Aunt Martha

I recently mentioned my paternal aunt Martha Cheavens in a post about my latest Material Mavens quilt.  She was an amazing person and a wonderful aunt!  I'll never forget the time that she, visiting my family in Austin, persuaded my parents to allow me (17 at the time) to fly to New York (my first time in an airplane).  She lived in Connecticut, but her sister Sallie, another beloved aunt, lived in Queens Village, New York, with her family, that included three cousins I adored.  I also visited Martha and husband Hugh in their home, and Martha took me into "the City" to see a Broadway play ("Pajama Game") and to eat at a Japanese restaurant.  This was before the days of the sushi craze; I have no memory of what we ate!

My older cousin David also accompanied me into Manhattan.  I best recall, with him, attending a popular television show of the era, the show that eventually caused a big scandal, "The $64,000 Question."  David also took me into a bar for the first time in my innocent young life, and because he was 18 and legally allowed to drink,he  impressed me mightily when he ordered a cocktail!  Some might find it very hard to believe that it was in this visit to New York when I first tasted pizza!  We had lots of Mexican restaurants in Austin, but no pizza parlor at that time!

So many responders to my blog post were interested in the book I mentioned, SPUN BY AN ANGEL.  It is a lovely book that would likely be termed a "young adult" novel now, but it wasn't her only book.  I also own a novel she wrote for adults called CROSSWINDS.  Martha was perhaps best known, however, during the 1930s and 40s, for short stories that were published in women's magazines such as MC CALLS, THE LADIES HOME JOURNAL, and GOOD HOUSEKEEPING.

Two of her short stories were adapted for the movies, and I own DVDs of these movies.  One was PENNY SERENADE, starring hearth-throb Cary Grant and Irene Dunn.  The other was SUNDAY DINNER FOR A SOLDIER, which featured Anne Baxter and John Hodiak.

SERENADE I have watched many times.  It truly is a tear-jerker and was loosely based on an episode in my aunt's own life.  I don't think I could re-watch this movie any time soon, as the death of a daughter is the centerpiece of the movie.

The two DVDs of these movies are readily available, and though her books are out of print, I've been successful at finding especially SPUN BY AN ANGEL online, books which I've ordered for my own children.  I also own the magazine story which was turned into the movie starring Cary Grant.

Thanks to all who seemed interested in my aunt, who died in 1975.  You can learn more about her at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Cheavens

The illustrations inside the front cover of CROSSWINDS

A Table Runner for Claire

Claire is one of my great-nieces, one of the granddaughters of sister Kathy.  She, her sister Martha, and her cousin Hannah, are called by me by "Camp Alice girls."  When they were very small, and before I had grandchildren of my own, for two or three summers the girls came to stay with us at what we called Camp Alice.  We always did a craft, visited sights around Baylor and Waco, went swimming, played games, and they loved most of all to dress up in my daughters' old prom dresses.

For the other two girls I made quilts for them when they graduated from high school.  But some how, Claire never got a quilt from me!  So I decided to make a table runner for her for a wedding gift.

I chose warm colors and a few "SouthWestern" style fabrics.  I have a wonderful book with many table runners to chose from, but this was the one that I thought showcased many fabrics the best.

I contracted with friend Judy Steward to quilt it for me, and she chose to quilt two long feathers down the length of the runner.  She used variegated thread for the quilting, and it really shows up nicely against the fabrics.  I had found a marvelous fabric for the backing that looks as if I had sewn together many, many tiny squares of fabrics to match those on the front, but not so--this fabric was just serendipitously printed this way.

Here are a few close-ups of the quilt that show off Judy's gorgeous quilting.  By the way, I've only partially hand sewn the binding to the back, and that's why the quilt is hanging rather irregularly!  Below is a portion of the back.  And then those close-ups.

Throw Pillows for the Grandchildren

Locke, my California grandson, turns 10 years old next week.  His Granddaddy and I will be there to celebrate this event with him.  We're giving him an assortment of gifts--boxed sets of The Cosby Show on DVD (a show greatly beloved by his Michigan cousins), two throw pillows to join the one I made him earlier this summer, and a Horned Lizard figurine that I bought several years ago in Fredricksburg, in the hill country in Texas.

One of the pillows has a Southwestern theme, in terms of fabrics and the Horned Lizard in the center.  This image I found online.  I wrote the photographer for permission to use his image for a quilted project, and he readily agreed, saying he was flattered that I wanted to use it this way!  I printed the image in reverse onto a wonderful product called TAP--Transfer Artists Paper.  This is a polymer product that you then iron onto fabric, and the image comes out incredibly crisp and true.

A side note about what we used to call Horny Toads, when I was a child.  We saw them everywhere in Austin, where I grew up!  We'd catch the babies, keep them for a time in a shoe box, and then let them go.  We used to say that we would "hypnotize" them by stroking them between the horns on their heads.  I remember vividly how soft and appealing their little undersides were.  Sadly, these critters are fast becoming extinct or at least they aren't as ubiquitous as they once were.  They aren't a toad at all, but a lizard, as their proper name denotes.

The other pillow features his Uncle Rob's dog Zeno.  Locke is crazy about this dog!  He loves him, he says, more than his own dog.  But Zeno is a dog any little boy would love, being a playful and active Border Collie.  Whereas Rolie, the dog who lives at Locke's house, is a placid and sweet toy poodle, definitely a "lap dog."  I used doggie themed fabric encircling Zeno's TAP image.

I like to give the non-birthday child one small gift, too, and so I made a throw pillow for his sister Lia, as well.  For her, who loves Rolie, the poodle, I transferred images of Rolie, Rolie and Lia, and then I printed off a heart to add to the pillow top.

At present these are just tops--I'll work on the backs of the pillows later, but I wanted to get this post up before time got away with me.

Here are photos of the pillow tops.  As usual, click to enlarge.  Lia's pillow is actually smaller--12" square, whereas the two for Locke will be 16" pillows:

Lia pillow top

Locke's Horned Lizard and Zeno pillow tops

The Horned Lizard close-up

Zeno close-up

Another Baby Quilt

This is a quilt made for some dear friends of our late daughter who are expecting a baby boy soon. I learned from daughter Susan that the mothers of this little boy are decorating his nursery with a beach or ocean theme.  I found two wonderful fish and seashell coordinating fabrics at a local quilt fabric store.  Actually, several years ago I had used one of these fabrics to back my quilt called "Lake Michigan Beach Boys," a quilt that hangs in my studio, and a duplicate of that quilt was given to Susan for her 40th birthday.

I'll be able to present this quilt to these friends when next I am in California.

I "fussy cut" the larger fish images from the primary fabric.  It was printed as wide stripes, featuring the fish alternating with the seashell and alphabet stripe.  This latter stripe I used as the top and bottom borders.  I also used from that section the shells and seaweeds that form the "cornerstones" of the sashing. The side borders are the coordinating, "tossed fish" fabric.  The sashing is a fun fabric that looks as if paint had been splashed onto it.  The binding is a wonderful stripe that contains all the colors in the quilt.

I had a stripe in my stash that has made an appearance in a number of baby quilts to use for the narrow inner border.  For the backing, I used a sailboat print, another fabric printed as stripes.

Good friend Rita did the quilting, using an all-over pattern called "Double Bubbles," which fit in beautifully with the bubbles that are in the other two main fabrics.

Below are some close-up photos.  For all photos, you can "click to enlarge":

Above are close-ups that show the nice quilting that Rita did.  Too, you
can see a few of the cornerstones.  AND also one of the things
that I liked best about this quilt--the way in several of the blocks,
part of one fish is "continued" in the adjoining block!  See the yellow dotted fish above.

The baby's name will be William.  As is customary, I included the
names of the designer and piecer, as well as the quilter, the date the quilt was
completed, and where it was constructed.   A bit of the yellow sailboat fabric
can be seen in this picture.

Hour Glass and Yo Yo Quilt

I've been working on this quilt off and on for several months.  I made it for the now two-month old twins, Kaitlyn and Dylan, of my nephew Joe and his wife Melanie.  I thought this wall-hanging quilt was the perfect baby quilt for the shared nursery of a little girl and boy!

Actually, this quilt was begun years ago, truth to tell!  I designed it under the tutelage of quilt artist and teacher Mary Mushuta at the Houston Quilt Festival.  The quilt made by Mary is found in one of Kaffe Fassett's books, CARAVAN OF QUILTS, in double spread pages 12 and 13, and then the directions for it are on p. 78.  Mary used all Kaffe fabrics, shot cottons and stripes.  The fabrics I chose are not his, but are considerably brighter than the ones Mary used.  In the class, after we cut out the hour glass blocks, Mary helped us with designing the layout.  I pinned the pieces on flannel, folded it up, put it away, and then, years later, pulled it out to make the quilt.  I ended up not liking how Mary had me arrange the blocks!  She wanted me to use four different fabrics in each block, which made the quilt look far too chaotic to my eyes!

I decided to alternate warm and cool colors in the hour-glass blocks, and I turned the cool blocks one way (in terms of color value) and the warm colors the other.  When I made and attached the yo-yo's, I chiefly put a warm yo-yo on a cool block, and vice versa.

I quilted it just as Mary did--with serpentine stitching through the seam lines of the blocks, the big ones and the small ones in the sashing, plus "stitch in the ditch" quilting along all major seam lines.  For the serpentine stitching,  I used violet thread in the cool block, coral in the warm ones.

warm yo-yo on cool block--violet quilting

cool yo-yo on warm block--coral quilting

The label that is adhered to the back of the quilt.

A Fabric Color Wheel!

I am taking a class next week from Katie Pasquini-Masopust at Quilting Adventures in New Braunfels, which I have attended five other times, always in March.

We are taking acrylic paints and she's providing canvases for us to paint.  We're also to take small pieces of fabric with graphic prints, such as dots, stripes, and plaids.  Some how we're going to combine what we paint on the canvas with these graphic prints, which evidently we will also paint, once we apply the fabrics to the canvases.  Sounds interesting!

We were to come up with color schemes before we arrive, and so I've been studying books that I have that deal with the color wheel and the various color schemes.  One of these books was an older one of Katie's.  In it she suggests making a color wheel from fabrics we have in our stash.  This sounded like a great way to familiarize myself with the wheel, and so I've done just that--made a fabric color wheel.

As you can see, Katie advises finding tints and shades of all the primary and secondary colors.  For some, this was easy--the blues, greens, yellows, and reds were easy to find in my stash.  Much harder was a dark orange to accompany the true orange and a red orange to go between the true orange and the red.  Also difficult was the entire family of violets.  I've never been drawn to the purple family, though strangely, I have an entire Elfa drawer full of these colors!  I can differentiate red violet from blue violet, but the "true violet" in the middle was quite a challenge for me!  I had to take a trip to a fabric store to find some of these colors that just were not in my stash!

Anyway, this was a most informative project and I enjoyed assembling it.  Now to decide on my color schemes!

Here are the violets now, close-up!

Lia's T-Shirt Quilt

I made granddaughter Lia a t-shirt quilt for Christmas, similar to the one I made for her brother for his birthday.  I had planned to learn how to quilt on a long-arm machine on this quilt, but, alas, this was not to be. My friend's machine was not cooperating!

So I ended up finishing Lia's quilt as I did her brother's--backing it with fleece that was then brought back to the front to bind the quilt as well.  I top-stitched the "binding" down with a wide zig-zag stitch.

Actually, I think the way it turned out is better than my first plan, because this quilt is now much more cozy and soft!  I think Lia will really like it.

These t-shirts were set aside by Lia's mom a year ago, after she had asked me to make her children these quilts.  I happened to find the paper bag of t-shirts totally by accident one day last spring.  A serendipitous find, for I had been sad to think that I couldn't fulfill Kathy's request, since I didn't believe that she had had the energy, in the throes of her illness, to gather up the shirts.  But she did, and there they were, waiting for me in the bottom of the guest room closet!

So now I consider that this quilt is a gift from both Lia's grandmother and her mother.

Here's as much of the quilt as I could get in
one photo.  I think it shows it pretty well, however.

I don't have room to pin this to my design wall, so I just photographed
it laid over my cutting table.

Here's a close-up that shows how the borders and the
binding interact with the squares cut
from the various t-shirts. 

Friendship Stars and an Elephant

I've been working on this quilt off and on practically this entire fall.  It started out with three batik panels surrounded by small blocks, but I was not at all happy with how it looked.  I didn't like the batik fabrics I had used for the small blocks, and I was unhappy with the block designs as well.  So I set it aside for a long time, and eventually decided to feature just one panel.  So then I had a lot of ripping out to do!

Then I had big plans of surrounding the elephant panel with alternating plain borders and pieced ones.  After attaching the first two, I added another narrow gold plain border, just a bit wider than the first one.  For some reason, I didn't like how this looked.  But I left it alone and made a couple of simple blocks to audition for use as the second pieced border.  But neither of these looked right to me, either.

Suddenly it occurred to me--why not just leave the quilt as it is?  I had always planned to use the dark blue, animal-motif batik for the outer border.  I pinned strips of this up, and, voila, the quilt looked not only finished but striking to me.  So the second gold borders were removed and the wider blue borders pinned up.

I decided to put Friendship Star "cornerstones" in this wider outer border for several reasons.  One, I wanted more "pops" of gold.  And, two, since I plan to give this quilt to a dear friend as a "thank you for your hospitality" gift, I liked the symbolism of using little Friendship Stars in the quilt.

Now the top is done, and I plan to quilt it very simply.  The center portion I'll quilt with embroidery stitching around the elephant and the other designs.  The borders will be machine quilted, again very sparingly.  I am considering framing this 30" square quilt with framing strips that can be bought in pairs at craft and hobby stores.  A quilt this small is every effective when it is framed.  Too, hanging the quilt is made very easy for the recipient!

The Jalna Books

My mother, when I was a teenager, introduced me to the Jalna books.  No doubt she suggested I read the book called JALNA first, which actually appears 7th chronologically in the series of 16 Jalna books.  This book was the first one that Canadian author Mazo de la Roche wrote.  It was received with much fanfare in acclaim in 1927, when it was published.  Then de la Roche went on to write, in no particular order, books that preceded and followed the original one.  Once I was hooked by this book, I went back and read the books in order, from THE BUILDING OF JALNA to CENTENARY AT JALNA.

It is believed, however, that de la Roche had the entire saga in mind before she wrote the first book!  Why she wrote them in such a random order is not clear.  Maybe it was just more fun that way.  There have been two movies and one mini-series based on the book, but I've not seen any of these.

When my daughter Kathy was a teen, I suggested to her that she read the books, and she became as devoted to them as I had been and as her grandmother before her had been.  Some years ago Kathy began searching used bookstores and online for copies of the various Jalna books.  She found quite a number, and for awhile, each birthday or Mother's Day, she would send me one of the books.  I have just finished re-reading JALNA.  On the inside cover is written:  "1999.  Happy Birthday, Mom, with lots of memories and much love, Kathy."

Lately I've been drawn back to these books and have been re-reading all of them, in a rather haphazard order.  I've probably re-read some six or eight of the sixteen books.  There is no doubt that this first
one--first to be written but not first chronologically--is the most dramatic and gripping.

 It is a way I can relive a wonderful connection to Kathy, a happy one, and to relive my delight in her gifts to me.  No, she didn't find all 16, but after she must have forgotten about her pursuit of them, I began looking for books to fill in the gaps.  My beloved daughter, with lots of memories and much love, I am re-reading these books for both of us.

I am today ordering used copies of JALNA and I plan to send them to my three devoted emailing friends who live at a distance from me--in Arkansas, Missouri, and Masssachusetts.  So I've spoiled your surprise, dear friends, but now you'll have a bit of history to go with the book, when it arrives!  Enjoy--and I send the book to each of you with lots of memories and much love!  Yes, it's a bit like a soap opera--a lot like a soap!  But very well written with wonderfully drawn characters and a plot that keeps you riveted!

Ribbons, Posies, and Butterflies: A Quilt for Mary Claire

Ribbons, Posies, and Butterflies--designed and pieced by
Alice; quilted by Rita

I finished the handwork today on the baby quilt I've been working on, off and on, for the past year.  The recipient is a little great niece who is now a year old.  It is her family that is co-hosting the family reunion we are attending next week in Pennsylvania.

I used the quilt pattern called Turning Twenty, Again, which incidentally would be an excellent quilt for a novice quilter.  There's a whole series of "Turning Twenty" books, but this is the first quilt I've made using this concept.  Basically, you cut a assortment of squares and rectangles in prescribed dimensions, and then you arrange these into big blocks.  In assembling the quilt, you "turn" the blocks so that the block that adjoins it is turned differently.  This quilt is composed of just six blocks--two blocks across, three down.  Below you can see that I zoomed in on one of the blocks.

This shows one of the
blocks with its 11 different
pieces.

After I was finished assembling the quilt, I realized that many of the fabrics contained flowers and ribbons, and at least one of them had tiny butterflies.  Therefore, when friend Rita brought over her notebook of quilting patterns, we chose one that featured flowers and butterflies.  The fabrics and the quilting design then led naturally to the quilt's name.

For the first time ever in eleven years of nearly constant quilting, I cut my binding strips on the bias.  One of my quilt heroes, quilt designer and author Marsha McCloskey, advises in several of her books that binding be cut this way.  I really liked working with it!  It turned so neatly and smoothly from the front to the back.

The lovely quilting by Rita shows up especially well
on the solid fabrics.

Here you can see the butterfly plainly.

I printed the label on paper-backed fabric designed for ink jet printer,
using my new HP Photosmart printer.  It did such a good job!
This picture shows off more of Rita's quilting, too!