Remembering at Easter…..

I have a set of quilts that I use for each month of the year….hearts for February, ocean scene for June, sunflowers for August….you get the idea!!

Most of these I have made over the years but there are a few that my mother made and the quilt that I use during the Easter month is one of hers…..

Interestingly, it is a quilt that she didn’t particularly like but I loved it, probably because of the amazing applique and quilting.

In particular, I love the “extra bits” that were worked into each of the blocks….

The ruched flower….

….the 3-D flower buds….

the “gathered” bells…..

….and the fabric that she used for the leaves…..

And then there was her quilting…..

Every stitch was even and perfect!!

It is coming up to the 6th anniversary of her passing and putting this quilt out at Easter is a wonderful reminder of her and her love of quilting!!

If you have thought about trying ruler quilting but didn’t where to start, check this out……

If you have an interest in ruler quilting, check out this online course…..

Click HERE for more information

Springtime Irises

Last week I posted about a quilt that I made for my friend’s son. This week I wanted to show a quilt that my friend made for Michael and me.

First, the backstory……

My husband is a Professor in Genetics and has spent his career studying natural populations of Irises in the swamps of Louisiana. They have beautiful flowers…..

Sandy knew of our love of these plants and she designed a gorgeous applique quilt based on them. At the time, she was highly interested in Celtic Knot applique and she did an amazing job of putting the two together……

Her applique was perfect….

….the Celtic knots added a level of interest to the quilt……

And, the background quilting helped the flowers to really shine…..

It is a favorite quilt and graces our walls every spring!!

Thank you Sandy for such a sweet memory!!

The older the better…

For the last few weeks, I have been showing some of my Mom’s quilts. She LOVED the art, making her first quilt at age eleven!! She took a hiatus for a bunch of years but returned to the art in the 1970’s as part of the Bicentennial quilting revolution.

This quilt was one of the first ones that she ever made. If I remember, she said that this was her second quilt and it is one of my favorites…..

It is made from 30’s fabrics….well…because it was made in the 30’s!!!!

I love the cheeriness of the blocks…..

As I looked at these two blocks side by side, I realized that the flowers are in different orientations. If you look back at the quilt, you can see that the block on the right is a mistake….the only one in the quilt. Or maybe, it was a “design decision”….right??

I am ashamed to say that her blanket stitch in her early teens was better than mine is now!!!

She used straight line quilting in the blocks and fun flower designs in the alternating blocks…..

And, this quilt is H…E…A…V…Y!!!

The cotton came from the field across from her house and, if you feel around on it, you can find bits of chaff that didn’t get carded out!!!

I don’t tend to display these older quilts too much in my home, but I am thinking that I need to find a good place for this one in my Spring decorating!!!

Do you have a favorite family “heirloom” quilt??

Yellow Rose of Texas

My Mother was two things……

AN AMAZING QUILTER

and

A TEXAN THRU and THRU!!!!

One of her favorite songs was “The Yellow Rose of Texas”…..especially when Ernest Tubb was singing it…..

She would sing the first few lines over and over and over!!!

So, I guess that it was no surprise that she chose to make a quilt called “The Yellow Rose of Texas”……

It contained so many of her loves…..Texas….Roses…..Needle-turn Applique…..Embroidery and Hand-Quilting!!!

In her patient way, she created 25 rose blocks…..EXACTLY THE SAME…..

….each complete with a small embroidered bee…..

And to set it off, she added the scalloped border….what a great touch.

She quilted around each of the roses and then added the same design in the alternating blocks…..

The result is a bright and cheery quilt and I break out into song every time I see it.

Thanks, Mom!!!

Let the handwork begin!!

Over the last 9 months I have been working on my color wheel quilt. A few weeks ago I posted about using the Pathagorean Theorum to calculate the size of the triangles needed to fill the corners.

Now the question was exactly what to add to the corners. In my original design, the outside circles were going to move in curvy lines…..

But, when I started laying out circles in different orientations, having curves in the outside drew the eye away from the center rather than toward it……

I had also considered making the darkest grey into a circle, but quickly decided that it wasn’t worth the effort!!!

After a lot more playing around……

…….I decided that a starburst effect would draw the eye to the middle……

At this point I realized that I needed a bit more fabric than I had on hand so, while I waited for UPS to make a drop to my door, I started making all of the circles. I found that the colors were much easier to pick since I had my fabrics folded so well. This was the basic way that I worked…..

SUCH luscious colors!!!!

You can check out this post where I tell how I prepared the circles.

Once the fabric arrived I made strip sets and then trimmed them down to a size that was a few inches larger than the final product…..

Now I needed to transfer the circle pattern onto each of the 4 fabric triangles. I started by tracing the triangle onto the fabric and adding the straight radiating lines. Next step was to trace the circles onto the fabric……