Spring Bloggers' Quilt Festival 2012

Yea!  It is spring Bloggers' Quilt Festival time.  This is such a fun event out in blogger land, hosted by Amy Ellis from Amy's Creative Side

"Hello" to all of you fellow bloggers participating in the festival and visiting my blog, I love visiting your blogs and reading about your quilts.   This is my second year participating.  There was really no decision in which quilt I would share, it would be the States Quilt.

I made the States Quilt with my Mom.   My mother has early dementia/Alzheimer's and last summer she and my Dad moved into assisted living.  Because her sewing machine was becoming increasingly difficult for her to operate the decision was made not to move it with them. She was also struggling with knitting and hand quilting, but I noticed she was doing some hand embroidery on dish towels etc.  I had seen this quilt with the 50 states embroidered and an idea was born. 


She was very excited to work on this quilt together.  I would trace the embroidery patterns in colored Pigma Pens so she would know what colors to embroider the state outlines, birds, and flowers and then because they live in another state I would mail 5 or 6 blocks at a time to her.  We continued in this fashion over the fall and winter, in the mean time I worked on star applique blocks and came up with the center eagle block. 

By the end of winter I was starting to sew the blocks together.  I must say I was not  thinking ahead when I choose a pattern with hexagon blocks...LOTS of set in seams. 

I machine quilted the States quilt on my home sewing machine.

 This past April I was able to bring the finished quilt back to my Mom, she was thrilled to see it completed and she enjoys showing it to her many new friends at the assisted living center.   

Happy Stitching All,
Cheri

States Quilt Finished

This past fall and winter I have been working on a quilt with my Mom. She embroidered all 50 of the state blocks and I put the quilt together and finished quilting it last month. 

We have been traveling the last two weeks and the first part of our trip was to Denver, Colorado to celebrate my parent's 60th wedding anniversary.  Being able to deliver the finished quilt was another happy surprise to our weekend there.  The little guy inspecting the quilt is my great nephew Koda.

My Mom has early dementia/Alzheimers.  We had a wonderful visit and she is doing well.  My parents have adjusted well to their move to assisted living.    She was so proud of her part in the making of this quilt and was enjoying showing it to all of her new friends. 

Happy Stitching All 

March Free Motion Quilt Challenge

The wonderful machine quilting information continues over at Sew Cal Girls free motion quilting challenge.  This month's instructor is Ann Fahl.  Her tutorial is full of good machine quilting review, tips, and new ideas. She encourages machine quilters to try some new background fills beside basic meandering and stippling.   The practice piece starts with loops and twists and continues on with adding stars, hearts, spirals, and eventually flowers.  This tutorial came along at just the right time for me.  I needed a background fill around the embroidered states blocks on the states quilt.  After practicing on a practice piece I developed my own sort of 3/4 spiral flowers and twists and loops.  I thought this pattern was just right around the embroidered areas and yet not to dense.

My favorite thing I learned from this tutorial was to use monofiliment in the bobbin.  I had never tried putting monofiliment in the bobbin.  It worked quite well, I had to fuss with the tension a little bit, but eventually did all of the red areas of the state quilt with monofilment in the bobbin and on the top.  Ann also suggests starting a notebook to keep your favorite quilting motifs and ideas in, and to use for practice with pencil and paper.  I have bits of papers here and there and notes from classes so the goal is to get it all together in the notebook.  I printed out Ann's 11 page tutorial and it is definitely going in the notebook.

                          

Quilting Around Embroidery???

I followed thru on my intention to spend my quilt retreat putting the states quilt together.  It is pieced, sandwiched and the quilting has begun.  The quilt is much larger than I expected, about 90 by 100 inches, I think if I had added the red, white, and blue borders it would have been a queen size quilt with a full drop, the borders touching the floor.  I decided to leave the borders off and stop where it is.  I am presently working on the center eagle block, doing some diagonal lines for background fill.  I know what I am going to do in the red areas, but I am a little unsure of how I am going to quilt around the embroideries. 

 

I am very open to suggestions!!  I will definitely quilt in the ditch around the stars, but I am thinking maybe I will stitch over the state outlines with invisible thread and then some kind of background fill around the rest of the embroideries.  Because it is such a large quilt I do not want to do anything very dense. 

Last weekend I was at my annual retreat with my small group.  I was a little remiss about taking photos and I did not get everyone in the group.  We had a great cabin at the local state park and set up our tables in a nice way that let everyone sew relatively close to each other and allowed for great visiting. 

 The weather was great, we got a lot of quilt tops completed, a lot of catching up with each others lives, and a little shopping.  A great time as always, miss you guys already!

Happy Stitching,

Cheri

States Quilt

Back in October I had a post about quilting with my Mom.  She has early dementia/Alzheimer's and had recently moved into assisted living.  She was having difficulty with her sewing machine and the decision was made not to move it to her new home, but she still enjoyed hand sewing.  We started making the states quilt together and she has completed all 50 embroidered blocks.  I am preparing  for my annual quilt retreat with my small quilting group this weekend and I am planning to dedicate most of the weekend to sewing these blocks together.

 

It is quite time consuming as each of the blocks has set in corners, but I have worked out a system and they are going together quite well. 

I also am all caught up on the Just Takes 2 blocks.  My wall of blocks is starting to look very interesting :)

Happy Stitching All,

 Cheri

January Free Motion Quilting Project

Well it is the last day of January and I am barely getting in my January free motion practice piece for SewCalGal's (see the link on my side bar) free motion quilt challenge. This months practice is leaves. The instructor is Frances Moore and she has many more wonderful tips on her blog. My photo does not show the quilting well, or maybe it is my fabric, but the leaf motifs are fun to do, just think hearts. I am looking forward to spending a little of my sewing time practicing some new quilting motifs and techniques.
I am also participating in the Just Takes 2 quilt from Gay at Sentimental Stitches and Brenda at Dear Jane. I am using a turkey red fabric and only have four blocks done, but my annual winter retreat with my quilting buddies is coming up in a couple weeks and I will be working on the blocks then. The eagle is for yet another quilt that I hope to be working on at retreat, the states quilt.I am not getting to my new projects because I have been spending most of my quilting time on Bella Garden, I have the appliques all quilted and the water portions finished and am now starting on the background fillers for the center block. Now I can throw in a few leaves here and there thanks to the Free Motion Quilting Challenge :)

Happy Stitching All,

Cheri

Quilting With My Mom

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My mother has been diagnosed with early dementia/Alzheimer's and it is easier for my Dad to take care of her in an assisted living environment. A few weeks ago my sisters and I, and our husbands, helped them with the move. This was a very surreal experience for us, seeing our parents leave their home (and ours) of over 50 years. This has been a very good move for them and they are happy in their new smaller home. The sewing machine has become very difficult for my Mom and the decision was made not to take her sewing things. This has been one of the hardest things for me as my Mom and I always had a love of quilting in common. She is still doing a little hand work, she is an accomplished knitter also, but over the past year I have seen her increasing struggles even with knitting.

On our way home from helping with their move my husband and I stopped in a rest area/visitors center in Julesburg, Colorado. There were volunteers manning the information and coffee counter and behind the desk was this quilt.
The hexagon shaped blocks are embroideries of the 50 states with the outline of the state, the state flower, and the state bird. The volunteers at the visitor's center had made this quilt and in the center had appliqued an image of a pony express rider, as Julesburg, Colorado was the only stop that the pony express came through in Colorado in the 1800s.

When I came home and thought about my mom's difficulty with sewing and her missing hand work, I asked if she was interested in doing some embroidery (my Dad thought she could still handle it). The quilt is from a pattern by the Colonial Company, http://www.colonialpatterns.com,/ the company that makes Aunt Martha's iron on embroidery patterns. She was very excited to make this quilt with me and so we have begun. I trace out the patterns for her in pigma pens using the colors that the embroidery floss should be and mail her four or so blocks at a time. I can hardly stay ahead of her!

She is on block 18 or 19 already! Besides tracing the blocks for her I have started working on the star blocks and am going to machine applique them.

I also decided to make an eagle applique (header picture) for the center block and will be working on the machine applique of that block also.

I initially really liked the hexagon shape of these blocks, but these will be set in seams to sew together...yuck! I am thinking this is going to be a hand pieced quilt. So far this quilt has reminded me of the quilting my mom and grandmother did many years ago, the large hexagon blocks required a template mounted on sand paper that I had to add the 1/4 inch seam allowance, just like they used to do in their quilts (read between the lines here and know the first yard of red fabric is in the trash as I did not read the directions and cut out all of the half hexagons to0 small). I am tracing and drawing the whole, half, and quarter hexagons on the back of the fabric and then cutting them out so I already have lines drawn on the back of the blocks for hand piecing.

At the rest area where I saw the finished quilt the picnic shelters were in these tee pees. We stopped in this one with our coffee and found these little inhabitants. I am not sure what kind of birds these babies are, but their nest was made of mud and they pretty much owned this picnic shelter, their droppings were everywhere, but they are kind of cute. Happy Stitching All