Said 'Who is the man making diamonds out of Cole?' The man pushing buttons on remote control

This twin Tarragon quilt is called from Saint to Red Devil as the recipient just graduated from the St. Stephen's and St. Agnes School and will be matriculating to Dickinson College in the fall. 

He loves basketball both on the court and in the stands.  His paternal grandfather played for the University of Kentucky Wildcats back in the 1950s and the entire family are Wildcat fans. I was given a bit of UK fabric for the back but black strips had to be added to make it wide enough.

The recipient;s great grandfather (the father of the paternal grandmother) was Congressman Frederick Schwengel, R-IA who served in the US House of Representatives for 8 terms.  

The paternal grandparents built a beautiful weekend retreat on the high banks on one of the many bays of the Potomac River.  It is amazing to sit on the back porch and watch bald eagles swoop down to the water to catch dinner.

Born and branched the Air Force for the USA They call me Silas Johnson but I'm MGJ

This quilt was made for a retired 2-star USAF general who served our country for over 3 decades.  Based on old movies, I knew pilots used to wear white scarves while flying but I never realized that in later years the squadrons and other units had scarves designed specifically for their organizations.  

I was presented with a big box of aviator scarves.  The vast majority were silk or a poly/silk blend.  Two scarves from Guam were made from barkcloth.  Most of the scarves had crests on the end with a repeating pattern in the middle.  I ended up arranging the crests into blocks and bordering them with the middle sections.  There were so many different pieces that I made a spreadsheet to keep things organized.  There were 65 lines of 8 columns detailing color, direction, unit, size of deconstructed scarf, crest quantities, crest design, crest size, block assignment.

The polka dots were from the recipient's very first unit.  This was more of bib than a scarf as the original garment was about 18 by 18 with a longer strip with snaps fastened at the back of the neck.  Most of the scarves were long, thin rectangles.

The fabrics of the scarves were very slippery, stretchy, and thin.   Some of the satin blends were shiny .  I backed everything with fusible interfacing,

Two of the scarves were made from barkcloth.  Not surprisingly these were both from Guam, as barkcloth originated in the Polynesian islands.   

I really enjoyed the mathematical challenge of designing this quilt.  Trying to incorporate as many of the different designs into a prescribed parameter while still being visually pleasing was a lot of fun.       

  

 

My name might be Hinteregger, or maybe it's Ryan If I said that I was weak, man, you know I'd be lying

This quilt was created for a recent high school graduate of a Sydney, NSW prep school.  He is an American-Australian dual citizen due to one of his parents being an expat from Boston.

I used the same layout as his sibling's quilt but of course using his school colors of red, black, and yellow.  Because his expat parent is a HUGE Massachusetts sports teams fan and the internet makes following seasons so easy, this young man is also a rabid sports nut. I was given the school blazer, a pair of soccer socks, 6 pockets from the school dress shirts, 2 ties, some polos, and a team jersey.  

 I had a good bit more of his uniforms than I did with his sister, but still had to supplement a bit with extra fabrics and Boston pro team garments.  I was able to find a Red Sox uniform that provided me with the logo, a former player's name and team number, and the name of the city on the front,. 

I also found 2 team t shirts (Celtics and more Red Sox!) in my local area which is surprising as I do not live near Massachusetts.  I couldn't find Patriots nor Bruins shirts around my vicinity but was able to find licensed fabric for these fracnchises and appliqued the dress shirt pockets to them. 

The students at the school wear ties as part of their uniforms, The dark one was a bit shorter than the red so I am guessing it was for the Lower School and the red one was for the Upper School.

The school is large enough that the students are split into houses to provide a more close-knit environment within a bigger institution.  The recipient was in the Maloney House which was named after the first student enrolled at the school back in 1937.

I sewed both the  blazer and part of a button-down shirt into a quilt block.  I did have to move the pockets closer to the midpoints so more of those features would be visible.

 

The mom was able to get an entire roll of the ribbon trim that is used on the blazer pockets and sleeves.  This was perfect for making a tiny patch on a big background more interesting.

This was given to him over Christmas as they had come back to the US for their first post-pandemic visit.  Quilts are expensive to ship even with the US borders so they knew to bring an extra suitcase for something like this.

Oh Livvy I can’t live without ya Everyday my life I’m talking bout ya All Of my friends they go on about ya Olivi uh uh, Olivia!

This was made for an expat's child who lives in Sydney.  The family visits stateside about every 3 years.  She graduated from high school in December 2020 (they are half a year off being in the Southern Hemisphere) and matriculated to the same university where one of her parents went to graduate school.  It is extremely expensive to ship something as heavy as a quilt from the US to AU so the recipient had to wait until they next visited their American relatives.

Students in Australia don't collect as many t shirts as do kids in the US.  However they do wear school uniforms and the parent supplied me with several school crests. dance team logos, and other tiny pieces of the uniform.   I was sent a small ziploc bag containing about 13 items that I wanted to turn into a decent sized quilt.  Eventually a lot of extra fabrics that reflected the recipient's interests were included.

The recipient's name is also the name of a children's book character .and luckily there was licensed fabric with the image and coordinating prints to go with it .  I didn't know if a young female adult wanted to be associated with a pig (the character) so I just used the coordinate.

This was not a surprise quilt so I communicated directly with the recipient for favorite colors, animals, university major, etc. 

Thank goodness for the internet.  I was able to find the uniform supplier website so I could see the prints of the seasonal garments.  The girls wear a blue plaid skirt and navy blazer in the winter, similar to what a lot of prep school kids have to wear in the United States.The blouse has piping on the sleeve that is the same plaid as the skirt. 

  

However, their summer uniform is very different to anything I have seen locally.  The summer uniform is a pinstripe shapeless dress which reminded me of hospital candystriper outfits.  They also wear a hat with a very wide brim to help protect them from the lack of an ozone layer over Australia.

I was able to match the pinstripe summer uniform fairly easily to a quilting cotton.  For the skirt fabric, I was able to find a tartan but then dyed it with a royal blue color as to make it match better as it originally had too much of a turquoise tone.

The recipient is a dual citizen so she was able to attend NASA Space Camp in her early high school years.  

I was given 3 MSCW crests, several MSCW letters, and one embroidery of just the crown, and some dance images. With a bit of sashing, the crests were made into 6 inch blocks.  The other tiny images and lettering were appliqued on greyish feline fabric since she loved cats and the color grey.  She also liked pale pink so I made sure to use that as well to feminize the predominantly blue quilt. I also heard she liked to go out a lot once Covid restrictions were lifted so I was very happy that the pink fabric had high heels as the motif.  The tiny logo rectangles were a bit boring by themselves so I framed each one with blue and white gingham ribbon.

The recipient is currently a biochemistry major at the University of New South Wales.  I incorporated some science-themed blocks as well as a UNSW recyclable bag that I had received at an Idealist Education Fair when representing my own alma mater.  The bag is NOT cotton but some highly heat-sensitive poly fiber so I included a written warning never to iron the yellow block as it will melt.   The white horizontal strips are from the sleeves of the uniform blouse and between the actual piping and the uniform website, I was able to create a fairly similar plaid.

Brothers out there with sisters, peep it Years and years you try to keep them a secret

I was privileged to make baby quilts for a set of boy/girl twins,  The parents don't have a genetic history of multiple births nor were they on fertility treatment so this was a complete shock!  Both parents did great especially mom who had to deal with hyperemesis gravidarum for the entire 9 months.

As the babies grew bigger and had less and less space in utero, the mother kept comparing the fetuses to monkeys as they were kicking and wiggling constantly.  I stumbled across the most apropos fabric at a quilter's estate sale.  It had pairs of monkeys hugging each other which was perfect for the girl but there was too much pink for the boy. I really prefer making gender-specific quilts for babies. The other problem is that there was only a 1/2 yard which was not enough and since it was an older print, impossible to find online.

I gave up and eventually found 2 different but coordinating jungle panels but THEN a couple of weeks later, went to a sale at Fabric Place Basement (awesome all-purpose fabric store with locations in Virginia and Massachusetts) to peruse their $2.99 sales table/. The sale had only first-quality LQS level brands but just older, discontinued designs.  In any case, they had slightly over a yard of  the monkey print.  I also discovered there was a coordinating print of pairs of bears.  

I wanted to have both pairs of animals in both quilts so I cut the stripes to have both monkeys and bears in both quilts but the alternating strips to be pink in the girl's print and blue in the boy's.  I had just enough of a 30's print of white elephants on an orange background in my stash for the borders.

Oh, but love grows where my Rosemary goes And nobody knows like me

Hey look me over, rate me a 10.  Philip my glass and I'll chug it down again

I have pictures of the babies on their respective quilts but parents who came of age during the Internet era are very cautious about allowing pictures of their minor children to be posted online.  I think this is very wise.