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Forty Wonderful Years

May 22, 2016 8 Comments

Today is a very special day in my life. Today I’ve been married to my best friend for 40 years.

Mike and I had a bicentennial wedding. No red, white and blue, but rainbow pastel bridesmaids, complete with matching parasols.

Our parents have been great examples of how to have a good marriage.

In the 1980’s Mike and I were enjoying our beautiful kids,

good jobs, and a lovely home in the woods; and then… at around the time of the above picture, I was introduced to QUILTING!

My dear husband has been supportive of this addiction ever since, even when he admitted he didn’t understand why I cut fabric apart and sew it back together again.

In 1994 I quit dental hygiene and began to focus on teaching quilting as my vocation, and I ended up finding a delightful niche in the quilt world.

Oodles of classes, four books and many Sew We Go adventures later, a new passion came into my life – grandchildren who live nearby! I love kids and I knew I wanted to take care of them while mommy and daddy were at work. When I brought up the idea to my dear husband he said “but what about your quilting?”. I said it was a fun ride, but I was ready to quit to be with the grandkids. His response was “keep quilting, we’ll make it work”. And he has!

When I teach (or spend a week in Paducah), this dear man watches those little ones full time. He’s amazing!

As with all marriages, we’ve had our ups and downs, but I’m so grateful to be on this life journey with Mike. So I’d like to dedicate this week’s post to a very special husband! Thanks for 40 wonderful years!

Quilted Memories

May 15, 2016 5 Comments

Our son, Brad, was very active in his High School orchestra. The orchestra teachers connected with a youth orchestra in England and they did exchange trips. Brad was able to travel to England twice, and both times I went along as a chaperone (I couldn’t have my son play his cello in Salisbury Cathedral – and not be there!) On one of these wonderful adventures I had the pleasure of meeting Art and Debby Abe. Their daughter was also in the orchestra and they decided to chaperone the trip too. I discovered that Debby was a quilter, and we’ve run into each other in the quilt world numerous times since that trip.

A few month’s ago I taught at the Ben Franklin retreat (to read that post click here), and Debby was there too. My heart ached for her when she told me what had happened in her life this past year. Then she showed me some pictures that made her story so endearing to me that I asked her if I could share it. Here it is in her own words:

“This is a memory quilt made from my husband’s clothes. Art passed away unexpectedly last April at the age of 60. I created this quilt with the thought it could be used as a picnic blanket, as it is backed with his jeans and pants.

As I was assembling this quilt, I was thinking how it is so much like our lives. In sewing the pieces together I did the best I could with the flawed and imperfect materials I had to work with, it was a challenge putting them together, because of the different fabric types. But in the end it turned out beautiful. Just like life – we are flawed and imperfect and have challenges, but in the end GOD’s “project” turns out beautiful!
Just like in the center of the quilt is what Art wore to church, so should God be the center of our lives. When we live a God centered life, we will have peace and joy – despite the heartbreaks of life.
And so (in quilter language) when the challenges and trials of life cause us to fall to pieces – we pick them up and stitch back together the fabric of our lives and press forward.”

Debby chose to make a unique memory quilt for each of her children:

Then she went a step further: “As a Christmas tradition, I would make a “Christmas eve” gift. We open gifts on Christmas morning. This year I took my husbands ties and created a memory gift. The girls ( my 3 daughters, 1 daughter-in- law, and 2 granddaughters) received a purse. My son and 3 son- in- laws got a key chain made from the end of a tie (sometimes it was the tie used for his wife’s purse). For my grandson I cut down one of Art’s ties to toddler size.

Here’s my granddaughter Ellie – who promptly filled up her purse and wore it around after receiving it.”

What an incredible labor of love! Thank you for sharing your story with us Debby – and God’s blessings to you and your family!

Crazy Quilts and Stevengraphs

May 8, 2016 3 Comments

In keeping with my recent crazy quilt post, I’d like to relate a story about a crazy quilt of my own:

In 2002 I had the privilege of purchasing a wonderful Crazy Quilt, circa 1885, from a dear lady in Illinois.

The owner was a woman named Vee and she related this history of the quilt to me: “It was found in an attic in the bungalow of Julius and Harriet (Lyons) Reed in Three Bridges, NJ after Etta (Harriet) had passed away in the 1970’s. Etta was Vees husband’s Aunt. They were originally from Davenport, IA. Julius was a soldier during the Spanish American war and he fought in Cuba. When he returned he went to New York and met Etta at church. They fell in love and lived in NY until Julius was drawn to a piece of property in New Jersey. Julius was a floor worker at Wanamaker’s Department Store in NY and they were quite poor, but he wanted this piece of property so badly that, as the family story goes, he met some Italians and did something for them – no one knows what – and they gave him enough money to buy the land. Julius then built the bungalow completely by hand. Etta was very good at decorating on a shoestring. Julius preceded Etta in death and after she passed away Vee and her husband went through the home and found little of value except for this crazy quilt which was in a box in the attic. They knew nothing else about the quilt, but Vee did mention that Julius did have very wealthy relatives in New York named Wentworth.”

Don’t you just love family stories and the unique details which are remembered?

Well, the quilt was stored well for all of it’s life, obviously never seeing the light of day for any length of time, so I wanted to get it appraised right away. While doing the appraisal, my friend Carol Butzke, commented that my quilt included a Stevengraph.

I’d never heard of a Stevengraph and set out to learn more. In searching the internet I ran across a collector in England. I sent him the picture, and here is a portion of his response:

“Chris
Thank you for sending the image of your silk. It has come across very well, and I can confirm it is indeed a Stevengraph. When originally mounted, the title printed on the card mount was “The First Point”.
This is of course a scene of two hounds chasing a hare. The rider on horseback is the judge, and the person in red at the edge of the crowd is the person who has just released the hounds, called a ‘slipper’.
It is impossible to date your actual silk, as they were made continuously right up to the destruction of the factory in 1940.
Thomas Stevens, of Coventry, Great Britain created the word Stevengraph to describe his silk pictures. It has now been extended to include all such woven silk pictures, and even the bookmarks as well.
All silks fade very badly in day light, and deteriorate with light and dust. From the image you have sent me, if your actual silk is as bright coloured as the image, yours is in remarkably good condition. There is no fading, and no apparant damage. As an item of beauty, it now needs always to be part of the quilt of which it has become an intregal part.
I hope this gives you a flavour of your Stevengraph. Do take care of it and the rest of the quilt. Keep the silk out of as much light as you can and away from dust, and who knows, maybe it will last another 100 years.

Regards
Peter Daws”

I was thrilled to have this information!

Currently the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts in Cedarburg is hosting an exhibit of Stevengraphs!

This is a portion of some additional information the Museum emailed concerning the exhibit:

“In 1862, Thomas Stevens, working in Coventry, England, had produced nine fascinating silk pictures of different designs and patented the word “Stevengraph” to refer to the pictures. They were an instant success. By the late 1880s, Stevens had produced 900 different designs on aspects of Victorian life.

Using another Stevens invention at the York Exhibition in 1879 – the portable loom, people attending saw their picture being woven before their eyes. The pictures sold in the thousands and over the years Stevens was awarded over 30 medals and diplomas for the pictures.

Stevengraphs vary in size from 1 1/4 by 4 inches for bookmarks to 7 1/2 by 13 inches for mounted pictures. Once sold for as little as 50 cents, they are prized today by collectors.

The heavy German bombings on Coventry in 1940 leveled his buildings and business. But appreciation of Stevengraphs lives on through collectors and exhibits like ours at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts.”

I haven’t seen the exhibit yet, but I’m looking forward to visiting the museum soon!

Do you own any Stevengraphs, or have you any stories to tell?

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And one more thing! While in Paducah, Wendy mentioned that there was a large display wall at Frank’s Sewing Center in Waukesha, WI (the shop where she’s the assistant manager), and they were considering featuring quilts by a “Customer of the Month” there. I told her I thought it was a great idea, and she responded “Good, you can be first!”

So I’ve put up a display of my Parallelism and Concentricity quilts for the month of May. My book “Where Do I Start With Fiber Art” is available there also. It includes the techniques I’ve used in the quilts displayed.

I hope you have a chance to stop by!

A Dairy Queen Surprise

May 1, 2016 3 Comments

Last week I mentioned that Wendy and I set up a quilting studio in the kitchen of the guest house we stay in, like we do every year. This year we spent many hours stitching with the warm Kentucky breeze blowing in the door – it was lovely. My plan was to create samples for some new WCTC classes. I also took 2 workshops while at AQS: Linda Poole’s “Hoot” – working with Inktense pencils, and Kathy McNeil’s “Summer Seascape”, learning her way to appliqué. Both were excellent and I have plans for the samples. Here are the pieces I worked on in Paducah:

While stitching one day, my friend Kathy sent me an invite to an annual “party” they host during Quilt Week, at the Dairy Queen on Friday night. Wendy was taking a class, so I decided it would be something fun to do. Boy, was I right! I arrived, said my hellos to everyone, and then purchased my peanut butter cup blizzard. While we were enjoying the ice cream a bearded man came up to our group (which numbered about a dozen) and welcomed us to Paducah. He said that he’d been looking for a group of quilters and had something in his trunk he wanted to show us.

A few moments later his wife and daughter came in with a large garbage bag, and began to pull a quilt from it. Melissa explained that it was made by her grandmother in 1979. The back was a very bright yellow solid fabric with a red border. I had no idea what to expect – and then she unfolded one of the most beautiful crazy quilts I’ve seen!

The embroidery was spectacular and we spent a lot of time admiring all the wonderful details.

And look at the beautiful way Melissa’s grandmother signed her quilt:

Some of the most amazing things happen when you least expect them.

Thank you to the Shaws’ for sharing their lovely quilt.

And thanks for the invite Kathy! Same time next year?

Quilt Week 2016 – Paducah, KY

April 24, 2016

Greetings from the middle of Illinois. Wendy and I are returning home from Paducah. I can’t believe how quickly the past week flew by. Our trip to Quilt Week each year is my favorite part of Spring. This year the dogwoods and azaleas were in bloom, the temperatures were perfect and the quilts were better than ever!

In past years I’ve posted pictures of the “flying geese bridge” that let us know we’d arrived, and the “1857 Guest House”, above a downtown restaurant, where we stay. This year I’ve decided to share some pictures of the impromptu parts of our trip. These began with a stop in Metropolis to don our quilting hero costumes:

And then we arrived in Quilt City USA. We set up our quilting studio in the kitchen and, over the course of the week, spent many hours there stitching – whenever we needed a break from the overwhelming amount of quilted inspiration, tempting vendors and wonderful food.

Our first evening we had the privilege of creating a window display in the front of Tribeca Restaurant. We chose to feature “Garden of Grace”, a quilt Wendy and I made together from a picture taken during the luncheon at Grace Church a few years ago.

On Monday we headed down to the Bill & Merideth Schroeder Convention Center to help hang the quilts.

They were amazing! And my quilt: “How Beautiful – Liberty” was hanging among all the phenomenal works of art – Praise the Lord!

During the week we enjoyed “Bubble Tea” at Etcetera Coffee Shop in Lower Town:

And I even participated in the sidewalk art out front:

One day we took a side trip into the countryside around Mayfield, KY to visit Backyard Fabrics – a bright and tempting quilt shop.

The quilts and shopping are all such fun, but I especially enjoy meeting quilters from all around the country. It’s always exciting to attend a church lunch or dinner and get to know your tablemates. Imagine my surprise when we went to dinner at the Methodist church, and I was seated next to Janet – a quilter who had taken my class when I taught in Fremont, NE last month!

We met her friends and had a lovely time of good food and conversation.

Then, on our final night, we met up for dinner with some of my friends from my Fiberista art quilt group.

Kay, Ida and Lori made the trip down from Wisconsin on Friday to see Lori’s beautiful quilt – “Autumn Gold”, and enjoy the show.

It was a great week, and I have more to share … about crazy quilts, Dairy Queen, and “rolling veterans”, but I’ll save those for future posts. This was my 27th AQS quilt show in Paducah, and I can’t wait for next year!

Creating Art With an Audience

April 17, 2016 1 Comment

This week I’m posting to my blog from a car in the middle of Illinois. What an amazing technological age we live in: I can connect my laptop to the personal “hotspot” on my phone, and be on the internet while driving down the road!

Wendy and I are on our way to Quilt Week in Paducah.

This year we have the wonderful opportunity to decorate the windows of Tribeca restaurant with our quilts, as part of the Quilt Week contest held downtown. If you’re in Paducah, please come by to see them (on the cobblestone alley next to the Yeiser gallery).

And now for this week’s post:

You may remember a post from last year that included some wonderful multi-media art from a church in Wales, WI. I saw those pieces because I was invited to share some of my quilts, and my quilting journey, as part of the morning worship service.

It was a very interesting morning! Each year Jerusalem Presbyterian Church invites an artist to create art as a part of the worship service. Painting a picture in that time frame might be possible, but making a quilt presented some problems. I worked with Pastor Petterson to blend my fiber art process into the service. What we decided would work best was to invite members of the congregation to bring a piece of cotton fabric. These pieces were collected before the service and during the service I sorted them by value, trimmed them to size and laid them into a pattern while Pastor and I compared these processes to what Christ does in the believer’s heart.

The members brought some very interesting pieces (most of them were not quilters 😉 ). But it actually went quite smoothly and it was a lovely time of worship.

This brings me to this week’s post. I was asked to complete this piece of art and after much thinking and prayer, I finally came up with a direction, and the quilt is done!

To begin, I chose to place the cross in the center of the pattern and then use the lighter value squares near the cross, with the value going to the darker fabric on the edges. I then chose a Scripture verse from the Gospel of John and used my new Brother Scan n Cut™ to make the letters (to read a post on this delightful tool go to: https://chrisquilts.net/?p=6614). I fused the letters in place, covered everything with black tulle, and machine quilted around the letters,

with spiral quilting in the background (notice the church block in the lower right, that was cut from a polo shirt).

I’m sorry I didn’t get more “work in progress” pictures, but here’s one of the finished piece:

I plan to present it to Pastor Petterson and the church family in the near future. What a joy to have been a part of this worship project, and to see it come to fruition! It causes me to think of one of my favorite Bible verses – Matthew 5:16 “Let your light so shine before others, that they may see your good works and give glory to our Father in heaven”.

Shape Cut a Quarter

March 19, 2016 4 Comments

Before we get to this week’s topic, I’d like to do a quick update on my quilt: “How Beautiful – Liberty”. It’s striking me as quite funny – I’ve enjoyed making my accordion door quilts, but never imagined anyone else would want to do it! Since sharing my last two blog posts, and winning the ribbons in Sun Prairie, I’ve had oodles of requests. My mind is just buzzing over the prospect of writing another book with all the techniques from “Liberty” in it. Please stay tuned!

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A few weeks ago the grandkids were entertaining themselves very nicely with their toys in the living room. So I decided it would be a good time to take some pictures for this week’s blog. I brought up my cutting tools, put them on the counter, laid the mat on the floor (the lighting is best in the middle of the kitchen floor)

and went to find my camera. When I returned, this was what I found:

Good thing I had my camera. Trey found sitting on my cutting mat so fascinating, I ended up having to move it to the kitchen table for the photo-shoot 🙂 . Now on to the topic at hand!

A number of years ago I shared my top three favorite rulers, and included in the list was the Shape Cut™ ruler by June Tailor. This past Christmas I did a post using it to fringe fleece scarves (click here for that post) and recently I shared a similar ruler for marking (click here for the Grid Marker post).

The Shape Cut™ is a great tool for rotary cutting multiple, accurate strips. When it came out it was well received, but it was limited to ½” increments. Back then I was doing freelance work for June Tailor (we’re talking the 1990’s). They asked me to come up with a way to cut ¼” increments with the ½” ruler and I was happy to take on the challenge (they did come out with a Quarter Cut™ ruler, but it had to be made shorter for stability, which made it less useful).

I spent quite a bit of time coming up with the answer, and I think you’ll find it works well. It’s really quite simple, and I devised a chart which does the math for you, that I’ll include in this post. I discovered the trick is to have a dashed line marked between the “0” and ½” slots on the Shape Cut™. The newer ones come with this marking,

but if you have an older ruler, you can add it with a fine line permanent marker.

Now for the step-by-steps. I’ve given you all the info, but remember there will be a chart at the end of this post that does the math for you!

Step 1: Choose a ¼” increment (i.e. 2 ¼”), double it (i.e. 4 ½”) and cut strips at this size. for 2 ¼” strips your cuts will be at 4 ½”, and 9″, and if you have the larger Shape Cut™, you can continue to cut at 13 ½” and 18″.

Step 2: Lift the Shape Cut™, remove the excess fabric from squaring up on the left cut, and reposition the ruler with the “dashed” ¼” line, along the left edge of the fabric.

We will now, in essence, cut these double strips in half!

Step 3: Cut in the 2 ½” slot (since the fabric is lined up ¼” from the zero slot, this strip will be 2 ¼”).

Step 4: Add the double cut amount – for our example – 2½” + 4½” = 7″. Cut in this slot, add 4 ½” again, and cut in the 11 ½” slot. If you have the larger ruler, continue by adding 4 ½” for each cut.

Here’s a chart with all the math done. To open a printable pdf version – click here, then click on the purple lettering with the word attachment in it (I’m not sure why the extra step, but it works).

I’d like to close by sharing a short video I took when I couldn’t break Trey’s fascination with the cutting mat. Click here to view it. Grandchildren are such a blessing!

Minot Prairie Quilt Festival

March 13, 2016 11 Comments

Greetings from Minot, North Dakota,

where I’m teaching at the Minot Prairie Quilt Festival. The sun is shining and the temps were in the 60’s all weekend. I was very impressed by the way they treat their teachers like queens. The accomodations at the Minot Grand Hotel were lovely,

and the goodie bag in my room was filled with a yummy variety of products from North Dakota.

I arrived a day early and Susan and Janet were kind enough to show me around town.

We visited the Scandinavian Heritage Center where they had interesting buildings and a huge Dahl horse, similar to the ones we saw in Sweden.

The gift shop was filled with interesting characters!

Back at the show I was given the opportunity to choose a “Teacher’s Favorite” quilt from all the wonderful pieces in the show. There were so many worthy of the ribbon, but the one that really grabbed me was bright, and beautifully quilted. Here is Diane Slickers with her quilt.

And here’s the picture her friend Judy took when she saw the ribbon 😀 !

Congratulations Diane!

I taught three full day classes and the students were great!

And being that Minot is quite a ways north, I can now number Canadian quilters among my friends.

Everyone was friendly and such fun to be with. It was my first visit to North Dakota, and I’m sure it won’t be my last!!!

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And one last thing 🙂 : This past week I entered “How Beautiful – Liberty” (the quilt I shared with you in last week’s post) in the Sun Prairie Quilt Show, and I was thrilled and humbled to have 3 ribbons hanging on it: a blue ribbon in it’s category, Crew’s Choice (the crew who hangs the show gets a chance to pick), and Viewer’s Choice! I’ve never won a Viewer’s Choice ribbon. What a blessing – praise the Lord!