UFO's No More!

Every once in a while I find myself working on all eight cylinders for an extended period of time and then have trouble coming down from the "flight or fight" state of mind.  When that happened recently, and the sudden influx of several quilts all having the same "due date" caused this heightened energy excess, I looked around my Lurkim for some UFO's that needed finishing.

This first one was the result of finding a stack of 6" lavender and yellow squares on the "freebie" table at a guild meeting some years before.  I found where they were hiding, put a yellow one on top of a lavender one, sewed  1/4" on either side of the diagonal, cut on the diagonal and had lovely two tone half square triangles to work with.  I put them in a zig zag arrangement, sewed them together and put a border on the whole thing and named it "La-Z Days"

But!  I still had some pent up energy, so I dug out a project I had started seven or eight years ago and grew tired of.  For a loooooong time!

The focus fabric was a very busy and bold melange of desert flowers and cacti.  I decided to meld a kaleidoscope design with a Dresden plate arrangement and came up with a series of quarter circles that were joined into full and half plates or medalions.  The background is a pale, dull yellow.

The first border is the same as the background, and the outer border is the original fabric from which the matching wedges were gleaned.  The name for this one was obvious:  Desert Flower.

But that wasn't all!  I actually made labels for these!  I hated making labels with pigma pens, but I have discovered how to print them out on predecorated cloth.  

These two quilts have been donated to my guild for their Bingo night prizes (Desert Flower) and their special charities (La-Z Days).

A Labor of Love

My "Sisty" has one of the sweetest daughters in the world, Jenna. So when Jen decided to marry her Love in 2017, Sisty went to town on a beautiful quilt for her.  When it was finished, she asked me to quilt it, and it was a real labor of love for me.

Here you can see part of the design of the quilt and my choices for the quilting embellishment.  The colors of the quilt are so beautiful!  The background is a soft teal pattern on off white.  I sent Sisty a picture of the two threads I was considering using, and she chose the medium teal.  

It was just right!  

The quilt consisted of rows of  baskets placed on point, alternating the direction of the "points".  

Here's an example of two rows joined to make all kinds of secondary blocks for me to fill with quilting. It was a king size quilt, but undaunted, I plunged into the challenge happy to help give this dear girl something really special.

All told, I used at least 9 different patterns:  cross hatching outside the basket handle, point to point arcs in the basket body, feathers between the body and the handle, straight lines between each basket on the side, different feathers in the space created by the basket bases, a third feather pattern for the inner background border, corner beaded feathers for the junction of the sides of that border, a curved grid under the triangles of the outer border, and a lacy trefoil for the darker triangles in this border. 

One of these days I'm going to take a photo of this quilt on Jen's bed.  I keep forgetting to do that - take pictures of the finished product.  This beauty took at least 120 hours of work.  The only other thing that I have ever created with such love and determination is my two wonderful sons, and they only took 33 hours total labor!  Hmmmm....  I wonder if they make quilting pitocin?

 

Back in the Saddle!

It's been almost 2 years since I last posted.  Those years have claimed my attention and energy elsewhere, but life is slowly coming back to normal.  A family member's prolonged illness and now gradual recovery left me little creative spark.  So now I'm back in the quilting saddle -- and back in my Lurkim!

For one thing, I finished this applique and pieced quilt, which ended up going to BFF Mary's daughter for her newborn baby girl, Amelia.  I miss Mary.  She moved to Florida over 2 years ago. She is the most creative person I have ever known.  You can catch her at www.keepmeinquits.blogspot.com.

Then I made a whole bunch of these cute little ditty bags to hold those great new wonder clips and gave them to my table at the guild Christmas party.

Got a lot of quilts done for customers, but forgot to take pictures for most of them.  They were all finished in time for Christmas, though, which was a real race!

Found time to do something nice for my sister, who likes to "keep me busy", bless her heart.  She does come up with some pretty quilts!

I started this quilt 6 years ago and finally finished it in 2018.  It's waiting to be quilted and bound, but that's for another day.

This beauty is a customer quilt.  She did a great job with that curved piecing.  I tried doing a New York Beauty once, but never finished it.  One of these days I will take up that challenge again...one of these days.

Look at this bright and colorful quilt!  This customer is going to have a very happy grandchild!

That's it for now.  See you at the next update!

Proud Mom

I have two sons, the eldest of which had to take a social sciences "filler" course in college where he was studying architecture over 20 years ago.  He chose  a course in criminology, during which he had to do a "ride along" with the local police department.  The next thing we all knew was that he abandoned his original interest in architecture and decided to pursue a degree in Criminal Justice.  And when that was accomplished, he then entered the police academy for another year of study.

Fast forward about 25 years, and lo and behold!  he has worked his conscientious way through the ranks to Deputy Chief!  Our family has attended his promotions with pride, but this one was especially prestigious, and proud just didn't quite describe the exquisite exhilaration of seeing him achieve this remarkable goal. This man has put his life on the line time and time again for others and yet has remained the kind of guy who adores his family and cuddles his dogs and patiently paints the bathroom yet again when his wife changes the theme.  He has taken time off to go to school concerts and football games and dance recitals and family reunions because he knows he has to stay in touch with the things that really matter. 

My youngest son, Jon, started out as a teacher in Maryland, inspiring his students a la Robin Williams in Dead Poet Society.  He taught them high school English, how to prepare a resume and survive an interview, and how to think for themselves.  He chose high schools whose students were challenged -- by economics, by environment, by the English language, by lassitude, by poor study habits and years of substandard performance, and he poured himself into showing them how to learn, to think, to participate.  They began to realize that their opinions and knowledge were also valuable.  They started recognizing that education was the key to possibilities.  They learned that their contributions counted because they mattered to him first.  And now he's in administration in his county's education system, teaching struggling teachers how to be effective, diminishing the attrition rate of new teachers and helping to develop methods that generate involvement of the students in the learning process beyond the regurgitation of what's in their books.

Here are the two most enduring loves of my life.  They have given me purpose, taught me patience, brought me joy and terror, and inspired more love than I ever knew was possible. They have truly been a gift to me, and I am grateful for them every day.

TIME OUT FOR ONE OF MINE

From time to time I give myself a reward after a quilt has been finished and handed back to its maker. Even though I have oodles of UFO's hiding in my lurkim, when I came across this charming pattern, I just had to make it.  I used yardage from my enormous stash (and felt very virtuous for doing so, thank you!).

But first, I must tidy up my work space.

And my pressing space.

Now that I could actually see the top of my cutting table AND find the ironing board, I set about  creating these initial building blocks:

I used maybe 16 fabrics all told, in various combinations.  Next was to add sashing:

First corner finished.  Now to add everything else:

Isn't this a pretty block?  I can't wait to have another "free" day to work on this quilt.

Best Laid Plans...

First, a brief visit with us on our honeymoon in NYC.  We love New York!  Arthur, being from the Midwest, had never seen the Statue of Liberty, so we spent a beautiful, sunny, perfect temperature day taking the ferry over to see Her.  I have seen Her several times, but every time I do, the experience is impressive, awesome, emotional.  This time was the first time I had actually entered the structure and gone to the top of the base to look out over the island to NYC (sans Towers.)  The next time we go to New York, we're going to visit Ground Zero.  We only had two days this time around, so we didn't have much time for anything but this tour and a Broadway play, School of Rock, which was fabulous!!!

This is a view of the workings for the original light.  The scale of this great lady is amazing! And to the right is a view of just a bit of the statue's underpinnings.

I love this picture of the south end of the city.  I just happened to catch a gull in flight -- that's the white blob left of center.

And then it was time to go back home and get back into normal life.  I auditioned some thread for my newest customer quilt.  She chose the teal one.

Next to work on a customer quilt already on the frame.  The fabric was luscious, and I loved looking at it every day!

Below is the quilt map I used to make the pattern for this quilt.  It really turned out lovely, but, darn!  I forgot to take a picture of the finished product!

So I'll stop here and add some more tomorrow.  Have a nice day!

Mea Culpa

Mea Culpa!

It's been 4 years since I last posted!  During that time I moved to Maryland, met someone special, established a connection with a wonderful quilt guild, the Village Quilters Quilt Guild in Catonsville, MD, started my Maryland business, Ladycat Quilting, said goodbye to two dear friends who moved away (Mary to Florida and Peggy to California), celebrated eldest grandson's graduation from VA Tech as a Naval Architect, escaped most pitfalls in my relationship with Special One and dealt with others, introduced My Guy to the Caribbean and scuba diving, made lots of quilts, attended second grandson's high school graduation (which he tried hard to skip), quilted several quilts for my guild members, for new customers, and for charity, bought one of those marvelous adjustable beds (!!!), took up in depth Bible studies and discovered a real enthusiasm for that research, made a whole bunch of zippered and windowed project bags and cloth bowls and a tuffet, donated 17 bags of clothes and shoes and housewares to Goodwill, kept a diary, learned what forgiveness really means, fell in love with great grandson Benjamin, repainted the family room and kitchen, replaced a toilet with a taller version, welcomed Peggy back to Maryland - permanently!,  and on May 19, 2017 I did something most 72 year olds don't do:  I married My Guy, Arthur, in a civil ceremony at the local court house with a lady officiant who was upbeat and funny and made it all that much more memorable.

So now it's time to get back to sharing some pictures of the quilts and projects that have been waiting to be memorialized in the blog.

This quilt was made for my second grandson's graduation, which I will attend June 17.  He will be going to George Mason U in Virginia to study dance.  This is a talented kid who played football for a few years, was in all county chorus for a year, and began doing this disjointed, robotic sort of dancing about three years ago, and it snowballed into taking lessons and performing in competitions -- and winning!  So when it came to fabric for the quilt, I kept thinking:  how do I tie in singing and football and dancing?  What do they have in common?

TIMING!  Everything depends on timing -- rhythm in song, running up the field to catch the ball, matching your steps to those of your dance partner.  So I found this perfect fabric:

Isn't that fabulous?!!!  Clocks!  All of them with sayings from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.  Or, if the Bible isn't your thing, maybe you can remember "Turn, turn, turn" sung by The Byrds in the late 50's and "written" by Pete Seeger (who, except for the first line, took it word for word from Ecclesiastes). If you look closely (click the picture above and it will enlarge), you can see the clock that has "A time to dance" written across it.  That's the one that clinched the deal for me, and the whole rest of the quilt was build around the central issue of time, particularly as it pertains to dance!

I think I'll stop here and show you more tomorrow.  Lots to come!