Merry Christmas

I hope you all have a Blessed Christmas and a wonder New Year. My husband and I are leaving for Florida Saturday to spend the holidays with our family. The following are some holiday quilts my friends and I made.

Two years ago I made my oldest grandson a large beautiful Christmas quilt but never got to the little ones. One of the twins took over his quilt so I thought I'd better make them a quick one this year and make them a large one in a few years. I saw this flannel snowman panel at the quilt shop and bought three, the fabric is just beautiful. The "triplets" love snowmen and they watch Frosty the snowman all the time. I added two boarders, a flannel back and quilted around all the snowmen. It turned out so cozy.

Close up.

Laura made this cute flannel Grinch quilt with her daughters flannel pj's she was done wearing. Great recycling.

Mary made this cute wall hanging, you can interchange photos in the tulips.

I made my niece, who lives in sunny Florida this quilt for Christmas. I put tons and tons of "daisy" quilting on it (I don't think it shows in the picture) and she requested satin binding.

I found this fabric and made some (13) quilted table mats for Christmas presents for friends. With trying to "go green" I think this is a good reminder.

I made then in two color ways.
I'll see you Jan. 6th or 7th.

Genealogy calendar

I showed my friend Nancy my "family tree" quilts blocks I've been working on, she asked me to speak to our local genealogy society in Jan. and show them how I'm recording my family history. Seeing as I only have 5 blocks done Nancy suggested I make a family calendar and for Christmas she had 4 printed, 2 for me and 2 for my kids. The hard part was to come up with enough family pictures for 12 pages, one picture for each month. The following are some of the pages.

This picture is for the month of January. This is my newest block with the original picture of the windmill in Poland on the top left corner and my great-grandmothers picture and the family grave site in Poland. (Deb, do you see the haystack fabric from our hand dyed wool, there's still enough left for your bear)

For Feb. I used a crazy quilt piece I made years ago with family wedding pictures I transferred to silk fabric, my mom and dad, my mom's parents and my husband and I. The picture in the frame is my dad's parents.

For the months I didn't have a quilt block for I used family pictures. This is John's dads side of the family. Someday, I'll have his childhood home finished.

By Oct. I was running out of ideas so I did Halloween. The picture on the upper right is me as Little Red Riding Hood. This month I also added some of my children's and grandchildren's pictures.

I also did one month with my dad in his Navy uniform. On the bottom of all the pictures in the calendar I wrote all of the family information.

I'm still working on my mom's childhood home, I like this picture of my grandpa standing by the front door of this home. This is my mom and her 5 sisters, the other with their mother.
The calendar shows both my and my husband's sides of the family so my kids can learn a little more of their family history.

Quilt guild Christmas party

Last night was our quilt guild Christmas party, the table decorations were so cute, the chairman's made quilted snowmen table mats with different snow people figurines on each table, at the end of the party different members won them (not me).

Another one.

Mary, one of our chairman was given this quilt made by the board as a thank you as she steps down.

I don't know this ladies name but she showed a series of pictures of pears her mother painted. Her sister and her split the pictures up and each made quilt blocks representing the different pear pictures. Then sewed the blocks together.

This is a picture of the finished quilt. Some are appliqued, painted, embellished etc. I wish I was closer to get better pictures.

Jamie made this table runner, the snowflake fabric is a batik, it is so striking.

This is the same batik in another color way she made. She hasn't quilted it yet.

Jamie's son is married to a girl from Japan. Jamie made this quilt as a gift to his mother-in-law. This is reproduction Japanese yukata cloth, used in rural Japan for casual comfy clothing.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving, we'll be spending ours with John's parents and brother's family. This picture is of my piano with my autumn arrangement on it. The turkey candle on the right is from when I was a child in the 60's , the turkey on the left is ceramic, I made in the 70's. The candle sticks I bought in Kenya, their hand carved soap stone.

Wizard of Oz party

This past Saturday our friend Theresa turned 50, her daughter gave her a Wizard of Oz birthday party. Her daughter and her friends are a very creative group and the party was wonderful. I remembered some Oz fabric I saw at our local quilt shop and new I had to make a little quilt for the birthday girl. The fabric that was from the Kansas farm scenes was wonderful with actual film images on it. The fabric when they arrived in Oz was awful, the images were fake and distorted, and the two groups were defiantly not made to be in the same quilt. But, I really wanted both fabrics together to tell the whole story. So, this is what I came up, which I was OK with. Theresa loved it.

This is Theresa as Dorothy (her daughter made her outfit, right down to her ruby slippers) and her boyfriend as the Wizard.

The two witches who each made their own costumes, the wicked witch also made her dogs costume, as one of the flying monkeys. The good witches crown was wonderfully done and the wicked witch is a make up artist and her nose and make up were great.

This is Theresa's daughter with her husband, she was the Wizard's assistant and he's the lion. She made both costumes.

The scarecrow, I think she also made his.

The tin man made his own with cardboard.

A close up of the flying monkey.

Group picture.

They could also sing and perform. Scott is quite well known around town for his music and singing.

And the wicked witch can also bake, she made the cake, notice the red shoes and legs under the house.

When we arrived at the cottage it was 70 degrees in the afternoons by the end of the week is was rainy/snowy and very windy, perfect weather for quilting. This was one of our sunsets when the weather turned cold.

They have a wonderful fireplace there, it was nice when it cooled off so I could light a fire in it. This little wallhanging I pieced was a pattern Kay was making and she had enough fabric for two so she cut me one at the same time as she cut hers (she's very fast).

The fireplace was a nice place to photograph Deb's Christmas quilt she pieced. The print fabric is a beautiful Christmas toile.

Close up of the toile.

Donna (from Atlanta, Ga.) hurt her back right before she came, hunching over a sewing machine did not work well, so she worked on knitting her father socks.

A few years ago our bee made 2 quilts for the cottage to hang up in the great room as Thank-you gifts. This is one of them.

This is the other one. They had commercial "tourist" blankets hanging in these spots.

Donna was like one big Santa Clause when she came, she brought wonderful gift bags for us full of fun things. One of the gifts was a pattern and fabric to make these tote bags. Their a nice size and use the 5" packet of charm squares and 1 yard of linning fabric.

Mary, in addition to many other things, made her sister this curtain valance.

This is another quilt top Kay pieced, those who know Kay know this does not look like her.

This is a wonderful purse Judy made, we all loved it.
This is only a small amount of the things that were made, when you have no "life" interruptions you get a lot done. Beside the two totes I made I spent all of my time machine quilting a quilt for my niece for Christmas and my seashell quilt for our R.V. As soon as their finished I'll post them.

Quilting retreat

Yes, Nancy did win her position in the election, our city will be so much better for it. We're all very happy.
For the past 8 years my quilt bee spends a week quilting up north, Lillian's nephew lets us use his families vacation home on Lake Michigan. It has a marvelous set up for quilting and a view that is wonderful.
The two windows to the left we quilt in front of them day and night.

This is our view out the windows.

We push the large dinning room table to one side and set up our machines, they are running day and night.

We all bring our own projects to work on but we started with this cute "group" project, making these little quilted bags. They were a fun project.

Every year our bee has a challenge for the year, last year we all bought a piece of the same fabric (my boarder fabric) and had a year to make it into a quilt. Then we bring them up to the cabin to show. This was mine, it represents the rain forests in Puerto Rico we hiked into last February (posted on my Feb. 08 blog). I put on some of the critters we saw, the big snails, Coque (frog), bright green butterflys, and lizards. Also the vines (white wool yarn I dyed with black walnut) that are hanging down from the canopy. It was a magical place.

This is Judy's quilt top. The challenge fabric was used as the zig/zag running through the quilt.

Donna's challenge piece.

Lillian made a jacket with her fabric, here she is modeling it.

Kay used some great Kaffe fabrics to make her piece. I don't think the photo showed it well.

Mary did a table runner (actually she did three but I only got this picture).
I have a lot more photo's of our projects we worked on I'll post some soon.