First Sweater (Size Very Small)

Yay me! I finished something today!

I started it last September, and finished knitting the pieces — oh, a month or two ago. I blocked the pieces in preparation for seaming them together, but then they sat for awhile.

In the meantime, I knit Dave's socks, a larger version of the same baby sweater,

one and one-quarter socks,

finished the front of one hand pillow, started the next,

bought the yarn for a full-size sweater,

and purchased fabric and notions to make a shirt for Tim.

What can I say— I get bored easily!

Aunt Esther's Quilt

I have had this quilt since I was a teenager. I don't know how or why I happened to be the lucky person to end up with it.

It hasn't been on a bed in years; these days, it pretty much is kept stored away.

For all that it's probably 70 or 80 years old, it's in pretty good shape. The colors are still pretty vibrant — not noticeably faded at all.

When I compare the fabrics in this quilt to the '30s reproduction fabrics I see in the shops, I like the ones in this quilt much more. The color palette is so much more varied; the reproduction fabrics often appear to be more limited in the number of colors in any given print, if not monochromatic. There's just so much more variety and visual interest in genuine '30s prints.

This quilt was made by a younger sister of my paternal grandmother. Esther never married, never had children. I know my family visited her on our trips back to Iowa to visit my dad's side of the family. She lived in a nursing home, and she had bad arthritis in her hands. I remember how her fingers angled to the side. She was a very nice, sweet lady.

She lived a quiet, unassuming life. But as long as this quilt is around, people will know that she once lived.

Batik Flowers

This is one of my favorite quilts.

The batik flowers came in a packet I bought a number of years ago in Anacortes, Washington. I purchased them just because I liked them, but I didn't have any particular idea of how I would incorporate them into a quilt.

Later on, I came across the fabric that I used in the blocks and the narrow sashing. The way I used it in the blocks, it appears to be two different colorways of the same print. In reality, the fabric gradates from light to dark. If you look carefully at the vertical sashing, you can see how it is lighter at the top and darker at the bottom.

Kokopelli Delectable Mountain Quilt

Spring quarter began this week, and it is shaping up to be a very busy term. I am enrolled in 4 classes: Photoshop II, Dreamweaver I, Typography and a class called Rights and Methods in Multimedia, which focuses on copyright issues.

Thus, my failure to put up a new post since last Sunday

I did finish sewing on the binding of the Double Wedding Ring quilt. Yay, me! There is still one task remaining with that project: I have to find an industrial-size washing machine and throw it in with some Color Catcher sheets.

During a period of time when I was not working on it and it was stored away, some of the fabric dyes bled or rubbed off. I'm not sure which. When I took it out of storage to work on it, I was dismayed to discover this. I'm still somewhat mystified, because it never actually got wet. Was humidity a factor? I'd never heard of that.

Anyway, I pulled out one of my favorite quilts to display in today’s post.

I made this several years ago at one of the few weekend quilt retreats I have attended. It was over at a then-coworker’s second home in Poulsbo, Washington.

I had purchased the three Kokopelli-themed fabrics at a quilt show. I think they were at least half yard cuts. I had already decided on a modified Delectable Mountain block, based on a quilt I had seen in a book by Judy Hopkins. The change I made was to connect the blocks by making them share a triangle.

I had originally planned to use a different fabric in the half-square triangles, but then I decided that it wasn’t working for me. So I visited the quilt shop in town, and found a different fabric that worked perfectly.

It’s a little hard to see in the photo, but it has a kind of granite-rock rough look to the print. It really did fit in better with the theme of the quilt.

That weekend, I think I made the Mountain blocks, and maybe even completed the rows with the background sky print.

But then I let it sit for quite awhile. Why? Because I was afraid to cut the fabric for the sashing and the border. Why? Because I had only the limited amount I had purchased and no way of getting more if I cut wrong.

When I finally set down to cut the sashing and border pieces, I measured and calculated at least three times to make sure I had figured it right. As it turned out, I was spot on. I did have to splice it in one place. If you look at the bottom border just to the right of center, you will see a single Kokopelli figure without his mirror image.

Most of the quilting is outline quilting, but I did put a sun design in the large sky triangles, that I thought was an appropriate motif.

Hearts All Around

This is a quilt I made a fair number of years ago. It represents one of my few forays into traditional appliqué.

Hearts are a favorite motif of mine. Around the house are several pieces featuring hearts:

A wedding present from my sister

A small wall hanging I made several years ago, using a quilting pattern published in Quilter's Newsletter

A tole-painted heart by my aunt Marlys

An early heart-in-hand pillow I made for my parents, featuring my then-7-year-old daughter’s hands


Anyway, the hearts in the quilt pictured above were fussy-cut from the leftover fabric from a jumper I made for my daughter when she was around the age of 6. I may even have kept the dress. Somewhere there is a box with some of her clothes from back-in-the-day that are just too cute or precious to give to Goodwill. A knitted baby sweater. Knitted booties and a cap. A baby blanket.

Here are a couple close-ups of the quilt. You can still see the pencil lines marking the quilting pattern, because the quilt has never been washed.

Flower Children

When I was young, there was a book called Mother Earth’s Children: The Frolics of the Fruits and Vegetables on the shelf that I guess actually belonged to my aunt Alta, and was later returned to her. It’s funny what memories stick with you from childhood.

Published by P.F. Volland & Company, the copyright date is 1914, and it must have belonged to Alta when she was little. As I recall, it was somewhat tattered but still holding together.

It was a book of four-line poems, each one about a different fruit or vegetable, with accompanying illustrations. They ranged from the commonplace, such as the Apple, Pear, and Orange, to more exotic ones, such as the Truffle, Oyster Plant, and Carrageen.

When I was in my twenties, I was browsing at a crafts fair and there was a vendor selling pages from this book that she had cut out and matted. I bought a few and gave one to each of my sisters.

Later on, I think sometime in the 1990s, I was in a quilt fabric shop and saw some fabric that I recognized immediately as being based on this book. Or so I thought. On closer examination, I saw that the images on the fabric were not fruits and vegetables, but flowers. Of course, I had to purchase some yardage!

With a little research, I discovered that the author, Elizabeth Gordon, had collaborated with illustrator M.T. Ross on two other books — Flower Children: The Little Cousins of the Field and Garden ©1910 and Bird Children: The Little Playmates of the Flower Children ©1912. She had also written Wild Flower Children: The Little Playmates of the Fairies, illustrated by Janet Laura Scott ©1918.

Around ten years ago, I came across this great website called Alibris, where I purchased vintage copies of Mother Earth's Children, Bird Children and Flower Children. Wild Flower Children was also available, but too expensive. As luck would have it though, a publisher called Derrydale Books had reissued all four books and I was able to purchase Wild Flower Children at a reasonable price. These are still available through Amazon.

But with no further ado, here is the quilt I made from the six panels included in the fabric design, along with close-ups of three blocks and their corresponding page from Flower Children. (If I recall correctly, the fabric was part of a line from In the Beginning fabrics.)