I love it when you hit those switches I curve ball what my pitch is So here we-here we come Like dum-ditty-dum I keep all three ladies in stitches

This was an interesting project that includes 3 generations of first-born women.   The grandmother (generation 1) apparently embroidered many blocks that compose a childhood prayer and put them together as a quilt top.  She made this for her hope chest, well before she was a wife and mother. The embroidery is hand stitched as was the piecing.  Originally the quilt was tied, not quilted.

The mom (generation 2) also had  a different baby quilt..  Eventually it used as the batting for the embroidered quilt.  

In the 1980s, generation 3 daughter was born.  She was given the embroidered quilt at her birth and also had a cotton thermal blanket that she loved. This daughter is now a a PhD candidate at UVa focusing on American Art History.

By fall of 2020, the embroidered quilt was in rough shape.  Both the backing and the  quilt that had been used as the batting were shredded and the batting had shifted.  The quilt had only been tied, not quilted so there were lots of lumps and bumps from the batting.  Luckily the embroidery had held up very well.

I took apart the 3 layers, tried to comb/ smooth out the smaller lumps and removed the big bumps that I couldn't get to flatten.  I put in a very thin poly batting between the top  and the original batting and then added a new back.  I machine-quilted it and added a hanging sleeve.  The mom (generation 2) embroidered a different prayer on a label which I hand-appliqued to the back.

The daughter  (generation 3) received the refurbished quilt in Christmas 2020 and promptly asked if her cotton thermal blanket was also in the middle. It had not been included because mom hadn't been able to find it.  Of course daughter runs up to her old room and digs it out of some hidden corner within a couple of minutes.

I was then contacted to rip out some of my quilting so I could then add the blanket and requilt it. I was worried because the original fabrics of the embroidered top were fragile and I was afraid that the fabrics would tear no matter how careful I was when taking out the stitching. However the customer is always right and I personally love the idea of all these layers representing different generations, so I was willing to take the risk.  The mom (generation 2) made an additional label (to go with the prayer label) that lists the names of the 3 women and their respective birth years.

I love this story as I am also the third generation of first born women and my daughter is the 4th generation.  In my family, all 4 of us have the same first name and my daughter thinks she wants to continue the tradition if she ever has a first-born who happens to be a girl.  Crossing my fingers!!!

And there's a magic in the sound of their name Here come the Irish of Notre Dame

I recently had the pleasure of creating a memory quilt for a brand-new University of Notre Dame alumna.  Hailing from Oakton High School in Virginia, she spent her last 4 years in South Bend.  The client wanted a puzzle piece design with multiple size blocks as opposed to a traditional t shirt quilt with sashing between the blocks.

The recipient was very involved in multiple activities, completing several several marathons and other road races as well as being a member of academic and athletic clubs.

Because Notre Dame does not recognize social fraternities or sororities, dorm life is very important to students. They are similar to houses at prep schools.

Like the vast majority of current students and alumni, the recipient is a HUGE fan of the Fighting Irish. Every year the alumni association creates a special shirt for Notre Dame football.  The fronts and backs of the 2017-2020 shirts are included in this quilt as well as a column of the mini-designs from the sleeves.  Despite making several Notre Dame quilts over the years AND the fact that my uncle is the stereotypical alumnus, I never knew about The Shirt tradition before this commission.

Like a scientist, mmm, when I'm applying this

This  little wallhanging was made for a Webster employee in less than a week.  She only had 3 shirts so it ended up about 40 by 40 inches.  I love the old NBC logo/letter and had previously used it in a baby quilt.  The former Gorlok is now off to a new job in a new state and she will be greatly missed by staff, faculty, and students alike!

Her azaleas made a beautiful backdrop for a quilt display, don't they?

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. 

Meat Pie, Sausage Roll Come On Kearny, Give us a goal OOH, We Got a Corner!

The recipient for this full-sized fennel quilt played a LOT of soccer all over the world as well as rowing crew in the US.

I was asked specifically to applique the patch on this Stuttgart shirt as it indicated a championship for this team.

This block was a combination of sections from her Stuttgart Eagles UnderArmor shirt along with a front pocket design of the tie-dyed grey shirt.

Singlets or middies are too narrow for a full block due to the armhole cutouts.  Hence I added red knit fabric so it could square off to the 14.5" block.

As always, I felt I really knew the recipient by the time I finished the quilt.

But the words ain't mine, I just pass 'em along For Betsy C and her friends, I sing this song

This is a lapsize lavender quilt made for a person relocating away from Virginia to freezing cold New England. 

I was inspired by Rob Appell's State Map Applique Quilt https://mansewing.com/2018/01/state-map-applique-quilt/ but instead of using a jelly roll of coordinated prints, I used novelty fabrics with themes that would mean something to the recipient.  I blew up the outline of our Commonwealth (omitting the peninsula that hangs off MD on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay).  I then calculated the desired width of the strips by dividing the total number of strips into the widest length.  I sewed the strips together and traced the outline on the back to make a gigantic Virginia shape which was then appliqued on the background fabric.

 

 

So left to right:

 

The Virginia house was red brick. 

The recipient lived in an historic city full of lovely old buildings. 

Her favorite getaway was to beaches of Florida prolific with seashells. 

The office theme was based on all the paperwork she had to complete constantly, 

The next strip was a friends theme as she was a very good one to all. 

The grape theme indicated all the vineyards in Northern VA and the dogwood strip of course reflected the state flower. 

The black strip has her favorite drink that she would always have with dinner (although she liked margaritas on the rocks and not frozen as indicated on the fabric). 

The middle strip had dog bones and pawprints to represent her beloved fox terrier. 

The fabrics were then repeated in reverse order.

 

 

 

 

Because the recipient was moving up north where winters are long,  I used a variety of polar fleeces to make the backing to keep her extra-warm  One can see on the solid fleece that the quilting really pop, whereas it just blends into the fleece prints

And I've been k-kicking the new k-knowledge An emcee to a degree that you can't get in college

This is yet another Webster University Gorlok quilt.  I really loved making this one as I discovered an extra-fun design from Sew Adorkable.  Back in the day when our calculators could just do simple operations, we used to write words using the number pad and then flipping the calculator upside down.  Basically any word using only the letters B E H I G L O S could be written.  The girls tended to type in 0.7734 (when the fours used to be written with  2 vertical and one horizontal line rather than the modern 1 vertical, one horizontal, and one diagonal)   and the boys would write 58008 and variations thereof.

In any case, the recipient's name is Bobbie and of course her name can be written on a calculator.  She had several Webster World Works shirts with numbers on them and other Webster items as well.  Not all the numbers on the keyboard have an actual number shirt but she did have a mousepad we used for the decimal point key and the bottoms from drink koozies that were used for the dots on the division sign. I was also supplied with a couple of Webster totebags that we incorporated as well. 

 

 

The mousepad was difficult to applique and didn't look great when it was done so I embellished the circumference with a gold lace.  All the quilting was just machine-stippling.

 

 

And then someone snuck into my quilt studio and decided to help....

 

I  rarely take photographs of myself but our Main Campus asked the various departments to depict ourselves doing something fun and/or silly.  As I explained in the statement that was submitted with the pictures, quilting is fun for me and I know the design was silly but I couldn't resist as I am sort of a geek at heart.