More Quilts to Share

With an invitation from my friend (and former student) Becky for Thanksgiving dinner I decided to find that Christmas table runner that I started last year and finish it.  Becky was thrilled - and quickly sent me a picture of the table runner on her table.

It was great fun to dig into my stash of batiks and make this quilt for my colleague and friend, Claudia Parliament, who retired from the applied economics department at the University of Minnesota. 

These baby quilts are headed to Alberta for Liz to share with her and Don's extended family. I know they will be loved and enjoyed.

Black and Gold Retirement Quilts

We had 3 retirements in Purdue's ag econ department in August this year. Three retirements in 2 weeks put real pressure on me to make the signature quilts. I was able to get the tops pieced in time for the retirement parties. Then we took some time this fall to collect more signatures. Over this past weekend I finally got the last of the binding finished on all three of the quilts. As always, the individuals receiving the quilts were absolutely thrilled to be getting such a wonderful memento of their time at Purdue.

This chevron pattern was made with rectangles (not the usual half-square triangles).  It made the piecing really easy and also made the quilting much easier as we avoided those bumps that occur with all the seams at the points of the half square triangles.

When I started making these strips I got the idea that it would be faster to go ahead and make the strips for 2 quilts. Well, it was faster -but I have to admit that by the time I was finished with the second top I was getting bored with the pattern. I was, however, very pleased with the final quilts - and they are going to different homes so both will be enjoyed.

Happy 50th Birthday Teri

It's been a wonderful weekend in Toronto where we have celebrated the 50th birthday for Teri (my sister-in-law).  Teri had the cake made complete with chocolate icing when I got here Friday evening. Saturday morning we had a great time with the rolled fondant.

Of course a 50th birthday is reason for a new quilt. I found these Kaffe Fassett fabrics at Rossville quilts - Teri's favorite!

Anniversary Quilt

While at the Ricky Tims Quilt Retreat in May I started the quilt for Mom and Dad for their 60th wedding anniversary. I got it finished just in time for the anniversary celebrations.

Here is what I wrote on the label:

Happy 60^th Wedding Anniversary

Mom and Dad

July 2014

Made with Love by

Joan

Norma Evans and Fred Fulton

Married: July 10, 1954

The background quilt is made from batiks and hand-dyed fabrics put together in crazy quilt style to represent the patchwork of life and especially the 60 years of the Fulton family.  The many twists and turns of the fabric pieces weave together in the quilt symbolic of the twists and turns that create the wonderful masterpiece of life.

Floating on top of the patchwork are a series of smaller quilts depicting the big sky and prairie landscape of Saskatchewan.

The iconic images of Saskatchewan include:

• ·      Wheat ready for harvest
• ·      Field of canola in bloom
• ·      Power lines that opened up life in rural Saskatchewan
• ·      Railroad and grain elevators leading into town
• ·      Hoar frost-covered tree standing alone on the prairie outlining the clear blue sky that is only found on the cold crisp prairie winter days
• ·      Ceiling of fluffy clouds overlooking a green field
• ·      Bessborough Hotel behind the Broadway Bridge in Saskatoon
• ·      Prairie sunset with the individual grain elevator standing as the sentinel of the prairie
• ·      A branch of the Evans cherry tree that produced the famous sour cherry jam for Fulton family members

Embedded within the quilting stitches on several of the quilts are the names of the family members. Norma and Fred are in the Prairie Sunset piece; Donald is in the piece with the power poles; Murray, Leona and Michael are in the piece with the two grain elevators; Glen, Teri, Lauren, Eric and Owen are in the piece with the canola field; Joan is in the piece with the three heads of wheat ready for harvest.

60th Wedding Anniversary

We had a wonderful celebration in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on July 13 for Mom and Dad's 60th Wedding Anniversary (they were married July 10, 1954). Over 130 friends and family members came from all over for a fantastic day of reconnecting and visiting. It was a perfect day.

Here is Mom and Dad. I was pleased to be able to make Mom's dress. I used to sew lots of clothes for both Mom and myself, but recently it has been more economical to buy clothes so I got away from sewing. For a special occasion it was fun to make the dress.

When I was visiting Mom and Dad in May we made 3 layers of fruit cake - for the anniversary. Teri (my sister-in-law), Lauren (my niece) and I decorated the cake before the party.

We cut up the 3rd layer ahead of time so that it was ready for people to enjoy at the party.

We had a crowd that liked fruit cake as all of these trays were emptied and we cut up another layer. So - all that is left is the top layer.

Anniversary Dress

This past weekend involved more sewing than just the quilts. While Sue was piecing the top for the 4th quilt I was sewing the dress for Mom for their 60th anniversary celebration, which is coming up on July 13. 

I still have a bit of work to do on the jacket, but here is what it will look like with a jacket.

A Second Weekend of Quilting and Friendship - It Was Wonderful

This past weekend my friend Sue Hine came from Colorado which meant 2 weekends in a row of intense quilting and great friendship. Wow - it just doesn't get any better than that!

Sue brought 3 tops to quilt. We sure were busy on the long arm.

Sue bought the kit for the top for this quilt at Rossville Quilts in March of this year (when she came out to Indiana to help me out after my surgery - and my recovery was going so well we were able to go shopping at the quilt shop:))

She was so pleased with how that top went together that she went on line and found these next 2 tops, which she had all pieced before getting her for the weekend.

On Saturday we were sitting at lunch and decided we had time to make a 4th quilt. It was a quick trip to Rossville to the quilt shop, picking some nice batiks from my stash and we got the 4th top pieced and then on Monday morning Sue quilted it.  Here she is a few hours before leaving for the plane where she is sewing the binding on the 4th quilt (which was the same pattern as the first one (with the white background) above). Fortunately she brought a big suitcase so had no problem taking them back home.

I was also able to get 2 baby quilts quilted - yes we really did put the long arm to good use this weekend.  These are 2 of the baby quilts that Liz and I pieced the previous weekend.

The beanie babies are going to be great in the pockets.

A Great Weekend of Making Baby Quilts

Liz and I are having a great weekend in Calgary making Baby Quilt tops. There is a population explosion in the Lucyshyn family so what a great excuse to have fun with the great fabrics that are out right now for baby quilts.

Liz had the one that is in the foreground pieced before we started the weekend. She had bought that as a kit from Periwinkle Quilts in Saskatoon when we were there over Mother's Day weekend. The "minkie" yellow pieces make it lovely and soft for the baby - but are more difficult to work with. I found the panel with the letters and numbers on the black background at Rossville Quilts. With borders it makes a fun quilt. We found this wonderful piece of flannel (below) with "glow in the dark" animals for the backing for that quilt.

This quilt is from the Moos and Hoos series of fabric. The sashing strips (and cornerstones) are small - just 1/2 inch finished. They were a bit of a pain to work with - but now that the top is finished we are very pleased with it.

This Noah's Ark quilt will be a pocket quilt to put Beannie Babies into. There was coordinating fabric that I got to make each of the pockets. We didn't have any batting here last night so we got the tops of the pockets done but had to wait on making the pockets until we had batting.

We took the ABC Menagerie charm pack as the starting point for this quilt. To add more interest we cut the squares in half and matched them with coordinating fabrics. The alternating blocks with the circles are a from a flannel that Liz found at Fabricland (perfect color match). We got things done this far last night and realized we needed to wait until morning to sew them together (avoiding mistakes when we were tired).

Our morning has been productive - here is Liz sewing on the last border. Below is the finished top. That makes 4 tops this weekend plus the 5th top that Liz had done before I got here. Looks like I will have a full suitcase going home and lots of excuses to use my long arm!

Quilting really is about Sharing the Love

I got an email with attached photo this past week that reminded me once again how quilting is really about "Sharing the Love." In her email Ashley said that she had saved the quilts I sent for the children until they moved into the toddler bed and attached this picture of her son in the big bed.

That prompted me to go back and look up some pictures of his older sister with her quilts. I think this is so precious with her reading to her doll.

When I made the quilt for the new baby boy I remember thinking that a 2 year old little girl would not understand why this baby was getting all of the attention - so I took left over pieces of flannel and made a fun quilt for her - thinking that she could cuddle with it and have it to play with her dolls. From this picture it's clear that the quilt was a hit!

New Garage and More Quilts

I had a second car garage added to my house this past year. This project took longer than originally intended, first due to the need to "jump through hoops" to get the variance from the county, next due to the need to get the gas company to move the gas line and finally because of all of the bad weather we had this past winter. Now it is finished and I am very pleased with the rust color of paint for the trim.

Myra Levine's daughter, Sami, graduated from high school and is getting ready to head to Denison University. I made her this laptop sleeve for her new adventures.

These two Quilts of Valor were a group project. During the Common Threads quilt retreat in Shipshewana in March participants made friendship blocks. Some of women then took the blocks and pieced the tops and I quilted them.

Johnny, one of the trainers at the gym, got married in May. Everyone at the gym got "into this" and we got lots of signatures, with several people even writing a message. As usual, I pieced the top, then got people to sign it and then I quilted it.

African Dancers

Our FibR group has a show that opens on Friday May 16, 2014 at the Tippecanoe Arts Federation. I have the following two pieces in the show.

This one I have titled "Sisters." This piece reminds me of all of the great African women I have had the honor and pleasure to work with and become friends with who really are like sisters to me. This piece was part of a challenge that our FibR group worked on. We selected one of the African fabrics that I had brought back from West Africa and each of us took a piece of the fabric. The challenge was to work some of that fabric into the wall hanging.

My second piece is titled "Convergence." The inspiration for this piece came from one of my visits to a village in Niger West Africa. I watched the women place maize in the bottom of the large wooden mortar to be pounded before it was cooked for the evening meal. They stood in a circle around the mortar each with a large wooden stick to pound the maize. They efficiently and with great speed took turns hitting the maize.  With the aid of song and rhythm they never once hit each other’s stick, but rather made a very labor intensive job look graceful and fun. I realized that, for these women, there was a convergence of work with dance and song. The background for this piece is a technique called convergence where four fabrics are pieced together. The two fabrics, which are also in the border, were ones I acquired when travelling in West Africa and typical of the women’s dresses from that part of the world. The red circles in the upper left symbolize the intense hot African sun.
 

Quilting Update

After my surgery in mid February I enjoyed such great care and attention from many great folks (especially thanks to Teri and Sue for coming and staying with me and then to Jane and Sue for taking me to Shipshewana for the Common Threads quilt retreat) that I regained my strength quickly and was able to enjoy quilting.

The first piece I made was a baby quilt for Maria Marshall. I was in a hurry to get it finished for the baby shower so didn't get a full picture of it - but even better I can now see how much she is enjoying it, having set it up in the baby's room with the Ragedy Andy doll.

The next piece I finished was this "Floating Diamonds in Blue" made for Moira Lemke in Calgary. I pieced this while in Shipshewana and quilted it once I got home.

Teri found this great pattern "Metro Link" and at the same time that she made it I decided to also make it. I also pieced this one in Shipshewana and quilted it once I got home. I donated this quilt for a Silent Auction in my department. This was part of a challenge amongst Purdue's College of Ag. departments to raise the most money for Food Finder's, the local food bank. I was really pleased that several people liked it and the bidding was exciting as rivals bid up the price - it ended up selling for $250. 

I had started this baby quilt for Tahirou and Amina Abdoulaye's baby that was born Dec. 23, 2013 back in January. The first thing I did in Shipshewana was to put the mitered borders on this side. These are all flannel fabrics - and as an added bonus I was able to use up pieces left over from other projects.

I found this panel, which is a world map, at Joann's to make this a cute two-sided quilt. It was a bit more challenging to quilt it as I had to ensure that the top and bottom matched up. I did that by starting in the middle of the quilt and quilting it from the center out. In that way I did not end up with the bottom being "off" from the top.  I was really pleased the Baoua was here from Niger and willing to take the quilt back to Africa so that the baby and his older brothers can enjoy this quilt.

It was great fun designing and creating this baby quilt for Nicole and David Widmar's baby that will arrive in early June. We decided that a pocket quilt with barnyard animals would be perfect for them.  I remembered that Sue Hine had found the wonderful farmyard panel at Rossville Quilts so that made a great center. Tammy Kettler had the idea that cow print would be nice - and indeed it really sets everything off. It's not too surprising that the outside red border was my idea (after all you can never have too much red). I had a lot of fun making each of the pockets - as well as finding all of the stuffed animals for each of the pockets (except for the tracker pocket and that is a teething ring)

I remembered that when I made a pocket quilt for Lauren's second birthday Teri got a plastic tub to keep the quilt and stuffed toys all together. When I found this tub with the white lid it was the perfect opportunity to pull out the black felt and glue gun - and make the top of the container match the cow print from the quilt.

Today is the Kentucky Derby and Mike and Alee Gunderson are having their annual Derby party. I'm going to use this opportunity to deliver this baby quilt (for the baby that is due May 14).  Some of the first piecing that I did during my recovery from surgery was this top with the purple flannel with pastel letters - again using up fabrics from previous projects. I found the baby print for the other side of the quilt at Joann's - making the second two-sided baby quilt that I made in just a month. This one was much easier to quilt as the second side was a design that ran the width of the quilt - and not a bordered piece where all 4 sides have to match up.

Winter Storm Becomes Joan's own Quilting Retreat

While it's still early in 2014 West Lafayette, IN has already been hit with a major snow storm and record cold temperatures. I fell very fortunate that everything in my house continued to work just fine during the storm and cold (heat and electricity worked fine and no freezing of water pipes - yeah). When Purdue closed for 2 days I got the opportunity to have my own personal quilting retreat. It was wonderful.

Here are the 5 quilts that I quilted on the long arm (4 of them were from tops that were previously pieced and 1 was "built from scratch") since the first of the year.

This one is for my cousin Jeff's new baby boy. I pieced the top while in Saskatoon over the holidays so it was ready to get loaded on the long arm as soon as I got back.

These next two quilts were also ones where the tops were previously pieced. Liz and I pieced two aqua quilts (inspired by a cover photo from Fons and Porters a couple of years ago). I had previously quilted her quilt so the storm provided the opportunity for my quilt to get done.

I pieced three quilts like this one a year and a half ago. They were for Liz and Crystal to recognize the fun times at the lake and for me. I got the quilts for Liz and Crystal quilted before my renovations, and so the storm was that opportunity for my quilt to get done.

After getting three tops quilted (and binding all completed) I decided it was time to make a baby quilt for Courtney and Chris who live in Vancouver. The saying that "you might need your stash for a stormy day" was really true this time. it was no problem that I could not get out of my cul de sac. I had all the fabrics I needed to complete this wonderful quilt. It was fun to discover fabrics in my stash. The fabric with colorful snakes on the black background was fabric I had used to make a shorts outfit for Courtney's brother, Devon, many years ago. The light fabric on the inner border was fabric I used to make an outfit (If I recall correctly it was a skirt and vest) for Courtney and her sister at that same time. 

Mixed in amongst the colorful snakes are 9-patch blocks with purple blocks coordinating with other fun  kids prints - so the baby and his parents can play "I spy" with the quilt.

The 5th quilt was another top that I had previously pieced. This one was made with our quilt guild as a charity quilt in a program called the 1600 race. it is made with 2 1/2 in strips that are pieced together lengthwise (a whole jelly roll can be used and that makes 1600 inches). In my case I used up end pieces from my fabric stash - which certainly created a "mixed" effect. I also used up flannel pieces for the back of it - so it is nice and cozy.