Birthday's today....

We have a few birthday's today. My Grandson Matthew turns 14 and as I think of it it makes me feel old or at least older!  I will be getting on the phone with him soon.  Happy Birthday, Matthew! 

Joyce Schmalz will be celebrating her birthday too.  Joyce is my sister Sharon's Mother-in-law and she will recieve her Quilt today! I am excited. I can not wait to here what she thinks! 

Happy Birthday, Joyce!

On to the next project......This is a new block for me! It's called "Lover's Knot" and I will be making several wallhangings or lap quilts for some other birthdays which will be coming up in spring and early summer.

I made this one two weeks ago and  I took it with me when we visited Shawn and Amber last weekend.  I wanted to make sure that the colors would work with thier bedspread.  Much to my surprise, Amber decided to re-redecorate their bedroom. Oh, holy crap! Now what?

When we were there at Christmas, Amber had gotten a new bedspread so I made a mental note and collected fabric for her wallhanging accordingly.  Now she has a totally different color scheme. Oh my, I never thought that I would run into this problem!  I had already started my next one which would be a "Lover's Knot" project  for Kyle and Christa. It has some special fabric which reminded me of Kyle!  ... Amber's birthday is in May. Now what?

This week I found some new fabric but will I have enough time to do it...I hope so. I will have to get right on it! Will get the fabric washed and ready to go so I can work on it this week.  Since I will be in Michigan and Boston the week after next I have alot to do!  And now I guess I have an extra Wall hanging.  Oh heck, I'll find someone to give it too! 

Happy Easter to all, Happy Birthday to some and happy sewing to the rest......I guess I better get busy, time is a wasting... May your seams be straight and your colors bold and beautiful!

Love,

Jan

A Quilt is born ...one October day...

The snow is melted for now...though they are expecting flurries again this next weekend. I need spring...the winter has been long and I am ready.  We are making our spring, summer and fall plans. Just finished another quilt top and have started then next one...and have two more in the planning stages.  Fabric laying out everywhere and not enough time for all the things I want to do.

I wanted to show you the first version of the quilt from last October American Patchwork Quilting.  Some day I'll do the leaf version but I enjoyed  making the two versions that I have made of this pattern.

I am currently an unemployed Computer Professional. I have found myself in this unfortunate situation at my age, too young to retire but too old to be a new hire. I am trying to figure out how I can reinvent myself for the second career which I hope to take me into retirement.  I want it to be 'something" which uses my computer skills and my 45 years of sewing experience...Humm, wonder what that might be...more on that a little later.

My father introduced me to fabric and my mother taught me to sewing...Dad encouraged me to learn and for all the years he was with us he provided me with fabric through his businesses.  So I LOVE fabric and I have a wonderful stash but I have never seen a piece of beautiful fabric which wasn't waiting for a new home! 

Last fall on a beautiful Indian summer day, I stopped into a new quilt shop for me and an old one... The new one was "Quilt in Joy"  in Huntley, Illinois. (http://www.quiltinjoy.com)   It's a nice quilt shop that is a couple of years old now. I always wanted to open a Quilt Shop there but I never had the funds.   Oh my, they have beautiful fabric, this is gonna be tough.  There are many kinds of fabric shops today,  some specialize in "1930's reproduction fabrics", "Civil War reproductions fabrics", "Thimbleberries fabric" and many more.  I like the shops that have beautiful, bold, vibrant colors. I think I have found a closer to home new favorite Quilt Shop. It's a really nice shop.  I resisted as best I could but I found some beautiful fabric on the clearance table which called my name loudly. I did not know what project these would be for just yet but a couple of yards each will do.

I met some former coworkers for lunch in DeKalb and we had a really nice visit.  On my way home I decided to stop at my other favorite Quilt shop in Hampshire, Illinois,  "Judy's Quilt and Sew ".  (http://www.judysquiltnsew.com)  It a wonderful shop which has beautiful, vibrant fabric but it's about 35 mile away.  So I have to make really good excuses to drive there and lunch in Dekalb with my friends gives me a good excuse!  Lunch with friends and vibrant fabric go together fabulously!  Once again I looked around and found a beautiful floral which gave me the idea to use the new pattern from my new quilt magazine! So a couple more fabrics from the clearance rack and the brain is planning the next project. It turned out beautifully if I don't say so my self.  This is the first quilt that I had machine quilted.  The quilter did a great job and now I am very interested in a long arm machine and a new retirement career.  I called the quilt "Flower Garden Dreams".  The Quilt works well in my newly painted spare bedroom.

Believe or not this is the same block as the leaf block except I cut a five inch square of the beautiful floral fabric and sewed to accent fabrics offset to the side as they showed in the directions.  The difference is how I laid the blocks out. I twisted each block 90 degrees from the previous block and this is the pattern you get. It looked rather Oriental to me and I decided I liked it!

Up close view. I supplemented the fabrics I bought that October day with two pink fabrics which I had in my stash and this quilt was born on that October afternoon from the clearance table!  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Then the border of blossoms.

Sewing pleasures to all!

Love, Jan

Joyce's Birds - March 2, 2010

Wow, the time sure has flown by.  It is March already and it has been a month since I wrote a Quilt blog. Sorry it has been so long but I have been very busy. I will try to write a blog a bit more often....

It has been a busy few weeks for me because I have been trying to get ready for my sister’s 50th birthday. I am having all my sibling and their spouses come for a long weekend visit so we can celebrate her birthday. Today I will highlight a quilt that I have made for her Mother-in-law which she will take home with her on Sunday evening.

This block is an offset Log Cabin which I have had quite a bit of fun with. It was a block featured on the cover of American Patchwork Quilting in the October 2009 issue. I modified it just a little.  Instead of piecing the square leaf block, I found a large print which I could use as the 5 inch center block.  Then I "built" the log cabin type offset around the five inch block.

 The ideas for this quilt developed after my brother-in-law saw my log cabin quilt which I had made for our travel trailer….

Yes, I have a quilt in our travel trailer! It is a log cabin block which features birds, birch trees, tree bark and looks very outdoor like….

I took it a step further and recover the valance with the bird fabric and made some cute curtains for the trailer to match. We also added a new cute bird wall paper border and the trailer now looks like new. Michael (my brother-in-law) stated that his mother would love the bird fabric and Michael loved the birch tree fabric.

SO I went in search of bird fabric and found this fabric which to me looked like a fabric which any mother would have loved! The fabric line has several coordinating fabrics which I used but I also added some touches of my own. The fabric highlights Cardinals, Robins, Sparrows, Hummingbirds and Wrens. A coordinating fabric used for the backing highlights a beautiful combination of raspberries, vines and leaves.

I added an additional modification to the block by adding a shadow or window box grid around each block using a pretty green fabric and finished the quilt with a matching bird border.

Shows Border Fabric                        Shows Pieced Back and Border

 And Robin Block up close

This block was really fun to work with. Next I will feature another quilt which I made with this block but I arranged the blocks differently for a very unique quilt.

Enjoy ... until my next Blog.  May you have "sew" much fun!

Happy Sewing,

Jan

Foundation quilting for starters...

Mixed Berry Star

Not really sure why I picked this quilt for starters but it turned out to be a wise choice. I had enough to learn about quilting so using a piece of paper for a guide was a good thing for keeping me sewing on the line. You start with the 2 Equilateral triangles which you will copy on Velum or foundation paper ; one triangle has a Clockwise twist and one triangle has a counter clockwise twist. You make 6 copies of each triangle.

With this pattern you need to do a little planning ahead of time. You need to choose three color families ; I chose Blue, red and a background color. I chose an off white / beige moda fabric for the background color. On each side of the triangle you will sew a different color family. For the Blue color family you will pick shades of blue which will range from light blue to dark blue. The Red color family I chose was really more like a cranberry red rather than a bright red. Then I chose 6 cranberry fabrics which ranged from light to darks.

You identify your blue fabrics with the lightest blue being blue fabric #1. Next darkest blue is blue fabric #2 and so on until you have number all 6 fabrics with the darkest fabric in the blue family as # 6.

You identify your lightest Cranberry fabric as cranberry fabric # 1. The next darkest as cranberry # 2 and so on until you number all fabrics in the cranberry family with the darkest fabric being cranberry # 6.
You cut a 1 ½ inch strip of each piece of three lightest blue fabrics, the remaining darker blue fabric cut 2 1 ½ strips of Fabric. Repeat for the cranberry fabrics, one strip of the lightest three cranberry fabrics and 2 of the darker cranberry fabrics. Cut one 2 ¼ inch strip of the darkest blue and the darkest cranberry fabrics. This will be used for the center piece. The triangle in the center is piece one and in my case I use the dark cranberry color on all of my blocks. Place the dark Cranberry over the center triangle. Work your way around the triangle. Sew the lightest cranberry to the right of the start of the center triangle covering the triangle to the right of the center triangle. Turn Foundation paper to right and sew the lightest blue fabric and then sew the background color to the remaining side of the triangle. Next sew the next shade of cranberry next to the lightest shade and repeat this process circling around the triangle adding one color at a time.

Complete sewing all fabrics to foundation papers. Lay out foundation blocks in the pattern that you like filling in open spaces with plain block size triangle blocks of the back ground fabric.

Other color combinations which I have done:

"Log Cabin with a Twist " by Barbara T. Kaempfer Dec 1995 (Available through Amazon)

Breakfast in Bed

It was May 1977...

I needed a spring wall hanging for the fireplace so I decided to make a second quilt. This time I chose a nine patch pattern which I believe that I got out of a magazine. It was so long ago I can not remember for sure. I found some great purple and green plaid fabric at my Dad’s store in Michigan to start with and since my favorite color is purple it was a perfect fabric to start with. After getting a new sewing machine and completing my first Quilt, I had started to visit fabric stores again. Fabric sure had changed from the days of making baby sleepers and kids clothes and the way people were sewing had too! Gone are the days of making clothes and welcome to Home décor and Quilting. I was able to find a great purple and green floral to use with the purple and green plaid. Next I realized that I had the solid perfect purple to match in my stash.

What sewing I had done in the last few years had been Home Décor like everyone else. I had made a Valance for my bathroom a few months before. I was looking for a scalloped edge valance which reminded me of my visit to Rome. In Rome, at the Trevi Fountain, there was a man selling flowers with a wooden cart. He had beautiful flowers and the cart was covered with a yellow and white scalloped awning. That is what I wanted for my window but mine needs to be in purple and white. When you go to the store looking for some thing so specific, you will likely not find it. And of Course I did not! So I made it.

 
 

Add a white fabric and now I have the perfect set of fabrics for my wall hanging.
I am surprised that I still have some of the fabric left! So after a few days of sewing the top was complete. It tool me a bit longer to Quilt it.
 

 
 
 
 
I decided that I would quilt it in Purple and White.
 

So here you are "Breakfast in Bed". 

 
 
Enjoy!
 
Jan

A Lighthouse for starters…

In the 1994, I had moved back to the Midwest to get closer to my family. In 1995, we had decided apartment living just was no longer for us so we decided to get into a house. We had hoped for a medium sized house since most of the time there would probably be just Greg and I but there just wasn’t much on the market when we were looking. What was on the market was either too small or big. There was nothing in between which would work for our blended family. Greg had three young daughters and I had grown sons. While rarely were we “all” together, his and mine, but it did happen on occasion and we wanted enough room for when that happened. So we ended up with a fairly large home which was built in 1902.

Our house as it looked in 1995

In the dining room, on one wall we have a fireplace, a big huge white brick fireplace. The previous owners decided to paint the brick so we have this big white wall. I was struggling with what to do with the “white fireplace”.

The company which I worked for had a photo contest every year, and the photos which were deemed the “best”, were made into a calendar. I always hung it in my office because it was a really nice “free” calendar. All company employees got a calendar for Christmas. When I turned the calendar from June to July, there it was, a really great photo of the “Chicago Lighthouse”. “What a prefect fit”, I thought. I had just moved from Phoenix to Chicago a few years before and I have always loved lighthouses. People probably thought I was a bit strange, when they walked into my home in Phoenix and saw that I had used lighthouses to decorate my kitchen in the desert. When you really love something you can’t just throw it away because you changed locations…I loved the desert and eventually did do some desert type decorating but…for a time I had lighthouses in the desert. Now I am back in the Midwest and my lighthouse fit again! When I saw the Chicago Lighthouse in the calendar it was like a “lightbulb” came on! I just knew I could make a wall hanging out of it.

I went my local newspaper office and bought a bolt end of news print. When a newspaper gets close to the end of a bolt of paper and they know that they cannot complete a run of the paper, they switch out the bolt of newsprint for a new full one. The remaining partial roll is set off to the side and they will generally sell them to the public. The bolt ends work great for people who need a large piece of paper to make a pattern out of or if you want to make a really big picture. I have found many other uses for this paper; covering large surfaces when you are painting, painting for small children, table covers for a messy project, drop cloth for spray painting, You get the idea. It is a cheap solution. A newspaper will sell them for a couple of dollars. I try to keep one or two handy all the time.

Anyway I got side tracked, so my very first quilt was born from a photo taken by a coworker. I kept the picture from the calendar for the longest time but right now I can’t find it. I drew out the pattern and hunted for fabric. I really had no idea what the heck I was doing but I needed a light house to hang on my fireplace and I was gonna get it!

 

 
It was a challenge and I made several mistakes and realized that I had no clue what I was doing! But I made it and decided that I liked quilting enough to really go learn how to do it correctly. I signed up for my first class!

How it all started ....

When I was 7 years old, my Dad worked for a department store in Rochester Michigan, a place called "Mitzelfelds". He was the manager for the store for years. One of his many responsibilities was to design and setup the displays in the windows. Often on Sunday, we would take a drive to Rochester to open the awnings over the display windows to protect the clothes in the window from fading in the direct sunlight. I remember doing this with him  most Sundays in the winter and spring.

Usually a few weeks before Easter, Dad would take all the girls with him when he took care of the windows. While we were there he would show us a rack of dresses and ask us to pick one out from this specific rack for our Easter dress. Most often we could find something that we liked. I did not understand why we only had that rack to pick from. I found a dress on one of the other racks. I cried when Dad told me that I could not have a dress from that rack. I pleaded and eventually Dad told me why, “Honey, I can not afford to buy you that dress. Mom and I have to buy four dresses today.  I just can not afford it”.  As a seven year old, I just did not understand the “concept of not being able to afford something”.  We had everything that we needed. We were never lacking for anything so how could we not afford it, I wondered.  I was heart broken as my Dad tried to explain how much it cost to raise 6 children in a way that a 7 year old would understand. Until that day I never knew that money was tight at our house!  I eventually settled for a dress from the rack that he could afford.

He watched me closely when we arrived home. He asked me to come sit on his lap so he could cuddle and hug me in a effort to make me feel better. We talked and he came up with and idea. He told me “Spend time with your Mom. Let her teach you how to sew and I will buy you all the fabric you want! You will learn how to make dresses that are even prettier than the one you wanted at the store today!”

So I did learn to sew from my mother and so did the rest of my sisters. Before long we were learning new techniques from each other. With his four daughters all sewing we had to schedule time with the sewing machine and while it was not tolerated, fights would sometimes break outing over who got the sewing machine next! Eventually Grandma Smith would give us her sewing machine so now we had two but they both ran almost constantly. Mom had to stopped sewing because the girls were always using both sewing machines. In middle school and high school, my sisters and I sewed all of our clothes. I do not remember buying anything except sweaters, underwear and shoes.

My Dad always followed through with his promises. He provided me with fabric from the time I was 7 years old until the day he died 34 years later. Bless you Dad for planting the seeds of my obsession!