Poppies

  

This quilt was made from a kit I bought at the spur of the moment.  I had pretty much finished shopping, had spent considerable time in the quilt store, and had all my fabric selections cut, when I came upon this line of fabric by Pamela Mostek which immediately appealed to me.  I love the bright colors and the zebra stripes in several different colors.  But what originally caught my attention was the poppies - we have a beautiful bunch of big red poppies by the gate to our yard, which I was very excited to discover the late spring of 2009, after we moved to Kentucky in July, 2008.  In Denmark, where I grew up and which I visit every summer, wild poppies grow along the edges of the fields and occasionally across an entire field which has been left to lie fallow, and I always marvel when I see the bright red splotches in the landscape.  They're so fragile, their petals thin as silk, and if you're picking wildflowers, you know better than try to include them, because they won't survive until you get home, yet their strong red color over powers anything else out there in the field.

So I knew I "had to have" some of the fabrics.  Nevertheless, I was too tired to figure out what I might do with them if I bought them and thus no idea how much to get of each different print.  Thus, when I discovered the kit already assembled, I was overjoyed;  somebody else had done all the thinking and figuring, and I bought the kit

I much prefer real living poppies in my yard, but unfortunately, they don't bloom for very long at all.  Now, with this quilt finished, I have beautiful poppies in the house every single day of the year!

I pieced the 55" x 55" quilt and it was machine quilted using the pattern Bubble Play by Regina Carter.

Quilting With Rosie

There is an old fireplace in my sewing room. I am not sure what the status of it is; the previous owner used it a lot, but we haven't tried. It is a very shallow fireplace, originally built for burning coal, so it would be hard to use without making quite a mess, and given that it is in the sewing room, I am not much interested in using it. When we moved in, there was an ugly piece of black fabric in front of it.
I first saw Rosie the Quilter when Michelle and I were at Paducah in 2007. Some folks were selling T-shirts with her image and of course I had to have one. Unfortunately, the heavy plastic on the T-shirt made it too hot for me so I gave it to Michelle - who at least for now, isn't quite as hot blooded as I am! I later found this wonderful Rosie fabric which seemed to be just right for the sewing room. Doesn't the quilt look perfect behind Jesse, who clearly also likes my sewing room? The quilt is about 36" square. I machine pieced it at a January 2009, quilt retreat at Kanuga and hand quilted it.It is ironic that this quilt - which I made specifically to cover the fireplace - actually caught on fire while I was working on it! We had an awful ice storm here in late January and were without power for almost a week. When I finally moved back in, the house was, naturally very cold. So while it was heating up, I lit some candles. One of them was way too close to where I was hand quilting Rosie - something I didn't realize until it was too late. When I suddenly felt too hot and realized the quilt was on fire - there were literally flames in it! - I threw it to the floor and stamped on it. Fortunately, the damage was limited:
But I did have to chop off about 2 inches along one side. In order that it wouldn't look too lopsided, I also chopped some off the other side.

Under-water Windows

I was very fortunate for 25 years while living in Atlanta to have an absolutely super doctor, Maggie Mermin. She saw me through recovery from and all the subsequent after-effects of brain surgery and many other much lesser ailments and crises. She is not only an excellent doctor, but also a kind, caring and warm person who was most generous to me in many ways and who I trusted completely.

When leaving Atlanta, I gave her this wall hanging, a Laurel Burch panel which I chopped up and sewed back together. It was machine quilted by Regina Carter.

Courthouse Steps to Justice

I worked at the Southern Center for Human Rights, in Atlanta for almost 20 years. It was a dream job. I made this quilt, which was machine quilted by Regina Carter, for the Center in appreciation when I left the office in April, 2008.

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.

Housewarming gift

This hanging was made from a very simple kit containing just the panel and a bunch of strips. It was extremely easy to put together and I hand quilted it afterwards. Even in spite of its simplicity, I like it a lot because of the bright fabrics and the fun panel. I gave it to Lisa and Xochtil as a house warming gift.

I have actually purchased a handful of quilt "kits," over the years, but this is the only one I have finished so far! Using kits seems somehow to be cheating, and I think I much prefer to put my own quilts together, pick my own fabrics etc. But there is also something tempting about kits. They eliminate the need for figuring out how much to get of each fabric - or the scarier proposition of trying to figure out if I have enough of the various prints to do what I have in mind. And they may eliminate some of the cutting which is not my most favorite part of quilting.

I hope to get around to doing some of my other kits before too long.

Strips and Curves

I took a class taught by my friend Ellen to make this quilt. Ellen, a member of AIQ, is an awesome quilter. She is creative, talented, has an amazing eye for color, and produces one amazing and unique quilt after another. I have no illusion that I will ever be in her class but when she taught this class I jumped at the option to learn from a master.

This quilt required very precise work and attention to detail, something I am not otherwise known for! It was a challenge but I enjoyed learning how to do it and am happy with the result, which was machine quilted by Regina Carter.

Alphabet Quilts

At some point in the late 90s somebody brought to our guild the idea of making alphabet - or ABC - quilts. In this type of quilt, every square represents a letter of the alphabet. One can use novelty fabric in which each square includes an images which start with each of the letters. This is what I have always done. Others are much more creative and elaborate about it. The idea caught on like wild fire in our guild, and at first a bunch of us made ABC quilts for a charity project - unfortunately I do not remember where the quilts went. The quilt above is my charity ABC quilt from 1999.
I had so much fun making the first one that I proceeded to make a Danish alphabet quilt for my nephew Jens, seen above with his quilt, for his 4th birthday in 2000. In this quilt I also paper pieced all the letters of the alphabet - including the three letters in the Danish alphabet which are not included in the English alphabet - and placed them in random order around the border. After studying the quilt for a while and figuring out what the idea was, Jens informed me that next time I needed to put each letter of the alphabet next to the square representing that letter.
So, when I made another quilt for Jens' sister Anna in 2003, I did as suggested and the result is seen above.

Purple Sampler

I made this purple sampler to hang on my office wall when I started a new job in 1998. But when my mother was very ill and hospitalized for an extended period of time in March of 2003, I sent it to her to use as a lap quilt. However, after she recovered she hung it in their beach house where it still is.