Nothing But Blue Skies for Sarah

This quilt was conceived and started for my niece Sarah when she started college at UK. The colors, blue and white, were picked because they are UK's colors. However, it was put on hold for a while as was Sarah's college education, when Sarah became pregnant with our beautiful great niece, Grace, and subsequently married Jeremiah. So, instead of a college graduation present, it became a Christmas present in 2007, when I drew Sarah's name.

The quilt was made with 9-patches, each containing nine different fabrics. Several of the fabrics appear in each block, but there is also a number of fabrics which are used much less frequently. I hand quilted it with perle cotton.

Christmas Tree Skirt

I had a bunch of Christmas fabrics and in the fall of 2007, I made Michelle join me in making tree skirts to use some of them. I had bought the pattern previously, and though neither of us was very enthusiastic about the project, we had fun making them and both really like the finished project.

I gave mine, which is seen above with my dog Jesse posing by it, to Vibeke, because I never have a tree of my own. At least not one big enough for this treeskirt.

Charlotta's Cross of Many Colors

The Open Door Community is a Protestant Catholic Worker House in Atlanta. I have known the folks there since they opened the place 25+ years ago and for eight years I was privileged to be involved in their work as a volunteer. I made this quilt - which from time to time hangs in the room used for dining, meetings, soup-kitchen and worship. I started making the individual crosses to experiment with stack and whack and my best friend and quilting buddy Michelle gave me the idea for the design and layout of the final quilt. I gave it to the Open Door in December 2007.

Crazy or Liberated Nine Patches

The term "liberated quilting or piecing" is used - by me at least! - to describe methods of making quilts which doesn't use traditional blocks and settings but are more free-form, less rigorous and linear. I have several books with inspirations and/or directions for that type of quilting, and I have long admired my friend Helen Thompson's quilts, which are spontaneous and beautiful.

While it really is a contradiction in terms to use patterns to make "liberated quilts," I used one from a book, The Casual Quilter, by Robin Strobel, to make this quilt of crazy or tipsy 9-patches. I used bright fabrics bought some years back following inspiration from Taffy who made lots of amazing very bright quilts.

I gave the quilt, which was machine quilted by Regina Carter, to Hannah when she graduated from nursing school. In this picture Hannah and her mother, Murphy, hold the quilt.