This and That • February 2021

February 14, 2021January 11, 2026 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

Little three-year-old Gio came to live with my son Chad and his wife Kristen last year, and when this February rolled around, I decided that he had become, in effect, my grandson, and in my world grandchildren get quilts. I rustled up a stack of Hungry Animal Alphabet fabric by J. Wecker Frisch, figuring that my daughter-in-law was probably working with this little guy on his alphabet.

Kristen and Chad had first taken Gio’s mother under their wing some years ago (a complicated story), but soon Gio’s mom decided to go out on her own; it was heartbreaking. Fast forward two years, and Chad and Kristen got a call to come and get this cute energetic little boy. Without a moment’s hesitation, they did, and now he is in a secure home with a family that loves him.

This past Thursday, I had hit the Pandemic Wall, (and here, too) so we grabbed the quilt and jumped in the car and headed to the beach to take some photographs. Let’s go places, indeed.

Of course, this is my favorite block. That’s totally me, there, eating raspberries with racoons and a quail on my shoulder and a quilt on the table.

The back is an alphabet toss of black letters on white. I quilted it in a meandering stipple, bound it in red (Gio’s favorite color), and signed the back and sent it off that afternoon. Gio’s Quilt is quilt #244. It measures 45″ wide by 55″ high and I hope it makes Gio smile.

from Surfside Quilters Guild website, February 2021

This past week I was also able to present and teach at Surfside Quilters Guild, out of San Clemente area (California).

I recently got a new laptop and am now able to use virtual backgrounds when on Zoom. I used to have to set up a quilt stand and clamp on a quilt as my backdrop, and one afternoon when I was auditioning backgrounds, Dave magically appeared. I ended up using the lower image with Plitvice and the backdrop of California poppies. I still think my hair looks like –and moves like — a bowl of Jello when a virtual background is used, but it’s easier than setting up quilt stands.

Surfside Quilters Guild is a collection with many powerful, talented and well-known quilters. I fall in love with every guild where I go and teach, but it was fun to circle back around to this one, and have Nancy Ota in my class (I took one from her when I first moved to Southern California). Nancy mentioned that she’d just heard news of the death of Roberta Horton, a silver star of a quilter. (I wrote about Roberta Horton here.) In 2019, when I’d gone to PIQF, I saw Roberta and she graciously agreed to a photograph together. The news of her death blew me away, much as the news of Gwen Marston’s had done a couple of years earlier.

Horton’s books: I have all but the Stained Glass Quilting Technique.

Roberta Horton is one of a collection of BIG quilters, meaning Before Instagram. Before Facebook and before social media. You learned about these quilters — Roberta, her sister Mary Mashuta, Gwen Marston, Nancy Ota, Ruth McDowell, among others — by reading magazines, seeing which quilt shows where they would be teaching, and then trying to get there. The edges of our quilting universe seemed a lot farther away then and I was a roaming fangirl. I learned a lot from the women in that cohort, who, regretfully seem invisible to this new crop of younger quilters, quilters who somehow believe they sprang fully formed out of the social media earth without any quilting mothers. I have always believed that we quilters are richer for our heritage, and hope we won’t forget these giants.

Because Surfside began in 2009, and because their website is a strong compilation of their history as a guild, I had fun exploring their Blocks of the Month. I chose their Freddy Moran Garden Lady block (2012-2013) for my block this year for the Gridster Bee, and hope to make many of the accompanying sewing-related BOM blocks for a quilt in 2022. [Freddy Moran is another heritage quilter, seen here and here.]

This block, however, is not from Surfside, but is the block one of my beemates chose for her turn as Queen Bee, and is a free pattern from Heidi Staples of Fabric Mutt. I am doing all my blocks for the above quilt with red backgrounds, so tried it out in the block you see above.

These are what I made for Susan. The scissors are there for scale (blocks finish at 3 1/2″).

And last but not least, here are some textures drawn by Mother Nature and her helping flock of seagulls, seashells and edges of waves. If you need more beach, I put a Beach Highlight on my Instagram; make sure the sound is on for full effect. I plan to keep my finger on that play button often in the next few weeks, trying to get through pandemic life, and as I get my second dose of vaccine this morning.

It’s nice to feel a bit of hope again around the edges of life. I wish this for you, as well.

Happy Valentine’s Day Quilting!

Quilts

Some Friday Finishes

November 15, 2013 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

Working on some Christmas Trees to go around this guy:

I finished up the center, bordered it with red, and arranged and sewed the blocks from my bee-mates in the Mid-Century Modern Bee. I think they look swell.

Krista invited me to the Friendship Cross-X block swap. Or + and x. or X and +. So many names for the same block.

After hours of listening, I have one more hour to go on Catherine the Great. I’m glad I learned about her and her times, but it is a loooong book to listen to.

Finished Rene’s block for our Mid-Century Modern Bee for November. I just realized I forgot to make the signature block (we do one of those for all our blocks, and send it to our bee-mate), so I’ll be slicing open the envelope and sliding it in before I head to the post office today. She used *this* tutorial; these are fun and easy. Another for the I Need to Make That list.

I noticed it’s getting harder and harder to carve out some uninterrupted time in the sewing room, so yesterday’s long day was very welcome. So many things I want to do, people I want to be with, traveling I want to do, and grandchildren I want to see. I was able to help my daughter’s oldest children sew a small project (a sleeping bag for a stuffed animal). I’ll leave you with Riley doing his first stitches:

Okay, back to the sewing. Today is partly errands, mostly sewing, which should continue through the weekend. Monday? The re-grading of the (shockingly bad) second essay. Yep. I made them all re-do it, so now I get to regrade it. Now I know I’m nuts.

Quilts

A Quibble and A Muse or Two

October 7, 2013 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

To prove to my Mid-Century Modern Bee, that I am on task, getting ready for their blocks, I decided to start on the center Santa. And instead of raw-edge fusible applique, I went with needle-turn hand applique. The directions are sketchy, at best, on this center square, just the big piece of art (shown in disguise, above) and a note to cut the finished center piece to 24 1/2″ square. I didn’t catch that one at first, and started appliqueing.

I traced the pattern, in reverse (taped up onto a window) onto freezer paper, which I then ironed onto the top of the fabrics, and cut 1/4″ around. This pile was where I started on Saturday morning, while I listened to our church’s General Conference, a respite in the wild and crazy world.

I was pretty far along when I realized that the picture was too big for the alloted measurement, by 1/4″, and that was with no seam allowances. So I cut the top of the tree off.

This is where I am tonight. I must have really gotten excited about shrinking this as it now measures 22″ top-to-bottom approximately, but now I have enough room for a smaller inner border of red. That’s the quibble. Now to the Muse(s).

My grandchildren came for the weekend. This is the first set (4 girls) –well, three of the first set. We made cookies that we later decorated when the second set (4 boys) arrived. I’ve made each grandchild a quilt, so you could say their very arrival on this earth served as inspiration.

The father of the four sons, Chad, is on the left and the father of the four daughters, Matthew, is on the right, flanking my saintly husband. While they look fully grown to you, in my mind, their are young boys, scrappily fighting in the upstairs bedroom over who gets the Transformer toy, like Chad’s boys in our front room shortly after they arrived. Boys will be boys, and that always involves a bit of wrestling around.

I was the muse for my sister Susan, when she made me this beautiful shawl/scarf, which I’ve already used a couple of times to keep me warm while grading. A noted historian, she writes comments on my blog like:

“I find the names of these blocks quite interesting in their historic nature. Fifty-four Forty or Fight refers to the battle over the Oregon boundary between US and Great Britain. It was a campaign slogan in 1844. Clay’s Choice no doubt refers to the great Whig politician Henry Clay, who helped broker the Missouri Compromise that would set back the sectional conflict until the eruption of the Civil War in 1861.”

I love her and was glad to learn about my quilt blocks!

My quilt group is also inspiring–we’ve been going strong for about fifteen years, and Caitlin (above) is a new member with her first quilt top, just finished last Friday night.

I saw this when we went to Greek Days at the local church, just a couple of miles from us. It reminded me of the Marcelle Medallion, which has been so popular around the web, and I can’t tell you how many pictures of stone floors I have from around Europe, quilt patterns in all of them.

I was quite impressed by the stories told by the priest, as he led us through his sanctuary, telling us of connections both modern and ancient, and it was an interesting point and counterpoint to the thoughtful talks I listened to in my church’s conference, as all these things remind me that we are more alike than different in our hearts and our minds, whether or not we worship the same.

This morning, we tiptoed out of the house, the grandchildren still asleep before their big day at Disneyland, to see this glorious sunrise. We stopped to take it all in, then moved on, pausing at each street, savoring the changing colors. This, too, is a muse of grand proportions.

It seems that every time I hit a rough patch, it stills me enough so that I can move in a new direction. Who would have thought that after finishing Kaleidoscope, with all its fussy English Paper Piecing, I would be appliquing a Santa down to a new square of cloth? But this is the direction the Muses have beckoned me to follow.

I am always frustrated by the rough patches and I can hear my parents chuckling in the background, as they know I like things to always be still and placid and never, ever, in turmoil. I’m a harmony junkie, if you will, not only in relationships, but everywhere in my life. “This too will pass,” my father used to say to me when I’d come to them in tears, upset by something or another, yet I always found it hard to believe their soothing counsel.

But I feel quite enriched this weekend, in spite of the chaos of an afternoon of eight children. I savored their noise and games, hoping it would never end, but of course realizing (that for sanity’s sake) it needed to. The trip to the Greek Days Festival on a hot October’s day. A visit to my sister last week. A new sewing project. Thoughtful and touching messages to the heart. And last, but not least, the best inspiration of all: the anniversary of our first kiss, twenty-five years ago.

May your muses find you this week. Happy Quilting!