Quilt Trip to Kansas City

Last weekend, I met up with Dorry in Kansas City. On Friday we took in the Kansas City Regional Quilt Show, but I'm not going to post photos of that. Instead, we're going to visit the National WWI Museum and Liberty Memorial, which we did on Saturday.

The Memorial was funded and erected by the people of Kansas City. The site was dedicated in a 1921 ceremony that included the Supreme Allied Commanders, and the Egyptian Revival-style monument was finished in 1926.

 The two sphinx that flank the tower cover their faces to shield their eyes from the horrors of war and the uncertainty of the future. 

The platform affords a beautiful view of the city.

Two halls were the extent of the museum's display space until the state-of-the-art larger museum was built under the tower.

  

One of the many remarkable features of the new museum is this display of poppies under a transparent walkway.

 

The museum is the only one in the world dedicated to the entire history of the war and is well worth the visit.  We spent one day there but your ticket is good for two days. I didn't realize until too late they also have an extensive library that is open to the public by appointment during the week for research.

The timing of our trip was the display of 24 quilts made from the design and story of Denniele Bohannan and Janice Britz' book, Where Poppies Grow, which was published as a free Block of the Month quilt in the Kansas City Star and has also been published as a book. 

 

Here are a couple of photos I took of the display on Saturday.

  

In the photo above, you see one that's smaller - it does not have the appliqued wreaths of leaves.  In the one below, one quilt is much smaller because it was made at a smaller scale - That takes a quilter who truly loves precision piecing.

That one got a lot of admiring comments, as mine did for the hand dyed fabric and the quilting. 


I've posted photos of my finished quilt, but it was special to see it hanging with the others in this place for the 100 year anniversary of the war.

This is actually the first quilt I have made following a pattern but I felt that Denniele's colors and setting were too good to be tampered with, and the white space was a great place to show off some fancy quilting.  The viewers did seem to enjoy seeing the different uses of fabrics and design in the various quilts. The book included an on-point setting of the blocks with no applique that also made a beautiful quilt - just barely visible at the end of the row pictured below. (Sorry, I only had my cell phone to take photos!)

Here's my quilt's label 

The North Carolina provenance also caused remarks, but Dorry's quilt gathered crowds.  Her unique setting was interesting to many viewers who kept her standing there to talk about why her quilt was so different from the rest.  

Dorry's quilt was made to honor the service of her Grandfather, James Patrick Coughlan, who was wounded at Gallipoli while serving with the ANZAC forces.

This is the best photo I took of her quilt - she has better ones on her blog in these posts - The first one explains how she incorporated symbols that relate to ANZAC into a design with the same set of blocks the rest of us used.  http://colvinkiwiquilts.blogspot.com/2015/04/an-anzac-day-tribute-poppies-for-jpc.html This more recent post has her finished quilt with closeups of the quilting designs. http://colvinkiwiquilts.blogspot.com/2015/06/where-poppies-grow-on-exhibit.html

Four Great Uncles

I am aware of four Great Uncles who served during WWI.  Because of a warehouse fire in St. Louis in the 1970's, their military records are not available.  Information at their graves might help me determine what kind of service each performed if I looked up the Order of Battle and Department of Defense information about the deployments, which is available in books held in Federal Repositories across the country.  The library at UNC- Asheville is one of those, but I haven't been there to try to investigate. At this point, I'm not sure any of my Great Uncles actually went overseas.

My grandmother's older brother, Uncle Casimir Hybki - Private, 18 Co Discharge Unit

• Uncle Cas' Memorial Marker  He died when I was young - sadly I do not remember him.

My grandfather's older half-brother, Uncle Louis Patyk - Private, Casual Detachment

•  Uncle Louis' Memorial Marker   He died before I was born.

My grandfather's younger brother, Uncle Willard Wohrer Battalion C, 68th PA

• Uncle Willard's Headstone I remember this great uncle with fondness. He was a strong farmer with a good sense of humor.

My Great Aunt Carol's husband , Uncle Irvin Pumphrey. Since it is not marked on his headstone, I don't know his unit. 

• Uncle Pump's Find a Grave memorial  Uncle Pump died before Uncle Cas, and unfortunately, I have no memory of him, either.  From the marriage record I can find on-line, I know his occupation was already "Soldier" when he married my grandfather's younger sister on December 24th 1917.

My quilt from the Where Poppies Grow - Remembering Almo pattern by Denniele O'Kell Bohannon and Janice Britz is done, except for the label.  The fabulous blue-striped red fabric in the "bunting" of the borders was custom hand dyed for this quilt for me by Vicki Welsh.  A click on these images should give you a closer view.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/living/home-garden/article4532707.html#storylink=cpy

I was careful to cut the three curved pieces across the top from the same part of her fabric as the stripes were cut.  You can see in this closeup that the seam between the 3 inch strip and the demi-lune shaped piece beneath it pretty much disappears.  It didn't happen everywhere - couldn't be helped when you have seam allowances to deal with.

 

I was very happy with the Baptist-Fan based inspired quilting design on the borders and the blue and white stripe of the binding fabric.  I don't often cut binding strips on the bias. A half yard was really just enough with the strips cuts at 2 inches for this 71 x 82 inch quilt.  I usually cut my binding 2 1/8th but I would have had a couple of very short strips to contend with and more seams had I done that.

  My other original (?) quilting idea was to put a star like the one at the base of each block's leaf wreath in the wide white border at the bottom of the quilt.

The sashing was treated with free hand feathers, while the blocks got channel quilting and minimal treatment in the colored piecing. This French Star is the one place that got something a little different.

 Tight echos, micro-stippling and 1/2 inch grid cross-hatching completed my quilting plan.
  Here's one more look at that bottom border.

WWI - December - Heavenly Puzzle

This is the last block in this series.

 

All the red and blue fabrics in this interesting block are from Vicki Welsh.  I used foundation paper piecing for the four corners which helped keep the points sharp.  

I'm going to miss working on this series  even the leaves.  After a few months, I knew the whole rhythm and allotted the time for the applique, never trying to get the entire block done in a day so I didn't find that job as tedious as I did in the beginning. 

Service records for the majority of our WWI veterans were burned in a fire in at the Federal Records storage facility in St. Louis in the 1970's, so precise information on my four great-uncles who served is unfortunately not as easy to come by as for Civil War veterans. Their tombstones list their units, though without much precision.  There is information about the Army's organization and where the elements served available at Federal libraries scattered around the country.  The University of North Carolina Asheville is supposed to be one of those places where the public can access that information, so that will be a project for me, perhaps before I get the quilt completed. As it is right now, I'm not sure any of the uncles actually shipped out to Europe.

WWI - November - Mother's Dream

I don't know why this block would get that name - I do know I like how this one came out.  I used foundation paper piecing for precision on all those 1 inch half-square triangles.

The red fabric in this block is different from the others in the series, but my blocks are all made with slightly different reds. I love the drama of  Vicki Welsh's shibori stripes in the four squares, so I chose a commercial print for the more subdued blue version in the center square. The red fabric in the long rectangles with a more subtle stripe was not from the same piece but it was also dyed by Vicki.

WWI - October - Dove in the Window

This month's block came with the story of the death of the great-grandfather whose service inspired the quilt. The block is called Dove in the Window.

This was a technically challenging block with the oblique angles -- and that is after our pattern designers simplified the piecing lines from the version that came with my computer software. 

Vicki Welsh sent me some of her remnant shibori-dyed fabric with my custom order for the borders of this quilt.  Two of the blue pieces wound up in this block. I cut my four corner triangles out of a more solid area on the edge of the darker one and really like the effect - but the intersecting diagonal lines on the center pieces are gorgeous.

WWI - Red Cross

All the colored parts are hand dyed - I love the shots of yellow in the red.

The center square is a tiny piece leftover from a quilt made around 2002. The rest is by Vicki who is working on my border fabric this week - can't wait to see it!

WWI Block of the Month - August - Winged Square

When I first saw this block I thought it was interesting, pretty, happily not too challenging.  But that was because I was looking at the thumbnail of the block  in the designers quilt. She used figured prints in the checkerboard element and I thought those 4 areas were each just one block of fabric -

-- whereas they are actually pieced of 72 little 1/2 inch (finished) squares. I know I could have strip-pieced, but I have found when piecing 1 inch squares, I'm more accurate if I cut the little squares and piece them individually, so that's what I did. 

I am really crazy about the look of Vicki Welsh's blue and red shibori!  The four squares and 1-inch strips are all from one piece of fabric that is mostly red with some blue - I cut my pieces from the blue areas. She also died the oh-so-pretty light blue center (which is also in the checkerboards.) 

This is not the first block where I switched the orientation when I added the applique. It's more common to find the long strips top and bottom, as I have them here. The designer put the long strips on the sides.  I don't guess it matters: when you set the block into the quilt it's a square either way, and it will be quilted as one continuous background.

WWI Block of the Month - French Star and My Country

I guess I have too many "Blocks of the X" projects because I don't seem to have done a post for this series for June.

The June block was My Country - straightforward piecing. I love how when I fussy cut Vicki's deep blue shibori to highlight the whiter parts, it looks like faded denim in this block.

July was French Star. Perhaps there was another way to do this when the block was invented, but the designer of our series gave instructions for raw edge fused applique for the white curved pieces. 

I used foundation paper piecing to make the blue and red star, which was quite pretty without the white applique.  (Sherrye wondered how it was pieced - there's a square of the red in the middle, surrounded by the blue points with a small red right triangle between each pair going around the square, related to an hourglass or quarter square triangle block. The block is put together like a 9 patch around the center square.) The 8 curved applique pieces make an usual block.

I have had a couple of other projects to work on this week, so I have not yet finished the machine stitching around the 34 leaves on the French Star, but that will be done before we see the August block.  I haven't done last weekend's Austen block yet either.

WWI Block of the Month - Block 5 - The Airplanes

When I saw this block, I assumed the maker had a red and white striped fabric she cut those pieces from....

No, they are pieced in.  We're not sure about the airplanes, but Norris thought it looked like a test pattern. We think maybe you're looking straight at the rotary blades?  But that doesn't explain the stripes.

The pattern as it was given and as it appears in Blockbase is not symmetrical - the red and white stripes are reversed on two adjacent quadrants.  I guessed that would be if you ever made a quilt of this block and set them block to block.  Here are mockups, the original first -

Since my quilt uses only one block, I decided I could make it so the imaginary quilt would look like this - I do like it better this way!

WWI Block of the Month Block Four - Ladies Delight

I have been spending a lot of hours on the Shindig quilt this week but managed to piece the block for this project.

Only the stem of the applique is actually sewn in place - the star is just placed there for photography and the leaves and blue circle are just fused. I'll finish the sewing when the quilting is done.

The Ladies Delight block is another one I have never made. I toyed with the idea of swapping some of the white and blue pieces, but then realized it was done this way so the leaves cover only the background and none of the colored areas. Almost entirely Vicki Welsh's hand dyes (the streaked dark blue is actually a print), I think this makes a pretty block!

WWI Block of the Month - Block Three: Dog Tooth Violet

The story and photos that went with the block this month were interesting, but I missed the connection between the Dog Tooth Violet block and the soldier's experience.  Perhaps these blocks were chosen merely for their patriotic flair.

I have not made this block before, but it is a pretty one. The wreath is intended to overlap the piecing, and I'm getting used to that. I put the block together yesterday, but didn't even get a start on the applique, even though all the pieces were ready to fuse and stitch.  I have found that glue-basting the stem is the best way to hold it in place for the machine applique. The fusible I was working with does not hold.

WWI Block of the Month - Block Two - Love Entangled

.... or is it "The War at Home" - the newspaper article about the block gave the latter name, while the pattern instructions call it Love Entangled.

I looked it up in the authoritative Brackman catalog of pieced blocks - she has it as Love Entangled from a source that would have provided that name in either the 1960's or 1970's.

I really love Vicki's hand-dyed shibori that I used for the larger pieces in the pieced block.  The pattern called for a large red square and blue triangles. My pieces all came from the same fat eighth I got as part of a group of multi-colored fat shibori fabrics I bought from her a while back. The little corner squares are also from Vicki, while the twelve little red triangles are from a hand-dyed fabric purchased at a quilt show years ago.

It is rather interesting to take so much time making all those little pointy triangles only to place appliqued leaves so that some of the points get covered up. I did make the stem and leaves a little more distant from the block so as to minimize that effect this time.  It took longer than usual to put this block together because I got my all the leaves, stems, circles, and stars prepared for the remaining blocks.  Let's see, twelve blocks, 34 leaves per block....  I don't really want to know how many leaves that is.

WWI Block of the Month from Kansas City Star Quilts

The Kansas City Star is publishing a new Block of the Month series that started in January called "Where Poppies Grow" that commemorates the service of one of the designers' grandfathers. The quilt can be seen on the publisher's quilting blog here - Pickle Dish blog

Dorry and I exhanged an email or two about this project - did we really need to make another quilt from a series of blocks? But my WWI education is lacking, and this block series is very different from those I've done recently.  The combination of piecing and appliqué was appealing so, I have taken the plunge.

I decided to stick with the original patriotic color scheme, but went in a new direction from my other historial-reference block series quilts.  I featured hand-dyed fabrics with a few commercial prints for supporting roles.  My friend Diane dyed the bright blues - the circle under the star is a darker version of the one in the pieced area. (Both are more of a Cadet blue, not turquoise as they appear in my photo.) I'm not certain of the origin of the red. The three shades of green leaves and the gold star were my custom William and Mary fabrics from Vicki Welsh for the Grandmother's Choice" quilt.

I did the 34 leaves, circle and star with raw edge appliqué finished with a tiny machine buttonhole stitch in matching silk thread.  Hand-appliqué takes a toll on my hands and wrists and I'm very comfortable and happier doing it by machine

I don't have a direct ancestor who served in WWI, but there are at least three great-uncles who did. After I do just a little more research, I'll post information about their service.