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My friend April is a hoot! She makes wonderful quilts:

And occasionally wrestles with water snakes while at retreat:

This past year she’s been super excited about an online adventure she joined. As April explains it, each month she received a chapter from a murder mystery in which an archeologist/detective discovers clues to solve a murder. Included with each chapter are directions for a quilt block, or blocks. The way the blocks go together is not revealed until the end of the year, and the mystery quilt holds the clues that solve the crime. In 2023 she embarked on a Viking adventure, and these are the blocks she made as of our October retreat:

She laid out the blocks in a way she thought might be correct, but she won’t know until the end of the year. I can’t wait to find out “who dunnit” along with her.

Many of us got caught up in her excitement ~ and now we’ve signed up for the 2024 mystery. Here’s the information from their website:

I’ve been many places in the world, but not Greece ~ yet. So I thought it would be fun to travel there via mystery quilt. Are you intrigued? Would you like to join us? I’m not affiliated with this organization in any way ~ besides having signed up. I’m just passing the information along in case you’re as interested as I am. All the details can be found at: murdermysteryquilt.com. And, if you think you’re not advanced enough to participate, there are helpful videos included that make it fun and achievable for every skill level.

The story and stitching begin in January. Recently they revealed the “where”, connected us up with others in a Facebook group to kibitz with (I’m in the “Poseidon” group), and gave out the fabric requirements. I realized how healthy my stash is because all of the fabrics I chose were found there!

April inspired us to begin a binder to hold all the information. So I’m ready to begin!

I will occasionally include updates at the end of a blog post for anyone who doesn’t sign up, but is still curious. So stay tuned. It should be fun!

I’m so happy to share the continuation of this story with you:

I introduced you to Julie last April. I shared our story, her home, and her beautiful hand-made works of art (click here for that post). At the end of the post I also shared how, after my visit to her home, she was diagnosed with cancer which required surgery and chemo. Chemo was very hard on her, and after the 5th treatment she ended up in the ICU and rehab. It was a very difficult time and I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to pray with her by phone many times. When her health started to improve the doctors decided to run some tests before they attempted to continue with the chemo and the scans revealed ~ she was “cancer free”!!! Praise the Lord!!! and thanks to all who prayed for her. She still has treatments and doctors appointments ahead of her, but she is healing and improving day by day.

Julie is indomitable. During her chemo adventure, when she’d have good days, she was determined to complete her grandson’s t-shirt quilt ~ the one I helped her brainstorm in the beginning of the year. And she actually got it done!

The next project she had on her list was a jacket made from fabrics she purchased on our trip to Japan in 2019. She loved the jacket I’d made for that trip. I love it too and am so grateful to my friend Evelyn for sharing her pattern and her guidance in making it along with her (click here for that story).

So, shortly after the good news about her remission I was invited to grab my jacket and pattern, and join Julie and Rick for lunch. I insisted on bringing sandwiches ~ and she made the rest. She is amazing. After lunch we headed down to her studio and she started laying out some of her lovely Japanese purchases. The panel of a geisha just cried out to fill the back.

We talked about the sashiko designs I’d stitched on my sleeves, and how the jacket pattern was not easy to understand, but was worth the time to decipher. I left and she began. She would text/call with questions once in a while, and we prayed together too. At one point she sent me a photo of the lining she’d tried on to make sure it would fit.

I would listen as she spoke/wrote about her frustrations with “chemo-brain” and her bouts with exhaustion, and the side effects of all the treatments and meds. I’m so grateful for all I learned about the struggles someone goes through while fighting this “monster” (Julie’s word).

Then came the text that she’d figured out the pockets (a fete in itself with that pattern), and she was almost done. I invited Julie and Rick here for lunch this time, and we were able to model our jackets together.

What a blessing to spend time with her ~ and Mike and Rick enjoy each other’s company too!

Oh, and she brought me a gift ~ an antique yarn winder. In one of our texts she’d mentioned she was thinking of downsizing some of her wonderful antiques and asked if I’d be interested in this piece from the 1800s.

I’ve been looking for a unique piece to place above the closet in our front hall ~ when the scarecrows come down (which they will do this weekend – as the Christmas decorations go up).

Rick and Julie brought the yarn winder with them, and I can’t wait to place it in it’s lofty home. I think it will be a lovely backdrop for a group of snowmen 😁.

Most of you have heard the story of how I learned to quilt in classes with my friend Sharon Grieve Grinyer way back in 1987. Two years later she introduced me to Klaudeen Hansen and explained how Klaudeen and her group ~ the Prairie Heritage Quilters ~ helped to hang the AQS show in Paducah every year. I was invited to join them, and I’ve been a part of the hanging crew every year since. This made me an honorary Prairie Heritage Quilter, even though I’d never been to one of their meetings in Sun Prairie. These ladies were a “guild” of quilters who took Klaudeen’s classes and became good friends. Some of them did the AQS thing, but many did not.

Well, last week I was invited to speak to a quilt guild in Sun Prairie. I didn’t remember speaking there before and I was excited to pack up my “Going Round and Round” lecture and meet everyone. My family and I lived in Sun Prairie for six years, and that’s when I took the class that changed the direction of a portion of my life (bye-bye dental hygiene). I was shocked to realize we moved away 29 years ago. Time truly does “fly” by.

As I was introduced to some of the ladies I learned that this guild is the continuation of Klaudeen’s Prairie Heritage Quilters. It is a lively and fun group of quilters, and I so enjoyed being with them.

I’ve done this lecture about circles and curves a number of times, and one of the techniques I share in it is for adding curved pieces to a quilt top using a flange of contrasting fabric. My small quilt is called Goose Tricks.

As I was packing up to head to their meeting I realized that in previous lectures I hadn’t included instructions for drafting the curved lines of flying geese. I learned to do this in a class I took in the early 90s with Caryl Bryer Fallert. My sample from that class is only 12″ square, and the line of geese is pieced into the background:

It’s quite easy to draft ~ and I love paper piecing these geese. So I decided to include it in the lecture. Afterwards some of the members asked where they could find more information. So here it is:

To begin draw 2 curved, non-parallel lines that get closer as they near the top of the page. This must be drawn at the size you want the pattern to be, because we’ll be paper piecing on it.

With a small ruler, draw a line connecting the bottoms of the previous lines. Then draw another horizontal-ish line the desired distance away (on my sample it’s about 1″). This will be the segment for one “goose”.

The next line will be about the same distance away from the last one, typically I draw these at a right angle to the side lines (or close to it), but you can experiment with different angles and spacing.

Continue in this way to make more geese in the line. I usually have the geese segments get progressively shorter as they go up to give the illusion of distance as they “fly away”.

Once the segments are drawn, a center line needs to be added to the pattern. This will be done freehand, and it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Now to draft the geese! Begin at the bottom and connect the lower left corner of the rectangle to the spot where the center line crosses the top of the rectangle. Then connect the lower right corner to the same spot. Voila ~ a goose. Repeat for each segment.

Next, add numbers to give the piecing order as in this next photo.

After the pattern is made the entire line of geese can be cut out on the outer line and paper pieced. Remember that there is no seam allowance on the pattern, so as you paper piece you’ll need to leave at least 1/4″ of extra fabric hanging off the edges of the pattern. This will be trimmed to 1/4″ when the piecing is done. The following sample isn’t curved, but the seam allowances need to be added in the same way.

The simple curved line of geese I drafted here is just a sample of the many possible patterns. The geese can be made in just about any curve and with any orientation you can imagine.

Back in 2017 I used this technique on a large scale to make my quilt, “Silly Goose”, for the National Quilt Museum’s “New Quilts From an Old Favorite: Flying Geese” contest.

“Silly Goose” is 50″ x 60″, so those are BIG geese. The label reads “There’s one in every crowd. She just can’t seem to follow the leader or the rules. What a Silly Goose!” I think you can see that I had a lot of fun making this quilt. To read more about it click here.

I hope some of you will try your hand at making a curvey goose quilt. If you do ~ please send photos!

Way back in February a new member of our Fiberistas group showed us how to make One Block Wonder quilts. Ruth has made some wonderful OBW quilts and we all had a blast (to see the post about our stack and whacking playdate click here).

Eileen brought two different fabrics to cut up that day and recently she sent me a photograph of one of her finished quilts:

She cut bigger triangles than the rest of the group and I think her blocks are stunning. I especially like the way she “floated” the blocks on the background. Would you like to see the fabric she used to make this quilt? Here’s the strip she put on the back:

Yup ~ chickens! Who knew?

Lori said she bought her original fabric because it was on sale and she thought it would make a good quilt back. I would never have thought of it as something that would work in a “stack and whack” style quilt.

Wow, was I wrong!

Fascinating! Lori decided the hexagons looked awful when placed next to one another because they were all quite busy, so she chose to put the “spacer” triangles between the blocks like I did (click here for that post), and it made all the difference. The lime piped binding finishes it perfectly.

Barb used a butterfly fabric:

And ended up making three smaller quilts. Here’s one of them:

Because Barb’s fabric had only small amounts of background and an even distribution of colorful areas, her blocks didn’t have as much variety, but the quilts are lovely.

Ruth knew from the start that her chosen fabric had the same “issues” Barb’s did:

The result was a lot of similar blocks. Her daughter wanted a bed sized quilt, so Ruth made some additional 3D cube blocks and mixed them in with all of her original blocks. Then she added some really fun piecing in the borders. The resulting quilt is sew much fun.

I love that she included a strip of her original fabric along the pillow tuck at the top.

And, just to refresh your memory, here’s the crib quilt I made for my great-niece:

We all were very pleased with our finished quilts, and I was very impressed that they all were finished in less than six months. Way to go Fiberistas!

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And I can’t resist one last “Autumn at our house” photo! We have an area above the closet in our front entry hall that is a challenge to decorate. I put snowmen up there at Christmas, and my Top Stitch Umbrella graces this area in the Spring, but what to do for Fall? Well ~ Mike and I found a child sized table and chairs at a lovely shop near Whitewater, WI, and I decided those chairs would be a great resting place for a pair of scarecrows 😁!

I purchased clothes at a resale shop, filled them with leftover batting, and then had Sommer and Trey draw faces on muslin. The sign was Trey’s idea (don’t you love the way 8 year olds think?)

I enjoy having them watch us every time we walk through the front hall!

It’s the start of our October “Sisters of the Cloth retreat”. The trees are just past their peak of color and the rain is dripping on the pond. Yet it is beautiful ~ and stitching with dear friends is such a blessing!

By the time I arrived April was busy piecing.

She’d already laid out many strips of “Cabins Under the Ohio Skies” blocks. She bought the kit a few years ago for their king sized bed.

And by Saturday the borders were on! Stunning!

Jo brought show and tell ~ a green and white quilt she just competed. She’ll have it on display at Primitive Gathering’s “Red, Green and White” quilt show in Larsen, WI. The show runs November 16 – December 22.

Sandy’s show and tell was a large pillow she made for their family room. It’s filled with a pillow she’s had since a teen that was wearing out. She put a zipper in the cover just in case she wants to take a trip down memory lane.

Mary Jo arrived about 3 minutes after I did and we both were set up and sewing quite quickly. She is working on a quilt for her son.

Mary made two delightful shirts on her new serger.

Cathy is working on a quilt for her bed ~ and making it up as she goes along. Wow.

Laura was good at shopping (aren’t we all?).

She also pieced some lovely blocks and three delightful sheep (here and at the top of this post):

I’m excited about my retreat project. A few weeks ago my daughter-in-law handed me some fabrics and said. “Remember Brad’s quilt from when he was a kid?” I said I did (this is the quilt on his bed when he was around 8).

As a matter of fact, I’ve borrowed it a few times when I’ve taught classes on the bricks and mortar pattern, but I’d never seen it out at their home. Betsy continued: “We love it and fight over it on the couch each night”. How wonderful! I get it. The back is flannel and it’s been washed a lot ~ so it’s super snuggly.

Then she asked: “Would you make us another in these colors?” I was thrilled. Now I know what to make them for Christmas. So, when I began packing for retreat I pulled a bunch of scraps in black and tan to go with hers. Then I looked at the pattern and decided gold would work in the mortar (red on Brad’s quilt), but it really needed another color for the center and cornerstones to show (the blues). I texted Betsy while saying to myself “I hope she picks green”. And… she picked green 😊. Now I had my palette.

I started in cutting bricks right away and had the top done Saturday morning:

It’s ready to quilt ~ on my Sweet 16 at home.

No retreat is complete without giggles and excitement, and we had both this time! The excitement began before I arrived on Thursday. April got up and started the water in the shower to wait for the water to get warm. At one point she redirected the water to the shower head and inadvertently bumped it, causing the magnetic connection that held the head in place to disconnect… and it became a water spewing snake. The head bounced off the tub, the wall, April, and all the while she was trying to catch it. In the end both April and the entire bathroom were sopping wet!!! I wish I’d been there. It must have been exciting.

Fortunately she was kind enough to pose so we can truly appreciate her adventure 🤣:

The following morning Sandy and Cathy were the first ones down in the sewing room. As Sandy sat down she saw something run along the wall and thought we had mice. As she got closer she realized it was a chipmunk. Yes, a chipmunk! Being the quick witted, swift moving quilters that they are, Sandy ran and closed the door to the rest of the house while Cathy opened the door to the outside. They did a magnificent job of herding that little critter back out to his home and family. Whew!

Since they didn’t take the time to snap a photo, they agreed to pose for us:

Please don’t worry. No animals were harmed in the making of this blog post. Rather, I found some wool in the scrap bag and fashioned our new mascot from it. Meet Chippy:

Oh, I forgot to mention that the warmish rain from Thursday gave way to temps in the 30s and 40s. Guess winter is making it’s way into Wisconsin. But we were warm, cozy and very blessed to be together for another wonderful retreat. Time to head home 😊.

Last week I wrote about a quilt I backed with Minky, in which I turned the back to the front to make a self-binding. Sandy is a newer blog reader and asked for more information on this technique. I’ve used it many times and the first time was on a quilt for my granddaughter Rainee, who was 3 at the time ~ and she’s now 11. My how time flies. I wrote a post on it at that time and you can click here for the step-by-step tutorial. Thanks for asking Sandy!

And now for the story of my most recent quilt:

The son of our dear friends, Randy and Donna, died in a tragic accident in 2020. Stephen was deeply loved by his family and this was a very difficult time. In a conversation with his mom a year or so after his death, she asked if I’d ever made a quilt from clothing. I told her I’d made many t-shirt quilts, and some of those were memorial quilts, but I’d be happy to make whatever they’d like. Quite a bit of time passed and one day I got a text saying she “was ready”. We agreed on a time to meet and then she texted me “I don’t know why this is so hard for me”. My response was “I do. I can’t even imagine how hard this must be.”

We met for lunch and had a lovely conversation. Then the subject turned to Stephen’s quilt. She said to just do whatever I wanted with the bag of clothes she’d brought. I asked her many questions and I could see discussing it was difficult for her. So I said I’d come up with a few options and share them with her. I went home and spread out the contents of the bag. Stephen was an honored marine veteran, and an avid hunter. His clothes reflected that.

The color palette was pretty much set, but what would I do with that orange hunting vest? Just wait and see 😊! I chose a simple 8″ block, and began to cut and piece. Quite a bit of stabilizing of the stretchy fabrics was need. And, as far as the orange, I cut it into 1″ bias strips and pressed them in half to be sewn into some of the seams.

Also included in the bag was an 8″ x 10″ photo of Stephen’s beloved cat Toki.

I cleaned up the photo in Affinity Photo, lightened the background, and printed Toki on fabric. Then I completed 9 blocks and laid them out together:

At this point I sent a photo of the project to Donna with a bunch of questions: Do you like the blocks? Is a small wallhanging good, or would you like it larger? Would you like a lap quilt to snuggle with?

She responded with “it’s fine. We’ll leave it to your descretion”. This was a learning moment for me. I realized these decisions were uncomfortable for them and they wanted the quilt, but they didn’t really know what they wanted. I was overwhelming them with questions and needed to be more aware of the signals these dear people were sending.

So I decided to make the wallhanging a little larger, add narrow borders, quilt it, bind it, and embellish with the extra items she’d included in the bag. One of the extra items was a pair of mittens from his childhood. They were too big to appliqué to the quilt, so I traced around one, shrunk the pattern down, and cut two from one of the mittens. The scale was much better.

I then added a simple label to the back.

Once it was completed I put it in a gift bag and handed it to Donna the next time I saw her. I told her to look at it when they were ready. I then asked her if we could meet up and have a conversation about what questions were appropriate and any advice she had for me if I have the opportunity to do this again for someone else. She agreed. Later that day I received a text that said “I can’t tell you how much I love the quilt! We’ll talk about it soon. THANK YOU!”

The Bible says that “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord; for those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). I’ve seen this work in Randy and Donna’s life. While mourning for Stephen they attended a Grief Share program. I have another friend who runs one of these programs through her church in Oconomowoc, and it has been a blessing to so many who are suffering. As part of their healing, Randy and Donna have started a Grief Share group of their own here in Watertown. It’s a ten week program which they repeat throughout the year. They are reaching so many with healing. God has used their grief to bless many, many others; and as a result Randy and Donna are growing and being blessed! Praise the Lord!

If you or someone you know is trying to cope with the loss of a loved one, I highly recommend searching out a Grief Share group in your area. Click here for the Grief Share site!

Before I get to this week’s story, I have a correction to last week’s post. In it I had a link to the Magna-dots I use for blade changing. The link was incorrect. Click here for Cynthia’s site.

And now for this week’s “topic of the week”!

It’s wedding time again! This time we celebrated the marriage of a niece on Mike’s side of the family, and I wanted to do what I traditionally do ~ make Rachel and Cory a snuggle quilt. I wasn’t sure what they would like so I dug through my UFO bins once again and found a top I’d made from two jelly rolls: one with warm colors and the other with cool. I’ve always loved the pattern and colors of this quilt top.

I decided the quilt needed to be longer, and not quite so wide, so I took off two strips, evened off the top and bottom and sewed the extra strips in place. I didn’t take a photo at that time, but through the magic of Photoshop, this is what it was supposed to look like:

I then took this top to my last retreat, along with a cute paw print fabric (they love dogs and cats).

I stitched the borders on and put it back in my bag to be layered and quilted at home. Prior to the wedding I took it out and decided to photograph it before layering it. This was a humbling experience.

This is not a bad photo of a quilt top. This is a photo of a bad quilt top. I added the borders without actually squaring up the top! I should know better ~ right? The right side of the top is over 1″ shorter than the left. I’ve said it before “when I think I’m hot stuff, the Lord humbles me”.

So why am I showing it to you? Because I found a fix that worked. I think the original problem was caused by all the strips being cut on the bias. This could work to my advantage because blocking a quilt top works best when there are a lot of biases. It was worth a try. This is something I’ve done in the past and I hope the review is helpful.

There was carpeting in the studio at my other house, but in this house I had to hike upstairs to the spare bedroom. I laid out old towels, and grabbed some old quilting pins (saved for this type of project) and a few large rulers.

The quilt was smoothed out on the towels and misted with water to dampen. Starting in one corner I laid my largest square ruler 1/4″ in from the edges. I then “piggybacked” 2 long rulers against the edges of the square (the rulers are outlined in red and blue so they are easier to see).

Then I tugged and pinned the top into the carpet and pad, along the edges of the rulers.

Because the cotton fibers were damp they were easy to maneuver where I wanted them. I continued around the quilt top until it was square. Wow – It looked much better, and when I measured it I was pleased. This type of blocking can also be done on a design wall, if you have one you can pin into that’s big enough.

I let it dry overnight and when the pins came out ~ it stayed right where I wanted it. If it hadn’t stayed put, I would have re-dampened, re-pinned, and then gently pressed over the entire quilt with a damp press cloth and a hot iron, to encourage it a bit more firmly 😊.

So it was time to layer the quilt sandwich for quilting. I chose a soft, gray minky™ for the back and a thin 80/20 batt (I like the results better when I combine a thin batt with a minky™ back). Some of you may remember that I often say “quilting the quilt should be as much fun as making the top”, so I asked myself “what quilting design would be fun today?” And as usual I answered “spirals”. I decided to use orange thread and quilt in the warm colored stripes.

Isn’t minky™ gorgeous on the back?

I turned the gray backing to the front as a binding and it was done!

The wedding was lovely,

and I can’t wait to get a photo of the happy couple with their new quilt! Stay tuned!

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And here’s my Autumn photo of the week:

It finally feels like Fall! It’s my favorite season and I love visiting the pumpkin farm and setting out the Autumn decorations. I hope you won’t mind my sharing a photo each week 😊, like this one of Autumn on our deck:

And now for “Scrubbie Quilts”: As a little background information for my piece ~ our big challenge this year will be a triptych: three finished quilts hung together from one sleeve. There’s more to that challenge to be shared in a future post, but this idea inspired me to try a triptych on a smaller scale ~ and incorporate the scrubbie.

But not all. Choosing which scrubbie was the easy part ~ what to do with it wasn’t quite so easy.

I began by selecting some of my rust dyed fabric (click here for that post) and a lovely blue fabric that went well with it. I cut out three rectangles of gradated size, and decided to fuse strips of the opposite fabric in a pleasing arrangement using the “Parallelisms” technique from my book Where Do I Start With Fiber Art? (click here to read about my book)

Nice, but it needed more. Would contrasting “diamonds” work?

Yes! Now what to do with the scrubbie? I tried pulling strands of the copper metal out and braiding them, but that was not fun or easy. Then I unrolled the scrubbie and was enthralled by the weaving of the strands. Perhaps I could flatten it (a fete in itself) and capture a piece inside each “diamond”:

Ooh – that worked! I actually had to make each diamond separately ~ from background, scrubbie and “frame” ~ then square that unit up and appliqué it to the main background with a blind hem stitch.

I soon discovered using rust dyed fabric and metal mesh (which all tend to be be hard on blades, thread and needles), proved to be difficult. After squaring up each diamond with my rotary cutter ~ the blade was shot (it was time to change it anyways). I don’t mind that task any more because I use Magna-Dots™:

For my step-by-step blade changing post with the wooden Magna-Dots™ please click here. The link to order magna dots has changed since that post. Click here for Cynthia’s site.

Once the blade was changed and the “diamonds” were in place, it was time to determine how to quilt each panel. I like to cover the piece with Glad Press and Seal™ and experiment with different designs by drawing with washable markers.

Once those decisions were made, I layered the sandwiches with a thin batt and pinned with straight pins because each panel was small.

As I stitched my chosen design I had to deal with a few issues due to quilting through the rust. I persevered and my three quilts were finished. It was time for binding. Simple seemed best, so I bound them all with a narrow blue binding and I’m very pleased with the results.

Any thoughts on what I should name it?

I recently showed this quilt to Sommer and Trey. I explained that the quilts got progressively smaller, and the number of skinny strips changed too. Then Trey said “yeah, and the strips got smaller in multiples of three”. Sometimes 8 years olds can really amaze us 😁!

And, to see all the amazing ThreadBender’s Scrubbie Quilts, click here! Thanks ThreadBenders, for another fun learning experience.