In Time for Father's Day

Last year I put together the center portion of the photo above, the box with many small cubbies.  I entered an enlarged photo in a calendar contest sponsored by one of my art quilting magazines.  My entry wasn't one that was selected for the calendar, but of course I've kept the filled box (which once was a children's beading kit), knowing that someday I would put it into a shadow box frame and hang it in my craft room.  So, just in time for Father's Day, here is the completed shadow box.  The contest theme was "Life is a box of ____________" and my entry was titled  "Life is a box of memories of Daddy." (Click on the photo to see it enlarged.)

I've taken some close-ups of sections of the shadow and inner box and will focus on each of these.  This next photo didn't turn out as well as I would like.  At the top left is one of my all-time favorite pictures of Daddy.  Below it, a too-faded picture of little sister Martha; both of these glued to fish fabric, to symbolize his favorite leisure activity--fishing.  In the top left of the inner box you can see a rising sun.  This is symbolic of Daddy's always rising before dawn, making coffee and his own breakfast, before coming in to awaken each child and our mother.  A shovel for the gardening he loved, a book because he was a voracious reader, more tools beside the book.  The curled paper in the upper cubby beside the sun will need no explanation for my siblings:  these came from the Big Black copy pencils Daddy brought home from the office, which all of us kids loved!  The dog stands for the three dogs I recall our owning:  Pluto, Chocko, and our beloved Inky, a dog I bought for a quarter downtown in Austin, a mongrel who lived the longest of all of our dogs!

Next a picture of Daddy and Joe digging, glued to newspaper fabric, symbolizing of course his career as a newspaperman--a career that began at age 14 and continued until his death.  Below the picture of father and son is one of those Big Black copy pencils I mentioned.  A typewriter charm is tied with a red bow.  We siblings all can recall how fast Daddy typed with just two fingers!  The pansy button symbolizes Daddy's love of flowers, as do the flower pots and more gardening tools.  The baseball and bat and other sports balls fabric:  Daddy loved all spectator sports. A favorite summer pasttime was his taking us children to see the Austin Senators play.  The picture of Daddy with oldest sister Kathy is in front of our house in Austin at 2504 Spring Lane.  This picture is glued to fabric of children fishing.

Finally, in the lower right of the shadow box, a picture of Mother Alice with newborn baby Alice.  More gardening tools are glued to the sides of the inner box, and then a silver fishing pole and fish charm are in the bottom right cubby, and the fabric below the inner box is a gardening print.

This blog posting, then, is in honor of my beloved Father, David Anderson Cheavens, who died far too young in 1970, at age 63, when I was only 31 years old, 7 months before the birth of Susan, our third child, who never got to know her Granddaddy. 

A happy Father's Day to all you fathers out there. 

Arkansas Reunions/A Journal Quilt

Last weekend Bob and I flew to Arkansas for his 55th high school reunion. For part of the weekend, however, I journeyed on to Ft. Smith to visit dear friends Sherron and Charles.  I decided to construct a crazy quilt journal this time, and practice some of the techniques I learned in a recent class.  Crazy quilts aren't traditionally quilted, but of course decorative stitching plays an important role.  The colors of the quilt were chosen deliberately:  Central High's school colors are "old gold" and black; the green fabric is for Sherron's favorite color.  The black center portion is Route 66 fabric; this symbolizes all the far-flung places from which the graduates of the class of 1955 came.  In the lower right corner are a lion and a tiger.  The tiger is for the LRCHS's mascot.  The lion in honor of friend Sherron, who was part of a committee to select a sculpture for the University of Arkansas, Ft. Smith (where she formerly taught English).  Their mascot is the lion, and Sherron and her committee worked long and hard and selected an excellent sculptor to depict a ferocious lion.  The freehand "55" is self-explanatory!

Finally is the applique of the happy little girl flying a kite, with the words "I 'heart' today."  This symbolizes my friend Sherron, who indeed loves every day!  She is the most optimistic, upbeat person I know.  This has always characterized Sherron, ever since we met as college freshmen. Spending time with her is always a joy, and I always come away feeling as uplifted as that kite!

Below, some pictures from my Ft. Smith visit and some close-ups of the journal quilt.  Sherron and I together, eating a delicious lunch at Hardscrabble Country Club; the lion sculpture; and then Sherron and Charles with their Crazy Quilt pillow, which project has been the subject of one of these posts.

Oil Spill Quilt Now Finished

I finished the oil spill journal quilt today.  Because in my first posting about this quilt, I didn't really discuss the construction of it, I will now.  I have had the center portion of the quilt for a long time, a lovely piece of fabric I knew would come in handy some day.  It seemed better than any other in my stash to represent the deceptive beauty of the oil spill, all the vivid colors which are lovely but which represent something so deadly.  The bird fabric, too, I've had for some time and used once in a banner in honor of a young man who died tragically young.  I had other bird prints, but these looked as if they could be sea birds.  The fish fabric was a no-brainer; I was glad that I found this one with a suitably-sober,  black background.  I "fussy cut" the Mother Earth out of a larger piece, and I drew with ink the crying eyes.  The huge teardrop is out of proportion to the eyes on Mother Earth, but I wanted to make the teardrop prominent and thus made it large.  The "veil"--a raggedly-cut piece of sheer fabric, was a last-minute inspiration.  As soon as I tried it out, both the quilt and the poem came together.  Today I have quilted this journal quilt very simply and minimally.  I used "invisible" thread in the hope that it would blend in to all the different colors in this small quilt. In the bobbin I used a variagated thread, and this shows up nicely on the back of the quilt--which back used the same black fish fabric as the front borders. 

A Mini Quilty for Alice

When my great-niece and namesake Alice was born, I made a crib quilt for her--my first ever crib quilt.  Her older sister Katie was so taken with this quilt  that she wanted me me to make one for her.   So soon I made her a "napping quilt."  Pictured here are Katie on her quilt at the left and Alice on hers.  This photo was taken 8 years ago!  Both girls became attached to their "quilties," as they called them.  Even today, the quilts are folded at the ends of their beds.

Fast forward several years.  Katie was going to England with her grandparents, who wanted her to pack lightly, since they were all going to have to manage their own luggage.  Katie asked me if I could make her a very small quilt from some of the same fabrics as her "quilty" since she was concerned she'd not be able to sleep well without her quilty.  This I did, and the little quilt made the trip to England and then joined the other quilt on her bed. 

Fast forward another couple of years.  This summer Alice is attending a sleep-away camp.  She, too, requested a small quilty to take to camp, one using some of the fabrics from her crib quilt.   I had to search to find these scraps,  and those that I found were quite small.  She had always loved the soft, touchable Minky fabric that I had used to back Katie's small quilty.  I found some scraps of this fabric as well.  Alice's little quilt is a bit more complex than is her sister's, because of having to use such small pieces of fabric.  It makes me happy that these little girls are so attached to their quilts that they want reminders of them to take with them when they're away from home! 

PS  These little quilties are more accurately "blankets" than quilts, since they are not quilted and there's no batting between the fronts and backs.  But I won't quibble about terminology; the girls will no doubt refer to them as their "mini quilties!"

Crazy Quilt Pillow for Sherron

Several weeks ago, I took an all-day class from quilt teacher and artist Alice Kolb.  I've gotten to know Alice in her role as co-administrator of the wonderful Quilting Adventures workshops that are held each spring in New Braunfels--workshops which I have now attended for three years.  Alice came to Waco to teach a class in crazy quilting, her specialty, a class sponsored by our local Homespun Quilters' Guild.  In the class I assembled a pillow top, using all green fabrics, chiefly batiks but a few others as well.  I knew at the time that I would turn this piece into a pillowtop for beloved friends Sherron and Charles.  I am leaving tomorrow for Arkansas, where I'll spend parts of two days and one night with them.  Earlier this week I did the decorative stitching on the pillow top; this morning I have put the pillow together and inserted a form.  Here is a close-up of the crazy blocks and the decorative stitching:

I am saving this as a draft and plan to publish it once I get to Sherron and Charles's house.  I want this to be a surprise, so I don't want to give Sherron a sneak peek at it before my arrival!

June, 4:  Now I am at Sherron's house and the pillow has been presented.  Both she and Charles seem to like it a lot.  Here are some pictures of the pillow with its new owners!  At Sherron's suggestion, I added my initials to the bottom right of the pillow.

An UNFINISHED Journal Quilt: Oil Spill--Vale/Veil of Tears

On Friday, May 7, on the front page of the New York Times this photograph of the oil spill caught my eye.  I cut the picture out and pinned it to my bulletin board.  Every day since I've looked at it, amazed at its beauty, horrified by what it depicts.  I knew that eventually I'd base a journal quilt on that photo. 

I've assembled the quilt, but it is unfinished.  I've not sewn down the appliques.  It's not been "sandwiched" with the batting and backing.  It's not been quilted.  But since I am leaving day after tomorrow for Arkansas, I wanted to get it posted and will eventually post an update.  Unable to sleep last night, I worked on it then.  Earlier in the day, thinking about how I was going to construct the quilt, I made up a poem based on it.  So, first the quilt; then the poem.

Here is my poem:

Oil Spill:  Vale/Veil of Tears

She weeps, Mother Earth—

She weeps for the birds of the air

And the fish of the sea.

Mother Earth cries for the

Men who can no longer go down to the sea in ships

To cast their nets.

She weeps for the white sands, now dark with sludge.

From afar this spill of oil is beautiful—

Its colors, the colors of a sunset.

But the beauty is deceptive.

Close up, noxious fumes sicken men,

Kill innocent wild things.

So in this vale of tears,

We, too, like Mother Earth,

See through a veil of tears.

A Journal Quilt: Memories of a California Easter

Easter 2010 was in early April.  And here it is, the last day of May, and I am only now posting my journal quilt inspired by our Easter visit to California.  The most dramatic event during that visit was the earthquake which we felt Easter Sunday afternoon as only a very slight, seconds' long, tremor.  Of course, those further South, at the epicenter, had an entirely different experience.  I attempted in my journal quilt to depict the splitting of the Earth of an earthquake, but to me, it looks more like a brown river!  Superimposed on the earthquake scene are, what else, Easter eggs, and also a vase of flowers.  Both eggs and flowers played a huge part in our Easter visit, naturally.  Southern California is a feast for the eyes with all of its flowers!  Too, Kathy and her family gave a pot of hydrangeas to be used in the church sanctuary,  in honor of Roman's father, who died last October.  The church was ablaze with scores of lovely potted plants of many varieties. 

We brought the pot of hydrangeas home, and we also purchased a mixed bunch of flowers at the farmers' market on Saturday.  The vase of flowers in the quilt picture above is rather surreal, since the pansies (of course a small flower) are huge compared to the roses and the daisies!  But I adore pansies, which remind me of both my father and my grandmother, so I wanted them to be prominenent.  I used a shiny voile fused to some white fabric to try to give the effect of a shiny pottery vase; this doesn't show up so well in the photo.  One photo from the Easter visit that I particularly love depicts Locke beside the pot of hydrangeas that Kathy and Roman brought home from the church.  As always, click to enlarge the photos, particularly the one below of our six year old Locke on Easter Sunday!

Our Youngest Grandson--Growing Up!

Dawson, our youngest grandson (six in March), seems suddenly to be so much older!  I used to consider him shy, but not so now.  One afternoon when he got home from kindergarten, we decided to make oatmeal cookies.  We didn't have the baking soda called for in the recipe.  "I'll go borrow some from a neighbor!" he announced. So he marched off with a plastic cup and a measuring spoon and came back with the soda.  This might not seem unusual, but it surprised me.  Not too long ago, he'd not have suggested such a solo errand. 

At Malcolm's baseball game, two little girls, younger sisters of Malcolm's closest friend, tagged around after Dawson as if he were the Pied Piper.  Is Dawson going to turn out to be quite the lady's man?

Most surprising of all, though, happened at the soccer game. No officials had shown up to referee his brother's game. "I'll go to the office and find out if any are coming," announced Dawson. His parents didn't think this was necessary, but again, I was surprised at his volunteering.

I also used to think of him as being dependent on Malcolm for amusement, not often content to entertain himself.  Not so now!  We went to Wal-Mart and used a gift card we'd given him for his birthday for a new Wii game.  He disappeared upstairs, loaded the game, learned its rules, and then proceeded to play it alone for several hours.  We could hardly drag him away from it to go out to dinner!

Red Poppies

This Memorial Day weekend we had an after church, indoor picnic. I'm on the fellowship committee in charge of such occasions.  We decided to center the tables with some red, white and blue placemats I use on the 4th of July.  One member suggested we also include red poppies, if she could locate some.  She did, at a local VFW post.  In our childhood, committee members remembered that veterans used to hand out red paper poppies on the street corners of our towns, as they collected donations for the families of their fallen comrades.  We pinned the poppies to our clothes in honor of these veterans.

The Memorial Day poppies tradition started with a poem written by a Canadian Army colonel during WWI.  Colonel John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" was first published in December, 1915, in the British magazine Punch.  Two women from Georgia , impressed by the poem, began selling paper poppies in order to help orphans or others impoverished at the end of the war.  Eventually the Veterans of Foreign Wars made the Memorial Day poppy official.  Below is the McCrae's poem.

In Flander's fields the poppies blow,

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky,

The larks, still bravely singing, fly,

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead.

Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved and now we lie

In Flander's fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow,

In Flander's fields.

A Sports-filled Week in Michigan!

We planned our trip to Michigan to coincide with what we hoped were two of Malcolm's baseball games, some practices of Dawson, and two soccer games.  One practice worked out for us to see, and it was fun to see Dawson batting, running, catching, etc.  One of Malcolm's Little League games was rained out, but the next one made up for it!  They won the game handedly, and Malcolm contributed with hits, runs, and by pitching two innings.  In the first picture above Malcolm has just hit the ball and is about to take off for 1st base.  What I particularly love about this picture--please click to enlarge it!--is Dawson standing at the front of the dugout in the background, in navy, watching from a position of privilege as son of the coach and brother of one of the Scorpions. 

After getting to 1st, stealing the next two bases, Malcolm then ran in for his first score.   Clicking on this 2nd photo, you'll be able to see his happy face! 

Particularly fun, too, was seeing Malcolm pitch.Malcolm was (to admittedly very prejudiced grandparents' eyes) the best pitcher on either team.  Watching him take the wind-up is especially fun.

Even more fun--and I didn't capture this in a picture--is that Malcolm imitates the pros he sees on TV.  Before pitching, he leans forward and looks hard at the catcher, as if waiting for his signal.  Then he nods sagely and begins his wind-up.  He was the only boy to enact this savvy charade, and it cracked up grandparents and mother watching from the sideline!  I can't resist one more picture, simply because though I am hardly a professional sports photographer, I really like the composition of this photo, with Malcolm sliding in to home and the umpire signalling "Safe"!