Mabel Lucie Attwell Baby Quilts

There are two quilts, one crib size and the other is a good size for a stroller or car seat.  Both are available for sale in my Etsy shop.

I found the Mabel Lucie Attwell fabric several years ago and it was love! at first sight.  There were 2 fat quarters of each fabric except the large print which was only 1 fat quarter.  And I've used up all but a smidge of the green check to finish these quilts.

The smaller quilt is in front with the large print, and
the larger crib size quilt is at the back.

The fabric is from 2001 and was made by The Woodrow Studio in London.

Strip piecing . . . hi ho, hi ho, it's off to quilt I go

For quilting the circles, I used freezer paper templates and
then carefully ran the Bernina around to created the quilted circles.

There is double quilting along all the seams.
This is a durable quilt!

Both quilts have the same quilting with a quilted circle in the center
of each block, and double quilting on the seams.

They are darling companions!

But I have listed them separately on Etsy for economy reasons so those with modest budgets have options.

The Thanksgiving Quilt: Ohio Stars Quilt in Civil War Fabrics

My favorite star block is still the Ohio Star,

even after making as many as I did for this quilt.

All of the block pieces in this quilt are 2 inches finished, including the little hourglass blocks that make the Ohio Star.

Using up scraps with the pillow shams . . . flying geese from the border.
The quilting on the shams is the same as done on the quilt border.

Neckroll made with leftover blocks.
I always do a neckroll for my bed sets to hide the top of the sleeping pillows.  The neckroll is made by whip stitching 2 little roll pillows together.
The little roll pillows are from JoAnn.

This neckroll is closed with a tie that I made from fabric from the quilt.
Sometimes I do a drawstring closure for the neckroll . . . but this is the easiest, and I like the little frilly look . . . looks like crackers!party poppers the English have on their Christmas tables.

No scrap shall remain unsewn!  The very last little fabric bits were sewn together willy-nilly with no real forethought.  I love these little projects . . . and no scraps in the waste basket.

 . . . on the bedside table

The Ohio Stars quilt as designed in EQ6

This is the quilt that goes on the bed at Thanksgiving.

There is no Christmas quilt, yet.  At this point the Christmas quilt is
a stack of fabric and a plan. It will be very red. With dragons. Oh my!

Yiayia's Quilt Block Scrapbook and The Christmas Quilt from Hell

The newspaper used to publish quilt patterns every week.  My grandmother neatly clipped pictures of the blocks she liked and kept them in a scrapbook.

Here's one of the pages . . . 

 . . . and another page

Early in my quilting life I decided to make one of the quilts.  I chose Philadelphia Pavement, which If you don't pay mind to how you cut the pieces, you can have lots of bias edges to deal with.

I didn't pay any mind and learned a great lesson: Pay Attention to Bias Edges!  That is one reason why this quilt is called The Christmas Quilt from Hell. It ended up being a nightmare to put together.  I love it now, but the process was oh so painful.

When I started sewing the blocks together I could not get the pieces in the block to align: they were so distorted from stretching that alignment was not an option unless I took them all apart.

So I had to go shop for more fabric for sashing to mask my inexperience.

The sashing worked . . . it got the blocks together and camouflaged the distortions.

Some of the effect of the pattern was lost by using sashing which disappointed me at the time, but at least it was not all a total loss.

The Philadelphia Pavement Block

See the little red and white half square triangles in the border?

They were s'posed to be in the block but I made them all too small and had to make more.  This was before I had EQ and did my own (mis)calculations.

This may be my very first attempt at free motion quilting.
The stitches are testimony to my struggle . . . wildly uneven and jerky.
This was before the Bernina.  It was done on the Singer 501a  utilizing the 'darning' feature which meant loosening the needle shaft to no tension.

In the back of the scrapbook was a 1943 Christmas calendar
of the Dionne quintuplets, which I still keep in the back of the scrapbook.

It's taken a decade to forget the aggravations of miscalculations, stretchy bias edges, points that never had a prayer of matching and jerky quilting.

But I look at my Christmas Quilt from Hell now and actually like it.

And it's a good marker as to how far I've come in learning my craft.

Not that I still don't make mistakes. I do.

But I never struggle with every step of the process like I did with this quilt.

Praise be to all who watch over me . . . maybe that is Yiayia, looking down and encouraging me along.

Bah Humbug . . . a fitting end for a post on The Christmas Quilt from Hell.

This was a gift for me years ago.

It hangs in the basement year round
to remind me of the things that really matter.

This time of year, everyone remember what really matters in your lives.
It's so easy to get wrapped up in the trappings and the expectations.

But it's really about the simple things.
And what lives in your heart.

The Autumn Quilt . . . Scrappy Spider Web

This is the quilt that goes on the bed when the first breath of fall hits the air.  It has all the colors of fall . . . blues for the crisp autumn skies, reds and yellows for the leaves that fall, and greens for the grass that is coming back to life.  In my neighborhood, we don't water our lawns in the summer and they all turn to straw. We are happy not to have to mow for a couple months, save on the water bills and then watch them come green again with the rains.

The fabric criteria for this quilt was a) leftover bits from other projects b) this is ugly, "why did I buy this fabric" and c) the less the fabrics "went together" the better.

You all know what I mean by the ugly fabric, we all have them, we all bought them.  We liked them at the time but they never ended up 'going' with anything else.

The result is wonderfully scrappy.  I don't see the individual fabrics, I see how they all just work together in their little misfit way.

Pillow Sham Front with trimmings from cutting the triangles for the webs

The pillow shams were made with leftover bits and cutting trimmings . . . there was next to nothing left of these particular misfit fabrics in my stash by the time this project was done.  I love it when that happens.

Pillow Sham back, which is the side that is usually showing on the bed

I liked this quilt so well when it was done that I took a little extra time on the shams and actually did button closures.

I really liked the quilting for the back of the sham . . . it's a double
wavy line on the seams.  It goes really fast and will keep all those seams closed

Each block looks a bit different depending on where the darker
fabrics are positioning in the web.
This is a good example of
"color gets all the credit, but contrast does all the work"

EQ6 design for the spider web quilt

Another Circle Quilt . . . The Circle Mania continues

There are 3 more circle quilts in process . . . but I think they are going to rest a while.  The next one I'm going to finish is western lone stars set on a rusty color background.  They are so pretty.  I'm making two, one to sell and one to keep.

This quilt is just listed on Etsy.  I really, really would like to keep it.  But I can make another one, right?  https://www.etsy.com/listing/112456459/modern-contemporary-pieced-circles-couch?ref=cat1_gallery_5

Hanging on the Dogwood tree.

The rains have started again,
so there won't be opportunity
much longer for au naturel photography.  

When piecing the circles, a circle of the blocks back fabric is cut away.

The circles for this quilt are made with the cutaway from
blended circle quilts with 5 inch blocks that I am working on.
The circles for this quilt are 4 1/2 inches.

And on and on it goes . . . the cutaways from this quilt
are the start of yet another circle quilt which will have gold circles.

Now you're starting to see how the circle mania gets started . . . . 

For the next quilt, the gold circles will end up about 3 1/2 inches after sewing.
I will probably use them with a different set of backing fabrics.

Close up of the quilting and some of the fabrics.
The circle fabric is one of my favorites.  I still have some left, yea!

This circle fabric has a little bit of gold metallic in it.

This teal fabric has heavy gold metallic.  It's gorgeous.

This fabric has lots of variation, so every piece cut looks different.

More of the quilting and the fabrics.  All the
little squares are from the fabrics used in the circles.

In the living room of my beautiful little 1906 house.

I think everyone who has lived in this house has loved it
because no one has messed with it.

The wood is unpainted and the light fixtures are original (including glass globes) with the original push button switches.

The oak flooring is a redo.  The floors were originally fir
which still remain in the TV room and pantry.

Someday I'll do a post of this little house.

The first mistress of this house was a petite French woman named Sophie Bergeron.  By pure luck I have a doll that was originally hers.

Aunt Susie's Scrapbooks

I am the keeper of Aunt Susie's scrapbooks.  Aunt Susie was my great great grandmothers sister.  She made scrapbooks for her niece Mary, my great grandmother and her nephew Horace, my great grandmother's brother.

Front of my Great Grandmother's scrapbook

Front of Horace's . . . the loveliest little fabric

Besides the family history, what makes these scrapbooks so unique are the fabric pages.

Mary's pages are silk with red bias tape.  Horace's pages are I think a cotton and are bound with blanket stitch. They are both so beautiful.

Both scrapbooks have fabric covers, and are bound by hand with red silk ribbon.

The first page . . . 'Good Morning', with a portrait

Aunt Susie's signature page in Horace's book . . .
and testimony to the love between the sisters

Mary's scrapbook . . . The fabric is a single layer
of silk and the pages are different colors.

Horace's pages.  The pages are a single layer of fabric with a beautiful blanket stitch.  I think the fabric is a very fine cotton.

Die cut lettering on a page
dedicated to American authors.

These die cut letters are amazing . . . each with classical figurine

Detail of die cut roses and the silk binding

Detail of blanket stitching and a fabulous die cut ship

Die cuts and cuttings from publications.
I love Aunt Susie's sense of composition

A page dedicated to Abraham Lincoln.
Horace's scrapbook is done with
each page a letter of the alphabet.
Mr. Lincoln's page is V . . . victory over those who enslave another.

Tribute to the memory and achievements
of Abraham Lincoln
in Mary's scrapbook too

The back of Mary's scrapbook
She is given wings to fly