Vintage Tuesday #2 Redux

Grandma Betty's Quilt - full
Grandma Betty’s Quilt – full

A long time ago I wrote about ‘Grandma Betty’s’ quilt. I finally asked my Mom about it. She said that Grandma Betty was our Great Grandpa George’s girlfriend. It was her car they drove from Chicago to Los Angeles. Apparently, she made this quilt for my Grama. Mom said that my sister has it now. It makes me really happy to know more about this quilt. I’ll try to find out more about Grandma Betty. I think she was long gone by the time my mom came on the scene.

Spiky Stars

Spiky Stars at Marin Needlearts Guild Show
Spiky Stars at Marin Needlearts Guild Show

This quilt was pretty innovative for me at the time. I was inspired by a Doreen Speckman class. This is the second or third quilt I made from the idea. I have ideas for more of these and I even have fabrics selected, but haven’t ever gotten around to piecing more of them. Doreen Speckman, about whom, I am sure, most of you have forgotten or never heard, was a great teacher. She was also funny and made classes a joy to take. I also took a Nosegay class from her.

Spiky Stars at Marin Needlearts Guild Show winner
Spiky Stars at Marin Needlearts Guild Show winner

I remember walking around the aisle and seeing my quilt with two ribbons, including an especially large one for Judge’s Choice and being really thrilled. I called my friend right away – from the show!- and told her.

Later, I stood and listened to a lady try and figure out how I made the quilt. I have won ribbons since, but this large and impressive ribbon still means a lot to me.

Vintage Tuesday: Sampler Blast from the Past

I always wonder if I should put these types of posts under the general #TBT (Throwback Thursday) posts. I suppose it would sync with other sites, but somehow I feel like my own system works, too.

Fort Mason Sampler
Fort Mason Sampler

Over the weekend, I did some chores that had been languishing, including scanning a bunch of photos I found while clearing out boxes and drawers during Lent. Some of the photos were of quilts I just hadn’t seen in awhile. Others I didn’t have digital photos of for this site. One was a sampler I did when I took a drafting class at Fort Mason just after I got married.

I made the top and gave it to my mom who quilted it. Many of the fabrics I used were from my first Sampler quilt, which, at the time, was still unquilted – well, the quilting was in progress. I knew, even then, that quilting was less appealing than piecing and my mom liked the quilt.

The point of the class was quiltmaking, but more specifically drafting blocks. I talked about this topic a little in my review of The Quilters’ Album of Patchwork Patterns. I am much more familiar with how blocks are structured, but at the time, this was a challenging part of the class. I haven’t seen the quilt in a long time and in looking at the blocks, I am much less confused by how to draft them. I am not sure I could do it the way the teacher taught me at the time, but I could do it, I think.

Fort Mason Sampler Wreath
Fort Mason Sampler Wreath

My favorite block was the wreath type block. I really tried hard to make it look woven. I see some of the fabrics in that block are from one of the the Pointillist Palette quilts, so I must have already been working on those at the time.

Pointillist Palette n.4 Revisited

Every month or so I have been going on and one about various projects on which I need to work. It occurred to me that some of the projects are so old that I should haul them out and take a new photo. I sighed hugely at the work involved in that little project, because some of them are well stored. I do think it is a good idea not just for you, but for me as well. I started with something accessible. The last time I looked at these pieces and parts was in 2014.

Pointillist Palette in process
Pointillist Palette in process

The pieces and blocks for Pointillist Palette quilt n.4 (??) are in my sewing table, so I was able to pull them out (and shake them off a bit) fairly easily.

The reason I think this is a good exercise is that I can see what I have. As you can see I have 5 blocks already made and many squares cut.  I am sure I need at least twice as many blocks, but this is a good reminder of what I have.

Also, looking at the pieces and parts reminds me I need to look at what my original idea was for this quilt. Was it a Night theme or did I already do that.

See the other Pointillist Palette quilts in the Gallery.

Vintage Tuesday: Artbabies

Artbabies
Artbabies

I was thinking about Marrimeko fabric the other day and this quilt came to mind.

This quilt is pieced, but the smaller sections are not pieced. They are panels. They were already cut when I bought them at the Crate & Barrel outlet, so I sewed them together to make a quilt for the baby I was expecting. Machine quilt was something I was building as a skill with the new machine I had bought the year before so I decided to machine quilt it. Basting has always been a trial, so I thought I was being clever when I used Wonder Under to baste the quilt. It stayed together while I quilted it, but the quilt is stiff as a board, practically. We never really used it for a baby quilt. We did use it as a playmat. I still like it and could put a sleeve on it and hang it up.

This quilt was probably one of the last quilts I made until the YM was about 6 months, maybe a year old.

Ruth’s Hand Quilt

Ruth's Hand Quilt
Ruth’s Hand Quilt

My mother-in-law died on Sunday. It wasn’t unexpected, but it is nonetheless very, very sad. I feel a huge loss.

I am writing about the Hand Quilt, because I never made another quilt for my mother-in-law. I meant to; I just never did.

The hand quilt is a quilt that my sister-in-law and I made for my parents-in-law (SIL made for her parents) in 1992. We got hand tracings from all of the siblings, spouses and kids. We transferred the handprints to fabric and then machine appliqued the hands to the background. I don’t remember how it got quilted, but it did.

I always wanted to make another one to make sure we got all of the kids, but I never did. I suppose I still could, but I would have to make one for each family and I just don’t think I have that much machine applique’ in me. You never know, though. 😉

TBT: Pointillist Palette Quilts

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was dabbling in quiltmaking. I had made a couple of projects with fabrics I bought specifically for those projects. The Internet was just starting to be something that quiltmakers could use and I was on a Usenet Board where quilts were discussed.

Pointillist Palette 1: Sun
Pointillist Palette 1: Sun

I went to Seattle for a conference and visited a quilt store called In the Beginning. At that time, it wasn’t just a fabric line, but there was a huge store. It was one of the largest I had ever visited. I saw the Pointillist Palette fabric there – the whole line. I was amazed and thrilled. This was fabric I really liked. Up until then, I was trying hard to avoid dusty rose and teal.

Pointillist Palette 2: Ice
Pointillist Palette 2: Ice

I like these quilts and think they might be the precursor, in some small way, to the Fabric of the Year quilts.

Pointillist Palette #3: Flower
Pointillist Palette #3: Flower

I wrote a lot about my inspiration in another post, which is good since then I don’t have to rehash it. I did think about one of the quilts in the series back in 2014. years ago, I know, but the thought hasn’t died. There is hope.

#TBT: Early Tarts

I don’t often have something to show for Throwback Thursday. I received a box back from ScanCafe and I found an early photo of the Tarts Come to Tea. It is amazing to see how it has progressed and to realized that the quilt is still in process. Sigh.

Early Tarts Come to Tea
Early Tarts Come to Tea

I started this quilt pretty soon after TFQ and I made She Had to Have Her Latte and I was still thinking that novelty fabrics would be a good idea.

Those novelty fabrics were jettisoned at some point, but some of the elements stayed. Even some of the placement basically, stayed.

I also started out using much darker fabrics.

I do still have that vase, which I like and may make into another applique type quilt.

I am not sure how I feel about these improvisational pieces now. Clearly, I am having trouble finishing the Tarts, despite keeping it on the list.

Throwback Thursday: Playmat (#TBT)

A few weeks ago, Sandi, of Quilt Cabana Patterns, posted a playmat she made. It reminded me of Throwback Thursday (#TBT) and how Quiltin’ Jenny always posts something from her pre-blogging days. I wasn’t very productive in pre-blogging days, but I do have quilts that only show up on Artquiltmaker.com about which I have never written.

Playmat
Playmat

The Playmat is one of those quilts.I made this quilt in about 1997 or 1998.

The Playmat was one of the first projects I worked on when I was a new mom. I hadn’t been sewing much, was only marginally connected online (remember this was in the dark ages with no Twitter or podcasts or blogs) via the QuiltNet listserv.

I don’t remember why I decided I needed to make a playmat, but I really used it to lay out on the floor so the Y.M. (previously the Tiny Bubba) could lay on it. Later, he sat on it, but as soon as he started crawling, we used it briefly in the stroller, but he would throw it off and out, which became annoying.

I made this quilt very quickly and used a pillowcase technique to avoid binding it, then quilted it myself.  I notice now that the edge is all bias. Not sure what I was thinking, but the piecing is much more interesting (if the color combo doesn’t hurt your eyes) on point than a straight set.

The back is a nice cute bears in King Arthur garb print. I know I didn’t want to cut it up and I used it for a quilt for Friend Julie‘s younger son as well. I’ll try and add that photo to this post.

I linked up with Jenny over at Quiltin' Jenny
I linked up with Jenny over at Quiltin’ Jenny

Vintage Tuesday: A.G. Quilt

House Block quilt
House Block quilt

This is the first quilt I made on my Janome 9000 in about 1995.

I moved up to the 9k from a Singer 201 that I bought at a White Elephant sale for about $30 including the table. The Singer 201 got me started in quiltmaking, but I outgrew it after about 3 years. The one thing I really wanted to do was machine applique’. The Singer 201 did not have a zigzag stitch.

I was so excited to do machine applique’. I drew out a picture that became the center and stitched it out. I didn’t know anything about stitch density. I used Mettler quilting thread for the stitches. and the satin stitch was really thick.

I was really pleased with the center block when I made it. I can do much better now, but it really showed that a much better machine helped me take a huge leap forward in my quiltmaking. The new machine allowed me to spread my creative wings.

Vintage Tuesday: My First Sewing Project?

Happy Tax Day! Hope you get a big fat refund!

Recently Mom cleared out her storage unit. She found a lot of great stuff, like her jewelry box and some not so great stuff, e.g. my childhood in a plastic sweater box. I had mixed feelings as I went through the box. Clearly, these things meant something to me, or my mom, at some point, but, frankly, most of them I didn’t remember. I put them away. When I am dead someone else can decide to toss them.

Childhood Heart Pillow
Childhood Heart Pillow

I did find this pillow, though, which I thought was very sweet. It doesn’t have my name on it, but if Mom says I made, I have to believe her. It looks like something I would do. I love the wonkiness of it. I also love the visible stitches. It seems heartfelt to me.

It also seems odd, in a way, because I never called my mom ‘Mother’. That must have been the pattern.

Anyway.

Enjoy!

Vintage Tuesday: Blood & Oil

Blood & Oil: The Peace Quilt, 1990
Blood & Oil: The Peace Quilt, 1990

March was an odd month, as I know I keep saying, so I am pressed for content. As a result, I decided to show some older quilts.

I have a couple of quilts that have to do with war. As a mother of a boy, I am concerned about how easily our recent presidents seem to engage in war. I don’t see my son as expendable.

This quilt was made before the Young Man was even a dream in my eye.

This quilt was made as a gut reaction to the First Gulf War. I was sitting home alone watching CNN’s coverage of bombs falling on Baghdad, Iraq. After living in Austria, I know that people everywhere have moms and jobs they go to and children who need to be taken to music lessons and soccer camps. The type of war we have now does not spare civilians and that is of great concern to me. It is a reaction to war itself – the death, the devastation, the violence and makes no comment on the justification for that particular war or any others. It is also not a judgement of those soldiers who choose the military as their career choice. The military does a lot of good for a lot of people and I applaud those who choose that path.

The background uses a technique by Mary Mashuta called ‘pushed neutrals’. The idea is to use several different fabrics in a similar range of hues to make a background instead of using one fabric for the background. This idea has lodged itself firmly in my brain and sometimes comes out these days as mosaic quilting.

This quilt probably has the most organized and intentional use of mosaic quilting of any I have made. It reminds me that I can use it as a design option. It also reminds me of low volume quilts which are such a craze right now. They use the same idea for the whole quilt rather than just the background.

Although the subject matter is difficult, I think this is one of the best quilts I have ever made. It was shown at the San Francisco Quilters Guild show in 1990, with much controversy. It was on display at the law firm of McKenna & Cuneo, LLP from 1997-2000.

I think I will need to take a better, higher resolution photo of this piece at some point.

Vintage Tuesday: Pink Spider

Pink Spider Looking at the Stars
Pink Spider Looking at the Stars

Periodically, I will find something interesting that is old and post it under the Vintage Tuesday tag. In this case, I am showing you an old quilt of mine. It can’t really be called vintage as it is only 24 years old, but you get the idea.

There are a few things that you should immediately see in this piece. They are:

  • another hexagon quilt – I really have done a few of them
  • not my colors
  • gradated to a certain extent – as much as could be with the colors I was using
  • similar to the EPP stars

Here is the story:

This isn’t my first quilt, but I believe it was the first quilt I actually finished (the Sampler took me awhile, because of the hand quilting). It was finished in 1990.

I did in response to a challenge posed by one of the members of the quilt group of which I was a member at the time. We were all on board and one of the other members went to pick the fabric. It is all machine pieced-NOT paper pieced- and machine quilted as well.

Do you like that binding? I put the binding on by machine and then sewed all those miters down by hand.

It was really a challenge to hang.

 

Vintage Tuesday #6

Cross Stitch Wedding Sampler
Cross Stitch Wedding Sampler

This an embroidery that my grandmother made for my wedding and just gave to me.

Frankly, I was stunned because
1. I didn’t know she did cross stitch. Crocheting yes. Cross stitch huh?
2. I have been married for 24 years. Where has this piece been all this time?
3. Where did she find it?

4. How did she find it?

5. How did she remember she had it? (I suspect she came across it when rummaging through something)

Don’t get me wrong, I like it and will probably get it framed. It just seems very strange to me.

Vintage Tuesday #5

I am tempted to tag these posts ‘Old Junk.’ I haven’t done it yet, but I am thinking about it.

Starry Starry Night
Starry Starry Night

I must be on some kind of roll with my old quilts. This is Starry, Starry Night. Again, it is a 1990s project and I believe it was a round robin by mail project. Who can remember?

Aside from my Mariner’s Compass center, I really like the border that looks like it is half in the black and half in the grey.

I am almost sure this is one of the last, if not the last group project that I worked on.

I thought of it after I decided to play along with the BAMQG Round Robin.

 

What I wrote on my website “This border exchange quilt is owned and was completed by Jaye A. H. Lapachet. The quilt was started in 1994 through the Q-XCHG Listserv. It was completed in 1999. Participants in the exchange were: Debbie Atkins, Leslie Burnette, Rosalie Freudenberger, Jaye Lapachet, Dianne Morelock, and Amy Lobsiger. Machine quilted by Laura Lee Fritz.”