Apple Blossom Quilt

Here is the quilt I've been working on for the last three months, although the statement is kind of misleading. I seldom worked on it except on weekends. In any case, it was finished last Sunday except for giving it its first washing and snipping the last thread ends. Wednesday I rounded up a clothesline and some clothespins, washed the quilt, and dried it on my front porch, fastening the line between two posts with a simple clove hitch. The pattern is made up entirely of Nine Patch and Snowball blocks and is in a book of a similar name. I took many pictures, several of which were okay, but wouldn't you know, the best picture of all is the one featuring the cameo appearance of two of my dogs, Chelsea and Frankie. (I think it was deliberate - Frankie's butt seems to show up in a lot of my photos.)




On Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, I presented the quilt to Marie-Jo, a close friend of my oldest daughter, whom I first met about 12 years ago, and who soon was beloved by all our family. Soon after I pieced the quilt six years ago, MJ moved back to France. She visited here two and a half years ago, but her quilt top had not been out of its bag. This trip, however, was planned three months ago, and I knew I must finish Marie-Jo's quilt so she could carry it home.

During her years in Texas, Marie-Jo celebrated the American Thanksgiving with our family. One year she was even put in charge of roasting the turkey. Now she is the one Frenchwoman celebrating the American Thanksgiving in Paris. Turkeys are difficult to find there, she says, but she chooses a roasting bird and faithfully follows our family recipes for my grandmother's stuffing and my Aunt Helen's pear salad. This year's holiday was extra special, with her here to meet the new sons-in-law and the two babies born while she has been gone. She holds her own in our "traditional" card game, Liverpool Rummy, which we have played at family gatherings since generations before I was born. And when I introduced another game I played as a kid, Michigan Rummy, she beat the pants off us, taking all our chips.

I love my French daughter.

The Cat Quilt



This is my first quilt. I started it around Christmas time in 2000, and presented it to my oldest daughter and her cat in the summer of 2004. Ebony is actually in the quilt - she is the black cat with round green eyes a little above and to the right of center. (It really looks like her! She has the roundest eyes I've ever seen on a cat, and when I found those buttons, I knew I needed them for this quilt. I carried them in my purse for over two years until it was time to sew them on it.)

Yes, it took me more than three years. I didn't sew, other than repairing an occasional hem or loose button, and I never imagined I would want to make a quilt until I saw one similar to this in a quilt book. My husband (who did sew) had to help with cutting out the first 4x5 inch blocks, because I couldn't even cut straight. I had bought rotary cutting supplies, and by the time most of the fabrics had been collected, I had learned how to use them. The sewing was hard at first, too. About half of the ears were sewn on by hand because it seemed easier to me than stitching those diagonal lines on Jack's sewing machine. After three long years, while quilting the whiskers, I had used it enough that I finally learned how to thread it without written instructions.

How did I ever dare to start this? How on earth did I manage to finish it? I've never been that much of a doer or a finisher. But I'd been to a quilt show - I'd never seen or imagined anything like it! And an incredibly talented woman named Carolyn told me I, too, could make a quilt. I didn't think so, but was utterly fascinated nonetheless, and began hanging out at the fabric stores and quilt shops. 

I found the quilt I had to make in a book called The Cat's Meow: Purr-fect Quilts for Cat Lovers by Janet Kime, published by That Patchwork Place in 1994. It was a wall-hanging called Stealth with off-set rows and neutral colors which darkened diagonally in beiges and browns across from top left to bottom right. A variation of that quilt in the same book was larger, with bright colored cats, and straight rows. I wasn't as blown away by the brights, but I loved the quilting of the whiskers across the horizontal rows.

The daughter had no idea what the design would be, she didn't want to know, but I insisted she tell me what colors she would like. I was absolutely taken aback when she said black and white. But it's a quilt, I gasped. Don't you want any other colors? Well, okay...gray, I guess. But when I began shopping for fabric, and especially after cutting and laying pieces out side by side, I realized it was going to look pretty good. The eighty different black, white and gray rectangles resulted in a very cool textured look.

One of the things that took so long, aside from my lack of skill, was collecting the fabric. At first I planned that every one of the 240 cats would be different, but after awhile I compromised on making three cats of each fabric. It could be like a matching game. I had the button eyes for one solid black cat, and I made three cats out of the backing fabric.

When all the rectangles were cut, I laid them out in rows, then spent hours swapping one for another until I was satisfied. Then I got out my little piles of two inch squares - or were they one and a half - and pinned two ears to each cat which were to be sewn onto the bottom corners of the cat above it.

(Before I started writing all this, I was thinking that, for an experienced quilter, this would probably be one of the quick and easy quilts. Easy, maybe, but quick? I don't know.)

Jack made me some stretchers out of elastic and paper clips to hold the layers straight and taut while basting, which was done with blue and yellow thread and an upholstery needle. I still use the same clips and elastic, but now baste with safety pins.

Another thing that took a long time was the pondering. It still takes me a long time to think things out and work up my nerve for the next step, and those times were v-e-r-y l-o-n-g for this first quilt. After the whiskers were quilted across all the cats, I thought for another long time about how to do the borders, and decided it was time to take a class. (Ya think?) I signed up for a class in free motion quilting and then, after a lot of practice, quilted paw prints all around.

Finally came the presentation of the black, white and gray quilt! She loved it! It was all worth it!

During the two years following, she adopted two more cats, a long-haired solid gray beauty named Nebula and a shy but adventurous white kitty named Roxi. This decision to own a black, a gray, and a white cat had nothing to do with the quilt, she says.

In the third year, she added Storm, a black lab, to her family. I haven't made a dog quilt yet. There is a really cute cookie jar I'd like to get for her that features three ceramic dogs in its design - a yellow and a chocolate lab as well as a black one. She may get it for Christmas this year. I just don't know how she will make time and room for the two new dogs she'll have to adopt.

A Simple Lap Quilt

This is, I know, an odd choice for the beginning of my Quilt Journal, but I just finished it and am pleased with it, although the only part that is mine is the binding.

A friend gave me a bag of fabric leftovers from her deceased mother's stash, and this large piece of specialty quilted fabric was in it - one side denim and the other side a homespun plaid, looks like, commercially quilted with a light batting inside. I don't know what Ronda's mother may have made from it, but the leftover piece trimmed to about 41 x 54 inches, perfect for a lap quilt.

I spent a pleasant hour or so rummaging in my fabric tubs for a binding fabric. Almost anything would've been fine with the denim, and I considered choosing something I knew would probably never be used elsewhere. Maybe a school print, with rulers, notepaper, apples, and such - the quilt will probably end up on the school bus anyway, to cover my special needs children on cold mornings. But I wanted even this almost-ready-made lap quilt to be special and look pretty, so I kept auditioning different pieces as I tried to match the plaid as well as the denim. I found two 10 inch pieces left from the Deer Quilt, the same pattern but one was gold and olive-brown and the other more orange and rust-brown. Perfect. I cut three 2 1/2 inch strips of each, and then cut the six strips into 12 shorter strips to alternate colors as I made the binding.

I never realized before how quickly and cheaply a good utility quilt could be made, one that can actually stand up to continuous use for a good many years, pretty yet not so special that I will need to worry about something happening to it. I'll be taking a closer look at the specialty quilted fabrics next time I am at the store.