I come from the land down under, where beer does flow and men chunder

This is one of my earliest quilts, made about a quarter-century ago. The SAE MIT graduate was headed from the United States for a 1 year master's program at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He liked Sydney so much that he is still there!

So in 1995,  I was at the fantastic New England Book Fair with my mother.  I had made 1 quilt at that point and swore never again as I found it dull to make the same block multiple times especially when the popular colors at the time were wedgwood blue and dusty mauve.  I was looking at needlepoint books in the remainder section and saw this book by Margaret Rolfe.  I suggested as a joke to my mother (who did not sew at all) that I get the book and we make the quilt to commemorate the recipient's year in Australia. We headed to the original Fabric Place Basement where I actually bought fabrics in fraction increments.    That was the last time I would buy less than a yard of a fabric even if a patten called for a small amount.  She agreed that she would learn to piece but somehow the project became all mine.

I added 3 images to balance out the 20 creatures Rolfe had designed.  My parents had visited Sydney during that year as they thought they would never have a reason to go again being that the recipient was only there for the UNSW program.  They picked up a university patch from the college bookstore which I then appliqued on an oblong 8-pointed star.  I added a miniature Australian flag and an appliqued outline of AU and Tasmania in a batik fabric.  The aboriginal dot fabrics weren't sold in the US during this era.

 

This isn't the greatest picture but it does show that the quilt has held up well.  The quilt was entirely hand-pieced and hand-quilted.   I thank Margaret Rolfe for opening my eyes to non-traditional quilt blocks and to her use of bright colors. 

Went to the prom, wore the fly blue rental Got six girlies in my Lincoln Continental

This full-size Fennel quilt was made for a recent West Springfield High School graduate who definitely marches to the beat of his own drummer.  At his high school prom he ditched the black tie,pants, and patent leathers for  a gingham bow tie, Sperrys and Chubbies. The jacket and dress shirt stayed on.

Pictures at the date's house.....

                                                                                       ......picture at National Harbor

This was a boy who went to MIT in the summer to study ultra-cold atoms,

ran cross-country and track,  refereed travel and house soccer (note the v-neck and the collar of the uniform remained intact).

Served as a class officer and in the student government, was in FBLA and DECA (yet another hoodie shirt)

and still managed to work a part-time job (tan rectangle was made from his Panera visor).  There will have to be another quilt for just his Scout paraphernalia as there was no more room in this quilt.

The quilt ended up quite large which is perfect for a twin bed in college that's been lofted with bed risers or cement blocks.  I had made the recipient's sibling the same size quilt years before and she told me the quilt was big enough to hide all the stuff stored under the bed.  It measures approximately 90" by 106".  This is taller than the room where the quilt was photographed so it is a bit wrinkled at the bottom.

This client asked to add a sweatshirt hood to the quilt.  So not only is there a hanging sleeve, the leftover hood from the DECA shirt did get sewn into the binding.

The client thought this would make the quilt extra cozy for the recipient's dorm room.

I'll take a little shout out to my dad and mom (yeah) For bringing me into this world and so on

This quilt is a nice lapsize bargello style design.  Nothing fancy, strictly utilitarian.  The recipients have a gorgeous burnt orange bukhara in their media room so the fabrics were chosen to coordinate with the persian carpet.

Summer Row by Row part II

Because love grows where my Rosemary goes And nobody knows like me
Garden: The Bee Buddy who did this row pieced a profusion of brightly colored flowers embellished with fun buttons. 

But there's booze in the blender, And soon it will render
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on
Food:  This lady (who also is a delightful neighbor) appliqued a beautiful bowl of fruit in her row.  She also added margarita glasses with wedges of citrus and umbrellas to complete the scene.  Oh so thirst-wuenching! :)

Our house, was our castle and our keep. Our house, in the middle of our street
Home:  In all the row-by-rows that I have done, the final row is always called home and hearth.  Obviously not much hearth time is needed in the summer but the cottage is too cute for words.  The 4 heart flowers represent what our family was doing at the time.  We were active-duty Army, sewing away at kids' sporting events...

Straight out of Cape Cod, We're keeping it real
Finally the rows all put together.  I had done several row quilts and wanted to come up with a different layout.  The Pentagon shape is an obvious homage to what brought us to the District in the first place.  The background is a hot pink background with many,many appliqued alligators.  I was trying to go with a somewhat preppy theme as summer and the pink& green combo go hand in hand for me.  I embroidered white diagonal lines and then hand-quilted it with kelly green thread to allude to an argyle theme.  

Summer Row By Row

A row-by-row quilt is a group project where each member makes rows for each other. We came up with a theme for the entire quilt and then for each individual row. Row 1 is done by the original owner which sets the tone for the rows she will be receiving.  The width of the row was set at 40" (40.5 unfinished) and there was no limit on height.  Although I have done row-by-rows with other themes, I'm sharing the Summer one as I would much rather think of warmer, sunnier days while looking at the snow outside.

Our overall theme was Summer.  Each row had a theme as follows: Owner's Choice, Recreation, Food, Water, Garden, Activity, Home.  We each provided a list of key words and memories for the others to draw from when planning the rows. We had a month to complete each row and we kept the results secret from each original owner until the end.

Beach baby, beach baby, Give me your hand,Give me somethin' that I can remember
Owner's Choice: I developed a scene at the beach that I based off a child's coloring page. Techniques used were hand-applique, raw-edge applique by machine, embroidery and macine-piecing. I have a lot of fabric that depicts natural elements so it wasn't too hard to find a tan that worked for the sand and I had lots of sky fabric.

Shadows on the wall, I can see them fall Here and there and ev'rywhere.
Silhouettes in blue, Dancing in the dew; Here am I, Where are you?
Recreation:  We are all quilters so the woman who did my row thought that a lady quilting would be appropriate. She used a shadow-applique and embroidery technique along with machine-piecing.

We sail on yachts and we ride on horses, Every meal we eat comes in multiple courses
Water:  The woman who designed this row knew that I sailed on the Charles River in high school.  That was a long time ago and I only did it during the academic year but seeing boats on the water is a wonderful sight in the summer as well as other times of the year.  Each of the sailboats has a college name on the sail.  The one with the plaid hull is obviously for the Home of the Tartans, This row was paper-pieced.

Last night I had the strangest dream I sailed away to China
In a little row boat to find ya And you said you had to get your laundry cleaned
Activity:  This quilter made an outdoor scene with Sunbonnet Sues hanging quilts on a clothesline. It was machine-appliqued and embellished by hand.

Watercress I

The Watercress is a wall-hanging sized quilt incorporating any number of shirts up to 12. This Watercress is composed of 9 blocks in a 3 by 3 grid. It was designed for a Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumnus. He played baseball at MIT and was a member of the Massachusetts-Iota Tau chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. His shirts are mostly his MIT baseball shirts but you can see an SAE Christmas Party shirt in the center.

This client only had 8 shirts but didn’t want a 4 x 2 quilt. Luckily 2 shirts had mini motifs on the front that coordinated with larger designs on the back. I was able to incorporate the breast pocket designs by using plain sections of the other t-shirts. The result is the left block on the top row. The middle block on the bottom row was actually a child’s shirt so I added triangles and strips to size it up to the other blocks. The sashing fabric is a mostly purple and gold batik which represents the colors of SAE.

A little-known factoid about MIT’s athletes: The Tech mascot is the Beaver. Do you know why?

Because the Beaver is Nature’s Engineer.

“So we turned to Mr. Hornaday’s book on the animals of North America and instantly chose the beaver….The beaver not only typifies the Tech man, but its habits are peculiarly our own. Mr. Hornaday says, ‘Of all the animals in the world, the beaver is noted for its engineering and mechanical skills and habits of industry. His habits are nocturnal, he does his best work in the dark.’ “
—Lester Gardner, Class of 1897