Quilts
I started quilting not quite 30 years ago after thinking for a long time that it might be fun. I'm not sure why I waited until after I had children. That was not good planning in terms of time management. I took two adult education classes run by the county school system. In one, we made a single block of our choice. Mine was a maple leaf block for my Canadian husband. In the other class, we made a trip around the world, which I gave to my older son. I later made a similar one for my younger son. They still treasure them. A couple of years ago, I did extensive mending of older son's quilt; younger son's is in the works now.
When the kids were in elementary school, I made a wall hanging for their teachers each year. Eventually, they each encountered bad teachers and asked me not to make a quilt for a teacher unless they asked me to. If they asked, I knew the teacher was special to them, and I tried to do something nice. The photos of most of those quilts were taken with film (remember film?), so they won't appear here unless I scan them.
One of the guild chapters to which I belong had a program on needles one meeting. When it came to my turn to mention the needle(s) I liked, I noted that I must be a "ghetto quilter." If I could get a needle threaded and it wasn't blatantly too large or too small, that was my favorite at the time. In this vein, I have been at several quilt shows with quilting friends at which the friends start saying things like the quilt we're looking at reminds them of So-And-So Famous Quilter's work. I usually have no idea of whom they are speaking. I make quilts, usually for a particular person. I cut up fabric and sew it back together in ways I hope will be pleasing to the recipient. Sometimes I choose the fabric for very specific reasons or relevance to the intended recipient. I make my quilts to be used. Unless they contain something such as recycled neckties, they are made to be machine washed and dryed. I do not make heirlooms. I would rather a quilt I made be loved to bits (as my sons' have been) than saved to look at.
The quilts here are presented in somewhat random order. Most of the photos came off passport drives used for backup. Since they had been put there not in chronological order, they aren't that way here either. Eventually, I may get around to scanning the hard-copy photographs from my pre-digital days.
When the kids were in elementary school, I made a wall hanging for their teachers each year. Eventually, they each encountered bad teachers and asked me not to make a quilt for a teacher unless they asked me to. If they asked, I knew the teacher was special to them, and I tried to do something nice. The photos of most of those quilts were taken with film (remember film?), so they won't appear here unless I scan them.
One of the guild chapters to which I belong had a program on needles one meeting. When it came to my turn to mention the needle(s) I liked, I noted that I must be a "ghetto quilter." If I could get a needle threaded and it wasn't blatantly too large or too small, that was my favorite at the time. In this vein, I have been at several quilt shows with quilting friends at which the friends start saying things like the quilt we're looking at reminds them of So-And-So Famous Quilter's work. I usually have no idea of whom they are speaking. I make quilts, usually for a particular person. I cut up fabric and sew it back together in ways I hope will be pleasing to the recipient. Sometimes I choose the fabric for very specific reasons or relevance to the intended recipient. I make my quilts to be used. Unless they contain something such as recycled neckties, they are made to be machine washed and dryed. I do not make heirlooms. I would rather a quilt I made be loved to bits (as my sons' have been) than saved to look at.
The quilts here are presented in somewhat random order. Most of the photos came off passport drives used for backup. Since they had been put there not in chronological order, they aren't that way here either. Eventually, I may get around to scanning the hard-copy photographs from my pre-digital days.
"Ivory and Ebony"
I think I decided that I would become a quilter somewhere around grade 5 when I would pass boring class time doing geometric drawings some of which might actually be found in the quilt above. I began "Ivory & Ebony") as part of a half-square triangle challenge. Every week or two we would get the diagram of a new blog containing multiple half-square triangles (picture a square with a diagonal line through it). I chose to make mine out of blacks and whites and shades or grey. I also made half the blocks 12 inches square and half, 16 inches. Arranging the blocks into the overall quilt layout (I did have to make a couple extras) was fun. I tried as much as possible to make it difficult if not impossible to pick out the original, individual blocks. I entered "Ivory & Ebony" in the guild's 2019 quilt show.
"Clouded Dragon"
"Clouded Dragon" is one of a series of five quilts I have made for master instructors of Myo Sim Karate and Kendo, the martial arts school in which I may someday get back to practicing. I need to see what photos I can find of the other four. All these quilts feature a center Japanese panel; the first one I made has a Mt. Fuji panel. All the fabrics in each of these quilts are Japanese in origin. I quilted this using a walking foot rather than free-motion quilting. Doing curved lines to match those in the image wasn't really easy, but it looks quite nice if I do say so myself. I entered "Clouded Dragon" in the guild's 2019 quilt show and was quite surprised by the 3rd place it won in the small, pieced quilts category.
"OMG"
"OMG" is the final quilt I showed in the guild's 2019 quilt show. I did it as part of a Scrabble challenge. Everyone was randomly assigned or drew out of a hat a letter around which a small quilt (no larger than 24" by 24") was to be designed. As you can see, I got "G." Virtually all of the quilts portrayed the assigned letter through an image. One of the other G quilts showed two giraffes, the two coming from the value of the G tile in Scrabble. (Aside: I was astounded by the number of people who had never heard of Scrabble, a game I grew up playing.) I intended my quilt to be pay homage to the letter itself. By one count, there are 96 Gs represented in the quilt. The background fabric on the front is the human genome; the back's background is goats. The front includes G cards and tiles from various board games, as well as four sentences in which every word begins with G. Some of the words in these sentences are quite obscure, but if you fold up the corner opposite one of the sentences, there is a list of all the words and their definitions. The back also includes two images of the Original Gangsta, Ice T; in one he is holding a gun. My absolute favorite part of the quilt is the hard and soft Gs hanging on the sides. The hard G is a letter cube including G; the soft one is a teeny pillow I made with G fabric. I have absolutely no idea what to do with this quilt now. For the meantime, it is lying on the bench for the piano none of us can play.
"Be Careful What You Ask For"
This photo of "Be Careful What You Ask For" was taken in January 2011. The story behind the quilt and the title is that I posted on Facebook a photo of part of the quilt top in progress. I captioned the photo with something to the tune of I didn't know who it was for. One of my karate instructors immediately commented something like, "Me! Me! Me!" So I finished the quilt and gave it to him. On the label, I noted it was in appreciation for "tumble falls among other things." He and his fellow instructor/wife helped me tremendously with learning how to do a proper tumble fall. This quilt is still one of my favorites, and is a design I refined for a later quilt I'll add to this list someday.
"Cattitude"
"Cattitude" is a small wall hanging made in December 2008 of all Japanese fabrics. I made it for my younger son's at-the-time girlfriend who had a February birthday. My younger son broke up with her in December (during final exams at university, timing his father still holds against him). It ended up going to a friend's son who graduated from high school that June. Would I again make something for my younger son's girlfriend? I don't see why not. They've been together for 11.5 years, and I basically consider her my daughter-in-law though they are not married.
"Chugga Chugga, Chugga Chugga, Shoe Shoe"
In what seems now like a past life (before kids), I was assistant leader of a Girl Scout troop. Years later, I'm still in touch with two of the scouts from that troop. (Aside for those who know Scouting: Both earned Gold Awards.) I made "Chugga Chugga, Chugga Chugga, Shoe Shoe" as a wedding present. He has had a thing for trains since childhood; she's very into shoes. The center of the quilt has lots of pinks and greys because those are the colors they asked guests to wear to their wedding. The backing is beer bottles/mugs because they met in a bar over beers. I made this quilt in June 2010.
"May You Always Be Surrounded by the Kindness of Strangers"
This is another from 2011; at least that is when I finished it. I learned that a friend's daughter had very quickly married in order to accompany her husband on his next Navy posting in San Diego. I showed her several of my unfinished quilt tops and said that I would finish the one of her choice as a wedding present. She chose the black and white one above. Yes, I've always had a thing for black and white with a wee bit of red as an accent. I called this "May You Always Be Surrounded by the Kindness of Strangers" since they were headed off to the West coast and into the future. They later spent several years in Rota, Spain.
"The Last Master"
This is another in my series of Japanese fabric panel quilts done for the local master instructors in the karate and kendo school in which I've studied. This one is called "The Last Master" since the master to whom it was given as at that point the last master instructor who received a quilt. I gave this one to the recipient at the party given after the rank exam at which I earned promotion to second degree black belt in the kendo side of the school. The instructor who received this had been my partner for the exam's partner work since no one else was testing for the same rank. That was in February 2011, and said master is no longer the last one. Since then a kendo student has been promoted to fifth degree black belt, which is considered master rank. No, he doesn't have one of these ... yet. He's also my older son.
"Sibling Revelry"
I actually blogged the making of this quilt in summer and fall of 2009. I'd had various friends ask me how I went about making a quilt, so I decided to try to show them. There are ten or twelve posts in all, and they're spread out between other posts. The first of those posts can be found here. "Sibling Revelry" went to two Norwegian brothers, cousins of the husband. We visited Norway on our way home from Vietnam, and they took us to their mountain cabin for a weekend. I wanted to do something as a thank you, and I'd never really done a quilt from a photo and thought I'd give it a try. One of the brothers is now deceased, and the cabin is for sale. Time passes, not always happily. The remaining brother has told me he will treasure the quilt and the memories it holds for him. Needless to say, they kept the quilt at the cabin.
"OMDI"
Most quilters have been asked by someone to turn old t-shirts into quilts. Most quilters say they did this once and have no intention of repeating the act. Back in (as best as I can recall) 2011, a dear friend (my sister by other parents, actually) asked me if I would make a quilt from her daughter's high school and college t-shirts. She would buy all the materials and also pay me. I did not want to screw this up, so the first thing I did was make a t-shirt quilt of my own to see what mistakes I might make. My younger son did creative problem solving competitions from third grade through tenth--Odyssey of the Mind in the first year, and Destination Imagination in the others. I pulled together t-shirts from each year and went to work. I did make mistakes; fortunately, they were all easily fixed. The shirt logos are different sizes because I wanted to concentrate on the logos, not the shirts around them. I quilted each logo based on the design. It took some time, but I really liked the effect. My younger son has this and claims to be saving t-shirts so that I can make another one for him someday.
"The Fabric of a Life (In Two Parts)"
When I got the t-shirts from my friend, it was clear that there were too many for one quilt. I didn't want to not use some from activities I knew were very special, so I decided to make two quilts. I intentionally put t-shirt logos in all directions; there is no top or bottom. I wanted whoever might be using the quilt to be able to see logos right-side-up no matter how they oriented the quilt. I had fun trying to get the various sizes of logos to fit together. As with my first t-shirt quilt, I quilted each logo according to its design. There were two shirts with designs covering the entire front, too big to easily incorporate with the rest. I made these into bags, one for each quilt. The labels noted that these quilts were "The Fabric of a Life (In Two Parts)."
"Kittehs!"
I made "Kittehs!" for a friend who has helped me out above and beyond the line of duty on more than one occasion. Several years ago, I bought a kit to make a cat quilt. It turned out that to do the quilt in the kit would be tedious, and that some of the cats would be duplicated. So I did my own thing with one set of all-different cats. The very interesting thing is that when I laid this out on the hardwood floor for photos, my cat walked in, looked at a cat face and, I kid you not, jumped in fear. After a second look, she was cool with it, but that first look was more than a little funny.
Untitled Baseball Quilts
The young lady for whom I made the two t-shirt quilts had her second child almost a year ago now. I had finally done a quilt for her first child, a daughter, and then found out she was expecting a second child, this time a boy. The family lives in the Boston area and, as you might expect, are huge Red Sox fans. I'd done a baseball quilt for the daughter, so I ordered another baseball panel for the son. The backs are Red Sox fabric, one blue and one red. I got these to the family before the son was born with the idea that the daughter could choose which quilt she wanted and which one her brother would get. I'm told the quilts are very well loved, which is something I love to hear.
"40th Birthday Blues"
I made this quilt in a mystery quilt class at Early Times Workshop. The class was a present from the husband for my 40th birthday. I packed the completed top away and it sat in a drawer. In late 2015, I purchased a gift certificate for machine quilting in a fundraising auction. I used it to get this quilted. In 2016, I gave it to a dear friend as a gift for her 80th birthday. Interesting postscript: This friend won the 2019 raffle quilt (also blue and white) with a ticket I bought her as an 83rd birthday present.
"R3"
"R3" was a housewarming present for my older son. He got it several years after he moved out of our house and into his own. The border of fountain pens reflects his preference for fountain pens for any writing. The book back fabric reflects his personal library, currently over 8,000 books and growing. "R3" reflects, of course, reading (the back), writing (the border), and 'rithmetic (several of the rectangles on the front).
Another T-Shirt Quilt
I made this shirt for a karate master instructor in the Myo Sim school in 2014. I had posted a Facebook thing of tell me you want something and I'll make you something. This master said he wanted something. Because I am totally crazy not to mention wanted to be nice to a master instructor in a discipline I was learning, I took an assortment of t-shirts and made a quilt. In the center is a crest from the UVA Myo Sim school started in the 1960s. Another master instructor had two of these rarities and offered me one when he heard I was making this quilt.
Hand-Dyed and Anonymous
I made this quilt sometime in the late 1990s. All the fabric was hand-dyed by a friend in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. My brother-in-law saw this top and claimed it as his own. No way, I said. The top sat for a long time because I wasn't sure how I wanted to quilt it. Whenever he visited, my brother-in-law would ask about his quilt to the point it got more than a bit annoying. This was the quilt I wanted for myself because I thought it made me look as if I knew what I was doing in quilting. I eventually quilted it sometime around 2014. It was still going to be mine at least until I made "Ivory and Ebony." That became the quilt that would say to me I could really do this strange art or craft. My brother-in-law got this as a birthday present. The photo above shows it hanging in his living room.
Phish Festival Quilt
A Facebook friend I met through a local photography group saw a Facebook post about a t-shirt quilt I'd made. She wanted to hire me to make two quilts from shirts she'd saved over the years, one from Phish festivals and one from a summer camp in Maine. I came up with a price based on what other people seemed to be charging on line. It was not unreasonable, but I'll charge more should I ever agree to do something like this again. I'll also ask about the shirts. She was quite happy to note that she'd saved space over the years by cutting the designs out of the shirts so she didn't have a whole stack of shirts she was no longer wearing. I basically had no wiggle room in terms of cutting designs with borders. I also could not stabilize the whole front or back of the shirt and cut the design out neatly. I survived, though.S She told me later that she had gotten lots of compliments on it when she took it to other festivals.
Camp Winona Quilt
This was the second t-shirt quilt I made for the Facebook friend. She gave me no wiggle room in terms of the fabric. It had to be the maroon of the camp. I came as close as I could and made sure she liked the color before I bought the fabric. Camp Winona is in Maine. Her family used to go to "family camp" there the week after the residential summer camp for boys ended. They no longer do family camp, but their son has been going for the residential camp session for several years now.
"Heart of Gold"
I made "Heart of Gold" for my sister by other parents. When she learned I was having a knee replacement, she came, without asking, and stayed with me for the first two weeks after. She was the one who got up in the middle of the night to give me my meds and change the ice keeping my knee cold. Otherwise, my husband would have had to do it. They also tell you that you should not be alone for two weeks, and the husband had classes to teach. I was going to machine bind "Heart of Gold" until Xena (the Warrior Bernina) decided to go on sick leave. Not having time to do the binding by hand, I called on the guild friend who had taught the machine binding workshop, and she saved my butt. Interestingly, the binder's husband worked with my sister before she retired. This is one of the quilts inspired by how I did "Be Careful What You Ask For."
Another Girl Scout Wedding Quilt
I made this quilt for my sister's daughter (who wins the jackpot by having five of my quilts in her house) as a wedding present. The house in the center came from a quild workshop I did with Gwen Marston. The people in the window are wearing baseball hats since the bride and groom were and are huge Boston Red Sox fans. The wonky log cabin blocks also came from Gwen Marston's workshop. I deal much, much better with liberated log cabins and stars than I do when corners and edges have to fit and match.
Laser Prints
This was in my pile of unquilted tops (called "flimsies" by one quilter I know). It's done from a set of laser-printed squares I'd bought. The husband had a grad student who was getting married and asked if I could do a quilt as a gift. I think the husband picked this top out of the pile. The photo is dated 2014-15, but I don't recall if that's when I made it or finished it. I think that was when I finished it, but don't hold me to that statement.
"Pucker Up? No! Puckers Down!"
This was a housewarming present for my younger son and his spouse-equivalent. I gave it to them in 2017, only a couple years after they'd moved in to the first house they owned. The quilt's name comes from the fact that there were a few small puckers from the quilting on the back. The label includes clip art images of the various animals they own, though I'm not sure if they'd gotten the parrot by then. Right now, they have multiple snakes (one is a Burmese python that could grow to 15 to 20 feet long), multiple cats, multiple rabbits, and one parrot. as for the puckers, I told you; I don't do heirlooms. This is another inspired by how I did "Be Careful What You Ask For."
Bright Stars Quilt
The guild to which I belong makes quilts for the 4-year-olds in the "Bright Stars" program of area schools. This is a high-quality preschool program that provides early learning experience. At the beginning of the year, each child receives a small nap quilt and a book that goes along with the design on the quilt. They take these with them when they leave Bright Stars to move to kindergarten. I paired the quilt above with The Little Engine That Could. Guild members make over 150 Bright Stars quilts each year. I think that this year we will be able to include all the schools that have Bright Star programs, so we could be approaching 180 or more quilts.
Somewhere over the Rainbow
I made this using an around-the-world technique of Bonnie Hunter. Rearranging the blocks to get the design was entertaining as well as challenging. Challenging? The design above was not the one I had decided to make, but it's still pretty sweet. I made this for a young woman who went to high school with my older son. About 13 years ago, she was going to England for grad school and asked on Facebook if anyone wanted to be old fashioned pen pals. I volunteered, and we began a correspondence that's still going on. I knew she was at a transition point in her life right now, and I figured this might help. The subtitle to the name is "where dreams that you dare to dream really do come true." I hope hers do.
Current Works Awaiting Finishing
Shown below are my current works-in-progress a.k.a. Unfinished Objects a.k.a. flimsies. I'm currently quilting the first one shown. Some of these were made so long ago I don't remember when I made them. I know in which year I photographed them, but that was for a Facebook thing posting articles I had made.