Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[Gracie]

I got a buttload of those sampler thingies at furniture stores...you know, those booklet thingies with upholstery samples. So...I took them all out, tried to peel the paper off the backs (all glued on) and decided to just toss the loose pieces in the washer. It all came off but left a mess in the washing machine. Dried them, then stitched them all together. Made a small couch throw with one, covered my footstool in the other one I made, then whipped together one big one but it still needs a backing. Took forever..my fingers and knuckles were on fire, but I did it. Here is the footstool I recovered:

I can't imagine the pain and patience of doing what you do, Becki. But it sure is pretty what you do!

 

[Gracie]

Oooh. I like that, Boop! I snagged it and have it in my massive Avie folder. Thank you!!

 

[Gracie]

btw...I stitched all those squares together without a sewing machine. Took forever. But they sure did turn out pretty.

 

[Gracie]

And this is why I covered the footstool...to match my bed (the recliner). I also painted the antique harp table. Good thing about my painting that is....it will all come off with warm water. So if I ever decide to sell it....I will be able to put it back in its original condition.

Scored a set of slipshades today too. CHEAP. I love slipshade chandeliers!

 

[freedombecki]

@Gracie - the main quilt for Gallery III reminds me of you.

Hard to grab it, had to find the gallery and then save.

So glad you posted that, BDB!

http://www.usmessageboard.com/8530233-post2798.html

And thanks for chiming in, too! Appreciated.

 

[BDBoop]

Beautiful! So warm, and yet jewel-like.

 

[freedombecki]

We travelled to LaGrange, Texas, today, and visited the lovely Texas State Quilt Museum that was established 2 years ago, to my great joy when I discovered it online the other day. The quilts made by the Texas ladies were just as pretty as the ones by "Internationally known quilters" in another area of the museum. All were gorgeous, zany, and some were just plain fun. There was even a quilt made by Illinois quilter Jane Sassaman, and here it is:

Texas Quilt Museum Houston Quilts

If you live near LaGrange, here's the map in LaGrange's downtown area, the museum being at 140 W Colorado St, La Grange · (979) 968-3104:



Texas Quilt Museum Houston Quilts

Oh wow. I LOVE that!

Thank you, Grace. It's minimal here, but it seems to me it was a large wallhanging or small quilt, and so very well-done by an artist, and was selected to represent all the wonderful hand creations of women artists both nationally and internationally. The local quilts while of a traditional bent, were nothing to sneeze at with astute color mastery and good needlework a given. I was totally enchanted the entire two hours spent there. (It's small but carries a huge impact by comparison to the quilt museum in Paducah that Miss Sunshine brought us pictures of last winter, and which I have visited at least once and many times in the memories it allowed to sparkle in my wee widdle head.)


So happy you dropped in and shared your wonderful efforts that show great artistic simplicity while at the same time, with the loveliest sophistication.

 

[BDBoop]

Okay, well I can't PM OR visitor message my thanks for rep, so I'll just send it from it here. Also, your rep currently reads the same forwards as backwards.

 

[freedombecki]

Still struggling with a rag-tag finish of the blue butterfly and all those flowers, and what seems like a half-mile of thread on the frame, which takes me hours to go around and looks like next to nothing for all the time expended on it, but at least the designer gave it a pleasing shape, imvho. *sigh*

Scan 1: the DMC 160 & 161 slate blues butterfly (the color comes across as faded jeans in vitro).

Scan 2: the border to the butterfly that will be done in two high contrasts of green due to my butterfly model chosen for the project, I'll see if I can rustle up the name somewhere before the day's end.

Scan 3: I found the Green longwing I was thinking of among my butterfly files. Its Latin designation is Philaethria dido for those who follow the Lepidoptera family.

I'd love to finish this project by the end of the week. Knocking the border and flowers out helps me not dread the time they will take when I'm working the butterflies, often thinking about a specific specie. Green used to be my anathema, until my daughter decided that was her favorite color, and I made an uneven log cabin quilt and sundry cabinesque wallhangings for her bedroom. That was happy and the first time I ever made anything that really, really pleased her. She has EC Escher prints everywhere in her home, which is just beautiful.

 

[freedombecki]

Thanks, BDB. I had to close my messages down due to the public due to having the task of dealing with my husband's sad auxiliary issues that go with the dementia package. He can't control certain aspects of his functions, and I absolutely have to spend hours a day cleaning up and keeping his life as pleasant as I can. He spent years working hard at a challenging middle management job in engineering so I could raise our kids and take a stab at finishing my college work. I can't even count the many lovely things he did for me, and I owe him big time when he's down on his health luck. I regret the inconvenience it is to such a wonderful person as yourself, who labors hard at split shift work and still finds time to post on a political board. My lack of incentive to correspond is my bad, not yours in the slightest, but I have my hands full at home trying to make his life worthwhile as he fights his issues. It's particularly hard on the mathematically- and man-for-all-seasons- gifted being that he is. We just buried my brother who died a heinous death of fighting Alzheimer's for the last 7 years. We have a chance with correct medication and exercise to fight my husband's Dementia and prevent Alzheimer's from setting in if possible. Fighting that disease process can put a family behind the 8-ball. My brother's care was so poor, he had bedsores over at least half of his body, because his caregiver did not know you have to turn the indigent on almost an hourly basis around the clock to prevent bedsores from forming. His suffering was intense, and the hospice he was in the last 2 weeks of his life at least provided him with enough drugs to let him go with dignity. My heart just breaks when I think of the day I got to visit him 3 days before he died. He weighed only 60 or 70 pounds, his head was half its original size, and he was just skin and bones, unable to speak, but he held my hand and squeezed to express his love.

'Scuse my wet eyes, BDB. /doffing cap

Well, lots to do today. I have to do a few things outside to burn the trash and some more of that fence the fence builder didn't remove. It's horrifying to see good wood laying on the ground that the builder said was "rotten. They're anything but rotten and could have been fixed and restored. We should have called a fencing expert to help us instead of letting a scheister with his eye on our farm tools (which wound up at a local pawn shop) do the work by lying about the condition of our posts, which he didn't want to work with.

At least I learned a valuable, albeit expensive lesson: put "No trespassing" signs up on the gate. That prevents criminal scheisters from coming onto your farm because here it is the state law they cannot trespass on your property if it is correctly posted. I am told the fees we were charged were largely misrepresentations and indefensible because there were no guarantees he would clean up his messes. The hardware from fences left askew where they lay punctured 4 tractor tires during this time parameter, and he earned more money than other repairmen charge from the tires his bad practice saboteured. The worst part about it was me being furious while this glib, innocent-faced cheater cheated my family out of a lot of money, charging us on 4 different occasions the same excessive fee for the same trees being removed, lying from the start and thinking we were too stupid to figure out what he was doing, using my husband's dementia for his plundering the family purse by saying he agreed to things he couldn't remember agreeing too and playing two ends against the middle.

/rant.

Might as well use the space below for a quilt show to salvage this post if possible.

1. This is the chain saw quilt, which reminds me of the repairman who stole a chain saw by telling my husband he was borrowing it, when he really took it to get money from a pawnshop owner, who registered its serial number with the sheriff's department in compliance with the office of parole for prisoners with a history of expropriating other people's property just like politicians expropriate money from the taxpayers to fund their kids's enterprises since they're too stingy to dip into their hundreds of millions of personal dollars:

Oh, my goodness, rake quilts are about too. They're so useful in the fall to rake up tons of leaves if you have one. I don't, because the repairman took all 5 of our rakes and made them disappear into thin air. Five rake. Count 'em, one two three four five! <poof!> gone!

Oh, well. Who misses a rake until the leaves dropor the rain puts a hole in the river pebbles drive.

 

[koshergrl]

My sis, bro in law, niece will all be here mid-Feb so I've got to get busy and throw some hats together for them...Also should have a new baby by then, so excited!

 

[BDBoop]

[MENTION=29697]freedombecki[/MENTION]

I'm sorry. My life is obviously very easy by comparison. It was not my intent to kick off the rant - but it certainly looked necessary. I hope it alleviated some stress, though I doubt it since the stress is ongoing, and the grief so very new.

You must miss your PM friends very much. And time-wise or not, caregivers need as much emotional support as they can get.



Oh, never mind that last bit. We are no longer friended *as I just now found out* ... So I'm happy to see you do still have your PM support system in place.

You take care.

 

[freedombecki]

My sis, bro in law, niece will all be here mid-Feb so I've got to get busy and throw some hats together for them...Also should have a new baby by then, so excited!

That sounds like good times, koshergrl!

 

[koshergrl]

@freedombecki

I'm sorry. My life is obviously very easy by comparison. It was not my intent to kick off the rant - but it certainly looked necessary. I hope it alleviated some stress, though I doubt it since the stress is ongoing, and the grief so very new.

You must miss your PM friends very much. And time-wise or not, caregivers need as much emotional support as they can get.



Oh, never mind that last bit. We are no longer friended *as I just now found out* ... So I'm happy to see you do still have your PM support system in place.

You take care.

The only rant I see is yours, boop.

 

[freedombecki]

Was thinking about getting back to the log cabin quilts, finished or not finished butterfly quilt. Thought it would be fun to go through the colors of the rainbow for inspiration. Please bear with me, it takes a half an hour to find and resize photos to fit here, but I love sharing the beautiful things I find that other women around the net have made, especially log cabin traditional quilts (and some, not so traditional).

Various red log cabin quilts, 1, 2, and 3:

 

[freedombecki]

Blue log cabin inspirations from around the net:

Blue 1, 2, and 3:

 

[koshergrl]

I've been thinking of my log cabin quilt that I haven't even started lol.
But I have been starting to dig through my fabrics..I definitely have the fabric to do a nice one. I have many yards of a beautiful white..remember I was going to do red, white, blue...and I didn't have enough white. Well I found white. I bought it at huge expense some years ago when I was going to do a blue willow quilt, that I never did.

 

[koshergrl]

It's very high quality, very nice...I bought it for some of the blocks, I think..and for the backing.

 

[freedombecki]

Yellow Log cabin quilts 1, 2, and 3:

 

[freedombecki]

It's very high quality, very nice...I bought it for some of the blocks, I think..and for the backing.

It takes a lot of fabric for a log cabin quilt lights, so if there isn't enough, you might consider instead using the white high-quality fabric for an embroidered quilt. There are lots of options. Then you can pick lights according to your pleasure for a log quilt.