Kozy Kitties in Chairs Quillow

This evening I finished a quillow for a customer.  She will give it to her new baby niece.  It measures about 44" x 72", with an 18" pocket.

Cross-Stitched Blocks

Guess what I just got?! My sister-in-law, Janice, has been sorting through her fabric and crafting items. For Christmas, she gave me a large tote crammed so full with fabric, the lid keeps popping loose.

Well, tonight she sent, via my brother, several more pieces of fabric – AND . . . . 23 large (17.5”) blocks, all of which she had cross-stitched several years ago!

I have intended to someday make an embroidered quilt – and now suddenly I have the hard part all done already.  Someday when I’m ready to put it together, I will choose the loveliest piece of fabric I can find for sashing and borders – a very, very soft floral that will match the embroidery floss.  I've put together an on-point quilt setting in EQ7 for these blocks.  It will be 90" x 111" before borders.

This one, I shall keep!

Vertical Seams on the Mosaic Lighthouse Quilt

Though I'd planned to wait until I had all 19,200 of the little one-inch squares ironed down before starting to sew the vertical and horizontal seams, I changed my mind shortly after starting on a second column, and then noticing that some of the little squares in the first column were coming loose.  So I tacked them down with a glue stick, cut the 160" x 44" column into sections, and started sewing vertical seams.

I now have 113.5 hours in this quilt, and 56 different fabrics.  7,914 one-inch squares have been put in place.

Here's what it looks like; this is the lower part of the cliff:

 

And here is the cross-stitch diagram, with the yellow area showing the part I have completed:

Over One-Sixth Done with Mosaic Top

I’m one row past the center mark on the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt – that is, of the main center columns, working from top to bottom. So I’ve put in place 81 rows and 44 columns of 1” squares – 3,564 squares. This means I am a little more than 1/6 done with the mosaic/postage stamp part of the quilt. It also means I underestimated the total number of 1” squares I will need – by half! The entire main central column will take 7,040 squares. The two side columns will each be 38” x 160”. The total number of 1” squares will be 19,200, rather than 9,600.  I had accounted for the ¼” seams vertically, but not horizontally.  I forgot that the sewn size will not only be half as wide, finished, but also half as long. 

I will do the top in three sections, then put them together when the seaming is finished.

In the cross-stitched version, the lighthouse, the keeper’s house, the fence, and the cobblestone lane are outlined with embroidery floss.  If this fabric version looks like a mishmash of colors all thrown together, I may need to do . . . something to better define those structures.  The seams themselves will help; but I may pull off a few squares and replace them with more contrasting colors.

First Section of Mosaic Lighthouse Quilt

Not quite a couple of weeks ago, on December 21, I started cutting one-inch squares for this quilt.  A few thousand squares are cut, and 1,100 are in place and ironed to the gridded, fusible, light-weight Pellon.  That fills an area 44" x 25".  This correlates to a 4" x 2.25" section of the cross-stitch diagram.  The entire diagram is 18.5" x 14.25".  This means {counting on fingers and toes} that if I used the entire diagram, I would wind up with a grid of approximately 204" x 158".  After the horizontal and vertical seams are sewn, the grid would be exactly half of that -- 102" x 79".

Since that would look funny on a queen-sized bed, I will keep this mosaic part of the quilt only the size of the mattress top, so the width should be 60" -- 120" of grid.  Therefore, it needs to be 76" wider (unfinished) than it is right now.  So I will be adding a width of gridded Pellon (it's 44" wide; I'll fill 38" of each width) to each side of the center piece I am working on now.  The borders will be about 18" wide.  I have a number of lighthouse and nautical patterns I plan to use for that.

Here is what's done so far.  It's mostly sky, with a portion of the lighthouse dome.  Yes, that sky looks sort of ... greenish.  Let's hope the rest of it will blue it up some! 

If it doesn't, well... we'll just pretend there's a tornado in the forecast, I guess.

It looks good in the printed picture, though; so I'll keep following it.

And here is the cross-stitch diagram.  The yellow part is the section that is done.

Pages from 'Quilting News', March 1977

Some time ago, my sister-in-law, Annette, gave me a stack of old quilting magazines that she had found at one of the local secondhand stores.  I have enjoyed looking through them, finding unique patterns, looking at beautiful quilts, and especially reading the articles and stories.

Here is an article and accompanying photos from the Quilter's Newsletter Magazine of March, 1977, about Grace Snyder, 'The Quilting Lady' from North Platte, Nebraska.  The technique she has used to make her Flower Basket quilt is similar to the technique I will use for the Light of Peace quilt I plan to make after I finish the mug rugs.

Flower Basket Petit Point Quilt by Grace Snyder, North Platte, Nebraska. In the last issue we introduced you to Mrs. Snyder and told you a little bit about her life in a soddy house on the Nebraska Plains, where she made most of her fabulous quilts. She completed the Flower Basket in 1943. Although it contains 87,789 patches, it took her only 16 months to make. As far as QN has been able to determine, this quilt contains more pieces than any other ever made. Mrs. Snyder made her own pattern for this quilt after seeing a china plate painted in a similar design which was manufactured by Salem China Company of Ohio. A detail from this photo reveals that each patch is a tiny triangle. The overall size of this quilt is 91” x 93”. Mrs. Snyder, now 95 and retired from needlework, enjoyed making appliquéd quilts as much as pieced ones. She is shown in front of her Basket of Grapes which she designed and made in 1947-48. She has made 24 show quilts (not counting the ones she made for everyday use in her home), and there are 13 left in her collection. The remainder she has given to her children and grandchildren. (Photos from the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer, Grand Island, Nebraska.)

New Fabric for the Next Quilt

This is the fabric, purchased at Country Traditions in Fremont, for the next big quilt, a postage-stamp style, using a cross-stitch pattern by Thomas Kinkade, The Light of Peace.  Each cross-stitch will instead be a one-inch piece of fabric.

I got 39 half-yard pieces, plus a yard for binding, and three more pieces for three borders that will increase in size as they get closer to the outer edge of the quilt -- 1 ½ yards, 1 ¾ yards, and 2 yards.  Most of the fabric was from the clearance shelves, and was only $5.99/yd., even the batiks that are normally $13/yd.

I chose the fabric by matching the embroidery thread to it.