A New Drunkard's Path Variation

These black and white drunkard's path pieces showed up anonymously in our Victory Prayer Quilts cabinet.

 Ruth pieced together a bunch, but she didn't really enjoy it.  Her story is, "I had enough of that!  So I slapped those green circles on and machine appliqued them."....Or something to that effect.

When I quilted this, I treated it pretty much as a sample of quilting design possibilities.

 Her quilt reminds me of the promise of rain on a cloudy day. Indeed, we have been assured it will rain today.  We'll see.

 My little town did get quite a few promises of rain during June and a few deliveries.
Our June total was .64 inches officially--which is a lot more than we get in June in many years.

Of course, if we walk across our yard, we usually return with a few (or more) stickers in our shoes.

 However, this surprisingly (to me, at least) refreshing quilt was quilted indoors to sounds of silence, the soft whirrrrrrr of fans, or strains of classical music--or fans and music at the same time
.


Gracing its back side is some John Deere fabric that also mysteriously appeared in our cabinet at church.  I pieced and quilted so many John Deere quilts five or six years ago that I'm not enthusiastic about making more.  You can see my nephew's John Deere quilt here. However, this fabric was perfect for the back of this quilt.  Does this quilt remind you of irrigation circles?

Sooooo, it's very unlike Missy's Quilt, but still a drunkard's path.  (There were still many black and white DP fabrics ready to be pieced, so I did bring a few home to piece another quilt.) Come to think of it, this is another three-person quilt.  I think I've been blessed with a few of those lately.

Happy quiltmaking, and I hope you are getting a bit of knitting time as well,......

A Victory Prayer Quilt Goes Modern

A few months ago Dawn H. sent a prayer quilt to her brother.  She decided she needed to join us in making prayer quilts.  I should have taken a "before" picture of Dawn's quilt top, but I failed to do so.
This is quilt is so special and so different from the ones I usually quilt.

She began with this fabric that brings  forth memories of the forests of West Virginia where Dawn grew up.  The fabric is amazing and spoke to me because of the years and summers I spent in the Appalachians.  She cut that fabric into rectangles and surrounded it with wide black sashing and charcoal cornerstones.

I knew it needed some silver feathers, but after I got them in there, I had to go rest and ruminate.
I surprised myself by deciding it needed vines from the forest in the borders and the rest of the sashing.

I've realized that just like my fabric stash, my thread stash could use some more greens.

 I used three greens, none of which are accurately portrayed by my photos taken on this overcast day.
On the left is a lovely golden green.

 Continuing up the left side and across the top, as well as a couple of the center sashings, is a nice medium green that looks more ashy in the photos.

 And on the right is a deeper, intense green.

 There was an additional little challenge in the lower right corner when I needed to tie the fresh golden green and the deep green together.  I hope this works.

 I would never have guessed when I first saw this quilt that it would end up with leaves and vines.

This would have been a good candidate for a black batting, but I didn't even think of that.

It was an interesting challenge to create a quilt that was so different from my usual and that ended up surprising me even as it was being quilted.

While she maintains some close ties to West Virginia, after Dawn grew up she lived several places around the country before settling into teaching jobs in California.  Her daughter married the son of some good friends from my church, and Dawn moved to Albuquerque for her retirement years.  She also serves as keyboardist for our contemporary service.

I'm more than a little in awe of her quilt, which is so different from anything I would have created in my mind.  I know it will be a blessing to the person who receives it.

Happy quiltmaking...and knitting,

Collection Complete?....Perhaps not...

 Several years ago, we began collecting polka dots and stripes for a quilt for Sweet Teen.
I'm not sure we're done collecting yet; it's certainly possible a few more could be added.

Along the way we did expand the collection to include a plaid and some checks.  And we had to include the fat quarters that didn't make it into her music quilt. In fact, I think she started collecting these before the music quilt was finished.

Update:  Within hours of this post, we'd added three more fabrics.  At this rate, piecing a backing from leftovers should be very do-able.

With her going off to the university in a few weeks, I need to get going on this.  Since she's running off to one of New Mexico's lakes with her boyfriend's family later today, I hope to get some cutting and piecing accomplished.

Weather report:  Over the course of three days we received 2/10 of an inch of rain.  Very, very welcome--and most of us are hoping for more.  One of my [now somewhat envied] friends said it rained for over an hour at her house (about ten miles from mine).
Normally we have hours of fireworks in our town; we have a couple of fireworks factories.  This year the city has said they will strictly enforce fireworks bans.  We'll see.  I may still need to fall asleep with ear plugs this evening.


Happy quiltmaking,...

Aaah! Quiltmaking Again...

I'm back to quiltmaking again.
With school finished, I'm hoping to get a great deal of quilt work done.

A new project involves this stack of lime, chocolate, and aqua and a baby quilt for Katie's baby Paisley, who will arrive at the end of July.  Katie is one of the teachers I work with.

I photographed the quilt fabric on some silvery gray paper because I think I need to add some silvery gray fabric as this quilt's neutral.  I also need to find a lime to yellow green batik with paisleys--and I'd be happy with a silvery gray paisley print.  So, if any of my dear readers have knowledge of such fabrics, please let me know.  I love the batik at the bottom of this stack (as does Katie), but I have only a couple of 10 inch squares of it.

I also finished the quilting on three prayer quilts--although these pictures are "before" shots.

The last two have gone out to another member of our Victory Prayer Quilt group who is very, very speedy when it comes to sewing down binding.

We were down to just 11 quilts this past Sunday and need to get a bunch made and/or finished for our next quilt dedication on June 16.

I do want to add a non-quilt comment.  That is that in all my decades of teaching, although it was busy, this was the easiest end-of-school year I've experienced.  I do like the charter school where I'm teaching!

My quilting plans are to piece and quilt today and to attend the Fiber-Arts Festival in Albuquerque tomorrow--and then to quilt some more as I watch the tree in my front yard begin to leaf out.  Late spring here--due in no small part to our severe drought.  While many of our prayers are for rain, we're also praying that we will not have to deal with wildfires and smoke and the devastation that accompanies them.

Happy quiltmaking....

Mary's Missing Quilt!!

Mary would love to have this back!

Mary's quilt has gone missing.  She posted about it here. Lots of lovely piecing--and a hope that she could give it to a grandchild in the future.

When I lived in Tennessee, one of my small Ted E Baer quilts went missing at a quilt show, and a few months later, someone delivered it to a local fabric store, and they gave it back to me.  It would be wonderful if Mary could get her quilt back--especially since hers is much nicer than mine was!

For those of you who are sewing,
Happy quiltmaking.....

Improvisation, Book Cover & NM Skies

 This is the backing for the Little Miss Gardener Quilt.

 To get the size this quilt needs, the backing either needed to be wide or have a pieced section. This is a great place to try a bit of improvisational piecing--fun, but not overwhelmingly challenging.

Top pieced strip: left over from the borders.
Center pieced strip: Left over 6.5 inch squares; a 6.5 inch block pieced from three 6.5 X 2.5 leftovers, and 6.5 inches of left over border.

 Third pieced strip: two leftover 2.5 inch strips--pink strip attached at each end.

 For those whose favorite part of quiltmaking is the quilting, this back would make a great quilt on it's own.  (And if I had a lot of leftover pieces, that's just what I'd do.  Unfortunately, almost all the leftovers were used to piece this back.)

Here's another book cover made by Sweet Teen.  She did make one more attempt to use the Hollister bag with the naked male torso, and I once again vetoed that idea.  Of course, she asked, "Why not?"  I replied, "Because women are infuriated when males objectify them, so you're not going to do it to some faceless guy."

Her boyfriend was standing here, grinned, and said, "Good answer!"

Her answer was, "Yes, ma'am."

I do hope that's the end of the saga of the Hollister bags.

 We are having an incredibly beautiful day here in the Estancia Basin.  Gorgeous clouds are piling higher and higher.  Although promising rain, more likely than not, they won't deliver--at least, not at my house.

 Beautiful skies and mild breezes just sing of the beauty of life.

And here's one of my neighbor's morning glories, twining through the fence and up a tree branch.

 Gorgeous colors, very different from the ones growing in my pot.  I did notice when I was outside that the sunflowers in my yard are eager to bloom.  If we don't get some rain, I'll water them this evening.
 
If your weather is not so glorious, you might want to nurture yourself with the creations of some fellow-bloggers.  I'm linking to Connie Kresin's Freemotion by the River, Esther Liu's WIPs on Wednesdays, and Freshly Pieced.

Oh, and my local pharmacy has 2012 influenza vaccinations available.  Got mine yesterday.  Please remember to get yours.

Have a glorious, joy-filled day, and..

Happy quiltmaking.....

Works in Progress

Of course, these are not all my works in progress, just what I've been able to devote some time to this week.
Here's more quilting on Brent's quilt:

...although you will be able to see the golden feathers better if you open the photos in gallery or in a new window.
Here's the thing:  I love coffee, tea, chocolate, caramel, butterscotch--all the lovely colors in this quilt.  Still, I find I can't quilt on it for very long without starting to get depressed, despite absolutely loving to quilt feathers.  Back in the 60's when my parents separated, my mom had to get dishes, and we bought some gorgeous pottery ones in brown, with flowing lighter colors at the ages.  A few months later we realized we were depressed at the end of a meal after eating off those dishes and managed to go out and buy lighter colored ones.  So, I don't know if it's the colors or the memory of those dishes that give me the blues.  I do find it interesting that some people absolutely love colors that I find very depressing.

Because of plummeting emotions, I decided it is wise to work on something I find very cheerful, and what could be more cheerful than rainbow colors...even if it's only the first three colors of the rainbow.

I realize it doesn't look very quilted, but since deciding only this morning that I needed something more cheerful to quilt so far all I've managed is the stabilizing.  

And since I soon have to head into Albuquerque for one of my therapies, I won't get any more done until much later this afternoon, depending on how much energy I have left after the trip to town and my experiences there.  I do have to save enough energy to head to choir practice this evening.  I'm wondering if I'll ever get back to the point where I don't have to carefully budget energy expenditures--I certainly hope so!

Yes, I'm quilting both these quilts on my Necchi treadle--although for ease of transition between quilts, I'm thinking maybe I'll thread one machine for Brent's quilt and thread the one in the sewing room for the rainbow truncated quilt.  (Guess I should come up with a name for the quilt while I'm at it!)

I'm linking to some sites that have some really outstanding quilts posted this week:
Esther's WOW: WIPs on Wednesdays
Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday
Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday
and Connie Kresin's Quilting by the River  (Be sure to check out Connie's posts about Missouri Star Quilt's grand opening in their new property as well as Connie's visit to Hickory Stick Quilts in Hannibal [yes, I've been there and loved that shop].)

Happy quiltmaking......

Quilt Think

I'm thinking about how to quilt these:

The first is a modern setting of some 1930's fabrics.  Top pieced by Judy. 

The second is one I started from my hand dyes a few weeks ago.  I now have the asymmetrical borders attached and need to decide where and how to quilt this.

Of course I'm still working on Brent's quilt and spending much of my day travelling for therapies.  If I'm lucky, I'll get an hour or so to quilt this afternoon.

I'm linking to:

 and

and since I'm late linking up, I've already seen some great quilts that others have posted.  I hope you get to visit some of those blogs and leave comments too.

And a heads up that this Friday is the Friday Night Sew-In for July.  (Link in my right sidebar--you can sign up now and then revise your blog link after you post about your Friday Night accomplishments--sewing, but does not have to be quiltmaking.)

Happy Quiltmaking.......

Quilted: Mod Circles

Over the weekend I quilted another of Judy's quilts for our Victory Quilts prayer quilts.
She pieced strips of fabrics together and cut them into three sizes of circles on her Accuquilt and then appliqued them to large half square triangles.

 I quilted each block differently...

 but this time I had enough sense to use the same quilting thread throughout the quilt,

 and didn't have to change threads constantly as I did on the Robin's Song quilt.

 I did spend some time quilting colliding feathers on Brent's quilt, but I needed a quicker project,

 and this met that need.

 I would never have come up with this design and pieced this myself; I like stretching my creativity to do things a little differently, and this quilt provided that opportunity too.

 We've heard from a couple of members of our congregation that they really like scrap quilts because they remind them of family quilts from when they were young.

 I used a medium green Fil-Tec Glide thread for this quilt.

 I love how threads seem to shift colors, depending upon the fabric they are on.

 I also love how productive Judy is with her piecing.

 When I checked the quilt cabinet yesterday morning at church, almost every quilt there had been made by her or Ruth.

 Judy came to quiltmaking from painting, and is truly an artist.

 This was treadle-quilted on my Necchi BU from the late 40's in a 1919 Singer treadle cabinet.

That reminds me, beginning July 16, 2012, Fil-Tec will be introducing a new Glide color every day for two weeks.  You can check them out on their FaceBook page.

I'm going to share this post at some linky parties, where you can find other quiltmakers sharing their progress.
 Every Monday, Judy Laquidara has a design wall party.  (Yes, I know.  This one is beyond the design wall stage.)
Also, Connie has posted her Quilting By the River Linky Party a day early due to so many activities  going on this week.

Happy quiltmaking....