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I need to share a quick note before I get to this week’s post. One of the two servers I use to send emails out each week has deleted my account. Because of the holiday I couldn’t get hold of anyone to explain why. This means that over 1000 quilters I usually communicate with won’t hear from me. If you got an email, it means you’re with my other server and you’re ok. If you found this post, but didn’t get an email this week, please email me at: so I can put you back on the list. I apologize for the inconvenience and hopefully will be able to get those addresses back soon. Thanks ~ and now for the post:

Thank you for all the well wishes and kind comments about the nativity my parents gifted me. Those comments meant a lot to all of us 😊. I only have a few nativities, and this one is the most special. On the other hand…

I think another of my collections has become an obsession ~ and Mike thinks I may need professional help!

The collection started innocently enough when I purchased my first hanging snowmen at a craft fair in the 80s.

Some I’ve purchased, some were gifts and a few I stitched myself. I didn’t realize how much my collection had grown until I started decorating for Christmas this year. Last year, in the midst of the home renovations, I began choosing spots to hang and set up our holiday trim, only to have things fall off and fall over as the workers shook it all up while tearing the old siding and windows off of our home.

We are really enjoying the peace (and quiet) and beauty (without the muddy mess) of the Christmas season this year.

So I had a blast deciding where the snowpeople in my collection should spend the winter. Well, it really spread out fast. I have tree danglers:

staircase sitters:

front hall freeloaders:

table toppers:

powder room posers:

desktop dalliers:

and a lofty gathering of loiterers over the front hall closet (the antique yarn winder from a previous post is adorning the dining room until the snow season is over):

So you might think I have enough, but no!!! (I told you it was an obsession!). I hadn’t planned to add to my collection, but one thing led to another and… well here’s the story:

In the beginning of December, when Mike and I went out to hang the icicle lights on the back deck rail, all 6 strands were dead. I decided it was time for a creative change and began noodling.

Years ago Mike made a bunch of pumpkins from logs (we have 9 of them, but this was the only photo I could find).

So… I asked myself “do we need a few wooden snowmen?”

The answer was yes! Plus, the hay bale we’d used for our Autumn decorations this year was frozen to the deck. Could it be incorporated? When we moved in we found some giant pine cones and birch sticks behind the shed. Ooh ~ it was all coming together. I grabbed 3 logs from a tree Mike had recently cut down, asked him to slap some white paint on them (he was already painting the inside of the garage), and then I got to work painting faces. After cutting a few strips of fleece for scarves, and adding some abandoned decorations from the bottom of a box ~ it was done!

An early December snow and a new string of lights made the display complete. I hope they make you smile!

PS I don’t need any more snowpeople! I think I’m done collecting! Perhaps I need to find a support group for this 🤣?!?

Happy New Year!!!

I was given a very special addition to our Christmas decor this year.

My Mom and Dad invited us over on my birthday in October ~ and she told me it was going to be a very special birthday. That really had me wondering. When we arrived they both were quite excited and took me into mom’s study to see the special gift she had crocheted for me. You might remember all the delightful items she’s made for family over the years. From Star Wars characters for the great grandchildren,

to snowpeople:

They’ve all been delightful and loved! But this time she outdid herself. She crocheted me a nativity!

Aren’t baby Jesus and Mary precious!

Mom actually placed some of her old earrings in the crowns of the kings. And the gold gift is Dad’s cuff link, filled with leftover gold from his dental practice (which he’s been retired from for decades).

She and Dad built the stable. Mom crocheted the roof and poles, and then they covered the floor and back with pieces of an old green sweater of Dad’s!

And just look at the detail on these delightful animals!

I couldn’t resist setting it in a place of honor right away, and at our family Thanksgiving gathering it was there for all to enjoy!

Trey especially loved rearranging the people and animals, and pointing out all the embellishments Mom included.

What a priceless gift! And a tribute to our Saviour! I am beyond blessed.

A Very Merry Christmas to you all!

This past Fall I posted a story about a local art show I participated in, and the artist exchange that resulted (please click here to read that story). I joined the Watertown Arts Council after the show, and have been added to their mailing list. So, the story continues:

Sommer and Trey come over every Wednesday after school to hang out with us. On one of those Wednesdays I showed them a flyer I’d received from the Watertown Arts Council, advertising an art contest they were hosting called the “Joy of Art”. As we talked about whether or not they wanted to enter the contest, they started asking me about a quilt I have hanging above our front entry.

I explained that I learned how to draft it using a “vanishing point” in a class I took way back in 1991. Katie Pasquini is a talented quilter and a great teacher ~ and my love for geometry made this class so exciting.

We drafted and stitched some interesting blocks in that class. I also drafted a long “corridor” with a “box” behind it, and went home wondering what I would ever do with it.

Well, the next year I read in Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine that they were hosting a competition to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus discovering America entitled “Discovering a New World in Quiltmaking”. At this point I’d only been quilting for 4 years and had never made an art quilt. So, when a vision popped into my mind, I shook my head and wondered how I could ever make that quilt. In essence I saw (in my mind) the world as a quilter would have seen it in 1491, flat earth and all. Columbus’ ships would obviously reach a point where they tumbled off the edge of the world and into a void. This void would be filled with quilt block stars, and a sparkling dragon ~ ready to gobble them up (crazy, I know!)

The first question I asked myself was “how would I do it?”, and the second was “how would I give it depth?”. Then that drawing came to mind. After a lot of trail and error, “1491 – A Quilter’s View” became the first art quilt I ever made for competition:

The dragon is hand quilted in metallic thread, and the stars were template pieced using lamé. I made the ships with my Repliqué technique, and the white orb in the box is the moon because it had no where else to go when the sun was shining above. The kids loved the story and wanted to learn how to draft perspective using a vanishing point.

So we grabbed paper, pencils and rulers, and I did a quick vanishing point demo, thinking they would tire of it quickly. Sommer was mildly interested:

but Trey, who usually doesn’t care much for drawing and coloring, was hooked. I showed them how to make a “road” first. Then we made a “box” like the quilt above our door.

He decided to connect them and make a road going into the box – with a door at the end! Then he wanted crayons to color it in.

As he began coloring I realized I had to leave for my ThreadBenders meeting. Grandpa was making dinner as I flew out the door (he is a blessing!). I joined my friends and, as I told them about the afternoon’s events, they asked if I took any photos. I called Mike and he said they were still drawing! I’m very grateful he took these pics!

I came home to Trey’s drawing and knew I had to enter it in the art show. I was amazed at all the fun details he included in his joyful picture.

Trey called his quilt Hallway Road and I entered it in the youth category. There were many fun pieces in that one.

I decided to enter my Citrus Splash quilt in the adult category. It was a viewer’s choice competition. Trey didn’t place in the show, but my quilt tied for first place 😁!

I loved Trey’s work and asked him if I could hang it in our computer room. He said yes. I think we’ll get him a “drawing perspective” book for kids this Christmas. Gotta encourage the creativity 😀.

In October I posted about a memorial quilt I’d made for friends whose son had passed away (click here for that post). I’ve recently completed a second quilt for their daughter. It’s very similar to the first, but with an interesting change I’ll share at the end of this post. But first I have to share a problem I ran into ~ and how I solved it. I wanted to center an embellishment on an odd sized block.

This block measures 5 1/8″ x 7 5/8″ ~ ugh!

Doing the math to measure half of 5 1/8″ didn’t sound like fun. Niether did 7 5/8″. What to do? The KISS method hit me ~ keep it simple! So I cut out a piece of scrap paper the size of the block:

Folded it into quarters:

Set it in a corner of the block and voila ~ there was the center spot!

I poked my stylus through the quilt at the corner of the paper. The embellishment I wanted to insert in the quilt had a post, so I used an awl to make the hole larger:

And pushed the post through it:

WooHoo ~ it worked!

So, what’s the other interesting thing I learned while making this quilt? Well, one of the shirts Donna gave me had a sharpshooter patch on each sleeve. I cut both off and used one in each quilt.

While at retreat I was making more blocks for the second quilt and I decided the shirt was of no value without the sleeves. So I began cutting the buttons off. You can never have too many buttons.

My friend Cathy walked by and asked what I was doing. That’s when she stopped me and suggested I use a pocket or two in the quilt. Wow ~ what a great idea! You see, Donna had also sent me a photo of a letter Stephen had written to his sister shortly before he died. I wasn’t sure how I could make that a part of the quilt until that moment. So I cut out a pocket:

And it became a block in the quilt. Once the quilt was finished I sewed the button back on and tucked a copy of the letter in the pocket. Thanks Cathy!

Now if I can just remember that paper folding trick the next time I need to center something in an odd sized block 🤣.

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And just a few seasonal photos ~

A week or two before Christmas every year we have our traditional cookie baking time. My mom and I haven’t missed a year of doing this together since I was able to help (so this started a looooooong time ago!) This year schedules have been a bit crazy, so I went to Mom and Dad’s to make the Spritz cookies with them:

And the kids helped grandpa and me make the gingerbread cookies on a different day:

Once they were in the oven, Trey demonstrated his excitement:

That boy can really make me smile!

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!