Two posts in one night!

You know how you have lots of things to tell people when you haven't seen them for a while? That's how I feel tonight! Since the next two pictures really don't fit in with anything else that I've posted for a while, I thought I would separate them out.


This picture is Clyde, my twenty pound helper cat. He is the brother to the little princess Bonnie that I posted earlier who was sleeping on the stack of quilts. Here, he is stretched out against the wall. He's sleeping on the part of a 110" quilt top that is too long to be on the design wall. It was stitch group this past Thursday night, and we had some show and tell. And afterward, we left the quilt top pinned to the wall and visited for a while. Next thing we knew, there was the anchor to the quilt!

The next picture is another one of my shard pieces. Ever have problems with your gazing balls breaking in the hail storms or rolling away in high wind? I do, here in Kansas where we get high winds each spring. One year, I watched as over 10 of my beautiful glass gazing balls broke in a ferocious hail storm in the middle of the day. They *were* beautiful, though, exploding pieces of glass shining in the sun, sparkling with the crazy rain, and blowing around in the wind. So, I got to thinking about all those bowling balls I see at garage sales that are really really cheap! And sometimes they're even free!


Now, my friends give me bowling balls, and depending on my mood, they might be elegant like this one, or funky with buttons or whatever.......Of course, not all the friends who have given me bowling balls have gotten them back. Some of them just get to stay on in my yard!

Thread catchers

Well, you all asked to see the thread catchers we made at my little impromtu craft group the other night. So here they are!

The first one is the pattern that we followed from a purchased bag. The second one that is pinned to my design wall is the one that I made. I used my mother's oxygen tubing for the stability around the top circle of the bag. They turned out to be pretty easy after all.

I also found crushed walnut shells that were pretty inexpensive at PetSmart for the filling on the pincushions. The three gals who made these had a good time, and still don't want to be quilters. They assure me that their innoculations are still good against the quilt pox, but you never know when the virus might hit.

Loves of my life

These are my first two grand-daughters who live about 10 minutes away. Julia Grace(on the left) is only 10 years old, but is about 5' tall already. Audrey Anne(on the right) is 8 this year and is as different from Julia as night and day!

Recently, I cleaned out boxes in my Mom's attic in order to have an estate sale there. I found these two old prom dresses that she had saved from my high school days almost 40 years ago! The blue one was my first date - to a Boy Scout Explorer's Ball! The green one is from a Snowball Prom in the winter. Too bad I don't have any pictures of me in them, eh?

I cleaned them up, and put them in their room here at my house, and this is minutes after they found them. The tiara was also from the Snowball too. Lots of memories here, and so strange seeing my grand girls wearing my dresses from so long ago!

Julia likes to sew on my machines, and has a grand idea of making her own quilt. In two years, she has exactly 4 split rail fence blocks done. She just gets to chattering so much, she forgets what else she's doing. Audry, on the other hand, wants to know how the machine works, and could care less about the fabric stuff.


And the most recent addition to my loves of my life is our little Stephen William. Mr. Blue Eyes will be one year old the day before Halloween this year. So far, he likes to play in the fabric squares and sleep on his puppy dog kisses quilt. Since my computer crashed a couple of months ago, I need to search out which CD the pictures of his quilt reside. Maybe that's this afternoon after I go to lunch with the neighborhood Bunco group!

Nothing goes as planned

No picture today, and nothing new to share. Just an inordinate amount of paperwork to do, housecleaning to catch up on, and phone calls to make. I originally thought I would quilt yesterday, but instead of that, I cleaned my sewing room so I could start with a fresh slate. Tonight I have a couple of friends, newly made, coming over to make thread catcher bags. Neither of them quilt, but they do sew. They both fell in love with my thread catcher bags that I have sitting all over the place - one on my ironing board, one by my sewing machine, and one by the design wall. I've made kits of what they need, already cut and labeled, so it should be an easy job!

Old work new again

I've been digging through my bins, promising myself to finish old projects before starting new. Now, they are overwhelming me! LOL!

This particular piece is a fun one I started with two other gals about 5 years ago. I put it aside because I couldn't handquilt it (lyphedema in my right arm), and I just wasn't that good with machine quilting. As the years have gone by, it got buried further and further down in the box. Today, it appeared!

It is a triptych piece, made by cutting a greeting card into three pieces. I gave two of the pieces to quilting friends, and they never saw the whole. The rules were that you had to stick to the colors shown, and we enlarged the card (after we drew the main elements we wanted) to total 9" X 28" - I think that was 400%, but it's been so long, I can't remember. I also can't find the original card - yet.

At any rate, it is now out of the bin, and sitting on my design wall for me to finish the quilting on Monday. That is my goal, anyway. Let's see what happens!

A few more quilts

I know we are all wondering what we can do for the Katrina evacuees. I keep thinking I should just empty my quilt cupboards and send them on their way, but for me the joy of giving is seeing the person's response when they receive the gift. That's probably selfish on my part, and not truly an unconditional "gift", but that's how I work, I guess. I just found out that our local Children's Mercy Hospital has taken in about 75-100 children, and our local Linus Project is asking for quilts. I finished up 2 single fleece throws that are simply tied on the ends, and then this little star quilt that's about 45" square. I am going to drop them off at the hospital tomorrow.

Once upn a time I had a sister-in-law who was very sweet. I've kept in touch with her off and on, and the last time we were at Mayo Clinic with my husband (in June), we saw here there. She is quite young, and has been diagnosed with colon cancer. She's been taking chemotherapy and radiation treatments. This month, she is going to have radical surgery, so I decided she needed a comfort blanket. This is one of Terry Atkinson's patterns (again!) called TicTacMo. I've made it with butterflies as the predominant fabric, and then used her favorite colors in the blocks. She lives in Minnesota, so I know she will enjoy cuddling up with this quilt this fall and winter.

And last, I've started a pile of quilts that I need to sew bindings down. There's a king size Dresden Plate made from leftover blades from one of my friend's birthday quilts, the king size Minnesota Chainsaw, my watermelon quilt (which needs quilting), and a couple of vintage quilts that I had quilted for a neighbor. When I turned around from taking the picture of TicTacMo, my little Princess Bonnie had claimed the pile. Guess this a new meaning for the Princess and the Pea!

Watermelons in August

During the last week of August, my friend, Ibby and I ran away to Iowa for a little mini-retreat with our Iowa friend, Carolyn. For the last year, Ibby had been collecting "watermelon" fabric. Everywhere we went, and everywhere we've shopped, she's said again and again, "Oh! That's perfect for my watermelon quilt!" Last spring, Carolyn and I were joking with her that she had enough watermelon fabric to make us all a watermelon quilt. Do you see where this is going?

Neither Carolyn nor I had ever seen the watermelon quilt pattern, but Ibby agreed to cut it and "kit" it all up for us to sew. Sooooo, when we arrived, we set up our machines and stitched that first night. The next morning we had an outing to Winterset to Fons and Porter's quilt shop, and each of us chose different sashing and border fabrics. That afternoon and evening, we sewed and finished up all the watermelon blocks. Then for about 3 hours in the wee hours of the morning, we just couldn't decide on sashing - first it was green, then it was orange, then it was orange stripes etc. The next morning, our brains finally got straight, and we proceeded on with our own style of finishing it. You can see how different border treatments change the quilt slightly, but overall - they are definitely still watermelon quilts!

I have such good friends, and this winter, when I am snuggled under this quilt, reading or sewing, I will remember our fun little retreat!

*MY* Birthday quilt

I finally found the picture of *my* birthday quilt from 2005. Remember, that my group draws for the month their birthday will be celebrated, and this year, mine was in Feb. We finished up the top on quilting day, and I got it back from the quilter when I was in Rochester MN with my husband (he was receiving a kidney transplant) this past June. The picture is when it was on the bed in Rochester - without the binding sewn down! We wanted a piece of home so badly, we slept under it as it was. I still haven't finished the binding on it, but I haven't succumbed to putting it on the bed on home yet, either.

The pattern is a Terry Atkinson pattern - I think it's called Texas Hold'em. It seems that I've done more of her patterns than anything else. They always work up so nicely, and they look much more complex than they really are. All the star points on these stars are done with the squared corner technique on a rectangle or a square - as a sashing - no more lost points!

I have a tendency to mess around with words or phrases - for some reason I can't keep them straight in my head. This makes reading billboards on trips a hoot, too. In this example, I couldn't ever remember that the pattern name was Texas Hold'em, but I kept calling it Texas Chainsaw. Since we were going through some bad times with my husband's illnesses, it finally got named Minnesota Chainsaw. Can you see the morphology? My brain is warped, I guess:)

What's in the past

I've been working on my genealogy again since the weather has cooled and the days have been somewhat gloomy. I've been working on this line of the family for years, and I just couldn't make the connection that I suspicioned was there. Lo and behold, yesterday I found it. One of my ancestorial lines actually goes back to 1525!

Now, that got me thinking how I found the link. Several years ago I was doing quite a bit of business, both buying and selling, on Ebay. I searched on a weekly basis for anything associated with my maiden name (VanBuskirk). I found a family bible for sale, but the bid went way over anything I could afford. So I took a chance and contacted the winner of the bid. It turns out that there are some connections, but not that close. BUT! The best piece of information she shared was that she was in possession of a quilt that had been "signed" by numerous female members of both our families. This was before the ease of digital pictures, so I can only imagine it in my mind. I've since lost touch with this "cousin", but I am still searching for her.

Now, on to the present. I have a quilt display wall where I like to change out quilts often. This quilt is not THE quilt, but rather a quilt I found at an auction in the country. I just love it. I like looking at the inexact way it was pieced, and I wonder about the quilter from the past. I think it's extremely interesting how the colors all fade on one edge of it, and now it looks like an abstract piece of art. Were these pieces of clothing the family used? Where did this pattern originate?

This makes me always think on my own quilting. Will my quilt survive me with no history because I didn't put a label on it? Will someone cherish it or toss it out to cover a window air conditioner or use it as a moving pad? Will *my* fabrics bleed or fade over the years to make it be an abstract piece of art? And while it's not perfect, will someone still love it?

Food for thought.

Birthday quilt day

I stitch with an extraordinary group of women called the Amazing Quilt Babes. We've been together about 10 years now, and for the last four years, we've done something special for each other. Since more than one of our birthdays is in April, we have to draw a month in which to receive our "birthday gift from the others - a stitch day. This is where the birthday girl chooses the pattern, cuts all the fabric pieces and gives instructions (if needed) to piece a quilt top. We generally meet about 9AM on a Saturday morning (once every other month) and stitch until 3PM or 4PM, with a break for lunch. By the end of the day, we almost always have the top ready to piece together.

This is last Saturday's birthday stitch day for Carolyn (standing left in the picture). This quilt is made of all half square triangles. It is by Calico Carriage - the name of it is No Diamonds in the Sky. Carolyn thinks this is as close to a Lone Star her husband will ever have. It sure sewed up nice!

For more Calico Carriage patterns check the link.

"More is More" Philosophy

Here is another example of "more is more", Quiltgranny's philosophy of life. This is "Phenomenal Woman", based on the poetry of Maya Angelou. Her hair is stitched with loose threads, beads, and snippets of fabric and roving on Sulky Solvy. Her dress was beaded before applique, and it lies three dimensionally with it's folds finished with tulle netting. She dances across the piece, shattering plates (Dresden) and swinging her tambourine to her own music and rules. The background is heavily seed stitched and the bottom edge is beaded with swinging beads.

I had so much fun with this piece, I didn't want it to end.

To read the poem, Maya Angelou, click through the link.

Quiltgranny's Dilemma

I've been thinking about what picture to use as my profile photo. I started to use Quiltgranny's Hands, but somehow I thought that might be "cheating" since someone else did the work. (I still love them though!)

So after some consideration, I've chosen my 2003 Self Reflections portrait. I belong to Kansas Art Quilters and this was the first piece that we were asked to do. It was quite a learning experience for me, and a lot of fun too. I used some of Lucky Shie's techniques like the chicken stitching, shisha mirrors, and "holes", and some of Jane Burch Cochran's techniques like over embellishing the heck out of it. The background is some shibori dyed fabric that I made when I took a class with Jan Myers Newbury, but the fancy stuff is covered mostly by the stitching. My hair is made of silk shirts cut into strips, and stray threads and beads and fabric bits sewn onto Sulky Solvy. I always say more is more. LOL!

You can see more of Kansas Art Quilters work by checking out the link.

Quiltgranny Shard

Blue and yellow chair - sharded with blue china dishes and yellow cups.

So, I did this shard chair in one afternoon and grouted it the next. I decided to paint the chair after I did the shard work, which I truly don't recommend. It still worked and I love it on my front porch! A nice break from sewing, and cleaning the house.

Not quilting today?

I take care of my 84 year old mother's needs, and occasionally that means I drive her to her doctor's appointments. Today was one of those days. I love her dearly, but she is extremely trying. That's why I did something totally different today with a friend/neighbor. We did some shard art, teaching a couple of other gals how to do it. I started later than they did, but I managed to get a "garden" chair sharded with blue, yellow and white shards. Tomorrow is grout day - maybe I can get it finished up and decide whether it will be painted on the legs or not. Sort of like a quilt or more like a puzzle. Pictures when I finish!

Out of the box at last!

This is Jane Burch Cochran and me ('m on the right). She inspired me to really reach out and just do the things that I feel like doing. Want to paint AND quilt on artist's canvas? Go ahead. Want to use alphabet stamps on ribbons? Just do it! Like sparkly things, and whimsical moods? Find something silly to stitch on, paint on, stamp on, hang on.....you get the idea!

I'm finding more pictures to share of my stuff. Not all of it is artsy. A lot of it is traditional because I feel the need to just stitch - and I love to gift quilts. Some of it is whimsical, and some of it has hidden meanings. So more later!

More about Jane is found by clicking the link with this post.