It's that time again . . .

Blogger's Quilt Festival!  Yay!  And a big Thank You to Amy for putting together and hosting this fun on-line event again. 

Welcome to Indigo Threads, if this is your first visit here.  I hope you'll enjoy my entry into the BQF, and that you'll visit again!



Amish Center Diamond
28 inches square

 My entry into the BQF is in the "an oldie but a goodie" category.   I made this waaay back when, in 1988 according to the label I actually made and put on.  (That's a miracle in itself!)  That's 23 years ago!  Wow, I can't believe it's been that long.

I had been quilting about 8 years by then, and Roberta Horton's book about Amish quilts, "An Amish Adventure", published in 1983, had gotten me excited about Amish quilts and their use of color.  I made two quilts in the Amish style,  a smaller, simpler wallhanging for my Mom and a doll quilt, before I decided to do this one. 

When I started this quilt, it was before rotary cutters and the nifty plastic rulers that we have now.  This was all measured with a yardstick and marked with a pencil, then cut out with scissors.  Practically the Dark Ages!  But somehow, it all fit together.

Good cottons in solids were hard to find then, so the purple and the black are both poly-cotton, I think.  I used a polyester batt, which was all I could find then.  Now, the black is suffering from some migration of the batting through the top.  It's not super visible, fortunately.

It took me 2 years to hand-quilt this quilt.  When I was working on the black borders with black thread, it was so hard to see what I was doing that I could only quilt on this sitting in bright sunlight.  Nighttime was too difficult to see to quilt - again, long before Ott lights came along.  I quilted this without a hoop or a thimble, as I never got the hang of using either.  I felt like I had better control of my stitching without the hoop.  And whatever finger I put the thimble on just seemd to end up sticking up in the air, well away from the quilt top!  LOL 

This quilt is starting to show it's age now.  I had it hung on a wall for a long time, and thanks to the bright California sun, it has faded some.  But it's still one of my favorites.  This was the best and most extensive hand-quilting I ever did.  Now, I quilt either on my Bernina or "by check" (longarmer).  I love the feel of the quilting - it's so soft and cuddly.  I suppose this quilt is my "heirloom" quilt, just based on the work and love I invested in it.

Don't forget to check out the rest of the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  It's so fun to see everyone's quilts and read their stories!

Shine On

"Shine" is quilted, bound and DONE!  This was my first quilt for the Liberated Amish Get Together hosted by Lazy-Gal Tonya.  If you haven't yet seen this blog and the wonderful quilts that were made, be sure to go take a look.

The "rules" for the Get Together were to take an Amish quilt from this website as your inspiration and make it Liberated.  And you had to include some Unruly Letters.  This one was kind of my "warm-up" because this little crib quilt just called to me. 
 

I can't belive it's taken me a year to get this done.  I just couldn't decide how I wanted to quilt this.  I finally took my inspiration from antique Amish quilts (should be a no-brainer, right?) and machine-quilted triple diagonal lines.  Free-hand, of course.  I was liberated enough to use my sewing machine, or it would be a realllllly loooong time before this got finished . . . hee hee!

I didn't measure anything, and I didn't stress about it.  It only took me a few hours to get this done, once I got going. 

I really like this quilt.  I think it finally came together just right.

A Little Sewing....

finally!


After looking at my new book Liberated Quiltmaking II (see previous post) over breakfast the other day, I HAD to go play in the quilt studio. I was inspired! I started with this little quilt for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (see the link on my sidebar). It's part of the Liberated Quilter's Challenge for 2010. Hopefully this is only the first one.

I used Gwen's Liberated Basket idea and added some free-cut flowers. It all went pretty well. I had to kind of scoot a bunch of stuff out of the way to cut fabric and to sew, but that's OK. Shade was thrilled that I was back in the studio. . . he really loves it when I'm in there. He has to lay right next to me for lots of love and scritches and kisses. Anyway, I don't think I'm quite done with this one. Still contemplating my next move. Maybe some embroidery?. . . . embellishing? . . . . buttons? We'll see!

Next, I wanted to make a LOVE block for Clare and her Quilts 4 Leukaemia as she requested. I started with the L and O. No problem, easy-peasy. Then I tried the V. Had to make a 2nd one as the first just wasn't too good. The E went pretty well. I had a little trouble making everything come out to the correct size. So I had to add some extra fabric. But I think it looks OK. I hope Clare will like it!

Then I decided to make Clare some blocks in red and white, also for the Quilts 4 Leukaemia. I did the Windmill block that's in LQII (page 86). They're free-cut, but don't turn out too wonky. It's really hard to see that those angles are different from block to block. Don't these look cute? They were a lot of fun to do. Just one problem. . . they're going to finish at 7.75 inches instead of 8 inches. RATS!! Apparently, my math skills are somewhat lacking. Not a big surprise to me, somehow. Why did I cut all 4 blocks, instead of trying just one first?? Now I get to do them over. *sigh* Now that I look at this photo, I think the block on the lower right is kinda strange looking. Two of the blades are fatter than the other two. What the heck?? What did I do?? Talk about wonky! *grin*



All these problems are probably due to the fact that my icky cold turned into one doozy of a sinus infection. My brain is fuzzy, and my head hurts. I spent 3 hours at Urgent Care yesterday waiting to be seen. But on the other hand, my prescription was ready when I walked into the pharmacy! Hopefully all will be better in a few days.


I've joined Tonya (at Lazy Gal Quilting) in the Lazy Gal Liberated Amish 2010 Get Together. (Wow, that's a mouthful!) She's going to be teaching/leading us to make a Liberated (a la Gwen Marston) Amish-style quilt based on the quilts in the collection of Faith and Stephen Brown. You can see the quilts in their collection here. Also, those of you in the San Francisco area can see 48 of the quilts in person at the de Young Museum until June 6, 2010! (Wish I could go see them!) I'm looking forward to this Get Together. I've always loved Amish quilts since I was introduced to them. I've made a few . . . a couple of wallhangings and a couple of doll quilts. I just love the colors in them. It's time to make another Amish quilt!

Here is Dunkel with his latest obsession! He's playing with string. DH tied a string to a cat toy stick, and Dunkel loves to chase it around and around and up onto the chairs. He's crazy about this! Anytime one of us walks even near where we keep the string, Dunkle starts meowing. Loudly and insistently! He's like Chinese water torture. He just keeps meowing and meowing. So, eventually we give in. We have to be careful because all he really wants to do is chew the string, and that's Not Good for kitty tummies. So, supervision is required. He's willing to play string any time and for however long we'll do it. Obsession. . . . thy name is Cat.

Ta-ta for now!

Another Trip in the Way-Back Machine

Since it's almost Independence Day, I thought I would show you one of my patriotic quilts. This one is from 1987! Made with muslin, homespun and the ubiquitous pin dot fabric that was available then, it pretty much screams when it was made.

I didn't use a pattern for this quilt, but made it up myself. I researched what dimensions a flag was supposed to be (which is really a proportion of length and width) and came up with the size strips I needed. I really did use 13 stripes in the correct way (starting and ending with the red stripe). I used a cookie cutter for the heart pattern and machine appliqued the hearts on. I did one wonky thing, and that was to piece the blue homespun for the flag field without regard to the plaid.

A few years after that, I knew a little more about folk art. I decided my "flag" was too wide, so I just chopped off the extra, and rebound that edge. Very daring for me at that time!

Sorry this closeup is fuzzy, but my camera didn't like to focus on that plaid. You can see my actual hand quilting!

An even closer closeup! I was pretty good at that machine applique then. Don't know that I could do that well today.

This 'Sunshine and Shadow' Amish quilt is the first one I made, and was made for my Mom. This is from 1985.

I'm really proud of the cable quilting on the border on this quilt. DH and I drafted it ourselves! I used some quilt book that told how to do it. It was really hard to get the cable to go around the corners evenly and then space evenly on the edge. It took us quite awhile to get this right, and I'm not sure it would have been possible on a rectangular quilt. At least not for us. DH is a trained draftsman, and this was tough for him! We just about wore out his fancy drafting eraser on this! I think I still have the paper pattern for this border somewhere. I'm also not that crazy anymore!

Again, more hand quilting. These fabrics for the stripes were cotton, but I think that the black is a cotton-poly blend. And I used a poly batting which is too poofy, but it was easy to quilt through. However, quilting with black thread on black fabric is really hard on the eyes. I needed to do this one only in the daylight!

Another closeup.

And here's a picture of the back, so you can see my lovely hand quilting. I don't hand quilt anymore because of arthritis, so I really treasure the few quilts I have that I hand quilted.

Maybe you can see that I embroidered my name etc. on the back of this quilt. That was the only way I knew to "write" on a quilt at that time. When I chopped off part of the flag quilt, I chopped off most of my embroidery.

Anytime I get the quilts out for photos, the cats must investigate. Shade always wants to get under the quilt. Dunkel always wants to see what Shade is doing. This one was taken while I was trying to photograph the quilt.

Then DH put the quilt over Shade to keep him out of the way while I photographed the Amish quilt.

This, of course, drives Dunkel crazy. He MUST see what's under that quilt, because it's VERY EXCITING! This makes Shade very grumpy. After a session of wappity-wap with the paws and some pouncing by Dunkel, Shade gets disgusted and leaves. Works every time!

The quilt is Dunkel's, and he finds a loose thread on the quilt sleeve to get all worked up about.

Life is hardly ever dull here.

I think I'm about to meet my goal. I'm almost done with this post, just as the sun is coming in the window. It's 90 + degrees today, so I want to go to a cooler room when the sun gets in here. I will spare you my whining.