Blog

Last October I had a wonderful time teaching at a Quilt Festival in Spring Grove, MN (Click here to read the post I wrote about that visit). While there I met a very talented quilter and I was blown away by her work. Her name is Doreen and she describes herself as “A quilter who rides a motorcycle, living on a small hobby farm in southeastern Minnesota. Grandmother and Great Grandmother and now retired.”

Treadlemusic is what she calls her business and it is a fitting name for what she does. Her machine quilting is exquisite (she was actually doing it while at the show, but what I found most engaging about her work is what she does with vintage linens!

Aren’t they amazing?!? She truly gives new life to old pieces. In this picture you can see her “before” and “after” on a simple embroidered doily.

Here’s a link to just one of her blog posts: https://treadlemusic.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/aurorafinal-chapter/

Have you ever used vintage linens in your quilts? Doreen has really encouraged me to look at my collection of doilies and tablecloths as a drawer full of opportunities. Thanks Doreen, for letting me share your quilts and inspiration!

*********************

Also… Today was the Artist Reception for the Quilt As Art exhibit at the Cultural Arts Center in Whitewater, WI. I’m posting a little late, as I just returned home. The exhibit is being held in a lovely old building on Main Street. There are seven artists whose work is on display and the variety of work is fascinating. Here are just a few pictures:

The show runs from today until February 24th, and the gallery is open Thursday – Sunday; noon to 5pm. For all the details please go to: https://www.whitewaterarts.org/quilt-show-february

I’ve posted about my Repliqué technique a few times in the past, but I don’t think I’ve ever featured the great way it works to create silhouettes on your quilts.

The very first time I tried it was for a challenge back in the 90’s. A year ago I did a post about that challenge (please click here to read that post), and this is the quilt I made for it:

Just so you aren’t too impressed with my artistic abilities, the floral design was actually printed on the fabric, white-on-white, and I simply stitched along the foliage.

What I loved about the technique was that it used machine free-motion stitching, but I didn’t need to be perfect at it, because the stitches wouldn’t show like they do when free-motion quilting. I’ve used it for many quilts since then. Here are just a few:

One of the projects I’ve been working on recently involves silhouettes of Mike and me with our grandkids. This one is of Hanna and me when she was 2 (she just turned 13 – oh my!)

After making this one I needed to do one of Grandpa with Willy when he was 2 (now he’s almost 11 – the years do fly by).

This past year I’ve made a quilt of Trey helping grandpa stack wood (he’s 3).

And Sommer quilting with me. She was almost 6 at the time. She may be a bit older than the others, but I loved the photo.

I hang them in a grouping using my Modular Memory Quilt technique (please click here for a previous post about it).

I’m in the process of writing a book on many of the techniques I use in my Modular Memory quilts and silhouette appliqué will be covered in it. So if you’re intrigued by this technique – stay tuned :-).

If you live nearby, and would like to try your hand at creating silhouettes in fabric, please consider signing up for my February 22nd class at WCTC.

You’ll learn to repliqué the floral pattern onto a beautiful background fabric, and the exciting part is – we’ll be doing free-motion satin stitching! It’s actually fun because the stitches are so close together it’s almost impossible to do it wrong :-). You can sign up at www.wctc.edu, but please do it soon. I need a few more students for the class to run. Email me at with any questions.

******************************

and one more thing:

I’m participating in an upcoming quilt show in Whitewater, Wisconsin called:

The Art of the Quilt

and here are the details:

A quilt show will be featured at the Whitewater Arts Alliance’s Cultural Arts Center, 402 West Main Street, from February 1 to 24, Thursdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m.  There is a free reception, open to the public, on Sunday, February 3rd from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the CAC.  

February will find one of the Whitewater Arts Alliance’s most popular exhibits returning to the Cultural Arts Center.  “The Art of the Quilt” will feature the work of several talented area quilters.  As of this date, the WAA has commitments to share their creativity from Mary Althaus (Whitewater), Chris Kirsch (Watertown), Rita Oehrke (Palmyra), Lori Schloesser (Watertown), Michele Smith (Whitewater), and Sue Theune (Whitewater).

I’d love to invite you to the reception on Sunday, February 3rd. All the artists should be there and it promises to be a fascinating show. I will have many of my favorite quilts on display. If you can’t make the reception, but you live in Southeastern Wisconsin, please consider taking a ride out to Whitewater during the month of February to add a bit of color to your snowy winter!

Our Hawaiian cruise was a sunny, fun and fascinating time in paradise. It may be over, but I have so many wonderful memories and I’d like to share a few with you!

Wendy and I began our trip with a few days in Honolulu simply getting use to the warmth and sunshine. By day two we were ready to walk to the top of Diamond Head.

That evening the rest of our group joined us and the next morning we were on our first tour – to Pearl Harbor. It was a very moving experience.

From there we boarded the Pride of America (how fitting). There were 40 of us total and it was a fun and friendly group.

We visited 5 ports of call on 4 islands and were blessed to see volcanos, waterfalls, rain forests, sandy beaches, along with macadamia nut, cocoa and coffee plantations. This trip had it all!

Some of us were even able to swim under a waterfall!

Not only were the flora and fauna beautiful, but we found a few quilt shops along the way:

Our class time went well. All participants had great results with their Hawaiian Paintstik Appliqué projects.

And we even threw in some extra fun – making fabric origami shirts to be kept as Christmas ornaments. A lovely reminder of the trip.

I will be sharing some additional photos and inspiration in the next few blog posts, but today I’d like to leave you with this lovely sunset view.

***********************

And one final note:

I came upon this information recently and I’d like to share it before I forget. In my free motion quilting classes we talk a lot about machine tension. In Bob’s latest email from Superior Threads he posted a great handout on thread tension, complete with easy to understand diagrams. Click here to see it – and print it out!

Christmas is such a beautiful season and I’d like to set the tone for this year’s post with a picture of a lovely Christmas angel made from a hymnal by my dear friend Maria. 

What a treasure. Thank you Maria!

Every Christmas my friend Sharon and I like to ring and sing for the Salvation army. This year my grandson Trey joined in for the first half hour. We’ve been doing this for at least 16 years, and it’s still a bright spot in my Christmas season! 

Another tradition is cookie baking. My mom and I have never missed a year since I was old enough to help. Dad’s a big help too. His best skill is tasting our results, but he’s gotten quite good at decorating gingerbread men and unwrapping kisses with Trey. My daughter-in-law Betsy, along with Sommer and Trey, are now part of the tradition. So much fun!!!

The tree is up, the gifts are wrapped, and the house is ready for the upcoming celebrations.

For years I used to overdo and stress about the holiday preparations, but in recent times I’ve cut back to just the essentials and my focus is daily on the true gift of Christmas – the birth of our Savior – who became a man, lived a sinless life, then suffered and died to save us from our sins and prepare a place for us in heaven. 

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life” John 3:16

What a wonderful reason to celebrate! God bless us, everyone!

When you say barn quilt nowadays, people often picture a wooden barn block attached to the exterior of an actual barn. I have one of those and posted about it years ago (click here to read that post).

Earlier this year I made a fabric barn quilt and entered it in a contest in which it traveled for 6 months. After I got it back I realized I had never included it in a blog post. It was a very enjoyable project and I tried a number of different techniques to accomplish my goals, so I felt it was time to share it with all of you – since it’s still the same year as I made it (by 2 weeks  :-D) ! It’s called “From One Barn to Another” and it measures 24″ square.

This was actually created by combining photographs of two different barns owned by my friends Glen and Di Lohr who live just across the road from me. Di was happy to have me do a photoshoot one sunny summer afternoon, as inspiration for a Barn Quilt challenge which invited quilters to do something innovative with the barn theme.

The majority of the quilt is the interior of their German Fachwerk barn.

Unfortunately this window didn’t look out at their more traditional Wisconsin style barn. But that didn’t stop me, I just Photoshopped™ it in,

and used my repliqué technique to do most of the work. 

The bricks created the greatest challenge for me. I certainly didn’t want to satin stitch all the way around each one. Neither did I want to use raw-edged repliqué (stitch around each brick and trim away so the mortar shows through). So I did something completely different – I thread-painted (stitched heavily in mortar colored thread) the mortar in as a wholecloth design on brick colored fabric! 

The challenge fabric we were required to use was a barn board print. I used both sides of the fabric to achieve shading in the window frame (the right side was gray while the reverse was much whiter):

Out the window I did all the man-made objects with repliqué, and the God-made objects with raw-edged repliqué (no satin stitching).

When it came to the ceiling, I didn’t have a dark enough shade of brown, so I painted what I did have:

I was pleased with the finished results. I’m going to hang on to it for a little longer, in hopes of exhibiting it in a few shows, but eventually is will be gifted to my wonderful neighbors.

We were living in Sun Prairie, WI when I first learned to quilt. After a few years of making quilts I decided selling them in craft fairs might be fun. At one of these fairs I met Jeannie. She loved quilts, but had no desire to make them, so we worked out a deal. It turned out – she and her husband made original design Santas and I already had a Santa collection 🙂 . Jeannie’s husband did the carving and she did the painting. We worked out a barter. She ended up with a number of my handmade quilts,

while I was thrilled to acquire 5 of their unique Santas (the tallest is 10″) .

Fast forward to last month when I was teaching in North Dakota. Amy was in my free motion quilting class. She caught on fast and did very well, but she admitted to me her first love was knitting. The next day she stopped by my classroom and handed me a small box with a thank you note attached. Inside was a hand-knit Santa!

Amazing! And now he’s part of the family. They may not be jolly, but I love them all!

What a wonderful gift. Thank you so much Amy!

By the way – Amy has patterns available on-line, and her work in lovely! You can see for yourself at: https://www.knitpicks.com/cfPatterns/IDP/IDP_Pattern_List.cfm?ID=K00509

************************

Also – if you’re looking for a unique, last minute Christmas gift, my daughter-in-law, Betsy, has an Etsy shop where she sells her macramé and animal sketches: https://www.etsy.com/shop/KnotsAndNubs?section_id=24967124

Her macramé is lovely: 

and she has many adorable animal sketches available (each one is 8″ x 10″):

If you’d like a sketch or painting of your own pet or favorite animal, Betsy  would be happy to work with you. You can contact her at: . 

And, for those of you who live in Southeastern Wisconsin, Betsy also has her work available at “There’s No Place Like Home” in Oconomowoc (25 S. Main St.).  She’s very talented (I’d say that even if we weren’t related, LOL)

I think hand-made gifts are the best!