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September 29, 2019May 7, 2026 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

Perhaps the UCR Science News was looking for something other than Nobel-prize generating stories or research about saving the world from cancer, but I’m happy that the editor liked my quilts, sent to him by my favorite guy (my husband). The quilts were displayed around University of California’s campus near some of the science buildings (and in the Botannic Garden). Thank you!

In other news, we visited the (tiny) exhibit at the DAR museum this past week (their library, above) in Washington, DC.

More on the exhibit in another post, but I met three quilters while I was there:

From the top left: Beth, a long-time friend (we always meet together at this particular science meeting of our husbands), Rhonda (who I met when I lived in D.C at the local quilt guild), and Bette (who I met online and since have become good friend with via correspondence and phone calls and occasional meetings). But that’s not all the news.

I spoke at the National Press Club, after I was proclaimed Queen of England.
Full story, below.

Kidding, of course. I merely posed, and the other photo is a leather-embossed rendition of a famous headline, one in a row of famous headlines.

We’d done most of the museums in December when we last visited, and I was wondering what to do one day when the Climate Change Activists staged one of their protests right outside my hotel. I threw on my clothes and went down to watch. I remember how the police used to break up other protests long ago, with tear gas and heavy-handedness. This experience was more like a garden party, as slowly, they encircled the boat parked in the middle of 16th and K. While the activists moved on to march around D.C. the police cut the handcuffs and tethers of those who remained, then towed away the boat. I was quite impressed with the whole experience, both of those who felt strongly about making a statement, and the police officers taking good care of those who they serve. Another reason why I love D.C.

Okay, I promise more serious quilty stuff soon. I’m coming home tonight from my niece’s wedding in the Bay Area, hoping to dive into what I’ve left undone while traveling. Before I left, I did get one quilt to the quilter’s, after auditioning, digitally, many different designs for quilting.

I also cut more pieces to keep going on my North Country Patchwork Quilt, eeking this one out, bit by bit (photo of what I have so far, above).

I did get caught up with my temperature quilt, which is turning out to be very different colors than what I expected. I find it’s easier to do a whole month at a time, than piece-mealing it, day by day.

Lastly, this coming Saturday, October 5th, I’ll be presenting a (mostly) modern quilt program at the Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild in Riverside, California. They are a small modern guild, with a whole group of interested, dedicated quilters. Maybe you’ll be there?

Guild Visits · Quilts

Antelope Valley Quilt Association Visit • September 2019

September 20, 2019May 7, 2026 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

I drove up to Antelope Valley, nearly two hours away from my home, and joined the ladies at a local church for their monthly meeting (shown here during their break).

It is in capable hands under their president Kathy (shown on the left), along with their two Program Chairs, Pat and Nette, as they showed off the results of their last workshop: Mondo Bags.

They had many Show and Share quilts, but I only show a couple. One exciting thing for their Guild is that a local art gallery will be hosing a show of their work, called 3 Layers.

This a great opportunity for them to have a challenge and then a place to display those challenges.

The program chairs and guild departments were busy before the meeting and then during the break: the snacks line had both goodies and healthy treats for their members.

Because the Guild is so far away, they allowed me to stay over a night, so I visited their local quilt shop: Bolts in the Bathtub, picking up a few treasures and chatting with the woman who helped me, allowing me to get a sense of what challenges their community of quilters face.

Saturday, we all started early with the all-day Free Motion Quilting Workshop. I didn’t grab everyone’s photo, but the missing ones are in the group photo in the lower right. They were an enthusiastic group, ready to tackle their quilting sandwiches with stitches. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the quilters of the Antelope Valley!

300 Quilts · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilt Finish · Quilts

Betsy’s Creation • Quilt Finish

September 1, 2019January 11, 2026 Elizabeth E.18 Comments

I found this 1920s vintage park with a grandstand in a small town just to the north of me and took my husband and my most recent finished quilt there, so we could do some photographing. And some reminiscing.

It’s a sweet little small-town-built-long-ago park that for some miracle has remained. Named for an officer of the local cement company at the time, it’s known as the Thomas J. Fleming Memorial Park, built circa 1922-1925. Why is this important?

I grew up in a small little town (not so little anymore), but it had that feeling of walking downtown on a hot summer’s evening, catching the fireworks on the 4th of July after seeing the parade that morning. It had the feeling of being able to drop your school bag at the door, change in to your “play clothes,” and head over past the Muehlstein’s home to send this and that sailing down their irrigation canal until you knew it was time to go home for dinner. (And did I mention that my childhood nickname was Betsy?)

We’d walk up to Heber’s house and offer to find the eggs in his chicken coop for him. He’d let us. We would wind crepe paper in our bicycle spokes and all show up for a local parade. This was also a place where I was smallminded at times, like when I teased Marlene in fourth grade over something dumb, and then used up all her Scotch tape. It’s a place where others can also be mean, like when I got beat up by the Mitchell boy, and cried all the way home. (Later my mother saw him on the road, rolled down her car window and gave him a talking-to like I’d never heard.)

This small town in America was my place, where I learned to behave myself so no neighborhood mother would ever have to lean out her car window and give me a scolding. And how I wish I could go back in time and find Marlene and tell her how sorry I am. It was a place to be small, to grow up, and to leave behind.

But I catch glimpses of it when I think of it as a land of red, white and blue, where we love flags and fireworks and the Fourth of July. It’s a land of learning to get along with your neighbor because you never know when that person with the different name would give you a lifetime memory. Like when I needed to learn to ride a bike and Joan Muehlstein gripped the back of the seat, ran alongside me, and hollered, “Turn towards the wobble!”

It’s mountains and vast plains, it’s small towns and big cities. And America is where I like to be the most, even though now I’ve traveled and love Berlin and Bologna and other different places with wonderful people who’ve gone themselves through nice and mean, dark and light, thick and thin. It’s when I return from far away and see that flag on the wall at the airport with a sign that says “Welcome to the United States,” well, I get a misty-eyed, just like in those movies from the 1940s.

It’s my home, this America. And to me, it’s a pretty great place.

Betsy’s Creation • Quilt #225
Pieced by Elizabeth Eastmond • Quilted by Cathy Kreter
72″ wide x 86″ tall

Quilt began on Flag Day: June 14, 2019
Finished August 20, 2019
More info and a free worksheet for making this quilt can be found here. I also made a companion smaller flag:

etsycreation

Guild Visits · Quilts

Inland Empire Quilters Quild

August 27, 2019May 20, 2026 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

The classroom behind me was abuzz as I set up my Shine quilt on its frame. I turned around to see that the room had filled up with women from the Inland Empire Quilters Guild, who had come to take my class on English Paper-Piecing (EPP). I have many Guild visits coming in the next year, but only one group has chosen EPP. So I challenged myself to come up with something unusual and interesting that would provide a chance for them to learn a variety of skills.

EPP Picture 2 — IQSC Collection: Clyde E. and Joan B. Shorey Collection IQSC Object Number: 2006.056.0012

First I gave them a brief history of EPP, showing them quilt pictures from the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, NE.

EPP Picture 1 — International Quilt Study Center, 2006.043.0143, Ardis and Robert James Collection

The International Quilt Museum calls these types of quilts “mosaic” patchwork quilts, and they write: “The earliest examples of mosaic patchwork, from 1700s England, were typically made from lighter-colored silks. Later, during the third quarter of the 1800s, dark-colored silks predominated. Their availability, and the paper-piecing technique, spread widely throughout the United States.”

The three tasks I designed for the Inland Empire Quilters were:

baste fabric to hexies and then sew them together
learn how to work with paper EPP patterns (batch-cutting, glueing and sewing)
work with color and value in creating Spectrum, a circular mini quilt

Sue worked diligently on her hexie flower, finishing it up. Most others shifted off to the mini-mini quilt: a Kansas Sunflower variation, shown at the top of this post.

I was impressed with their designs and the variety of colors they used.

After lunch, we shifted full gear into working on Spectrum, with collections of Kaffe Fasset fabrics being displayed on tables everywhere. I was most impressed with the generosity of these women, who shared different colors with each other, helping their fellow quilters get all the hues they needed.

At the end of class, Carol went down to the car and brought up this old EPP quilt, with the papers still in it. We pulled out a few stitches, removed a few papers and decided it was from the 1930s as the papers were really postcards from a Chicago hotel. What tales this quilt could tell!

Monday night, I returned to present a program for them, and at the beginning, those who had made progress on their projects held them up for everyone to see.

I snapped photos of some who came up to show me (including Vicki and Terri). That’s Cynna’s Spectrum color wheel taking shape, above left, and Paula’s Kansas Sunflower (variation) and small hexie quilt below left. I was very impressed with everyone’s work.

Susan, the Program Chair, was busy at her table, but she and others had worked hard to show their projects for the meeting. She has arranged a visit by a noted designer next year and was busy taking sign-ups for that workshop to be held in March. Program Chairs are critical to a Guild’s success, and this Guild has a wide array of interesting presentations for their members. They also have engaged chairs for Charity, Outreach, and other, but most of those are discussed at their other meeting (they have two per month). This month was also the kick-off for their Block of the Month, which looks really fun.

One of the best sounds ever is the cheery voice of quilters greeting each other, which you can hear in this video. I had a wonderful time visiting the Inland Empire Quilters Guild. Thank you for inviting me!