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What a blessing to have Christmas fall on a Sunday. Our church usually has the Christmas service on Christmas Eve, and that’s when we are together with my Dad’s side of the family. I’m so joyful to be heading to worship on this Christmas morning!

The past few weeks have been exciting. It’s been such fun to find new places for all our decorations. To start, the 12′ Christmas tree that looked lovely in our old home was just too tall for our new one. So we found it a good home, and then found a new tree at a thrift store. It’s 9′ tall and fits beautifully!

I love the perspective from the second floor walkway:

There’s a quaint shelf under the kitchen cabinets that now holds some of my favorite pieces.

Each year I look forward to cookie baking day with my mom and dad. For the past few years we’ve held it at our home, but my oven hasn’t been working right, so we got together at my parent’s condo. Praise God, I’ve never missed a year of this lovely tradition and usually the kids and grandkids join in. This year Brad, Sommer and Trey were there.

I finished the Santa Wreath that Cathy and I were working on in Michigan. These guys make me smile!

I could do without the below zero temperatures this year, but it is truly a white Christmas – and it is beautiful!

Praying each of you has a blessed Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year!

This is really a whole house update 😊. We are making progress and so happy to be blessed with our lovely home.

In a previous post I mentioned my friend Elliahna. She is the high school student who’s been painting much of the interior of our home.

She recently finished all of the rooms upstairs and she did an amazing job! Having a teenager paint for us has been a great blessing. She often makes me smile, like when she ended one day only halfway done in the guest room. Here’s what I found when I took a peek after she’d left:

And here’s how it looks now:

Lovely!

In my last new home update I shared my dreams for my new studio (click here to read that post – by the way, Elli loved the pillowcase I made her 😊).

John has been busy working on my studio closet.

When he had the walls and shelves in place he asked me to put stuff on them so they would settle before he secures them. What fun!

As of yesterday the closet doors have been hung. I’m getting excited. It shouldn’t be much longer and I’ll be able to put what I need where I need it! Although, with Christmas less than a week away, my part in this may not happen as quickly as I’d like. I’m so looking forward to putting it all together. God is good!

Currently I’m listening to a crew busily replacing the siding on the outside of the house. After moving in we discovered that there were many high places in the siding where birds had pecked through and actually built nests inside the walls. It took awhile for us to find a company we trusted to make it right, and we’re grateful to finally be getting it done, although I wish the weather would cooperate for these hard working men. As of a few days ago the yard was a muddy mess, but the last two days of snow and cold have made it look better.

All the Christmas decor I’d hung on the walls inside has fallen (or been taken) down because of the hammering, but we know we are so very blessed and this craziness is only temporary! Stay tuned, my next update should include photos of my finished studio and home exterior!

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And I’m excited to share one more quilt with skinny sashing. It was made with flannelette by Sandra in Saskatchewan. Beautiful!

Thanks for the photo Sandra!

Way back in January, while on retreat, I sewed on a quilt for my neighbor and dear friend Diahann Lohr. She had purchased the fabrics with her “then to be” daughter-in-law Jess, with the intent of making them a wedding quilt. Di is an amazing graphic artist and website designer. I think she’d say she’s more of a quilter wannabe who doesn’t really have the time or inclination to complete the quilts that she desires. So this is the second quilt I’ve pieced together for her (click here to read about the first one).

Jess found the pattern online and printed it out, not realizing the directions were for a lap sized quilt that was to be made from layer cakes (packs of 40 pre-cut 10″ squares of coordinating fabrics). She chose not to use layer cakes for their king sized quilt, and this presented a bit of a problem. Can you imagine trying to figure out how much yardage to purchase in this situation? Well… the salesperson at JoAnn’s did just that. Keep reading to find out how well she did.

By the second day of retreat I had the blocks done (all 121 of them!) and I did a little “the blocks are done” dance around the room:

Then I began laying it out on the design wall. With only four main fabrics it was a bit tricky to get a balanced look. Praise God for the large design wall at Cattail Retreat!

Next came the 3/4″ finished sashing between all the blocks. I didn’t get that completed until a week after the retreat and the sashing really made everything pop. I put the top on my bed and sent a photo to Di and Jess. She decided she wanted a small border added.

At this point I need to share my thoughts about that talented mathematician at JoAnns. This is all the fabric I had leftover after making the quilt top:

The only thing she didn’t allow for was the additional border and the binding – which she wasn’t responsible for figuring out anyways. I am amazed that she could figure it out that closely – or maybe it was just luck 😁.

I put on the border and gave it to Di so she could pass it along to our friend Sue at Aunt Susie’s Longarm Quilting.

That was quite a while ago. Recently I realized I’d started this post, but never shared it with you. So I emailed Di and asked if I could have a photo of it on Jason and Jess’ bed. Di told me that every time she went to take the picture either the dog or a kid climbed up to jump on the bed 🤣.

I almost think I’d rather have a kid/dog in the photo ~ just for the fun of it ~ LOL!

So grateful the quilt is done ~ and for my sweet friend Di. She is a great blessing to me.

Our ThreadBenders group recently had a great opportunity to exhibit some of our quilts in a lovely show in Marquette, MI. My friend Cathy’s sister lives in the Upper Peninsula, and that’s how Cathy found out about the show. She did the legwork to get our quilts entered and delivered way up north for the show this past weekend. Then she invited me along to see the quilts and bring them home afterwards. It was a bit snowy, windy and cold, but the sun was shining and the scenery was beautiful. I especially enjoyed this sunset from our motel room window.

Each member was welcome to enter a number of their quilts and encouraged to choose some from our recent challenges. The show’s staff did a great job of keeping our quilts together as exhibits. This was the first time we were able to use our ThreadBenders banner – with all the blocks in place (click here to read a post about it).

And our quilts got a lot of interest.

As with other shows ~ I’d love to show you all of the quilts, but I only have room for a few of my personal favorites. I hope you’ll enjoy them 😊.

A Place in Our Hearts by Christine Jenkins

Flower Power Galaxy by Karen Dill was made using raw-edged reverse applique. I’m intrigued!

African Nightmare by Carol Mihalko. Carol said it was a nightmare because it took her a year to complete.

The next quilt is also by Carol and is entitled Yooper Row by Row. The rows are of sites in the upper peninsula and, if you’re not from the area you may not know that Yooper is a term for the UP.

There were quite a few quilts made using gradation/ombre fabrics, and I couldn’t resist sharing a few:

Aurora by Carol Bowling

Good Vibrations by Cynthia Yackel

This next one was made for a challenge to put words on quilts, and Karen chose some of my favorites from the book of Galatians.

Fruits of the Spirit by Karen Maki

My Girl by MaryJo Busch is a favorite of mine. MaryJo is a ThreadBender, and talented long-arm quilter, who made this quilt for a challenge in a different guild. She recreated a piece of art hanging in a local hair salon using Shiva Paintsticks ~ in the style of Degas. Lovely!

The vendors were also great. My favorite was Rae Warner.

Rae is a retired art teacher who creates the most fascinating dolls. Their faces are drawn with colored pencils and each one was a delight. Esmerelda just had to come home with me.

I began this post with a the view from our motel room. Here are a few photos of the inside:

Yup ~ Cathy and I brought our featherweights and spent the evenings stitching away 😁. We’d purchased kits for Santa wreaths on a previous adventure and it seemed like the perfect time to get ’em done.

It was a great motel room and it even had a wheeled table that was just right for our machines.

Thanks to Barb and Lynn, and all the members of the guild, for making our quilts look great!

Stay tuned for finished photos of our Christmas wreaths, and a lesson I learned about featherweights!

One of the small challenges our ThreadBenders group held last year was to make a sun quilt. That was it. No other rules, but the reason Vicki came up with this challenge idea was because she watches CBS Sunday Morning and they post artwork featuring suns. She told us the artists never know if or when their sun might appear. Once our quilts were made she entered them all at our local CBS affiliate. To see all of the quilts our group created click here.

Last June a non-quilting friend of mine said she saw my name on tv. I looked confused and her response was “your name was there, and a picture of a quilt with a sun, but I think part of it was missing”. I showed her the quilt and told her the design was meant to be a quarter of the sun shining down from the upper left corner (like when we would draw landscapes as children). We laughed. I was sorry I missed seeing it.

Over the next few months Vicki saw many of our quilts appear on tv and tried to photograph them (which I thought was quite a fete since they’re on the screen for mere seconds). Then, last week she sent me this:

My quilt was repeated! Woo Hoo! I was so grateful she sent me this photo, since I’m never around to watch tv on Sunday morning. Actually, since we’ve moved to our new home we haven’t even pursued getting tv service. Mike and I just aren’t tv watchers. We had an antenna at our previous home, and can’t find anyone to put one up here. So we read in the evenings and this house has kept us plenty busy the rest of the time.

I’m so pleased Vicki took the photos of our quilts. Here are the others she’s spotted so far:

I was impressed that she got photos of so many, but then she confessed that she tapes the show and can pause to snap the pics 🤣 .

Vicki suggests other artists make and send in their rendering of a sun, in any medium. You never know when you’ll have your 15 seconds of fame!

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Also…

Lenora emailed me a question about last week’s post:

“I am quite taken with the quilt in the picture of Valeria’s show and tell 2018.  Would you know the name of it?”

I didn’t, but I’m hoping one of you might”.

Here’s the photo:

Please reply in the comments if you have any information about this pattern. Thanks!

Last month I presented my Compass Capers lecture to a Modern quilt guild just north of Milwaukee. It’s a delightful group and I had a lovely time. One of the quilts I bring to show in the talk was a gift to me from a different quilt guild I belonged to many years ago ~ Common Threads. I was President of that group for 2 years and when I stepped down I had the wonderful surprise of being given a quilt from the guild. It has a Mariner’s Compass at the center which is surrounded by autographed rail fence blocks.

The making of the quilt was supervised by a friend named Valeria Peterson, with help from Pat Smith. Valeria made the center compass, hand-quilted the entire lap sized quilt and added the prairie point border.

I was not only surprised, and appreciative, but overwhelmed by the beauty and workmanship of this wonderful quilt! It was a joy to read the names and messages from all my guild friends.

It goes without saying that Valeria was a talented quilter. She had some physical struggles and suffered with pain a lot of the time, but that didn’t stop her from being an amazingly generous person. She also had a passion for animals and veterans, and donated quilts, supplies and money to be a blessing to many. I’ve always felt honored to have a quilt made by her and I snuggle under it often.

Well, after my talk to the Modern guild I received a lovely note from their President that included this message:

“There was no time to share a Valeria story with you.  I was so touched to see one of her projects at the meeting.  She was also a member of our Guild AND a frequent and generous donor to our charitable project, Quilts of Thanks.

  She would routinely stop at Material Matters and hand in a check for $1,000 to purchase fabrics for Veteran’s quilts.  I was blessed to longarm quilt the very last quilt purchased with those funds right after she died,  and which included some blocks she had made just before her death. Fast forward a couple of months, and a lady posted in Nextdoor Thiensville that her son, a Navy LT.  was coming home on leave after many months serving on a submarine.  She had recently moved to Thiensville, from another suburb, but had no family in the area to welcome her son home. The community rallied around her and her son, and there were probably 75 people with balloons, streamers, signs…and me, with a patriotic quilt….the one I just described. Instead of putting my name on the quilt label as a maker, I chose to put Valeria’s name on that label.  We presented the quilt to the son, and as they were looking it over, the Mom, who is a Nurse Practitioner, gasped.   

She was Valeria’s nurse practitioner, and had taken care of her in the last weeks and moments of her life. And that, I would say, was Divine Intervention.  Valeria’s gift, to a woman who meant so much to her,  after her death. So that is my Valeria story!   Hugs, Joan”

I wrote her back and asked if she could provide me with more information for a possible blog post and if she had any photos of Valeria. she responded with these photos and a portion of the news article:

 “Lt. Sean Condon US Navy received a Quilt of Thanks this afternoon at a community celebration welcoming him home from deployment. It was awesome to see so many members of the community turn out!”  
Assistance in piecing additional blocks was from Suzanne Grohe and Joan Cain. Quilting by Joan Cain. Pieced blocks and fabric from Valeria Petersen. ” 

in closing Joan wrote:

“We always say that the quilts pick their recipients….there are a lot of stories, and if you didn’t have faith before you started…you do after you’ve been a part of it all! Joan“

This is a wonderful story and tribute to Valeria and I felt you’d want to read about her too. The problem was – Valeria was a very humble person and didn’t like to have her photograph taken. But the story continues. A few weeks ago I taught for the Common Threads quilt guild and asked if anyone had a photo or story they’d be willing to share. Laurie was kind enough to go through their photo archives and get me permission to copy a few of the pics. I loved this one from when we were on the guild board together. Valeria is the tall one in the middle, Pat Smith is far left and I’m far right.

And here’s their copy of my quilt:

This next one is of Valeria during guild show and tell in 2018:

And with one of her dog quilts:

I am so grateful to say that I was a friend of this wonderful woman, and happy to share a small bit of her story with you. If anyone has any Valeria stories they’d like to share, please include them in a comment to this post.

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Also ~ After reading my stained glass side lights post (click here to read about it), a few friends sent me photos of stained glass quilts they’d made. Kay sent me her Sunflower:

Laurie said she made her landscape in a class with Wendy Kleman who had them use grosgrain ribbon as the leading:

Lovely quilts! Thanks ladies!

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 😊!