Dora Quilts: Quilt Stories

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Quilt Stories

This is my friend's cabin near the Cumberland Gap at the crossroads of Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky where I busily dreamed, cut, pieced, and quilted for up to 16 hours per day some days. Alex did target practice with a rifle, got her first fishing license and went fishing, picked and strung beans, went to Bible school at a nearby Baptist church, played with a toddler, rode the neighbor's Mule, and had so much fun she wants to go back. It's one step from Heaven.

Over the next several posts, I'll talk about the quilts I worked on.

Here's a sample--more details later.

I cut, sewed, and applied the binding for Tuscany, so it is now ready to be sent to one of my dear friends. Except for the off-white backgroud of birds, all the Tuscany fabrics are from Moda's Charisma line.

These colors will work beautifully in my friend's living room, although I think she's expecting a quilt that contains robin's egg blue, brown, and cafe au lait.

At last (meaning after probably nine or ten years) I layered and began quilting this Blue and Yellow Hexagon Strip quilt. The fabrics for the triangles were cut from layers of a blue and yellow fabric. I was working on this quilt before Bethany Reynolds published her Stack 'n' Whack quilt books and patterns. (Just shows that sometimes more than one person picks up on some of the wonderful ideas out there floating around in the universe.) The hexagons are surrounded by my own hand-dyed fabrics. This quilt is still only partially quilted because I waited too long to order some blue thread from Tracy at Sew Thankful. (She gives great service; however, the thread was out of stock. She had to back order it, which she did even though she's no longer going to carry that brand of thread, and the thread was waiting for me when I arrived home.)

My friend's cabin is so cute that it should really be featured in Cottages & Cabins magazine.

Then I layered and began quilting this lap size quilt, which I call Mrs. Lebo's kitchen because the Cherry Jubilee fabrics in the four patches remind me of my first grade teacher's kitchen. It was going to be a Victory quilt, but Alexandra loves it and admitted that she really wants it. (There is a second similar quilt that I didn't get layered that will be a Victory Quilt.)

This is a quilt I had no idea I would make. That is, I took the Tom Sawyer fabric and a [very] few coordinates knowing I would piece some stars and make a small quilt. While in Cleveland, TN, we had a very brief visit with a man I've known since we were in first and second grade. While showing me his new home, we saw the now too-worn quilts his mama had made. She died in the 1950's, and I just know that if she were alive, she'd make him another quilt. Since she can't, I did. This is totally unlike any other quilt I have ever made! I've never before understood why people like Civil War reproduction fabrics. Now I do! However, that's because they were just perfect with this Windham Fabric Mark Twain-inspired toile-like fabric. The quilt does include the fabrics I had taken with me that were not reproduction fabrics. I picked up the reproduction fabrics [by Fay Burgos for Marcus Fabrics] at a delightful fabric shop in Tazewell, TN.--The Mark Twin/Tom Sawyer fabric was purchased last summer in Hannibal, MO at a quilt shop across the street from Mark Twain's childhood home.

This is the second quilt I had no idea I would make. These fabrics are from Robin Pandolph's Chateau Rococco line for Free Spirit Fabrics. I took several of them with me, thinking I would make a small quilt. I had so much fun with the feather on the borders of Mrs. Lebo's Kitchen that I knew I had to do a quilt with a red border quilted with gold feathers.

I picked up additional yardage at the shop in Tazewell and pieced the top, got the borders added, and layered and basted it. However, then it was time to leave so that I could see my niece who lives in Oregon and who had returned to Cleveland, TN for her good friend's wedding. I figured the quilt was going to come back to New Mexico to be finished and then be mailed back to Tennessee. My daughter and Miss Bobbie convinced me we should extend our visit so that they could go see the new Harry Potter movie together the day it premiered. They saw the movie, and I completed the quilt in time for us to go outside and take pictures.

By the way, to see any of these photos in a larger format, meaning you'll see more details, you can place your cursor over a picture, right click, and open it in a new tab or a new window.

We began the long drive back to New Mexico early Thursday morning. We had a lovely first day's drive in mostly drizzle from East Tennessee into Oklahoma, where the sun came out. The sun shone brightly the rest of our return trip except for a few drops of rain between Tucumcari and Cline's Corners. But any way you look at it, a trip of 1400+ miles is lllooooonnnnnnng!Obviously, the summer monsoons fizzled early here. NM is very brown except where there is irrigation. We spent Saturday tackling weeds and yard work; I gave in and got out the Round-Up; we had a few more drops of rain last night, probably just enough to wash off the Round-Up; we'll see.