Mother/Daughter Lone Star Quilt

From 1973 through 1974 my mother cut (with scissors, not a rotary blade) and sewed (by hand, not with her sewing machine) all these diamonds to make a Lone Star quilt to match my pink and red bedroom.  I was 12. 

Her original plan was to piece the large star, then applique it to a large piece of background fabric, but she couldn't figure out how to do it.  So she set the star aside.  A few years ago she found the star, and gave it to me so I could finish the quilt.  This March I pulled it out and got to work.  I decided to square out the star with aqua fabric instead of trying to applique such a large piece.  Then I found one of the original pink fabrics used and cut it to frame the star.  A second blue frame was added to make the quilt large enough for a queen-size bed.  I used a second aqua material as binding, and made the back from a material with a paisley pattern (I love paisley!) in reds, pinks, aquas, and blues. I hand-quilted with red cotton thread.

This quilt was forty years in the making and I'm so happy to have it, and thankful my mother can see the finished product of her hard work.

Spring quilting

This colorful , "busy" quilt top was given to me by my mother a few years ago.  I washed it, folded it up, put it in a closet and thought I'd finish it eventually.  Last month I pulled it out and had a really good look at it. 

First, I wondered who pieced it.  It was hand-pieced with black thread.  The black thread, the fabric designs, the fabric age, and the fact that I recognized the green fabric as belonging to my grandmother lead us to believe that she pieced this top.  Grandmother didn't do it while Mom was still living at home with her parents, and some of the fabric looks 60's - 70's - ish, so we think she probably did it in the 1970's. 

Then I ironed the top, found a sheet I liked from the thrift store, pinned top, cotton batting, and sheet together, and began quilting.  My local yarn store had a bright orange fabric that I liked so I used it to cut bias strips and make the binding.  It covers my king-size bed, but really would be perfect for a double bed. 

The only remaining task is to stitch a label telling who made it and when.

Baby blankets for Liam

Liam has grandmothers who knit, crochet, and quilt.  He is a well-blanketed baby.

Here he is on the quilt his Gmom, Penny, made for him.

Here he is on the quilt his great-grandmother, Linda, made for him.

And here he is on the blanket I crocheted for him.  Happy baby, thankful family.  God is good!

Waiting for Liam

Tom and Kate's son, Liam, has an official (doctor given) due date of May 30th.  Kate would be okay with him making his arrival anytime from today on.  His other grandmother, Penny, comes tomorrow and wants him to wait until Monday, so she's not tired from the trip and has at least one good night's worth of sleep under her belt. 

I'm ready, ready, READY to meet this new grandson!  A few minutes ago I finished stitching the binding to a quilt for him - a quilt my mother began for Tom when I was pregnant with him 26 years ago.  Mom cross-stitched the alphabet squares and pieced the cross-stitch squares and fabric squares together.  Then she got busy (a lot of grandchildren arrived in a few short years and she was - and is - a very hands-on involved grandmother - the very best!) and put the quilt aside and didn't finish it.  A few years ago she gave it to me to finish, and while I went ahead and put the batting and backing on, and quilted it, I waited until Kate was pregnant to figure out what to use for binding.  Last week I finally found a fabric that I liked, so I cut and sewed and ironed and pinned and stitched and today.... it is complete. 

So please come on, Liam!

Hayley's quilt

Last fall Hayley asked me to make her a quilt.  She is coming (with the rest of her family) on Friday to spend the weekend and to go to an Auburn football game (that's the birthday gift she asked for).  I told her that no matter the outcome of the game, she'll have her quilt to take home with her.  Happy 12th Birthday, Hayley!

Because she asked so sweetly

Last weekend Glenn, Amy, and our granddaughters came for a visit. We had them for three days (and I forgot to take pictures, ugh!) and were so disappointed when they had to leave for home.

While playing, Hayley saw the quilt I made for Marley. She came to me and shyly and sweetly asked, "Grandma, will you please make me a quilt?" After supper that night, we went out to my yarn studio and she looked through my fabric and fabric remnants and selected colors and pieces she liked. Today I found a cotton with a design I liked a lot. It's called "Family Tree." I think it will be good as the quilt backing.

Marley's quilt is done

It's been washed, dried on the clothesline, and is now on her bed. It reminds me of her - bright, cheerful, happy!

Marley's quilt

After I finished a quilt for Jacy in May, I immediately wanted to begin another one. So Marley took the squares I'd cut for her, and she arranged them herself into a pattern she found pleasing. We looked for fabric to use on the back and I asked if she'd like to use one of her great-grandmother's sheets. My grandmother could not resist a bargain and if she found something she liked at a good price, she'd buy several and give the others away as gifts. Back in the 1970's she bought quite a few "jungle print" flat sheets, and I have some of them.



I sewed the pieces together pretty quickly, Marley chose the color thread she wanted me to quilt with, and I started quilting. I took it to the lake with me and worked on it for a couple of nights.



I'm almost half-way through the quilting, and then I'll sew up the binding and stitch our names on it and be done.

Quilting and knitting

Penny came for the weekend and we spend three fun days quilting, knitting, and making a couple of trips to antique stores. Now it's back to life as usual, but with happy memories of good times with my friend to brighten my days.

Definitely worth the wait

When we moved into this house with its three outbuildings Steve said to me, "You're going to have a yarn studio where you can sew and spin and knit."

That was five years and many plans ago. Earlier this week Steve moved his office to another outbuilding. I scrubbed his former space. David, Marley, Sam, Steve and I moved furniture, bins, and books yesterday. Today I have a yarn studio.





Now the question is, how often can I get out there?

Time for another quilt

I've been looking at this batch of fabric for a couple of months now. Quilt books, magazines, other people's quilts have given me much to think about and consider. Perhaps in October I'll be able to start a quilt for Jacy. I'm ready to get busy with needle and thread again.

Finishing up a baby quilt

My mother started this quilt in 1986 for Tom, who was born in May of 1987. She cross-stitched the alphabet squares, and cut and hand-pieced all the squares together before she put it aside.

And years went by. Several years ago she gave the work-in-progress to me so I could finish it.

Now before I start another "new" quilt I want to finish this one up first.

I have the cotton batting ready, but have to find a suitable backing and binding.


Mom bought and gave me this fabric when Tom was born and I made curtains for his room with it. We used the curtains in the children's rooms in every house we lived in until we moved here. I would cut and alter and sew them to fit the windows and I thought I still had enough material for a small crib quilt. But I don't! So I have been going through the other material I have and have yet to turn up anything suitable.

I hate to have to make a trip to the fabric store, but it may just have to happen.

Sarah's quilt is ready for use

Sarah's quilt is finished. I am very happy with this quilt. It was my first one to make after reading Jane Brocket's book, The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking, and I was able to use so much of the information I got from her book.

First of all, I don't think I would have mixed different-sized rectangles with squares had I not seen and liked her quilt designs. I also had the firm notion that a quilt backing had to be made with a solid color, and not a fabric with a design on it. Finally, I believed that one had to baste the quilt layers together before quilting, and that is what I had done in the past. This time I just pinned the heck out of the quilt layers and quilted in hand - no basting.

It all worked! And it was fun and much quicker (almost three weeks from start to finish) because I loved working on it.


The back is my favorite part - I loved that fabric when I bought it (paisley is pretty!), but didn't know what I would use it for until Sarah decided that it would be fine for her quilt.

Quilting and listening

This week as I quilted I've been listening to various readings and dramatizations from BBC radio. First up (and my favorite thus far) was a dramatization of Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose. It's only an hour long, but so good.

Of course, I had more than one hour's worth of quilting so I checked out BBC 7 and listened to Alan Bennett read The House at Pooh Corner until I ran out of episodes. Then I heard Prunella Scales read E. Nesbit's Last of the Dragons. Still more quilting to do, so I began listening to a dramatization of The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff, which is a book I own, and have assigned to my children to read, but which I have never read.

Today I will begin putting on the quilt's binding while listening to another episode in each of the three books already mentioned, and I think I will add to the mix Agatha Christie's Murder in Mesopotamia.

Green border

I really like this material that Sarah chose for her quilt's border, I think it would look good as a quilt back, too - and it's 110 inches wide. The lady at the fabric store told me it can be used to back a king-sized quilt!

Sarah's quilt top

After I finished Joan's quilt, I asked Sarah to look over her old squares that I cut out five years ago and see if she still liked them. She decided she'd like something different, so she looked through my fabric and chose greens. The large flower print and the blue-green material are both fabrics her great-grandmother bought back in the early 1970's. The pale mint green and the light green fabrics were bought by her grandmother in the mid-1980's. And the other material is what I bought. There is one more green for the border, and a yellow-green for the binding. The back will be... something else.

Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet quilt

Poor Joan! She chose the fabric and colors for this quilt five years ago, when she was 12! The squares were cut and stacked and ready to assemble. Then we moved. And I kept on thinking I'd eventually have time to put the pieces together and make the quilt. (I also had cut squares for quilts for Jacy, Sarah, and Marley.)

Now I've finally finished Joan's quilt. Thanks in large part to Jane Brocket's book, The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking, I felt that I could put it all together without machine-quilting it and still be happy with the end result.


So I did quilt it by hand, and I didn't use a frame or a hoop.


And I'm happy with the end result. Thankfully, so is Joan!

Inspired to finish

After reading Jane Brocket's latest book, The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking, I was inspired to haul out the quilt for Joan I started working on over a year ago and just finish it.

On Friday Sam, Marley and I went to a fabric store. I wanted a fabric to use to bind the quilt edges, and perhaps get a color other than off-white or white to use for the quilting stitches. There were several colors that would work well with the quilt, but I finally decided upon pink.

(While we were there, Marley wandered among the bolts of fabric, touching and making comments about colors and textures. Finally she asked me if she could have some soft material for a blanket of her own. I agreed, and we're working on her own project now, too.)

On Saturday afternoon I spent a few minutes finishing up the basting of the quilt layers, then I began quilting.

As silly as it sounds, I had been stymied by the thought of quilting the layers together because I was certain that one had to use a quilting frame or a hoop. Although I have the large oval quilting hoop that belonged to Steve's grandmother, I dreaded putting on the hoop and moving it about in order to make the stitches. (Back when I could see well enough to cross-stitch, embroider, and do Hardanger embroidery, I never used a hoop - it was too confining and made me too slow. Plus, I noticed that the fabric was more likely to show dirt and oil where the hoop had been.)

Reading in Jane Brocket's book that she didn't use a hoop freed me to try the same. And it worked! I stitched for a little over an hour Saturday afternoon and got 1/4 of the quilting done. Last night I worked for a few hours and am 3/4's finished.

This week should see me finished and ... perhaps getting to work on another one?

The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking

Imagine my delight yesterday when, after a morning spent shopping for groceries, I returned home to find Jane Brocket's newest book, The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking in a box on my back porch. Thank you, Mr. UPS-Man and Amazon!

Like The Gentle Art of Domesticity, this book is filled with gorgeous pictures and lots of encouraging words and inspirational ideas (is that redundant?) I took the afternoon off from my normal wifely/mommy work to read it, but I think I won't be able to put any creative urges into action until summer comes.

I have friends who quilt beautiful works of art, and while I admire their work I know it's beyond my capabilities and my time and money limits to do what they do. But this book makes me hope that I can make quilts for my family that we will use and enjoy.

Columbus and quilting

Columbus thought he should help me baste the top, batting, and back of the quilt. He's not a lot of help, but he is amusing.

I can see how a quilting frame would make this easier. I do have Steve's grandmother's old quilting hoop and I think I might try giving it a go.