For my birthday my son, Elliott, gave me a certificate for a kitten from the Humane Society. Business was brisk last Saturday when we stopped by — tons of people adopting pets, which was nice to see. There was only one very small kitten left, and we managed to fill out the paperwork quickly in…
Here is a the next group of these nursery rhyme illustrations which includes a sweet rhyme that is a little more obscure. I LOVE YOU WELL I love you well, my little brother, And you are fond of me; Let us be kind to one another As brothers ought to be. You shall learn to…
Sam at Feeling Stitchy selected my lion quilt block as the winner in the yellow category of the Feeling Stitchy Rainbow of Stitches contest. I entered a quilt block in almost every rainbow color, and I think yellow was the category with the least number of entries. So….better odds for my lion, which is good…
Maybe I should have pressed this a little better because it’s looks a little wrinkly. I do like Alice’s eyes on this one — the facial features are always the most challenging, especially the eyes. There is still no plan for how I’m going to set these blocks — whether I’m going to make alternate…
As many of my friends know, I am a big fan of Lois Lenski. My son, Elliott, loved the Mr. Small books when he was little — something about the simple stories and simplistic (but adorable) illustrations is just so appealing. Of course, one of the reasons I like her drawings is because they can…
The Strawberry Fields Doll Quilt is finally done. I decided to use feather designs — a continuous feather in the pink zig-zag, and some made-up feather designs in the blocks, side setting triangles and corners. I just drew all the designs as I went without a template, so they are a little primitive. In retrospect,…
This is the only Amish style quilt I’ve ever made — a Christmas present for my mother-in-law, Gail, in 2002. It was a departure from the 1930s style quilts I was making at the time, but I was interested in trying the contrasting stitching in the quilting. I do think it turned out rather well,…
You might have thought, justifiably, that I had given up on this project, but I have been plugging away at it. I have a few more blocks completed (including a little stocking for Emily), but not quite enough for another row. At the rate I’m going, I might actually finish it by Christmas. I was…
In 1904 The Ladies Home Journal, as part of their promotion of “Quilts as an Art Form,” commissioned 5 famous artists and illustrators to design quilts for their magazine. The Better Homes and Gardens publication, Century of Quilts, contains an interesting article about these designs with black and white photos of three of the quilts…
Although I made this top years ago, I still haven’t decided on a quilting pattern. The idea for this quilt started with a group of vintage triangle swatches purchased on ebay. I was thinking about patterns that had lots of triangles and finally settled on Ocean Waves. Of course, I didn’t bother counting all my…
This is my entry for Amy’s wonderful Blogger’s Quilt Festival. It’s the first quilt I posted about when I started my blog. Nobody actually read my blog back then, so I thought I would bring this little quilt back into the spotlight because I loved making it. A Quilt for Julie Martha Dellasega Gray, 2008…
Isn’t this just the best cover ever — a huge garden filled with gorgeous hollyhocks, foxgloves and other flowers I can’t identify. It’s rare to see a soft cover book with a wrap-around cover illustration like this, and I am pretty happy with my work on the image repairing the gap where the covers had…
I’m pleased with the way this turned out, and it actually was not that difficult. The only pieces that required sewing were the jack-o-lantern and the black and white bias borders. Every other piece was applied with fusible web, requiring only a good pair of short, sharp scissors. The final size is 38″ in diameter,…
This is one of two booklets I own which were published after the Sears National Quilt Contest associated with the 1933 World’s Fair held in Chicago. It is mentioned in the wonderful out-of-print book, Patchwork Souvenirs of the 1933 World’s Fair by Merikay Waldvogel and Barbara Brackman — a great story about the contest with…
Thank you everyone for your birthday wishes, and also for the nice comments about this project. Yesterday I managed to finish two more sections of the topper, and I attempted to make the lines in the skeleton a little darker. I am having a lot of fun with this project — here are my next…