Family Heirlooms

Two quilts, family heirlooms, recently came into my possession. For some reason, I have mixed feelings about inheriting them.

 

My father and his siblings were going through their father's affects. My dad brought me these quilts. The first quilt was one I made my grandpa for his 90th birthday. All of the aunts, uncles, cousins, and cousins' families made quilt squares. I sewed them together into a quilt and quilted it. This quilt is big!

 

 

I quilted it with trains. My grandpa liked trains.

 

I am sure my aunts wanted this quilt. They gave it to me because I made it. Someone has to end up with it. I guess it may as well be me. I feel unworthy to have it. For some reason, I don't know what to think.

 

The next quilt was made by my great-grandmother. I felt guilty taking this one until I found out that there were quite a few and my aunts and uncles got quilts too. This is a smaller, throw size quilt.

 

Isn't it fabulous! My dad says he remembers her sewing up scraps on a treadle machine. Don't you love this animal print! My dad and I guessed it was a women's coat. The fabrics are all heavy - wool and heavy poly. It is hand quilted.

 

This is actually the second quilt of my great grandmother's that I own. The other is even more fabulous except it is in terrible condition. This is truely a treasure!

 

Of course, it isn't labeled. I need to do that. This grandmother lived to be over 100. We never lived very close, so I only saw her occasionally. Even at the end, she always knew I was "David's oldest." We always called her "Little Grandma." She wasn't even five feet tall, at least when we knew her. When we went to her house when we were younger, she would pull out a tv tray and little wind up toys. We loved to wind up all the different little toys and watch them hop across the tray.

 

Have any family heirlooms come into your possession? What have you done to honor the trust without feeling guilty?

Auction Quilt

I don't often make auction or raffle quilts. I made an exception recently. My cousin is doing a fundraiser. I donated a quilt. I wanted to try to make something people would be more likely to bid on. I'm not sure it worked or not. When talking to his wife, she thought it would be good to make it red, white, and blue with quotes from President Lincoln.

 

Well, I didn't get started on the quote part right away, so I didn't have time. I have never been able to do iron on very well. Actually, I'm terrible at it. I was going to have the quotes printed at spoonflower.com, but I didn't have time.

 

On to Plan B. I was going to sew the quotes myself. After picking some good quotes, I realized that even the short ones were too long for my inexperience and short amount of time. On to Plan C. I decided to go for words instead of quotes. I picked words from the Republican Platform, something I knew the audience would be drawn to.

 

Then for the red, white and blue. I grabbed two charm packs of Friendship, one of Moda's Collections for a Cause. It is red, white, and blue, sort of. It is more red, tan, and blue. Then I made it brown by adding a brown border and snowball blocks. I like it. I'm sure it wasn't what they were thinking, but I hope people like it.

 

 

Here is a close up of some the words.

 

I used my friend's method to write the words. Here's a link to her tutorial:

http://april-makingendsmeet.blogspot.com/2013/03/raw-edge-free-motionish-applique.html

 

This is the first time I have tried it, so I don't do it as well. I think it turned out all right.

 

I still don't have high hopes for it. Maybe it's because I live in Utah. People around here would rather quilts themselves than buy them. Any of you found what works with auction and raffle quilts? I would love to know!

Sewing for a Cause

 

Next weekend a friend of mine, Ella, is having a sew-a-thon to make quilts to sell at an auction. The money is to help a historic church (whose claim to fame is being on the movie Foot Loose) get new windows. More information about the church and sew-a-thon is here:

 

https://www.facebook.com/#!/Footloosechurch

Ella has some things planned to encourage people to come and sew including:

 

Friday, Sept 6 at 1:00 trunk show by me while you sew

and

Friday, Sept 6 at 2:00 a beginning quilting class

 

The class I am teaching will be very different than most beginning quilting class. I am working up samples to show the difference between doing something "correctly" and doing something "incorrectly." AND - this part I am pretty excited about - I hope it is well received - I am going to talk about some times when it's okay to break the "rules."

 

Ella may not ask me back. I told her the contents of my class will be a surprise. (insert mildly evil laugh here)

 

If you will be in the area, come join us! (I heard Chick-fil-a is providing dinner Friday night!)

 

Quilting with Kids

I was happy to get an email the other day from one of you with this picture.

 

It is a quilt made by an 11 year old. This is her first quilt! Isn't it fabulous!

 

The pattern is called Square Dance from Simply Charming Kids:

http://www.moosequilts.com/shop/kids.html

 

 

It is called Simply Charming Kids for two reasons. First, it is a great book to introduce kids to quilting! Kids love charm packs as much as we seasoned quilters do. If they like the charm pack, they will love the quilt! The patterns in this book are kid friendly!

 

The other reason it is called Simply Charming Kids is because sometimes we want to make a quilt for a child. When I make a quilt for a child, I want them to use it. I want it to be a fort or a cape or a picnic blanket or a doll's quilt. I don't mind if it gets muddy or puked on or bloody. Because I hope that the quilt will be used, I want it to be a simpler quilt. One that is fun, but one that didn't take me forever. The quilts in this book fit that purpose.

 

 

There are certain stages in life when we want to make fast, fun quilts. Simply Charming Kids has 8 fast, fun patterns! I am so happy to see kids using it (with help from loving adult quilters)!

Knit & Purl Part Two

Now for the rest of the story! If you missed Part 1, you can find it here:
http://moosequilts.blogspot.com/2013/08/Knit-&-Purl-in-Quiltmaker-Part-1.html

One thing you may have noticed from reading Part 1 is that I spell Knit & Purl differently than Quiltmaker does. Well, that isn't completely true. If you look on page 48 in the magazine, you will see they spelled it as I do. Funny! I write it as Knit & Purl because the quilt reminds me of knitting.

But back to the retreat. . . . With the help of Edyta's half square triangle paper, I did finish all of the half square triangles. There are also a few (120 I think) squares that are something I don't know the name of. If you used two HSTs, it would be an hourglass. That isn't the square. It pairs one HST with a square to make two blocks made up of three triangles. That isn't a good description. How about a picture.

Can you see it in the blue circle? Well, I finished those as well. That means that all I had to do was assemble the blocks. Sounds like all the hard work was done!

It should have meant that. It would have meant that. Except that shortly after I returned from the retreat, I ended up in the hospital with my daughter. Naively, I thought she would sleep a lot, or we would be sitting around watching tv. Under those circumstances, I could whip that puppy out like lightening! I even had a back up project in the car. Well, as many things, the hospital trip didn't go as planned. That story is here: http://moosequilts.blogspot.com/2013/07/what-doesnt-kill-you.html

 

The nurses all had something to say about my sewing machine set up. (Don't you love the drapes! It's a children's hospital.)

They had never known anyone who was crazy enough to bring a sewing machine to the hospital before. I think I got the blocks done at the hospital. When my daughter would finally go to sleep at night, I would stay up sewing for an hour or two. Sometimes I would be able to sew one block during the day. Sometimes one is enough.

When we got home, it was just a matter of sewing blocks together. That really was the easy part. I knew exactly how to quilt this quilt. From the moment they asked me to make the quilt, it asked me to quilt it by echoing the design. Have you ever had a quilt tell you what to do? I never questioned the quilt, but it's choice was reinforced when I emailed one of the editors of Quiltmaker. She said she was thinking the same thing! The quilt talked to her too!

Here is another picture of my quilt. I decided not to crop the second picture so you could see part of my daughter in her wheelchair. Just keeping it real! (P.S. my daughter is in physical therapy now, and I love to see her getting stronger!)

am

Knit & Purl in Quiltmaker Part 1

I am excited to show you my new quilt in the latest Quiltmaker Magazine! Meet Knit and Purl!
http://www.quiltmaker.com/patterns/details.html?idx=15331. They are even offering kits here: http://www.quiltandsewshop.com/product/knit-purl-throw-quilt-kit/New-In-Quiltmaker
This is the beautiful picture from Quiltmaker!

This quilt started out as a block that I submitted to be in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks. When I submitted it, I showed some fun variations putting the block into a quilt. So they asked me to make the quilt instead of a block. Of course I agreed! When I started sewing the quilt, I realized it had 960 half square triangles. That means it took a little longer than I was expecting.

I started sewing it on my Pennsylvania Retreat. (The icing on the retreat cake was that the dogwoods were in bloom! It's one of my favorite trees, and it doesn't grow in Utah very well.)

 

I expected to finish it at my retreat. That didn't happen.
Because I was making so many half square triangles, I decided to experiment with different ways of making them and see what I like better. The method I ended up using was Laundry Basket Quilts Triangle Paper by Edyta Sitar:
http://www.laundrybasketquilts.com/Shop/trianglepaper.htm

I LOVED this paper! I cut strips from my fabric and cut them in half so they were about 6 1/2" x 21". I pinned the paper on and sewed away. The thing I liked about this one compared to others I tried was the sewing. It seemed so logical that I was surprised it was the only one that sewed the triangles exactly this way. Others are similar, but this one is the best. After sewing, I cut each paper into 28 HSTs. It got tedious removing the paper, but it's one of those mindless things that I did watching a movie or at sewing group while talking.

One other thing I loved about Edyta's paper was it's size. 28 seems like an odd number, but it was the perfect size to use with a fat quarter or half of a full strip. The fabric was used economically. And just one more thing. . . this one is silly, but it helped me a lot. Because of the size of the strip, it didn't take too long to sew or cut apart, but it also made the quilt more managable. When I got tired of doing the same thing, I would take a few and tell myself for example, "I can count to seven." (I remember seven distinctly for some reason.) Seven was an easy number. If I can count it easily, then I surely could sew that many! However, seven papers made 196 HST! Not bad!

As you can see, this quilt has a story. Oh, and it gets better. Stay tuned until next time!

Update: Find Part 2 here: http://moosequilts.blogspot.com/2013/08/knit-purl-part-two.html

Sea Pebbles Quilt Kit

I just found out that Keepsake Quilting is offering a kit for my Sea Pebbles Quilt!

 

 

Here's more about the quilt:

http://moosequilts.blogspot.com/2013/06/sea-pebbles.html

 

You can order the kit at Keepsake Quilting:

http://www.keepsakequilting.com/productdetail/5194/---SEA-PEBBLES-QUILT-KIT.htm