Christmas Preparations

How are your holiday preparations coming along? Is your Christmas shopping done? (Ours isn‘t) Got your tree up? (Nope) How about those exterior lights and flashy yard ornaments? (Never have, never will) Is your holiday menu planned? (Kind of) Are your Christmas cards in the mail? (Just)

No wonder my Santa has an anxious look on his face. He’s in panic mode!

Actually, our family is celebrating Christmas simply this year, with minimal decorating, minimal gift giving, minimal hassle, but maximum love! It just feels right.

As far as I’m concerned, this antique quilt is the only decoration we need to give the house a festive look. It dates from the mid 1800’s and is in pristine condition. You can still see faint pencil lines used to mark the quilting pattern, which in no way detracts from the tiny stitches, 12 to the inch.

The quilt maker chose solid colored fabrics in classic red and green for her seemingly simple star design. But look closer... 

The star blocks are quilted with parallel lines and a grid within each green square. Alternate muslin blocks are heavily quilted with a double clamshell design, showing the maker had amazing prowess with a needle.

I'd like to display this in our living room for Christmas. Does anyone have experience hanging a quilt from picture molding that's already attached to the wall?

Christmas blessings to you for the coming year.

Fun with Barb and...

Have you seen Barb Vedder's new blog yet? Fun with Barb and Mary follows the exploits of two quilters who maintain their long-distance friendship after one of them moves from the East Coast to the Midwest.

Wait a minute... why does that sound familiar? Barb and I are longtime quilt friends too and have had plenty of fun together. When her move from Chicago to the East Coast made us long-distance friends, believe me, the fun didn't stop!

Diane and Barb, 2002

Before she moved, Barb and I collaborated on a Churn Dash block swap based on this pattern from the Jan/Feb 2002 issue of Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine. We used Civil Was reproduction fabrics and shirting prints, making enough blocks for two large quilts with no two blocks alike.

The blocks finish at 5" and my quilt measures 64" x 85". It was machine quilted by Robyn Saunders of Batavia, Illinois.

Click to enlarge

 Link to Barb’s quilt HERE. 

The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt:

Number of visitors to the Quilt: +18,000,000

Number of names on the Quilt: more than 91,000 (representing only about 18% of all U.S. AIDS deaths)

Size: 1,293,300 square feet (6 city blocks)

Viewing time: To see the entire Quilt spending only one minute per panel - over 33 days

Total Weight: More than 54 tons

Last Full Display: The Mall in Washington, D.C. in 1996

Goal of the Quilt: to honor and remember those who've died of AIDS, to bring awareness to how massive the AIDS pandemic really is, and to bring support and healing to those affected by it.

These are the panels I made to honor my brother, Wayne Hanson and his partner, Don Melvin, who died of AIDS in the mid 1990's. Each individual panel measures 3 feet by 6 feet (roughly the size of a grave).

Eight panels are combined into 12 by 12 foot units that make up the massive quilt.

If you ever get an opportunity to view a portion of the NAMES Quilt in person, don't hesitate. You'll find it a powerfully moving experience.