Quilt Documentation

Yesterday was the Quilt Documentation.  They do it twice a year, and I've missed the last two.  For my first documentation post click HERE.  The quilts are examined, described, their stories documented, and they are put on a national database.  A label is also attached to the quilt itself with it's computer database number, and the date it was documented.  It's wonderful to have a historical record!  They do it all over the country if you are interested in participating:

 This beautiful Double Wedding Ring quilt was made by one of my great-aunts (a sister to my great grandmother).  It had been purchased by my Mom to help defray medical expenses on another great-aunt who was very ill, and was given last year to my daughter who loved the quilt and asked her grandmother for it.

 It was photographed and examined and all the information will be placed in a national database.  The quilt was made approximately 1976-1979 (possibly a little earlier or later than that bracket of time) and cotton as well as synthetic fabrics were used, scraps I am sure owned by the maker from clothing items.  It is rose, brown & light blue with little touches of other colors on an off-white field.  The quilt was completely hand-pieced and hand-quilted.  It is treasured.

While there, a lady didn't have her camera with her to take pictures of her quilt so I offered to photograph it for her and send her the shots in an email.  She was very happy about my offer!  You aren't allowed generally to photograph the other quilts, unless you have permission like I did.  I saw many gorgeous quilts in the two hours I was there!



Theirs was also a family heirloom.

Also, here is my latest finish (just have to do the binding).  It's a wall hanging Christmas gift to my sis-in-law who loves baby ducks.  I posted this on my regular blog as well.  It's pieced and appliqued, with embroidery and fabric paint embellishments:

And a few of the "show and tell" items from the last Quilt Guild:

A beautiful top made by my friend Paulette...the picture can't do it justice.  It's really gorgeous!

This little girl made this quilt under the tutelage of her grandmother.  It will be entered into our Junior Division at the Quilt Show.  She was VERY cute showing it to all of us!

Wonders....

 

Of the "One Block" kind and otherwise....the guest speaker for the Tucson Quilt Guild was Maxine Rosenthal who wrote the book One Block Wonders.  She is such a hoot!  My goodness we enjoyed her talk!  Paulette and I attended both the night and morning meetings because we were still selling raffle tickets.  See info about that HERE.  So we got to hear her twice and see her quilts twice, but we were also happy to get to see two different groups of show and tell quilts from the members.  Let me start with a few of those:



A top hand quilted by Paulette for Quilting for Others

A new member's very first quilt top!!!!

 

 

 

Now for one of Maxine's quilts....

That's Maxine in front explaining her method of using octagons and hexagons repeating to make her overall design.

 She had a lot of others in various color combinations and designs.  For images of her wonderful quilts, go HERE.
Enjoyed being at both meetings but starting next month we are only going to be attending the morning meetings.  Going at night became too difficult!  It's mainly for people who work, anyway, and none of us do.  There are huge groups at both meetings but I love it!

September Meeting

I belong to the Tucson Quilt Guild, which is a very large group of whom I only casually know a very few people, but the speakers are always amazing, and the show and tell awesome...and the guild does a LOT of quilting for charity and the community.  I enjoy the meetings very much.  My friend Paulette from church has been attending with me for well over a year, and now GayNell has also joined us.  This month I was able to attend twice (they divide the group into a night meeting, and a day meeting to accommodate everyone) because we were selling raffle tickets for our quilt to help out the Robinsons with their son who has SMA.  See post about that HERE.  The speaker was Rob Appell of Man Sewing!  See his website HERE.  What a delightful presentation!  He is high energy and entertaining, and has so much to share!  I was so happy to discover that he is a Christian, whose journey from alcoholism is inspiring, and he too does a great deal of charity work, supporting causes to help the world's endangered species, and supporting returning combat veterans.  His enormous Iwo Jima WWII Memorial inspired quilt will be auctioned off soon...the opening bid is $25,000!  This one quilt will raise an enormous sum to help the families of these returning veterans.  Awesome job, Rob!

One of his amazing ocean quilts!

 

Two more gorgeous ocean quilts!

 

One of Rob's quilt kits he sells to benefit organizations that help preserve endangered species!

Another of his animal quilt kits!

Here are a few items from Show & Tell....

A raffle quilt for "Quilts for a Cause," to benefit  breast cancer research....The Guild also supports a Homeless Women's Shelter, and the Diamond Children's Hospital with "Quilting for Others."

And a quilt made by a Vermont Quilt Guild Member, which was sold and the proceeds were sent to women in Africa to help them start a business of bee-keeping.  They got $2700. for the quilt!  Our Guild was asked to participate in this project, and I made two of the flower squares that were cut down to hexagons for the quilt...Paulette made five, I think.  I loved the pattern for the flower and saved it.

And finally, here is another item I made for the Children's Home (see our trip to the Home to take all the quilts and things to the kids on my main blog, HERE)  His corn and hat might make him hard to cuddle but I couldn't resist adding those elements.  They can strip him back to just his overalls so he will make a good bed buddy....

Something Special

This is a raffle quilt our sewing circle at church made to sell tickets to benefit a child in our church with Spinal Muscular Atrophy.  This is SMA Awareness Month and if you would like to learn more about this serious, debilitating disease, please click HERE.  If any of you out there would like to buy tickets ($1. apiece, or 6 for $5) or give a donation to the family, please let me know!  The quilt is 72"X 70" and is machine pieced and largely hand quilted. We will be doing the drawing on Veteran's Day and I will post the winner.  The quilt would be great for a special Veteran because of its colors, or as a Christmas present....or just to keep for yourself! 

A Few More Finishes

Here are a few more things I have recently finished.  The first is a doll I made for a child in our church that was to have a several day stay in the hospital....

Secondly, a pj set and bunny for the Children's Home...I plan to make another bunny in  grey for a boy....

And finally, another quilt for the Children's Home....this one is a panel and I just added the borders with some applique/fabric paint embellishments, and quilted it.....

Quite unintentionally there's definitely a "bunny" theme going on here! :-)

Two Recent Baby Finishes

If you follow my quilting blog you know our church provides items for the Children's Home at the Tohono O'Odham Reservation...new & gently used clothing, new & gently used toys, also diapers and wipes, and we ladies in the sewing group all make baby and child-size quilts, plus things like bibs and burp pads.  We received a huge blessing when we took items there before Christmas last year, and will be going again next month.  Here is my most recent child's quilt for them:

I had an old piece of "soft book" fabric that I cut up and used for the letters and other elements of the quilt, and did some of my own applique as well. It was fun to put together.

closeup of top half

Close up of bottom half

I also recently made a "play mat" for a child in our church out of the scraps from the quilt above.  Wade has SMA and can't use most of the muscles in his body.  He is about to turn 2, and cannot sit up on his own, and has limited use of his arms and hands.  I thought hanging this in front of him would give him incentive to try to reach and play with the objects and keep his mind stimulated.  His mother tells us that he loves Baby Einsteins on an ipad they have.  Being a toddler, and not a baby, I geared some of the items to his age level, but this play mat could be adapted to a younger baby and hung on the side of a playpen or crib.

All the items are "removable"...a slinky, flashlight and morraca, plus softer toys.  In the bag are foam shapes and also numbers 1 through 5 and the letters of his name. 

There is a Warriors For Wade facebook page here:  https://www.facebook.com/Warriors4WadeRobinson?pnref=story

And here is the cutie himself, taken from the facebook page:

Just wanting to get the word out there about Spinal Muscular Atrophy, and hopefully generate some prayer for little Wade and his family.

Baby Quilt Finish & A Few Other Things

Our dear friends just became Grandparents for the first time.  Myra is from Scotland, so I wanted to give "Wee Fair Bairn Emma" a quilt of Scottish fairy tales.  It is finally finished!  I had everything done in time for Quilt Guild Tuesday night, except tacking down the binding, and I took it for show & tell.

I designed this quilt using fairytale illustrations from Pinterest as my inspiration.  The panels are all embroidered and then fabric painted.

The thistle in the center is applique.

This panel is the Silkie story, though I opted to go with an actual mermaid for the quilt.

This of course is a unicorn story.

The Water Horse

The wife who could not spin or weave....unfortunately in this shot the window looks askew, but it's actually the way the quilt is hanging.  It's straight, I promise. :-)

At Quilt Guild  Paulette attended with me, and here are the two quilts she quilted:

I also really liked these two from show & tell:

Four of us from church have made a quilt we will be raffling off to raise money to help out the Robinson family, whose small child has a devastating disorder called SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy).  We four pieced it, and Paulette attached the borders, and is now quilting it by hand....(more on this quilt when it is completely finished):