The needle's in the groove and the Vinall's on the platter. I know that I'm fly, man, there's no need to flatter

This is one of a trio of quilts I made for 3 sisters.

All 3 girls are excellent athletes, participating in lacrosse and swimming throughout their childhoods and  high school.  The oldest sister also played Division 1 lacrosse at the University of Richmond, very time consuming and impressive!

I believe this quilt set a new record for number of shirt emblems in one quilt.  I was able to squeeze  11 NVSL All Star logos into one block. The mom wanted non-Halloweeny arachnid motifs since Richmond's mascot is the spider but she found high heel fabric for the borders and sashing as the recipient is now working in Manhattan and is in pumps and suits.

My favorite block in this quilt is this one below,  I love the smiling shark and apparently this now-sophisticated young lady, former jock laxer, was originally a Barney fan! :)

How many University of Richmond students does it take to change a light bulb?

Two, one to mix the martinis and one to call the electrician.

Like the saying goes, you gotta call and duke it off. Ask Juanito, he'll tell you all about it

This quilt was made for a Duke University Blue Devil.  A neuroscience undergrad at Bowdoin College, she is in graduate studies at Duke's School of Medicine, smart cookie!

I used 4 different Duke symbols in the corners. The 2 D's are commonly used in various university logos.  The U shape in the upper left is the School of Medicine symbol and the lower right design is the university's stylized version of the gorgeous Duke chapel. I went shopping in my stash for the swirly design fabric as well as the tone-on-tone cobalt rose background.  With all that blue, I was afraid of this becoming too masculine.

 

I only had one shirt to incorporate for this project but luckily found some licensed Duke University fabric at a nearby fabric store.  College cottons used to be common but now the shift is to fleece so I was thrilled to find the quilting-weight material. As usual, the hoodie pocket stayed on for some dimensional interest. Unfortunately the print of the hoodie and the pocket were not centered evenly on the shirt.  This wasn't noticeable on the wearer but it did look a bit off as a quilt square.

Duke basketball is so popular that undergraduates form a tent city called Krzyzewskiville or Kville before the big rivalries in order to score tickets.  This started in 1986 and is still going strong.

Blue ribbon gardens grow the fleur-de-lis!

This floral chintz pillow was made for a young woman who recently initiated into Kappa Kappa Gamma at Colgate University.  The recipient being a much bigger fan of pink and green as opposed to 2 shades of blue or the Colgate colors of maroon and white, we opted for a muted flower print with hot pink as the accent color and a green fabric with pink fleur-de-lis.

Unlike some of the other Greek pillows that I have made, we opted for the letters to be arranged diagonally instead of horizontally to include a monogram.

Colgate's logo isn't just a capital C, it always has the apostrophe gate written across the letter.

Here is a closeup of the fabulous pink and green fleur-de-lis fabric, perfect for any preppy Kappa.

I found a bit of interesting Colgate trivia.

No triskaidekaphobiacs at this upstate school, all good Raiders apparently are triskaidekaphiliacs instead.  Colgate was originally founded as The Baptist Education Society of the State of New York by 13 men who each offered $13 and 13 prayers.

The society's original constitution contained 13 articles. The address is 13 Oak Drive which happens to be located in the zip code 13346 (the first two digits are 13, and the last three digits add up to 13!).

So, that is why Friday the 13th is a day of celebration of Colgate. Every Colgate Day students, faculty, staff, alumni, and families around the world don their Colgate regalia and celebrate the university and its community.

Cougar on the court and I can't be beat, But, yo, Cait, what's up with the boots on your feet?

This quillow was made for the granddaughter of a sweet woman. The young lady spent her entire academic career at  Collegiate from K-12 until graduating this past spring.  Like her grandmother, she had a finger in many pots ranging from sports to camps to community service.  I was specifically requested to keep the pocket in the hoodie block.  Unfortunately, the silk screener didn't line up the word with the pocket.

She was always an excellent athlete.  I think I first met her at the ripe old age of.  She and her sister were already waterskiing experts! She is also a big sailor.  She and her dad competed in the race that is shown in the picture below.  This square is actually on the back of the quillow as it makes a pocket. This block also became the label for the gift.

  When the pocket is turned inside out and the quilt is stuffed inside, you can then see the other side:

 We were amazingly quick in the search for the sashing/backing/binding fabric.  Usually it takes a couple of tries of placing multiple bolts against tshirts to see the best results but this time, this was our first pick.  Collegiate's colos are green and gold and this print had multiple greens and shots of yellow.

The recipient has now started her college career at UVa where I know she will excel as she did for the first 18 years.



She said "You call yourself a doctor?" I said "This is true." She said "Explain to me really what doctors must do."

This was a quilt that was commissioned by four adult sons in memory of their father.  The dad was born in Italy, came over the US at age 13 and apparently learned English quite rapidly as he went to Rutgers at 18 followed by Jefferson Medical College at 22.  Being a member of a more formal generation., the good doctor was given a tie by each of his four boys on every gift-giving occasion.

I received 3 bankers file boxes full of ties and the instructions to make a modern, vibrant quilt with this fairly sedate neckwear.  We went back and forth with different designs and it was actually both of our sons who came up with the final layout. My kiddo has a strong artistic sense and the recipient's son is an Industrial Design major at Carnegie Mellon, go Tartans!  

I used 132 ties in this wallhanging which barely made a dent in one box. The vast majority were silk which involved a lot of prep work to get them to behave properly in a quilt.  Each 4" right triangle was separated by 2" sashing so that the busy patterns would not clash with each other. I incorporated plaids, stripes, Italian brocades, skinny ties, wide ties.  I used the boldest prints in the boxes staying away from browns and tans. The sashing was quilted but the ties were left unquilted so they could pop a bit.

 

The red, blue and yellow triangle is from a pharmaceutical company tie. Many people know that Depression-era quilters used feedsacks in their work. Many dry goods at that time came in a fabric sack that was printed decoratively. What I did not know was that pharmaceutical companies would give away ties to physicians, many times with an enlarged print of the microscopic image.


Although I am glad I accepted this challenge as it caused me to push my creativity in a new direction, I am somewhat relieved that my own father rarely wore a tie to work as he was a research scientist in a lab and did not dress up except for lectures.

Now we're your friend, and you're her brother, But your sister's so def we might scheme on your mother

Brotherhood (and motherhood) at its finest! This Paprika Pillow was made to support the Delta Tau Delta (ΔΤΔ) Parents' Auction for the Westminster College chapter, Delta Omicron.

The official colors of ΔΤΔ, otherwise known as Delt, are  purple, gold, and white . Their flower is a purple iris.  I was fairly certain that no self-respecting Delt would want a pillow with flowers on it so I went with a plaid that was purple with touches of gold.

 

The other side of the pillow has an extremely simplified image of the column from the Westminster College logo.  Columns are very significant to Westminster as they are the only remains of Westminster Hall, the original administration building, which burned in a fire in 1909. 

I've got money like Charles Dickens. I've got the girlies in the coupe, like the Colonel's got the chickens

Those *&^$%! Chickens!  This quilt was made as a result of a quilt bee swap. In a swap, the participants make as many blocks as participants. They keep one for themselves and trade and receive one to/from everybody else. Our quilt bee is called the Worker Bees because we are really diligent about doing projects. In any case, someone proposed chicken blocks. By the time I was done, I had 14 chicken blocks, 3 of which were facing the wrong way. I had no idea what to do with these creatures and just let the ideas germinate in my head. I elongated a Margaret Rolfe rooster pattern for the corner blocks, found chicken wire and 2 egg motif fabrics and then came my true inspiration.

I was at a wedding in a tiny town in the Pacific Northwest and we had time to kill before the ceremony.  I found a needlework shop and a quilt shop practically across the street from each other.  When I saw the crewel work pattern that said Good Morning Let the Stress Begin WITH a rooster, I knew that had to go into this quilt.  I am not a country girl so this would be my one and only chicken quilt. I am also not a morning person and back in those days it was always stressful getting the kids to school, spouse to work, me to work, etc.

The foxes came from a very old needlepoint book by Dorothy Kaestner.  Each fox face is mostly needlepoint but the ears and top and sides of the head are bargello stitches.  If you look carefully, you will see each set of eyes in a different position.  The bird blocks were all quilted with a hexagonal design that I thought resembled chicken wire. It was all hand-quilted, hand-embroidered, and mostly hand-pieced.  So despite me not knowing what to do with these *&^$%! chickens, it all came together fairly easily.