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This past September while at the Great Wisconsin Quilt show, I had some time to visit the vendors. I was especially intrigued by all the gradation fabrics I found there since I presented 3 lectures on the topic.

I was fascinated by this table topper hanging in one of the booths. It was made out of circles from a gradation fabric (it was orange, so I was immediately drawn in).

The owner of the booth told me it was a Cheryl Phillips pattern, but they didn’t have it available. Hmm, that name sounded familiar. So I did a search and found Cheryl’s site (click here to visit for yourself).

And on the site I found her Bonus Blossom pattern which was used to create the pretty topper.

So why did her name sound familiar? As I scrolled through her site I realized the “Phoenix” quilt I helped Renee put together a few years ago was Cheryl’s pattern. Here’s Renee’s quilt top and you can click here to read the story. I think Cheryl Phillips loves gradations as much as I do!

I recently shared my Gradation lecture and workshop with a guild in Eagle River, WI. The Cranberry Quilters are a delightful group, and we had so much fun playing with gradation fabrics that I couldn’t resist pulling out one of mine, while unpacking after the trip, and planning a Bonus Blossom topper for myself.

I took the fabric along on retreat the following week and cut 6 red/orange circles from one stripe, and 6 purple/blue/green circles from another. I sewed 1 circle of each, right sides together with a circle of thin batting, turned it right side out and repeated to make 6 turned circles. Then I used a faux cathedral window technique to sew the circles together. Here’s the back of my topper.

Once all my circles were connected I realized that I wasn’t consistent when I lined up the front and back fabrics. Do you see the problem? Here’s the front:

I think it’s really pretty, but it’s not consistent. I kept the greens along the outside edge on the front, while half the back circles have the orange on the outer edge and the other half ~ the dark red. It may not be consistent, but I’m choosing love my very original design. I’m certainly not going to take all those circles apart! The batting caused a bit of puckering on the front, but I’m choosing to think it adds to the blossom effect 🤣. I do love the way the hot colored gradation plays with the cool one. I’m not sure if I’ll use it as a table topper or hang it on the wall. Hmm.

A few days after I arrived home from retreat the grandkids came over. Mike came in from outside and told us we had to come out and see a tree in our yard. Amazing colors! The kids wanted to jump right in. It looks like a gradation tree to me!

Two days later the leaves were all on the ground. Glad we captured this colorful moment.

We’re making progress on our “new” home. The roof has been replaced and we have money down on the exterior siding which should be done in November. Our carpenter friend, John, has repaired almost every door and threshold in the house, and now he’s working on my studio!!! Hooray! I’ll be posting an update on that story soon.

One of the problems John helped us with was in the upstairs bathroom. There was a 4″ gap on both sides of the vanity ~ and the previous owner didn’t finish the floor and wall at the back of the openings. It was ugly. So John made “boxes” to fill the void and I painted them.

It looked much better, but it need a little something more. Being an interior bathroom there were no windows, so an opening had been made to the foyer below, and a stained glass window was put in place to give the small room some light. It’s actually quite lovely and it can be tipped open for ventilation.

This gave me an idea. Perhaps our vanity needed stained glass sidelights. So I measured the space, did a few sketches,

and traced my chosen design onto fusible interfacing. Then I cut fabric pieces and fused them in place on the interfacing.

If you’ve never used Clover Fusible Quick Bias™, or you haven’t played with it in a while, I highly recommend it. I’m grateful that I have a few spools in a variety of colors on hand (and that I found the box that currently contains them). For this project I chose the traditional black “leading”. I cut the pieces and ironed them in place one at a time, being careful to hide the ends under crossing strips.

Since my sidelights would be laying on a flat surface I decided not to use batting. So I layered them with a backing fabric and quilted everything by topstitching the edges of all the bias strips with black thread. They were finished with a 1/4″ wide black binding,

And set in place.

They really do draw everything together!

And I made them completely out of my stash. That’s why we need a stash 😊!

I’ve used Quick Bias in a number of projects and thought I’d share just a few more:

Do you have any stained glass quilts you’d like to share? Please email me photos at: .

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Also, I have a few more initial signatures to share that were inspired by a recent post (click here for that post). Tomi Fay wrote that she likes to just use her initials in lower case:

“My initials – TFF, are very boxy so not open to flourish. I do not like handwriting my capital letters. I write my name by printing the T, F, and F and then writing the rest of the name. So years ago when I had a job where I had to initial items I read, I decided to just write my initials in lower-case script. I never thought of putting these on a quilt!” 

Donna is a part of ThreadBenders and sent me her doodle page:

“I’ve been doodling with this since your suggestion at our meeting. Attached are some of my doodles. I think I’ve settled on the large B with D in top section, M in bottom section…all surrounded by a large Q. I’ll try to have a sample by Wednesday for our meeting.”

I really enjoy seeing what quilters come up with 😊!

I think one of my favorite requirements for quilty friends is a sense of silliness. The group that I go on retreat with certainly fits that criteria. At our Spring retreat April showed us a pair of old, dirty bib overalls her husband got at a rummage sale. He wanted to stuff them to make a Halloween scarecrow, but she wanted to wash them, patch the holes with doilies, and wear them. We were all encouraging her and then the conversation morphed into a challenge ~ where we would each buy a pair of bib overalls and embellish them. Cathy suggested we call it the Bib-a-thon, and the big reveal was planned for our October retreat!

We gathered together this past Thursday for our Autumn retreat at Cattail,

set up our machines and began to stitch, and talk, and giggle.

On Friday Ruth, a first timer, arrived and was welcomed into the group. From the start it was pretty obvious she wasn’t wearing bibs, since she didn’t even know about the challenge, and then one of the group started teasing that she was wearing invisibibs 😄.

Friday lunch is always spent at Fitz’s restaurant on Lake Wisconsin, and we were hoping our usual waitress would be there to pick the best bibs. But sometimes plans don’t turn out the way we intend. Shortly before we were to leave for lunch Cathy injured her leg and got a free trip to the urgent care. She’s doing fine and we made it to Fitz’s for dinner.

We asked our wonderful waitress Pam to pick her favorite and…she picked Ruth’s invisabibs 🤣.

We held a secret viewer’s choice vote amongst ourselves and Sandy was the winner of that! Her appliqués are amazing.

Here’s the fashion show of the rest of us:

I’m pretty sure there was more talking and eating accomplished than sewing, but a good time was had by all. Now where am I going to wear those bibs???

In last week’s post I asked the kids to sign the artwork they painted on our garden shed. I was surprised that they both decided to use only their initials (click here to read that post).

Over the years I’ve also signed things with my initials and I’ve done some other fun things with them too. When Wendy and I led our Hawaiian cruise, we came up with a project using our initials in our own version of Hawaiian appliqué (to read that post click here).

The green quilt includes the initials for our travel name: Sew We Go ~ SWG ~ in the design. The yellow one has my own initials ~ CLK.

A long time ago I came up with a quick signature using my initials. I like to utilize it when signing small or artsy quilts. When I wrote “Where Do I Start With Fiber Art” I decided it would be fun to autograph the books with my personal “brand” 😊.

Recently my friend, Lori Jean Schloesser, signed the back of one of her art quilts with her version of her initial autograph, along with the year.

She embroidered it ~ and everyone in our art guild was intrigued. So we decided to play around with our initials during our meeting. I thought you’d enjoy seeing some of the trials:

Connie sent me a photo of her 2 favorites ~

Lori mentioned that we didn’t need to include our middle initial, and it didn’t really matter which one came first or was bigger. It’s the artist’s choice and there’s no right or wrong. We can even choose to come up with a new design down the road 😊.

Kay’s initials are KAC, and here is her trial page:

I like the ones where the A fits into the bottom of the K. But it’s not up to me, and Kay wasn’t sure which one was “the one” by the end of the meeting.

Barb’s initials are BAG, and here’s her trial page ~

I tend to prefer the ones where the small g fits into the bottom of the capital B. It will be fun to see which one she’ll choose.

Lori also mentioned finishing the initials by placing them in a circle, square or other shape; or even reversing a letter. Hmm. So many fun ideas that I decided to play a little more in a drawing program on my computer:

I’m still kind of partial to my original design, but it was fun to do a little doodling.

So, do you have an “initial signature”? If not, I highly recommend doodling around and seeing what you come up with. If you come up with your own unique brand, please feel free to share it by sending me a photo at: .

Every so often I have a blog post idea that isn’t really about quilting, but it’s so much fun I have to find a way to give it a quilty spin. So, here’s the quilting part 😁:

Way back in 2004 the Milwaukee Art Quilters had a challenge entitled Name That Tune. Now I attended high school in the 70s, and my favorite slow dance song way back then was Color My World by Chicago. I immediately came up with a fun way to make that into a quilt, paintbrush, paint and all:

The problem was that the long narrow size requirements left a lot of open space. How was I going to fill the bottom expanse? Well, if I put God’s hands there in the stars the quilt could be subtitled He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands ~ a second tune to name! This presented another problem. I can’t draw hands. So I had my teenage son, Brad, pose for me,

and those hands were quilted in with silver thread:

It ended up being a really fun group of quilts and you can click here to visit the Name that Tune page of the Milwaukee Art Quilters site.

Are you ready for the segue???

A few weeks ago, as the grandkids (Brad’s kids) and I drove down Main Street in Watertown, I pointed out the new mural that was being painted on the side of the florist shop. Sommer replied “I wish someone would let me paint flowers on a building”.

Fast forward to last week. We have an old garden shed in our yard and Mike decided it was time to clean it out, patch the holes and paint it.

He asked me what color I wanted it painted. I bet you can see where this is going. It took a few minutes for that moment in the car to come back to me, and then I realized Mike had to paint it sky blue ~ and we could give Sommer her wish.

Once he had it done I called the kids, and yesterday they came over in their paint clothes. Trey (7) was as excited as Sommer (10). My only request was BIG flowers, otherwise they could do whatever they wanted. Sommer chose the front:

and Trey the left side.

Great grandpa and Great grandma stopped by to supervise.

And Mike took a break from his yard work to take a few photos and tickle Trey.

Once Trey got back to painting, it didn’t take long for the garden to grow,

And the artists to sign their work. Trey decided on big initials

While Sommer did a small initialing near each flower:

Then they went inside the shed to play and make faces at the grown ups. I couldn’t resist a window shot and, while going through the photos that night, I was surprised to see me and Mike in the window too!

A good time was had by all!

It was a cool, but sunny Autumn afternoon, and one I’ll remember for a very long time! These kids really do add color to my world!

Have you ever finished a quilt, binding and all, only to realize later that it’s not big enough to make you happy?!?

In 2020 I made a new quilt for our king sized bed (click here to read a post about quilting this quilt). It fit great ~ with the bed skirt completing the look.

Then we got a new “Sleep Number” bed that couldn’t have a bed skirt because it had a divided mattress. The beige base looked ok, but if I didn’t tuck the sheets up they hung down and it was obvious the quilt was just a little too small. The good news was our bedroom was upstairs and I didn’t have to look at it very often. Then we moved and our bedroom is now right next to the living room.

Can you see the sheet hanging below the quilt on the left? Grr! I also really didn’t like the hard plastic showing everywhere else (as on the right corner). Grr again!

So last week I decided it was time to add a border to a finished quilt. I’ve done a tutorial on this technique before, but I thought it might be worth repeating. The first step was to remove the old binding and, since I had stitched it down with a machine serpentine stitch instead of hand appliqué, it took me two nights.

Once the binding was off ~ I had the new borders sewn on in a day. Ripping is certainly less fun and more time consuming than sewing 😊.

To add the borders I cut new 5 1/2″ strips for the front, back, and from batting too.

I layered a front border strip, right sides together, along an edge of the quilt center, then a strip of batting, and pinned it in place.

Then I flipped it over and pinned the back border strip along the entire edge also. I sewed the borders on through all the layers; folded everything away from the quilt center, pressed, secured them flat; and added the next border until all the border strips were attached.

This new border was wide enough to require quilting, so I echoed the diamond quilting lines from the rest of the quilt, using rulers and my mid-arm.

I then needed to square everything up before attaching a binding. The old binding wasn’t long enough and I didn’t have any more of that fabric to add the extra length, so I cut new binding and added it all the way around. I secured it with a serpentine stitch once again ~ and I plan to never rip it off 😊.

Every time I look in the bedroom I am assured that it was worth it!

We usually think of a quilt as being finished when the binding is on, but sometimes it isn’t truly finished for quite a while after that!

“Congratulations on the publication of your new book!  I’m wondering if
you might be able to do a guild lecture possibly followed by a  workshop
featuring your intriguing new twist on building memories with quilt
blocks?”

A workshop on the techniques in my book ~ what a great idea! So I’ve been noodling on it and here’s what I’ve come up with:

In my Seminole Sampler workshop I supply kits for making a number of different Seminole borders that the students can keep with their handouts for inspiration and direction in future quilts. No UFO – just more tools in the quilting technique toolbox! It’s been very popular.

So should this workshop be kitted? Should it be samples as in the class above? Or should the students make a project to hang on the wall? The workshop is being held in October and, after quite a bit of noodling, I decided a small project with an Autumn theme would be nice. The students would make two 8″ x 11″ blocks in order to learn a number of techniques, and then I’d demonstrate some helpful finishing techniques so they could see the project through to completion and hang it on the wall. But if that’s not their thing, they can simply slip the samples into a page protector to save for future reference. Here’s the project:

The techniques learned will be Repliqué, raw edged Repliqué, shadow Repliqué, and 2 finishing methods, along with my simple way of “block connecting”. With each of those techniques learned a quilter can re-create any photo as a quilt block!

I decided not to kit the class because the supply list is quite small and I thought students might want to choose their own Autumn fabrics. I invited 3 friends to take a “guinea pig” class and see how it would work in a 3 hour workshop format – and it worked great! I’m looking forward to teaching it in Janesville next month! If your guild would be interested in having me come and share my Modular Memory Quilts, or any of my offerings, please visit the classes page of my website by clicking here! Then email me at: .

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Also, I love it when I receive emails with photos that were sent in response to one of my blog posts. Crystal sent me this response to last week’s post about Karen and Lynn’s jeans quilt:

“Hello Chris, After reading this week’s piece about one lady’s quilt made from her husband’s old work jeans and t-shirts I thought you might like to see a quilt that I made from my husband’s old flannel shirts in 2018. My overall design is a simple one.  The back is fabric I bought that represents my husband’s lifelong fishing hobby. I used wool batting to make it winter cozy. The long arm quilting was done by Anne Books.  The bonus was that I got eight to ten buttons from each shirt that I of course saved!”

I’m sure her husband loves it! And she ended up with buttons too! Thanks Crystal 😊!

Ken is a man with a loving family who worked as an industrial service plumber during his career. Over the years his wife, Karen, mended his jeans and overalls and, about 4 years ago, that pile of mending gave her an idea. She and her daughter Lynn decided it would be fun to make him a quilt from his old clothes (she smiled when she told me that it would be more fun than mending them). So here’s the story:

I met Lynn “virtually” last year when I was recording a Zoom lecture for PBS. Lynn is a video production specialist and I was blessed to work with her. This year PBS recorded my lecture at the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show in Madison last week, and I was able to work with Lynn again.

We got to talking and she told me she was a quilter and had a quilt in the show. Then she told me a bit about her quilt, and her parents, and I could tell this was a blog post story waiting to be shared.

After my class that day I went searching through the quilt exhibit and found Lynn’s quilt.

I emailed Lynn and asked if I could meet up with her and her mom and get the rest of the story. When we got together there was a crowd at the quilt. The viewers were excited to talk to Karen and Lynn and have their questions answered.

Then we sat down and chatted and that’s when Karen told me about the jeans. She and Lynn decided their quilt would be a secret and they got together and went through Ken’s clothes. They told me he is a man who never wastes anything, so they determined he would be happiest if the entire quilt was made from reused fabric. So, once they cut up the parts of his garments that would make the best blocks, they cut strips from his gray work shirts to use for the sashing between the blocks.

Karen gathered all the materials and did most of the cutting and some of the pressing.  She also did some hand sewing, such as on the Miller patch. They collaborated on the design and choice of which fabrics went where. Lynn was the sewer who put the blocks together. The story goes that Karen thought it would be nice to use Ken’s t-shirts for the back, but Lynn wasn’t sure a two sided quilt would be something she wanted to attempt. The t-shirt idea eventually won out and Lynn was relieved that it went together as well as it did.

In the end the only part of the quilt that had to be purchased new was the interfacing for the t-shirts.

They presented it to Ken and he loved it (how could he not 😊!)

Thanks to these two dear women for sharing their quilt and it’s story!

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And I just have to add a little bit to my previous post about buttons (click here to read that post). I enjoyed reading all the comments. Someone said their grandchildren enjoyed playing and counting her buttons. Why didn’t I think of that? The next time Sommer and Trey are over I may find out exactly how many I have 😁.

My friend Patti sent me a few pictures of her buttons with this comment:

“Like Lorraine, I have loved buttons since I was a child. My husband Ed made this “roof” for me to fit a doll house which a friend had started and abandoned. Another friend drinks Starbucks drinks and she saved the bottles for me. They fit the “floors” of the doll house perfectly.”

She continued with another email:

“Ed made this container for me. It fits exactly six of my button bottles at once so I can take them anywhere. Friends come and select buttons for their projects, I bring buttons to meetings when someone has requested a specific color or type and these are immediately put into a finished project/new home.
Buttons bring things together and make things beautiful.”

Notice the delightful details:

Thanks Patti, for sharing your collection, and the smiles!