Skipping Christmas

I promised to “be back soon” with the final reveal of the wedding quilt, but it felt weird skipping Christmas without a mention. The “kids” were “home” for the holiday, so we had lots of family time together.


William spent three months in Russia this fall, studying at the Moscow Arts Theatre. It was the trip of a lifetime, but he was happy to get back to his girlfriend and American food. He made Anna her first Christmas stocking.

At least someone is using my sewing machine.

James and Rachel brought along two additions to their family, our grand kitties, Gandalf and Carrot.

We intentionally kept the décor simple to minimize kitty mischief. Hanging a couple red and green quilts made the house look festive.

We even managed to host a party for 25 friends. It’s an annual gathering that I usually have to miss when it's held at someone else’s home. But with the kids here to help and everyone bringing an appetizer or dessert, all went smoothly and we had a great time.

I hope this holiday season sets the tone for 2012 and that the coming year will offer plenty of opportunities for fellowship with family and friends. Happy New Year!

Gilding the Lily, Part 5

As you can see, I finally settled on a traditional layout for my Carolina Lily quilt. Plain alternate blocks give those busy lilies some much needed breathing room. They are now the focal point of the quilt, without overwhelming the whole design.

Those 15 ½” setting squares and 7” borders provide yet another opportunity for choice, this time, of a quilting motif. Will I decide on something tasteful or will I cross the line again, between classic elegance and over embellishment? Wait and see.

I found a gorgeous inspiration quilt at Feathered Fibers (Click the photos for more incredible detail). Everything about this quilt is perfect. In fact, if I had seen it 18 years ago, it would have saved me a lot of grief in the design department! 

Let me know if you can recommend a machine quilter who stitches like that! Thanks.

Gilding the Lily, Part 4

With a betrothal announced, I finally had an incentive to get this quilt finished. As usual though, I couldn’t do it myself. That’s what I get for waiting 18 years!

I’ve mentioned my awesome quilt friends before. They’ve come to my rescue many times, finishing ill-fated projects with their expert needle skills. This time, they were particularly generous and agreed to assemble an entire quilt top for me!

What makes their gesture so poignant is that these are the same friends who made my son this baby quilt 23 years earlier. They’ve known James his whole life and put such love into both quilts.


Here are my dear friends Mary, Sheila and Kathy. Ever modest, they insisted on squatting for this photo, to show off more of the quilt.


And here they are again, striking a more glamorous pose. They'll be furious that I shared this photo, but I just love it. Their personalities really shine through!

Gilding the Lily, Part 3

To make a long story short, I nixed the urn idea and added stems and leaves to the lily pattern. Choosing a less intense red fabric helped reduce the "pulsing" colors. After the ladies in my quilt group made 12 blocks for me, I took a little break.

In fact, I didn’t think of this project again for 5 or 6 years! As I gathered materials for a Gwen Marston Beaver Island Quilt Retreat in 1998, they came to mind. Gwen's retreat topic that year was Four Block Quilts and I figured having an extra set of blocks to play around with might come in handy.

I stitched four lily blocks together and came up with this. The green center portion didn’t appeal to me much, but the new block had potential for creating some interesting secondary patterns.


Had I continued, the resultant quilt might have looked like this. Interesting, yes, but way too busy for my tastes. Besides, it would have required 4 additional blocks, which I just wasn’t up to making.


I guess I hadn't learned my lesson. Once again, I'd taken a simple block and schlocked it up. After picking out the seams, the project got shelved again, until… 12 years later, when our son and his University of North Carolina sweetheart announced their engagement. Could there be a more perfect wedding quilt for this couple than a Carolina Lily?

Gilding the Lily, Part 2

Let me put these Carolina Lily blocks in a clearer context for you. Eighteen years ago, I belonged to a bee group that stitched and swapped complex quilt blocks with one another. When my turn rolled around, I chose the lily pattern and fabrics as previously described.

It was obvious that my dueling red and green fabrics wouldn‘t work. Any sensible person would have stopped right there and replaced one of those colors with a fabric that did work. Not me! I thought if I found an additional fabric that contained both colors, it would somehow bridge the gap and actually calm the block down. 

I carried those swatches with me everywhere, auditioning any fabric that contained a smattering of red and green.

At last, I found a paisley print that matched. "Wow" I thought. "I've hit the jackpot. I've struck gold!" Literally... it was a metallic print. Before I could think twice, I bought the fabric, cut the pieces for the urn and added them to my sample block.

You see where this is going, don’t you? The fabric looked perfect... from 6 inches away, but when it caught the light, the Carolina Lily turned into a gaudy, glitzy, Christmasy fiasco. I had, quite literally, “gilded the lily!” 

Gilding the Lily, Part 1

Do you know that expression, "gild the lily"? It means "an attempt to improve something that is already fine the way it is."  Take note, it will be a recurring theme through the next few posts.


I love classic red and green quilts. You just can’t go wrong with that color combination… or so I thought. This particular block posed plenty of problems for me. I learned many lessons about color and design in the process of turning it into a quilt. Perhaps by sharing, you can learn from my experience.

I took up quilting while living in North Carolina and always intended to honor that by making a Carolina Lily quilt. The pattern is, indeed, based on an actual North Carolina wildflower.


The traditional Carolina Lily block consists of three 4 petaled blooms on long slender stems, but there are many variations. Once I came across this design in Primarily Patchwork by Marjorie Puckett and Gail Giberson, 1975, I looked no further. The full center flower and simple urn-like pot really appealed to me.

By sticking with classic red and green on a white background and limiting myself to solids, I thought fabric selection would be a breeze. Not so! It is actually possible to make mistakes using only two colors of solid fabric.

My first fabric purchase was this beautiful green. I bought the end of the bolt because it was such a good deal and I just knew I’d never find that particular shade again. By purchasing yards of fabric, however, I was seriously invested in using it and making it work, even when it didn’t.

Early red and green quilts were made with Turkey Red fabric, a colorfast, cool red cloth. In my quest for authenticity, my next fabric purchase was a rich, saturated red.

Here’s where things got interesting. What happened when those two fabrics were pieced side by side? It may be hard to see on your computer monitor, but the red and green actually "pulse" or “vibrate” where they meet. This optical illusion occurs when complimentary colors of roughly the same value (brightness or intensity) are placed next to each other. The effect was dizzying, but I thought I could still make it work.

I've Got Plans...

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.

It's About Time!

“Well, it’s about time,” I hear you muttering. “You’ve been taunting us with photos of that same red and green quilt since before Christmas!” Quite true… so with apologies for what may now be an anticlimactic reveal, let me tell you all about it.

This is the quilt I made at my first Gwen Marston Beaver Island Retreat. Gwen's topic that year (1997) was Four-Block Quilts. Much of what she taught us is outlined in her subsequent book, Classic Four-Block Applique Quilts: A Back-To-Basics Approach.

Gwen’s approach to design is rooted in the folk art tradition of artists who are self-taught rather than formally trained. She prefers to work organically, cutting shapes “by eye” directly from fabric, instead of using patterns or templates. She’s more likely to measure “by hand” (finger or knuckle) than she is to pick up a ruler. Gwen even designs her layouts right on the fabric, adding, subtracting, and moving pieces around until they look pleasing. That's what makes her quilts so free-spirited and charming!

For the retreat, I brought along four Oak Leaf & Reel blocks to use as the center of my quilt. By making them ahead of time, I was able to focus more on settings, borders, etc., during the workshop itself.

I framed my blocks with appliquéd dogtooth, vine, and berry borders. As Gwen instructed, rather than having the motifs elegantly turn the corners as they would in a traditional quilt, these march boldly off the edge in a far more casual manner.

I can’t tell you how challenging it was for me to work this way. My quilting style back then was stiff and fussy, and even though Gwen assured us there was historical precedence for her laid-back methods, it somehow felt like I was breaking the rules. 

Notice, for example, that the leaves and berries in my border are hand appliquéd, while the vine itself is top stitched by machine. What? Combining hand and machine appliqué in the same quilt? I kept looking over my shoulder for the quilt police!

Over time, I have loosened up and embraced Gwen’s relaxed, no-nonsense approach to quilt making. Her methods aren’t right or wrong, better or worse. They’re just another way of doing things!

Oak Leaf & Reel

30" x 30"

Diane Burdin, 2000

Celebrate!

Celebrate the miracles of this season~

Blessed Christmas

and

Joyous Hanukkah!

Here Comes Santa Claus!

One Christmas, we created a special memory for our son, but in the end,  it was sheer happenstance that made it magical!

We’d borrowed my dad’s business car on Christmas Eve, for our traditional tour of Christmas lights. We’d arranged with Grandpa to call his car phone about 15 minutes into our drive. Of course, we had set the situation up by telling James to “be on the lookout for Santa! Watch the sky for signs of his sleigh and reindeer!”

When the car phone rang, we could hardly contain our laughter. Santa had his chat with James via speakerphone. Grandpa’s “Ho-ho-ho” was convincing and we were all giddy with pulling off the surprise.

And then we turned the corner. Standing at the curb was a magnificently dressed Santa, reaching inside his car trunk for a sack full of gifts (or finishing a cigarette. I can’t quite recall which). We adults were dumbstruck, but little James simply pointed and called out, “Santa.”

Once I caught my breath, I rolled down the car window and shouted like some lunatic Santa groupy, “Hey Santa, we’ve been driving all over town looking for you. We have a little boy here who’d love to say ‘hello.’”

Santa was nice enough to stick his head in the car window and say all the requisite things: “How old are you, James? Have you been a good boy this year? Now go home and get to bed so I can deliver your presents.” Meanwhile, the guy who was waiting for Santa’s grand entrance to his Christmas party, could do nothing but stand there holding his front door open.

It all happened so fast, there was barely time to thank him, let alone slip Santa a tip for his efforts. The party host may have been annoyed but we were ecstatic with our unforeseen Santa sighting. It was pure magic!

This is the quilt I always associate with that Christmas. I'd just finished it for James’ third birthday. 

On the back is a quote from Charles Dickens: “ ... it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when its mighty Founder was a child himself.” 

It was certainly good to be James that Christmas!