Temple of the Dragon

My first quilt featuring all Asian fabrics.

This one now resides on our younger son's bed.

Gorgeous.

April 2007 Journal Quilt - Mindful Moodling

I had surgery on my foot during April 2007,

so while I was restricted and off work,

I had time to sit and stitch

(between pain medicine induced naps).

I had already made a couple of Priority Quilts

for AAQI using my moodling technique,

so it became my technique-of-choice

for April's journal quilt.

Doing ~

simply for the sake of doing ~

no right or wrong,

just the pure joy of stitching.

The quote printed on the tag on the back reads:

"Our society demands constant activity,
constant achievement,
and tireless motion.
Anything done for fun,
anything which serves no logical purpose,
is suspect."

Moodling,
which I learned from Brenda Uleland's book
"If You Want To Write,"
is "a precious gift we have sacrified
in the name of accomplishment."

"Children know how to moodle,
they are natural virtuosos at it.
You never see a child look up
from his blocks to say,
'Man, I really should work on my taxes soon.'"

"You never see a young child stop to question
the motivation of a game or joke."

"Children,
precious moodlers that they are,
have enormous powers of concentration.
All of us were once moodlers,
whether we admit it or not.
But the art of moodling is drummed out of us
pretty quickly.
We put away our imaginary friends.
We close the coloring book.
We become  . . . grownups.
We lose the opportunity to see
a castle in a pile of backyard twigs."

Elsie's Pinwheels

This crib size pinwheel quilt was pieced by my grandmother.

I remember covering my baby sister with it

(although it was a yarn-tied comforter then).

Like the other rescue quilts of my grandmother's,

I gently removed the yarn ties,

the poly fiberfill batting,

and the stained muslin backing.

I added new inner and outer borders

and handed it off to Chris for quilting.

What a sweet, wonderful little quilt!

Fozzie's Feet

Created using the Barrister's Block pattern

(closely related to the Bear Paw block)

found on the Quilter's Cache website,

this quilt was originally conceived to hang

on the wall behind my desk at work.

Barrister's Block seemed appropriate

for a law office ~

although the colors are not

the least bit subdued.

Leftover pieces were used to create

the colorful piano key border

and the half-square triange corner blocks

were strategically placed.

This was the first quilt I'd hung at my current law firm
and it was a great hit.

I later entered it in the Mid-South Fair
and the Fayette County Cotton Carnival.
It was a ribbon-winner at both events.

It was also one of the Chris-quilted quilts displayed
in the Nolting booth during the 2007 AQS Nashville Expo.

After retiring from public view,
Fozzie's Feet has served us well
as a cheerful topper for our kitchen table.

Elsie's Broken Dishes

My grandmother,

Elsie Race Walton,

pieced this quilt top.

Along the way,

my mother turned the flimsy into a comforter

stuffed with polyester fiberfill batting

and tied with acrylic yarn.

After the quilt moved to my house,

I gently removed all those yarn ties,

unstitched the binding

and discarded the aging batting and muslin back.

The flimsy was gently laundered

before I added a narrow inner border

and a wider floral outer border.

The project was then handed off to Chris ~

but we later decided

it was more than she wanted to deal with.

In the end, Elsie's Broken Dishes was quilted

by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.

She graciously coped with the

extra border fullness

and slightly askew flimsy

to create what I call one of my rescue quilts.

Baptist Fans were the one and only choice for quiliting.

Who knew growing up that my staid and proper

English grandmother

had such a scrappy-colorful inner self.

What a treasure.

March 2007 Journal Quilt

Bits and Pieces of My Past

My journal quilt for March 2007 was created as my class project

for a Joggles online course taught by Sharon Boggon.

Instead of creating a crazy pieced block

(as the syllabus described),

I used one of the journal quilt panels for my background.

The vertical row of buttons came from a sweater

worn by my dad when he was a little boy;

there are random items from the botton boxes of

my husband's grandmother and my mother

[did you know that November 16 is National Button Day?];

plus silk ribbons,

a strip of hand made insertion lace given to me by

one of my host families during a college orchestra

1974 summer tour of Finland;

daisy-shaped lace flowers from a

junior bridesmaid dress worn when I was 13;

plus more well worn buttons, beads, and threads.

I did not include this quotation when I made the quilt,

but added it later to the back:

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile

the moment a single man contemplates it,

bearing within him the image of a cathedral."

(Antoine De Saint-Exupery)

Christmas Quilt

When I attended my very first AQS show in Nashville during August 2006,

I took two classes.

These fabrics were purchased for Scott Murkin's curved piecing session

(we were to bring 9" squares of lights and darks).

I managed two or three blocks during the class,

brought everything back home

only to have the precut squares sit on the shelf.

Sometime in early 2007,

I abandoned the curved piecing effort

and went with half-square triangles.

Layouts were auditioned and a flimsy was born!

Chris added free motion feather work in the light color bands

(some of her first)

and My Christmas Quilt became a reality.

The quilt is visible on the quilt rack year round

but takes is place of honor on the back of the couch

each December.

February 2007 Journal Quilt - Elsie's Butterflies

Hand crocheted butterflies from handkerchiefs made by my grandmother

were gently hand stitched to a remnant of my mother's quilt flimsy.

I added beads to the wings of the butterflies,

then machine quilted the piece.

The quotes were written on fabric

with a Sharpie marker

then fused to the back where another

of Elsie's butterflies 

had been stitched.

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly

but rarely admit the changes it has gone through

to achieve that beauty."

(Maya Angelou)

~ ~ ~

"If there was no change

there would be no butterflies"

(Author unknown)

In the Workshop

For DH's 2007 birthday, I searched online and found as many different

workshop/tool themed fabrics as I could.

These were turned into an oversize lap quilt

(he unwrapped the fabrics - the quilt itself came later).

Created using the Yellow Brick Road pattern.

I couldn't resist the 

measuring tape fabric

for binding.

Quilted by Chris Ballard.

(Look closely at the top photo ~

she custom quilted a saw blade in each corner block!)

He liked it enough to take to one of his woodturning guild meetings!

Pumpkin Harvest

Chris started this Thimbleberries project long ago (before I knew her), then put it aside for a variety of reasons.  When she pulled it out again, she pumped up some of the oranges and greens ~ but still didn't want to finish piecing the top.

SO ~ we agreed to a collaborative swap (my piecing her top for her quilting one of my quilts).

This was the one and only Thimbleberries pattern I've ever used. 

Chris used this as her blog's profile photo for quite a while.  Iris (her Nolting long arm) had only lived at her house for a few months when the quilting of Pumpkin Harvest was happening.

Her quilting was intricate, intense, and amazing.  She earned a blue ribbon and a grand prize ribbon when the quilt was entered in the 2007 Mid-South Fair. 

Anniversary Flowers

This small wallhanging was created for family friends using

a Pat Sloan pattern that appeared in a magazine. 

Why a wallhanging of flowers? 

A year or two earlier, I had stopped to pick up fresh flowers for them

but fell leaving the florist and ended up with a broken ankle. 

It was delivery or fabric flowers from then on!

My machine quilting skills were still very basic (looking back,

I really should have used some spray baste to help reduce the puffiness).

The good news is that the couple LOVED the piece

and have it hanging in their living room.

My One and Only T-shirt Quilt

One of the "long time on the to-do list" projects was creating a t-shirt quilt for our younger son.  I had an eclectic group of Boy Scout shirts, neckerchiefs, and patches plus church youth group trip shirts, his high school graduation stole, and items from the 1997 BSA Jamboree to work with. 

The first project was determining what kind of interfacing was needed to stabilize all the various fabrics (tricot fusible from JoAnn's online).

At this point, I was not yet a truly liberated quilter, only a scrappy quilter.  It took a little doing, but finally, I had a layout that worked.

Borders were added and his four Philmont patches (he attended once as a member of our troop's crew, once on a Venture work-crew, and twice on summer staff) to the four corner blocks.  It had become a flimsy!

Chris quilted it with her wonderful meandering

She used echo quilting in the corner blocks to highlight the patches.

The quilt now hangs above the head of his bed.

My Week in the Mountains (January '07 at JCCFS)

Kaleidoscope Quilts with Instructor Karen Tunnell (front row, right)

John C. Campbell Folk School

(this was the second time for me in her class)

My Week in the Mountains at student display (left).  I found the inner border fabric at the local Murphy quilt shop (field trip required - I had nothing with me that would work).

Detail of one kaleidoscope - after free motion quilting by Chris Ballard.

Finished quilt.

2007 Journal Quilt Project and January's Grace Under Fire

From my journal notes:  "This will be a grand and brave adventure ~ the goal is to make one quilt a month with the background for each being a small section of this tattered quilt top (shown before being dis-assembled) that was on my mother's bed at her house, in assisted living and, later, at the nursing home until it became just too fragile for use.  Originally pieced by my paternal grandmother, Elsie Lucretia Race Walton (1894-1976), her flimsy was never made into a quilt.  Instead, after her death, my mother added polyester fiberfill batting and a muslin back to create a yarn-tied comforter."

After being deemed "too fragile for use" my sister sent the comforter to me to see if I could "fix it."  Sadly, it was too far gone (as in threadbare). After gently removing the yarn ties, the backing, and a gentle laundering, I made my sister a table runner from one section of the flimsy and have cut fourteen 9" x 12" sections for this 2007 monthly journal quilt project.

Grace Under Fire 

The focal point for this first journal quilt is a circle of black wool embellished during my November 2005 fiber arts class at John C. Campbell Folk School (taught by Nancy Claiborne).  The wool was edged with hand-crocheted lace made by my other grandmother (Mabel Anna Howell Ash, 1894-1953) and features a bit of painted-in-class pillowcase edging (also crocheted by Mabel) along with a lot of individual beads.  This was my first use of alphabet beads (inspired by Nancy's work).

Now, two years later, the medallion has a home.  I used metallic thread to quilt the background, then appliqued the wool piece in place.  

Juxtaposition

Wikipedia's definition: 
"An act or instance of placing two things close together or side by side."

The black and whites took on a life of their own once the narrow green piping was added.  And the binding was perfect!

Haiku written for the hand-beaded gift enclosure card:

Mosaic of life ~

Beneath the survace hope waits.

Springtime, joy bursts forth.

New Crayons

"Everyone is born creative:  everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.  Then, when you hit puberty, they take your crayons away and replace them with books on algebra, etc.  Being suddenly hit, years later, with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, "I'd like my crayons back, please." 

(Hugh Macleod)

Near the end of 2006/beginning of 2007, I was still a bit hesitant with my machine quilting, so using the glittery holographic threads were a real stretch for me.  I love their sparkle and the thrill of excitement each time the light catches the lines "just so."

Rachel Roggel, aka "The Button Lady," inspired my use of buttons on this quilt.  (www. roggel.com)  And I learned to use Hot Fix crystals, too.

I chose only flat, sew-thru buttons so I could use multiple colors of embroidery floss and leave the fuzzy, irregular ends showing.  I wanted the texture of the frayed ends as a counterpart to the regular, solid shapes of the buttons.

There is a subtle rhythm to the colors and their placement, but they also appear deliberately random.  As Jimmy Buffet sings it, "I don't want that much organization in my life . . . I want my Junior Mints!"

I've inhaled so many books and articles on embellished quilts ~ it was finally time to make my very own ART quilt.

-----

"Most of a woman's depressions, ennui, and wandering confusions are caused

by a severely restricted soul-life in which innovation, impulse,

and creation are restricted." 

(Christina Pinkola Estes)