"GO DUKE"

In honor of my son receiving tenure at Pepperdine University, I made this quilt in the colors of his graduate school, Duke University, where he spent the first 7 years of his marriage earning his doctorate and where our grandson, Benjamin, was born.

Although the strips are straight, the arrangement gives it an optical illusion of curves.

"D" is for the Duke Blue Devils with its outstanding basketball team and coach "K".

I machine quilted triple diagonals and hand embroidered my congratulations.

The pattern came from Best of the Best Quilts by Leslie Beck, 

pg. 106, called "Autumn Lights".

Quilting My Travels

 I am currently enjoying hand quilting my "AROUND THE WORLD" quilt, featuring the fabrics and representations from the 90 countries we have visited. 

Each fabric calls for a different quilting motif. Sometimes shadowing the images within, while others work best with traditional patterns. I'm using a combination of hand quilting thread and pearl cotton for more plain areas. 

 The quilting on this king size quilt has gone much faster than I thought and should be done within a month.

 In the meantime I continue to work on piecing several other quilts: 2 for retirees from my former school, my 6th wedding quilt for my grandnephew and a undesignated quilt from a B&W swap.

 Watch for those being posted.

 Happy Quilting!

"AROUND THE WORLD"

Jack and I have visited 85 countries with 2 new ones coming up this September. It has been our passion and joint adventure to travel the world. I laid out the fabrics I've collected plus prints that represent those places last March. I added some more from 2 more trips and designed some appliqués to represent some other countries. It's been a challenge and fun to put this quilt together. Now the border is ready to embroider the names of those countries on our next cruise. I'm not sure how I will handle machine quilting of this king size quilt myself but I really want to personalize each area.

Love of Travel

My latest inspiration is to make a memory quilt of our travels.

We have visited over 50 countries and more to come.

I have collected fabrics and needlework samples from a number of those countries.

I want to design a quilt that features as many parts of the world as possible.

I found this panel at Hancock that I'll cut up to show our love of cruising.

I purchased these fabrics to supplement my stash.

I appliquéd these stacking dolls to represent Russia.

I want to also appliqué a maple leaf for Canada.

I'll post more on my progress as I plan and start piecing. I don't want to move too fast as we have a upcoming trip to Africa in the works.

New projects in the works . . .

The young man who was hired to teach Art when I retired, is also one of my former students. He is doing a terrific job and I am so pleased to see what I started 20 years ago continue. He and his wife are expecting their first child in March. A teacher colleague and I are making a baby quilt for them.










I found this flannel backing, scanned the images and enlarged them for applique.




Marsha is making the pinwheels to fill in the other 5 squares. We'll join them next week and I show you the finished product.


The second project is for my oldest Niece, Sarah. Its her turn for a king size quilt for their bedroom. She looked through my books and spotted an idea in Louise L. Smith's A New Twist on Strips 'n Curves (Not a simple pattern). "Can you do this Aunt Janet?" "Of course Sarah, I love challenges." I put together these fabrics from my stash and got the go ahead.
Here are the strips I've sewn so far, ready to cut and put together. I hope the orange doesn't take over.

I did this technique before for my sister. Look here to see what I'm talking about.

It's Time Again for "Challenge Walk MS"

Kathi and I have been friends for over 35 years. She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in her early 30's. It has progressed to confinement to a wheelchair but her faith, sense of humor and spirit has never diminished. I made this colorful lap quilt for her last year and she loves that it draws people to come over and talk to her.

My niece also has a long time friend, Rita, who has MS. As part of Team Momentum, Abby will walk with friends who have known Rita since High School.

Abby raises additional money by raffling a quilt that she and I make. This was last year's and we will be starting another very soon.

The T-shirts for the walkers and volunteers become the focus and create the theme. Tropical stamp fabric was perfect for the sashing and palm tree flannel became the backing. The hibiscus flower was scanned from the logo and enlarged. I used fusible web (see "Mon" entry) and machine applique to create this shadow effect.

“MON” Japanese Family Crests

Yae is a very special lady in my life. At age 80+ she still works as an aide at my school and is respectfully called Grandma by the students. Over the 20 years at South Pointe Middle School, I was blessed to have Yae worked with me at various times. Yae survived internment camp during WWII without bitterness, recovered from brain injury due to a fall, and continues to work daily with kids at risk. I designed and made this quilt with love and admiration for the person she is.

My design was base on "Diane's Garden" , a "stained glass" look achieved by fusing colorful pieces of fabric onto a black fabric background. I used Lite Steam-A-Seam2 to apply crest appliques to background, a double stick fusible web sandwiched between transparent papers. Applique design is 1) traced in reverse on paper liner 2) second paper liner is removed, 3) web side is ironed to wrong side of fabric, 4) design is cut out, 5) remaining paper liner is removed, 6) fabric cut-out is ironed to background fabric, 7) edge is machine appliqued using a blind hem stitch or zigzag.
Mons are Japanese family crests handed down from generation to generation through the female members of a family. I found these in books and online although I had to redesign them to minimize the number of parts and increase connections. After Yae received the quilt, she told me that her family has a crest. I wish I had know this ahead of time and could have used it too.

The day I decided to give Yae her gift turned out to be the one year anniversary of her husband's death. I didn't intend to cause her grief but unintentionally she said I made a sad day better.

Micah's "GECKO" Quilt

This adaptation of "Jig Saw" was completed entirely from my stash. The geckos were inspired by one of the fabrics used. I found it easier to plan the placement of the puzzle pieces by scanning strips of my fabric choices first, printing in color and cutting out the same number of small puzzle pieces as I had fabric. The paper layout showed me which fabrics had to be included in each block and auditioned the placement and contrast of colors. The gecko applique pattern was also an enlargement of the scanned gecko print.