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Last week I told the story of our granddaughter’s comforter and this week you’ll get “the rest of the story” 🤣.

My husband retired six years ago. I have recently been pushed into what I hope is temporary early retirement, from teaching quilting and grandchild daycare, by the pandemic. So Mike and I are spending a lot of time together. As with many people who are at our stage of life, we are experiencing some of the less than funny symptoms of maturity. Fortunately we enjoy teasing and laughing together.

That being said, Mike wasn’t laughing when we began pinning Hanna’s poofy comforter into the frame. Three extra-loft batts make for a really thick comforter!

I usually pin with 1″ bent safety pins, and even I struggled to get them to work along the edge of the purple fabric.

Mike struggled for only a few minutes before he threw up his hands in frustration, so I gave him the handful of 1 1/2″ pins I own.

That didn’t make him any happier and, after giving it a good try, he allowed me to finish pinning things together solo. I didn’t blame him a bit. I however did persevere and all went well.

Time went by, the quilt was finished and sent off to Hanna, and I didn’t give this situation another thought… until Christmas. Mike and I don’t typically exchange gifts (we have everything we need – praise the LORD). So imagine my surprise when he walks up to me with a smirk on his face and presents me with a Christmas present. I unwrapped it to reveal… 3″ long safety pins!!!

I laughed hysterically! Those pins are honking big!

I’m pretty sure my quilts won’t survive the size of the holes they would make!

I have a challenge – who can come up with a use for 3″ pins? I’d love to let Mike know that I like my gift and find them useful (tee-hee).

And now, the rest of the rest of the story…

I wrote this post shortly after it happened, in anticipation of sharing it with you this week, and I thought it was complete. Imagine my surprise when 3 days after Christmas Mike hands me a package that had just been delivered to our mailbox. What was inside?

The colorful 4″ pins that didn’t get delivered in time for Christmas!!!

This guy really makes me laugh. As I hugged him I glanced at my shelf only to discover I am also guilty of a pin addiction. At last year’s quilt Expo in Madison I found a unique “quilt hanger” I just had to have and, you guessed it, it’s the biggest pin yet!

It’s about 16″ long and it actually opens to slip a quilt on for display on the wall.

So I guess we were meant for each other!

Wishing you a week filled with smiles!

I have one more Christmas project story to share 😊. Our granddaughter Hanna will be 15 this month and she recently redecorated her bedroom. She asked me to make her a poofy comforter: solid forest green flannel on the top with a purple flannel on the back, and the back could be a plaid. She wanted the knots tied to the back. I like a girl who knows what she wants (even if a solid green top isn’t very exciting in grandma’s opinion)!

For the top I found a flannel sheet in the requested color. I absolutely wanted a plaid for the backing, but the one I liked best was near the end of the bolt, so I needed to border it with solid purple. Once the backing was pieced my dear husband offered to help and quickly cleared a space in his shed. We thumbtacked the top fabric, wrong side up, into the frame (so the knots would be on the back), then layered on three extra loft batts, and topped it off with the purple plaid backing. Pinning the top in place with all that batting was quite an ordeal, and that story will have to wait until next week’s post, but once it was pinned the tying could commence.

I don’t believe I’ve ever posted about tying a quilt, so I figured it was about time to share some of my favorite tips. I prefer to use a light weight yarn or multiple strands of embroidery floss. For Hanna’s quilt I used a 6 strand length each of purple and green floss. It can be tricky to thread the needle with thicker threads. I’ve found this type of threader to be very helpful (and I just saw something similar at JoAnn’s):

You simply push the hook through the needle, catch the threads/yarn:

and pull them through:

I cut my thread(s) as long as the side of the quilt (yes, you read that right), and I make knot stitches in a line down the entire length of the quilt. I was told years ago to make sure the stitch length of the knot is at least 1/4″ so that it won’t pull through with wear.

I like to use a ruler to keep my stitches evenly spaced and found the plaid to be a real blessing in lining up the knots! After a line is stitched I go back to the beginning and cut the first tie so there is about 1 1/2″ of thread on each side.

At this point it’s important to grab each end and slide the piece side to side to insure there are no unwanted twists of thread underneath. Once you’re sure, tie a square knot (right over left, then left over right).

To trim the knots evenly I like to hold the tails against my forefinger and cut at the first “knuckle crease”:

Continue to tie all the knots in that line and then move on to the next. The tying went well and in no time it was complete,

It even looked good on the bottom, as seen when I peeked under the frame.

Next it was time to bind it in the purple flannel. I can’t say I love binding a project that is this thick, but I love my granddaughter – and she loved her comforter – so it was worth it! The comforter (and other gifts) made it safely to Vancouver, WA and she had it on her bed on Christmas Eve!

She said it was exactly what she wanted, and it’s so much fun to make something that brings joy!

The last time I tied a comforter was in December of 2017 when I helped my cousin make a t-shirt “quilt” for a friend who’s husband had passed away suddenly. Stitching through those layers was a bit tricky, and if you’d like to read about it please click here.

Do you have any tips for tying a comforter you’d like to share?

If 2020 had been a normal year our Sew We Go riverboat cruise of the European Christmas Markets would be a happy memory by now. Sadly, this did not happen. On the bright side, AmaWaterways has allowed us to simply postpone our dream cruise until December of 2021. So Wendy and I certainly have something to look forward to!

As with all of our Sew We Go adventures, We design projects for our travelers to make to add to the fun. This year our pre-trip project was inspired by a favorite treat at the Christmas markets – Lebkuchenherzen!

These are a German variation on traditional gingerbread cookies with a cherished history. Some of them sold at the markets are the size of dinner plates! They can be simple or very complex. This sweet treat has a fascinating history. To read an article about it go to: https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/a-brief-history-of-lebkuchen-germanys-heart-shaped-gingerbread-cookie/

I decided these cookies could be made in fabric with rick-rack and bias tape “frosting”. So I went about designing and stitching a table topper. I sent the instructions to our travelers in the weeks prior to Christmas this year to make the postponement a little less disappointing. This project kept me busy for quite a while, but I didn’t want to tell you all about it here until our group had the fun of learning how to make them. Since these table toppers have a holiday theme – I felt now was a good week to share!

Each of the hearts was made as a separate small quilt. The center was made as a quilted circle, and the hearts were stitched in place. I couldn’t resist making a second one because it was just so much fun!

I enjoyed decorating with my Lebkuchenherzen toppers this Christmas, while dreaming of next year’s trip.

I’m not able to share the pattern with anyone outside of our travelers at this time – as this project was designed especially for them. We are enjoying the anticipation of a trip that is less than a year away and afterwards, if anyone is interested, I may be persuaded to present the instructions here on the blog 😊.

And to leave 2020 with a smile…

As a wonderful finish to this week’s post my friend Julie sent me a delightful photo of Christmas gifts she made for her grandkids that were inspired by a Sew We Go project I’ve posted about many times; our version of Flat Stanley – the quilt sissies!

Julie traveled with me to Japan last January and was intrigued by my QuiltAnna (lower center right in the photo above). She decided to make her own version for her grandkids!

How creative!!! And here they are strolling past her mariner’s compass quilt 😁:

Great job Julie – thanks for sharing – I’m sure they’ll love ’em.

Happy New Year everyone! May 2021 be a good year for us all!

I was excited to put up our tree this year so I could place our new Mariner’s Compass tree skirt under it!

Once it was in place my husband commented that it matched the Christmas quilt we’d just hung on the other side of the living room.

I hadn’t made the connection – WOW! I guess I do have a Mariners Compass addiction 😄.

Since the day we put up the tree – it snowed! 6″ of heavy, wet, beautiful snow! I love it and I couldn’t resist going outside while the thick flakes were coming down and snapping a few pics.

As I approached our bird feeding area there were birds everywhere. My presence caused them to scatter, so I decided to stand very still and wait. Mike looked out our bedroom window and couldn’t resist photographing me waiting to photograph our feathered friends.

A brave chickadee made the waiting worthwhile (look to the right – he’s small, but he’s there!)

One of my favorite parts of the season is baking cookies with my parents, kids, and grandkids. Our son and his family live nearby but are concerned about gathering this year. Our grandkids in Washington should have been here by now, but the pandemic has delayed that visit. So I set up a time to bake with Mom and Dad. After all, they’re the ones I’ve done this with consistently since the time I was very young 😊. Then, while talking with Hanna via Facetime, she had the idea of baking together virtually. She and Willy “gathered” with us on my computer screen.

They made peanut butter kiss cookies

And we made all our traditional ones:

A yummy time was had by all!

Now we await a church service on Christmas Eve and a quiet and small gathering for Christmas dinner to celebrate the birth of our Savior.

So grateful to have so many blessings. A very merry Christmas to all of you. God bless us everyone!

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And here’s a quick update on Sharon and my “Ringing and Singing” for the Salvation Army

Each year during the Christmas season I’ve posted about the wonderful time my friend Sharon and I have ringing and singing for the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle drive at our local grocery store.

This wonderful program has become yet another casualty of the pandemic. I received a letter from Marie, the head of our local campaign, saying that they won’t be manning the kettles with volunteers this year (it would have been our 18th). The good news is they have an alternate plan to support this very worthwhile organization. I wrote Marie that I would share it on my blog:

“Due to Covid, & the safety of our bell ringers, the Watertown Salvation Army Kettle Campaign will look a little different this year. There will be no bell ringers at kettles. New this year is a way to donate to the Virtual Kettle. Please text to Local to 24365. Donations made online will be credited to Jefferson County’s Kettle Campaign. Check donations may be mailed to PO Box 774, Watertown, WI 53094. Thank you for all the past generous contributions to the local Red Kettle Campaign.Marie Miller, Volunteer, The Watertown Salvation Army”

If you don’t live in the Watertown area, I’m sure the Salvation Army is taking donations wherever you live.

Many things are going to be very different this Christmas season, but the real reason for the season will never change – Joy to the World, the Lord Has Come!

We have much to celebrate!

Ever since I began quilting in 1987 I’ve been amazed at the great blessing quilting friends are. I have so very many quilting friends and am grateful for each and every one.

There are some people who hold an extra special place in our hearts and in my heart there’s a big place for two wonderful sisters – Evelyn Link and Hazel Robinson.

I’ve known Evelyn most of my quilting life, and she is very dear to me. I’ve posted about our adventures together on quite a few occasions. I don’t quite remember the first time I met Hazel, but we too have been fast friends ever since we met.

It’s with a heavy heart that I’m writing this post to remember dear Hazel who recently passed away. She was never without a smile and just loved to make everyone around her smile too. She was an amazing cook and she, along with her husband Eddie, were truly hosts with the most – the most generosity, kindness and fun that is.

In 2010 Hazel (and Evelyn) invited me to Alaska. She and Eddie lived on the Kenai Peninsula half of the year. These dear ladies arranged to have me teach classes for quite a few quilting groups in the area, and requested that I plan a longer stay so they could show me Alaska. What a wonderful time we had! I stayed in the “apartment” above the garage which consisted of Hazel’s quilting studio, a kitchen, bedroom and bath!

They taught me to eat crab legs with scissors and how to track down moose on a 4 wheeler (that was Eddie’s job 😊). I met many delightful quilters and taught classes in a variety of wonderful settings.

One of them was in a fishing lodge on the Kenai River, and I even got to take a boat ride with Ken, the professional fishing guide who was married to the quilter who owned the lodge. Wonderful people! So many good memories! (to read a post I did about that trip click here!)

Evelyn and Hazel joined our Sew We Go adventure to the quilt show in Sisters, OR in 2015 and that’s where the photo of us at the Stitchin Post above was taken. I was with the sisters in Sisters 😁!

Early on in our fun together I noticed Hazel calling Evelyn Sissie (or Sis E). I was so pleased to be a part of their many adventures and was thrilled when they invited me to be an honorary sister – Sis C! And on that note, if you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ve heard the story of the Quilt Sissies. That all started with Quiltina, a quilter’s version of “Flat Stanley”. He’s a cardboard cut out schoolkids take/send all over and then write about his adventures. Well, Wendy Rieves and I lead quilting tours in the US and Europe and, prior to our riverboat cruise in France I mentioned to Wendy that we needed a quilterly version of Flat Stanley to accompany us on our travels. Her fruitful imagination created Quiltina, and she’s been traveling with us ever since.

Evelyn accompanied us on that French cruise and won our trip challenge with a prize of, you guessed it, her very own doll which she named Quiltilly. You may be wondering what this has to do with Hazel. Well, once I was made an honorary sissie, and since Evelyn and I each had our own doll, I just had to make one for Hazel. True to her wonderful sense of humor, she named her Quiltzilla!

A few years after the Alaska trip, Evelyn invited me to stay with her and teach in the Phoenix area. She had moved to Tempe after she retired to be close to Hazel, since that’s where she and Eddie lived when they weren’t in Alaska. So the Sissies had another memorable trip together, and I got to meet so many more delightful quilters (click here for a post about that trip). We also saw Chihuly in the Botanical Gardens, a quilt show in Tucson, and a lovely mission.

Where did we end up together next? Evelyn and Hazel stayed with Wendy and me during Quilt Week in Paducah. What fun we had there! It even included lunch at Grace church with a surprise visit by Quiltman and Bobbin (and our dear friend Nancy too).

Hazel was a talented piecer who loved to make large quilts for her family. She was especially good at the intricate Judy Niemeyer patterns. Evelyn recently sent me this photo of the last quilt Hazel made.

I had a different post planned for this week, but couldn’t think of a better way to remember Hazel then on my blog. Thank you for sharing some memories of a dear lady with me. She will be greatly missed!

Love you, Hazel!

During “Safer at Home” my granddaughter’s school did a great job of finishing her second grade year online. At that time Daddy and Mommy let her get her first email account, and mine was the only email address she knew, so we communicated daily. She would send me a “Daily Hi” every morning (this was her idea 😊).

One day she had to gather items of different colors for art class, and send a photo back to the teacher. She sent it to me too:

I responded “Wow, what a great color wheel. Were you supposed to make a color wheel?” She said she was only supposed to pick out objects in all the colors. After she gathered all the pieces Mommy helped her to put it into a color wheel (Betsy is a graphic designer and she’s inspiring a love of art in her kids).

This got me to thinking about all of the amazing colors around us and how they can inspire us in our quilting. I tried to get out for a walk every day during that time and snapped a few pics of the colors of early Spring. I certainly needed a bit of brightness to get through that difficult time!

I recently went through some of my Summer photographs and found a few that inspired me with their colors:

And now Autumn is in full swing. This is by far my favorite season, and I once read a meme that stated “Autumn is my favorite color”. I agree!

I think what intrigues me the most about these photos is how the colors are so wonderful together – especially in nature. God certainly knows what hues play well with each other! In fact, I recently took this photo

and it reminded me of a quilt I made using these colors a few years ago:

I call it Interchange, and it was made for a “Color Wheel Opposites” challenge. I wanted to see what would happen if I took two opposing colors on the color wheel and laid out squares of the “raspberry” that went from dark at the top to light at the bottom, with squares of “yellow green” that went from dark at the bottom to light at the top. I also challenged myself to only use fabric from my stash. It’s finished with a facing because I thought a border would detract from the intent of the piece, and it’s quilted with “wheels” of intricate stitches. These opposing colors certainly are beautiful together – in nature and fabric 😃!

So how does one translate the colors in a photograph to fabrics in a quilt? Well, join me in next week’s post and I’ll share a few ideas!

If you’ve made a quilt inspired by colors in a picture – please email me photos – I’d love to see how you were inspired!

During this time of limited travel, I’ve been thanking God for all of the wonderful trips I have been blessed to take throughout my life – and you’ve joined me on many of them, if only via my blog :-). I have had moments of being a bit stir crazy over the past six months, but am grateful for my family, my church, and quilting.

I finally reached a point where I admitted to myself I needed to use this time more wisely (my teaching engagements have almost vanished), and began to clean out my studio. As I went through the books on my shelf I came across two that brought back fun memories, and one of them wasn’t about quilting at all. Here’s the story:

My book, Repliqué Quilts was published in 2001 and went out of print in 2004. At that time I purchased the residual books and loaded all 967 of them into my basement (Over 18,000 had been sold – praise the LORD!). It took awhile, but eventually all of them sold and I now wish I had more – as many newer quilters have shown an interest in Repliqué. But I digress.

To continue the story: way back in 2010 I received an email from Ann in Kamloops, British Columbia. She wanted to purchase a copy of Repliqué. The problem was I had no way of accepting credit cards or foreign checks/currency at that time. Rather than over thinking it I sent her the book and asked her to send me a book from her area that she thought I might enjoy. It turned out to be a delightful exchange (click here to read the original post).

About a week later she sent me the second book about Laurie Swim; a very talented Canadian art quilter.

So, when I pulled out these books I opened them to read the story about our exchange, only to find I hadn’t recorded it on the inside cover – as I had hoped. I felt it needed to be there and thus the books have been written in and this post came to be 😊.

My studio cleaning came to a complete halt while I dove into revisiting Kamloops, and Laurie’s quilts.

Then I searched back through my emails and discovered that Ann had used my Repliqué technique to recreate a photograph in fabric, and I’d never shared it on my blog. So this is a bit late in coming, but here’s what Ann wrote to me way back in 2010:

“Hi Chris, I just finished the attached art quilt – wall hanging which I thought you might like to see. Your generous contribution of the book helped a lot. Thanks so much.”

Stunning!

Dear Ann, If you’re still reading my blog posts, I’d like to thank you again for the fun we had with our “Kamloops Kapers”. Please let me know how you’re doing. Have you made any more quilts using Repliqué?

It turns out I have one more “Japan trip” post in me. It’s actually about the origin of sashiko – which began as a type of mending – and I hope you find it interesting.

While in Japan I enjoyed wearing the jacket I made with my friend Evelyn prior to the trip.

When I returned home, after washing the jacket, I discovered a tear along the bottom edge of the lining (I must have caught it on something).

I could easily have patched it and nobody would have been the wiser, since it was on the inside of the jacket. But I’ve been fascinated by “Boro” mending ever since learning about it in Japan, and I thought it would be fun to give it a try. For a site with the history on this ancient utilitarian technique and how it grew into the sashiko stitching we know today click here.

I bought this lapel pin while on my trip to Japan and was told it was an actual piece of vintage boro.

So I cut a rectangle of blue fabric, stitched and turned it so there were no raw edges (not typically done in boro, but I just couldn’t help myself):

Pinned it in place.

Chose a thread and began to stitch!

Because of the thickness of the fabrics, I had to do a stab stitch, but I think it adds to the effect and I’m loving the results (bottom center on the back of the jacket).

Wow! A way to mend that’s fun! Then, a few weeks after mending my jacket I had another “boro” style mending adventure. This past February I went to a wonderful reunion in Florida with a group of my cousins (before everything was shut down). Deb, Kathy and I found a shop with fun clothing and we all purchased similar shirts.

Mine has been worn and washed a number of times, and the last time I noticed a 1″ hole on the right front. I have no idea how it got there, but something had to be done. Since it was a t-shirt knit I decided to add lightweight fusible interfacing on the inside and then I blanket stitch appliquéd a leaf on the front, and added stitching similar to the shirt embellishment.

I’m rather pleased with the way it turned out.

This might just cause me to like mending. Have you done any creative mending? It takes a bit of imagination, but I recommend you give it a try!

Face Mask and Surgical Cap Update

We would like to thank everyone who has helped with our Mask and Cap project over the past 2 months. To visit our updated site and read the latest news click here.

Gina has compiled a list of all of the hospitals and organizations who have benefitted from your generosity these past 2 months. Click here to read this very exciting list!