a traditional one called "Interlocked Squares" that I thought was appropriate for a wedding.  I did them in two colors and alternated their placement in crossing lines. It should remind you of the quilt I worked on with Alice and Ann to support the Shindig on the Green this past summer.

I kept the quilting pretty simple overall, in keeping with the Modern Quilting look I wanted for the quilt: lots of negative space and geometric themes keeps it in the basic idea of a Modern Quilt - though the Interlocked Squares block with its Y-seams is not one they would normally gravitate to. The quilted motif in the middle of the blocks also interlocks.  The fabrics in the center of the blocks are both music-theme prints.

I wanted all the negative space to feature some special quilting. I used a silhouette photo of Tanya when she was a dancer that Joyce sent me a few years ago.  My best friend from high school Ginger Gebka is a graphics artist - she turned it into a simple line drawing for me to quilt.

 The backing is a green and white floral - I like it when I can see the quilting on the back and it shows nicely in this photo I took after going back in the house, away from the leaves.

 

The label text is printed over the photo I used for the quilted silhouettes, turned green and artistically mellowed. I photographed the label laying on the front of the quilt - I'll sew it on the back during TV time this evening. 

Tanya's quilt will be ready to wrap by tomorrow!

Not-a-shower gift

My niece Tanya is getting married in less than two months!  Her sister Niki is Maid of Honor and hosted a luncheon for her last weekend.  When Joyce was here, she shopped my stash for a couple of fabrics that I could make a gift from. I managed to whip these up and sent them to Joyce to bring to the occasion for Tanya.  There are six placemats, with napkins that match the backing/binding.

Joyce picked the green and magenta stylized floral of the wide stripe in the center.  Dorry will recognize the two most outstanding leaf prints I used next to the magenta bits nearer the edges.  She sent the light one peaking out from under the napkins to use in Dana's quilt (which I did to good effect!) and the one on the right is from the cutoffs of the backing she gave us with the  Welcome to Chestnut Ridge, quilt top she designed and made for us as a housewarming present in 2007.  (The quilt, though not the backing, is visible at the link.) I also got to include two of Vicki Welsh's shibori hand-dyes that I also used in Dana's quilt.

A Quilt for Lyn

Brother Roger's daughter Jen, having completed only a quilt or two before this, decided to make one for her sister Lyn who recently moved into a drafty house. Jen is a working single mother of two who recently bought a house, so she recruited other family members to help. I volunteered to provide the backing and batting and said I could do the quilting on my longarm so it would be easily finished in time for Christmas.

Jen had already picked the pattern and deep blue and autumn colors for Lyn.  I looked through my stash and picked a couple of fabrics I thought could add sentimental value to the project: a blue music print I used in Roger and Laurie's Civil War quilt, the red-orange fabric we used on the back of the comfort quilt we gave Brother Jeff and his wife Joanna after their daughter and grandson were killed, and an orange fabric Lyn's cousin Niki used for her quilt. I threw a few fabrics from Joyce's latest quilt in the box  - some of those I used in my own projects as well. Lastly, I sent a blue and white print purchased in Egypt by my Dad while traveling there on business decades ago.  Mom made a summer shirt from the fabric and wore it a lot. Lyn and Jen were both very close to my mother so I thought that print in particular could have a place in Lyn's quilt.  Somehow, Jen managed to include just about everything I sent her.

I asked Jen for photos of the fabrics she bought so I could buy the right backing fabric, and gave her a deadline in early December for piecing the top.  She beat it by almost a week.  I sent her photos like these next two while I had it on my machine.

 

I took a photo of the quilt before I put it in the box to ship it back to Jen. Lilly was the Acting Quilt Model that evening. (Like almost all my photos, clicking on them will give you a larger view.)

Not only did Jen put the quilt together, she also wrote a lovely poem to go with it.  Lyn received the quilt at the family Christmas gathering at Joyce's house on Sunday - and it is reported she was so touched she was in tears. 

I really enjoyed working with Jen on this quilt for Lyn!

What Are Little Boys Made of?

A couple of years ago, when we were going through my mother's things after she died, my father found two items that had no identification on them. 

A very ordinary looking, well-worn flannel receiving blanket.  The flannel was thin, and the edging was coming unraveled.

 

And less mysteriously, a slightly stained flannel baby jacket with a hand-crocheted edge.

The jacket still had three of four ties attached - and the sewist had used blue thread - so this was a jacket made for a boy baby.   

I had several white flannel baby jackets of this same style, with crocheted edges and ribbons for my doll-babies, made by my mother's mother.  So, it's just my guess, the jacket was made by Grandma and the blanket in the cedar chest must have been one of the first Mom had for my big brother Jeff.  Now, they may also have been used by any number of the subsequent babies - at least my other two brothers, but I suspect they were saved because they were gifts for Brother Jeff, the "experimental model" as Brother Roger likes to call him.

As we divided up, and saved or gave away many of our mother's items, these two baby things, in their then nearly 60 year-old condition, had  no value other than sentimental.  I brought them back here with the idea that I might make something of them if Jeff's son, married the year before, ever had a son.  And since he is expecting one of those in August, it was time to make these over.  

Modern parents don't allow much of anything with ties around their infants, so I sewed a row of snaps to the jacket, and trimmed it with a bias strip of a green and blue striped fabric, which also became the binding for the newly lined blanket.  I hope Grandma would approve of my signalling the baby is a boy this way.

 

 

The blanket's new green lining fabric is a licensed Golden Books print - which goes both with the 60-year-old theme, and the shower invitation's suggestion for signed children's books for the baby in lieu of cards.   

Here's a closeup of Grandma's crochet - this would be the new baby's Great Great Grandmother's work.  I don't expect his Modern Mom Katy will take this baby out in the old-fashioned jacket, but perhaps when he's teething (it's not a new-born size) he can use it when he's drooled on everything else in his wardrobe, and he will feel the love of the previous generations.

(the greens of the stripe are not really olive and do not clash with the lining in real life, as they do in these photos)

I guess I have to call this quilting, but there's no batting. The flannel layer is just to preserve the blanket for a little while but the blanket is still thin. I chose to use a Patricia Ritter design called "Ribbit" because well -

 

"... frogs and snails and puppy dog tails".   And it was fun to trace out all those little toes!  The frog is maybe the size of my hand.  

Don't worry, this baby will be getting his own brand new quilt, the white one with blue and yellow zigzags. And now I get to go book shopping!

Week 38 - Ohio Star

This is another 9 patch trying to fit into 8 inches. I haven't checked the finished size on this one, but I did cut the square pieces at 3 3/16ths. I haven't made it with a dark background before so this was fun.


The Ohio Star is is an all-time favorite block. Joyce and I - with her then 9-year-old daughter's eager assistance - made a quilt for Tanya with large Ohio Stars on a white background some dozen or so years ago.

Leftovers

When I made the border for Kason's quilt from the University of Kansas Jayhawk fabric, I was left with a piece just the right width for an Apron, suitable for a competitive Barbecuer, and one of the World's Die-Hard Jayhawk fans, brother in law Marvin!

Here he is showing the lined, double stitched pockets. I used a pattern for a lined apron I found on line for the basic apron design, and a chef's style apron Norris uses for cooking to get the size and placement of the pockets.


Norris went to the "other" state university in Kansas, so he would not be my model. Thankfully, Marla took these for me after the apron arrived for Marvin to use at their backyard barbecue set up.

If you were thinking there's something about that blue checkerboard pattern - there is. The best match for the KU blue that I had on hand is a gradated fabric - I made sure I laid out the squares to keep some of that fade from lighter to darker blue. The pocket is invisible in my photo because I made the prints line up perfectly.



We'll gladly feast on leftovers from Marvin's cooking and now he can protect his clothes with leftovers from Kason's fire-engines quilt.