Falling for Sunflowers

These days as I walk towards my sewing room, I am reminded of our father who loved his sunflowers! Last year, I fell in love with this fabric panel at a quilt shop in Palm Springs and just had to have it. It reminded me of Dad... It hangs just outside my sewing studio.

I had just gotten back to machine quilting after a long hiatus and this was my "first" piece of the season. This is before Lolah, some free motion quilting and ditch work.

We cherish our reminders... this is a memory quilt I made for our mother after Dad died. I salvaged his plaid shirts, pyjamas, bathrobe and used those fabrics for the backing.

The front is a collection of memories we have of our yearly family reunions and other photos.

Notice the sunflower at the bottom right...

And here he is standing near his largest sunflowers... our father was 6' tall... these were amazingly tall flowers.

I machine quilted every family member's name (children, grandchildren, great grand daughter) on the borders and all the nicknames we had for him.

With the remainder of the fabrics from Dad's clothing, I made each family member a Christmas bell-pull.

Found this pattern in a Christmas magazine that year and knew instantly what I was going to use to make them.

The stars are from his neckties, the buttons are off his shirts, all the fabric from his clothing except for the batting which I used for the snowmen.

Christmas was a big part of our lives; mom used to start playing Christmas carols in August as soon as we went back to school. Dad would decorate outside, get the tree from the woods in early December and set it up for us to decorate.

My brother-in-law has the old wheelbarrow that our father used to ride us in... of course that was not the primary purpose of this wagon but anytime there was nothing on it, we ran to jump on for a ride!

This brother-in-law has the most fabulous garden. Every year whenever we visit, there's something new to see. Someday I may share more of his work which is truly a labor of love for anything beautiful! These are a few of his sunflowers...

From our own garden...

Always thinking of you DAD!

Love you and miss you!
Lorette
aka: LVP

Recent finishes

My handwork finishes have slowed recently as other projects took precedence. I was finally able to work on these last week:

Yoko Saito's Quilt Mystere Block no 3: embroidery:

This cute little snowman wool mat was suppose to be a project during our upcoming travel but I had nothing else ready to work on. It's from My Red Door Designs, a quilt kit I purchased at Cherry Berry Quilts last fall.

 Peppermint Place Block no 5 was quick to make. The top and bottom of the block will be sewn together later on in the process. The string in the bird's beak is to hold up a button star which will be added after the quilt has been quilted.

Now on to the last installment of the quilt: Block no 6 or what they call Pattern no 6 contains the rest of the quilt instructions and fabric. This is a lot of work to keep until the end! I wished they had spaced out the applique a little more but when I looked at the construction of the blocks, it makes a little more sense. It would have been hard and probably wasteful in fabric doing it any other way. So on with the prep. This will become my travel handwork once I piece the blocks for the applique.

The fabrics:

The instructions... many pages!

The freezer paper pieces:

Resulting garbage:

My fingers were quite sore from the scissors and all that cutting. Hope to get a few blocks ready for handwork today!

Toodles!

Lorette

Lolah's friend Sue!

You may recall I was entrusted to quilt this antique applique quilt by a wonderful (and brave!) friend back in July. I'm sure you longarm quilters all remember your very first customer quilt and how nervous it made you feel! This is why I've had butterflies in my stomach all summer long!

We'll be home for a visit soon and I needed to get this done so I could give it back to her quilted. It's a beautiful Sunbonnet Sue her mother made in the 60s or 70s perhaps even earlier; it was never finished... some of the embroidery is missing not because of wear but because it wasn't done. It has some small stains, the blocks are not all square, the seams aren't perfect but it's still a treasure. It was made by her mother and that makes it a special and beautiful quilt!

I thought long and hard about what to quilt on this top. First I had to find a backing that would complement the quilt as I wanted to use it for the binding as well. Lucky for me, Quilty Pleasures had this beautiful yellow print on sale in July and I bought the whole bolt! I love it when things fall into place like this! There were 3 fabrics on sale that day that spoke to me and I bought the rest of the bolts of each. If you recall, I returned home from a quilt show where I purchased 9 quilt tops to use for practice on Lolah! I have yet to start the first one because I've been busy with other quilts all summer as well as this "Sue" quilt.

This is my first commissioned quilt! YIKES! And it's an applique quilt to boot! WHAT to do? WHAT to quilt? I loaded it on Lolah and proceeded to SID (stitch in the ditch) around all the applique and the blocks. Yes I know; the seams were not all pressed correctly but I ignored all that! This quilt needed to be strengthened and SID work is what would accomplish that.

Then it rested for 1 1/2 weeks until I was comfortable to quilt it. How scary is it for a beginner to undertake such a task? I would look at it and scratch my head in wonder... and walk away to think some more! Then one day, the obvious set in my brain (it's slow most of the time but it gets it eventually!): why not add some traditional which her mother would have done as well as some modern? A little background fill custom quilted along with some cross-hatching in the setting triangles might do the trick?

I looked at the embroidery on the hats and some of the flowers on the dress fabrics and quilted similar flowers in the background. The blue light highlights these flowers; it is not glow-in-the-dark thread! I used Soft and Crafty 100% Cotton quilt batting with yellow PermaCore in the bobbin and in the setting triangles and white PermaCore in the background.

Then I added a stepping path to each doll...

Cross-hatching in the setting triangles...

 30 hours later (I know... other longarmers wouldn't take this long!) this is what Sunbonnet Sue looks like today!

This quilt will always be dear to my heart because my very first quilt was a Sunbonnet Sue with a yellow setting, perhaps not as bright a yellow but still precious! Now it is also my first commissioned quilt! How fun!

Margaret, this is coming home to you soon! I hope you like the modern take on the traditional!

The butterflies aren't completely gone yet but I hope the trepidation will subside soon! This was a terrific experience for me as I have several applique quilts of my own that need to be quilted and I know now that I will be able to quilt them with a bit more confidence. For that I have you to thank Margaret! You're a great friend!

Can't wait to see you!

Lorette

I've not forgotten!

Remember these 2 "secret quilt" photos?

The parcel was delivered a few weeks ago to a beautiful little baby girl in Ottawa, Ontario! Here are a few more photos I couldn't show.

Doodle E2E (edge to edge) quiting is my favorite! This was inspired by LouAnn Kessi's Sketchbook designs. LOVE LOVE LOVE her blog!

And here is the best way to display the quilt! Thank you K!!! You're the best!

Don't you just love how the baby's sleeper matches the pink fabric with large print flowers?? Too cool!

Toodles,

Lorette

Remembering

a little quilt I made for my parents; it represents the activities they enjoyed. It hung in their home in Mom's sewing room. 

It will someday hang in my own home and it will make me smile as it does now... remembering...

Miss you both!!

Lorette

Weekend Finishes

Last week, Lolah was put through a great workout. Do you remember this quilt from a June post I called Waving? It's an adaptation of a pattern called Metro Waves by Jenny Pedigo of Sew Kind of Wonderful.

I've had it loaded on the machine for awhile now.

But I returned to it on Wednesday and got it done! I even turned the quilt to work the borders. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be and it worked out great.

It's quilted with 1 layer of Hobbs wool and 1 layer of cotton batting; thread used was Superior's King Tut Variegated.

I love the look and feel of this quilt. The back is lovely too.

Thursday, I loaded the baby boy quilt on Lolah. I knew I wanted to make it look modern and didn't want girlish swirls and flowers so I went with straight lines and gridwork.

I love the amount of lighting the LEDs give me especially when looking behind the needle at where I plan to quilt. So pleased with these lights.

The backing is a piece I purchased at our guild August sale: 6 1/2 yds for $12. Can't beat that and it's perfect with the stars in the same colors as in the front of the quilt.

Lastly, I tried my hand at Zentangle quilting. I didn't want the traditional black on white; I just wanted something muted as I was just practicing. First I drew it on paper, then I drew the lines on the fabric with the blue pen. (sorry, no pictures of that!) This was done on my regular machine. Much too fine in details for Lolah! Besides, I have to keep up my machine quilting skills which are barely used these days.

Notice my little spruce tree signature design which will now be quilted somewhere on each piece that comes off Lolah. It incorporates my initials and the SpruceItUp logo (copyrighted).

It's Monday! A new week with new projects on the horizon; it will be busy!

Toodles!

Lorette