I didn’t mean to buy another quilt.  Really, I didn’t.  But it was only $45.00, and it was so sad–but beautiful at the same time.

It was really in bad shape, with lots of spots, fading and disintegrating fabric.

This quilt was such a study in contrasts.  The Sue’s were all appliqued on flour sacks.

But the stitching was amazing.

And there was an incredible variety of stitches around the girls….

…and on their hats.

And did you notice that each sleeve has a little white cuff?

As you can see, I took the quilt apart.  It was tied, and the edge of the top was folded to the back and zigzag stitched.  The filling was a worn out old blanket.  Boy, did I make a mess!  And, of course, as I worked, I made up a story about the origins of this quilt.  Here it is:

Tillie, the maker of the quilt, was born in the late 1800’s.  She had four brothers.  Tillie was the youngest.  By the time her four brothers were married, her parents were in failing health, so Tillie remained at home to care for them.  By the time they passed, Tillie was past marrying age.  She had no marketable skills and no resources.  It fell to her brothers to look after her.  Tillie would spend a month with each brother.  Of course, this didn’t thrill their wives, but Tillie tried to make herself useful.  The one skill she possessed was sewing, so she passed the time at each house sewing clothes for members of the family with whom she was residing.  Her sisters-in-law would purchase fabric before Tillie arrived and have a list of things for her to make.  Tillie enjoyed this and felt that she was contributing to the household.  One brother had a little girl, Matilda, that was Tillie’s favorite.  Tillie asked Matilda’s mother for fabric to make a special quilt for Matilda, but her mother said that would be a frivolous thing and wouldn’t buy the fabric.  So, Tillie saved scraps from her other sewing, and at each household where she stayed, she gathered discarded flour sacks.  In her spare moments, she would make another Sunbonnet Sue block until she had 36 beautiful blocks.  She had even saved enough flour sacks to piece a backing.  Back at Matilda’s parents house, she was ready to baste the quilt together when she fell ill.  She soon realized that she wouldn’t be able to finish Matilda’s quilt.  On her deathbed, she pleaded with her sister-in-law to finish the quilt.  Her sister-in-law begrudgingly promised that she would.  After Tillie’s death, her sister-in-law found an old blanket, laid it between the quilt top and backing, turned the edges of the quilt top to the back, not caring that she caught some of the pretty applique in the seams, and zigzag stitched around it.  Matilda loved her quilt and the memories of her Aunt Tillie.  She enjoyed looking at the pretty fabrics and beautiful stitching and slept with the quilt every night for years and years, eventually passing it down to her daughter.  Of course the ungrateful wretch thought it was just an old rag, sold it at a garage sale, where an antique dealer bought it, put it in her booth at the antique mall and it found its way to me!

And I love these blocks.  They’re really inspiration to me.  Thank you, Tillie.

Wow, I’m in the new Fons and Porter magazine–and I didn’t even know it.

I got suspicious last week when I started getting lots of orders for the Sweet Pea bundles and dress panel.  Then my friend Loretta came for our Redwork Christmas Party, and she had a copy of the magazine!  Jean Nolte designed the quilt, and all the little dresses are embellished with ribbon or rickrack or lace or aprons or pinafores.  It’s just adorable!

I always have fun making samples with my own fabric lines, but it’s so exciting to see what other people do with it.  Thank you, Jean.

I’ve been saving the selvages from my fabrics and I’m getting quite a bin full.

A long time ago I made this fun Quilt In A Cup, but I haven’t done anything else–until now!

It’s really fun to see my name and Anna Lena’s on the selvages.  I’ve been wanting to do something with them, but it seems like there’s never time for a project that isn’t FOR something–to support a fabric line, for a class, for a book.  So, a few days ago, I decided to heck with everything else, I’m making something with my selvages!  The result is this little bag.

It was more of an experiment than a real project, and I’d do some things differently if I did it again. But it’s kind of cute and I did learn a cool thing when quilting the orange polka dot fabric for the bottom.  If you look at the polka dots just right, they make a perfect diagonal line!  So, I sat down at my Elna and just followed every other line of dots to do my grid quilting, and it worked perfectly.

I think you can see it better from the back.

I’m going to remember that for a future project!

Well, I’d like to think so.  I had the sweetest letter from Tamsin Harvey, the proprietor of Berrima Patchwork and Crafts in New South Wales, Australia.

In it, she says that she stocks a range of my fabrics and would love to put a piece on display that’s been signed by me!  She included a piece of my Blue Swallow Print from the Sweet Pea line from Studio Anna Lena.  She also included a Sharpie pen and a return envelope.  Now sweet is that!

Amy at Park City Girl is having another online quilt show.  I LOVE these.  I love going to all the links and seeing all the quilts.  And I want to play along, too.

Click here to see all the quilts in the show.

This is my Lollipop quilt.  I made it from the fabrics in my Sweet Pea collection.  I just love the bright colors and all the balloons.

Just now, when I went to my photo files to retrieve the photos, I realize I took pictures to do a tutorial about how to make the blocks, but had never posted it, so here goes!

First, I traced the pattern onto paper with a Sharpie pen.  That way, I could see it through the fabric and didn’t have to mark the fabric at all.  I used the iron on bias tape, and pressed it into place.  Once it was secure, I did a serpentine stitch down the length of each one.

I wasn’t looking forward to preparing a gazillion circles for applique, but it wasn’t bad at all.  My method is to cut a circle out of a manilla folder.  Then, I cut the fabric circle about a half inch bigger.  An acrylic template and a 28mm rotary cutter makes it easy.

I just did a running stitch around the outer edge of the fabric circle, placed the paper circle in the middle and pulled the thread.  Voila!  a perfect circle.

It was just a manner of pressing it to get a nice, crisp edge and popping out the paper.

Then I put the block back on the pattern to find the placement of the balloons.

I machine buttonholed around the circles on my Elna 7300.

When doing embroidery of applique, I always start with my background a little larger than needed, so I had to square up when done.

It wasn’t long before I was cranking out the blocks!

Here’s a link to the free download of this pattern.  If you make one, please send me a picture!

Do you know what a bed turning is?  You’ll often find them at quilt shows.  A bed is piled high with quilts, and at a set time, the quilts are turned back one at a time to reveal the quilts underneath.  At the Northwest Quilting Expo, the Latimer Quilt and Textile Museum folks were there with a booth, and they did a wonderful bed turning of recent acquisitions.

But, before I show you the quilts from the bed, you must see this.  This balloon quilt is jaw droppingly amazing!  Each balloon bouquet has 23 circles the size of a quarter!  The “strings” are embroidered with different colors of floss.  Oh, I’d love to have a quilt like this.  I may have to learn to applique–and live to be 120 years old!

Most of the quilts on the bed were from the 1930’s, so you know I couldn’t resist.  I snapped away as each quilt was revealed, and now you can enjoy them, too.

Somehow, I didn’t get a full view of this quilt, but I did get a close-up of the block.  Aren’t the colors amazingly bright!?!

Here’s a pretty Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt top.

And speaking of bright, how about this tulip quilt?

The blue centers in this Dresden Plate Quilt made it a very pretty thing.

It was finished as a summer coverlet.  I love the edge treatment.

You don’t often see the yellow green in the center of the Dresden Plate blocks in 1930’s quilts.  The cross-stitch embroidery in the intersections was also unusual.

This star quilt appears to be from the 1940’s.

Here’s a pretty tulip variation.

I’m guessing this is an older quilt, but it’s so hard to say when the fabrics used were solids.

It’s always interesting when you find a quilt with some of the fabrics completely faded out, like this one.

The hummingbird pattern shown here is one of my favorites.  It’s on my list of quilts to make someday!

Whirligig is another quilt I really like–and would like to make!

My gosh, someone used orange in this quilt.  What a bold woman she must have been!

This is an interesting Nine-Patch variation.

I’ve seen lots of vintage quilts with this combination of lavender and yellow/orange.

Lastly, this variation of the Nosegay was very interesting.  I’d not seen it before.  Thanks, Latimer, for sharing with us.

I decided to take a break from retirement (insert laugh track here) and take a booth at the Northwest Quilting Expo at the end of September.

It was fun to see all the samples hung up and the fabric displayed.  Thanks to Robin and Connie, my Beck and Call Girls, the booth looked great.  And they worked their tails off all weekend!

All the fabrics in the booth were designed by me, so that was kind of cool!

I got to do two lectures – one on using large scale prints and one on using fat quarters.

This woman had made a shirt from my fabrics.  I was delighted to see that!

The quilt displays were great.  This was the winning quilt.

And you know I’m just a cowgirl at heart, so I fell in love with this quilt.

Oh, my gosh, here’s the quilt that reminds me of the doors in Sweden!

Like this one…

Perhaps it was the orange in here, but I loved this one as well.

Here’s a close-up.  I love the strip piecing and the quilting on it was stunning.

I’m sorry this is blurry, but this was a lovely quilt.

Again, the quilting was amazing.

This quilt is from the Latimer Quilt and Textile Center.  If you’re familiar with Tillamook, Oregon and the Tillamook Cheese Factory, you’ll recognize their logo.

It was incredibly well done.

I had so much fun a few nights ago–I sewed something just for myself!  I made a Lilly Apron.

This pattern was designed by my friend Michelle at Busy Bee Quilt Designs. I bought the pattern back last May at Quilt Market, and have been meaning to make one for myself ever since.  Good intentions, you know.  Well, I thought it would be fun to have an apron to wear when working my booth at Northwest Quilting Expo, so finally got my fanny in gear and sewed.  This is the result.

Michelle’s directions were great.  I think if I hadn’t decided to make it reversible, I would have been finished in about two hours.  As it was, it seemed like a good idea to make it reversible.  From start to finish, I spent no more than three hours on this.

I liked it so much, I didn’t take it off for two days.  Bob thought I was crazy, but, hey, it’s important that I keep up my image!  I want to make one out of each of my fabrics.  Wow!  That would be one big stack of aprons!

P.S.  I just found this photo of Michelle at Market, wearing the original Lilly apron.  Isn’t she adorable???

As a dedicated fabric designer, I take my research seriously.  Since my designs are based on prints from the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s, it’s important that I surround myself with materials from that era.  Recently, even though I was on vacation, I took time out from my schedule of spa pampering and relaxing and devoted an afternoon to research.

In other words–I went to the antique mall!

I’m always on the lookout for quilts, quilt blocks and tops that let me see a good representation of fabrics, like this Apple Core.  Why look–this quilt maker used red AND orange.  Way to go!

She was also very frugal.  Over half the pieces in this top are pieced.  In other words, she didn’t have a big enough scrap to cut out an apple core shape, so she pieced her scraps together first.

I have an image of Sunbonnet Sue in my mind–the Sunbonnet Sue that my Grandma Kennedy made.  All other Sue’s are compared to her.  This Sue comes pretty close–and she has some pretty fabric in her dresses!

Many of you have heard me say this before, but LOOK!  Quilters in the 1930’s used orange–real orange!  Not peach, not buff–ORANGE!

Besides quilt tops I find other things that are great fabric resources–like this little lingerie bag.

And, of course, clothes pin holders.  I have seen (and collected) lots of these over the years, but never one with feet!  Isn’t it absolutely charming!?!

Ah, the sacrifices I make for my craft……..

Perfect for your favorite Sweet Pea!  

Isn’t this little bag just adorable?  My friend Robin, who stitched up the Sweet Pea Jumper for me, thought any little girl who had such a cute jumper would want a little purse, too, so she just whipped this up!  Amazing, huh?  And she took lots of photos during the process so I could post this tutorial.  If you’d like to make it, here’s how she did it.

Purse Tutorial

Fabric Requirements

2) 8″ squares of Sweet Pea Doll Panel

8″ x 21″ lining fabric

2″ x 8″ bottom fabric

2) 1″ x 24″ strips for drawstrings

Instructions

Insert the 2″ x 8″ piece between the 8″ dress panels.  The bottom of each dress should be facing the inserted piece.  Press seams open.

Place this piece right sides together with the lining, matching one end.  Stitch.  Press seam open.  Now match the other short ends.  Stitch.  Press seam open.  The lining piece is longer than the panel piece.  Find the center of the insert and the lining.  Pin together.  Press outer edges.

Make a 1/4″ clip at the seam line of the lining where it lines up with the insert.  Repeat on both sides.

Turn under area from clip to make a narrow hem from clip to seam.  Stitch.

Pin the side seams.

Sew up sides of lining and panels, leaving hemmed area unsewn.

Mark a diagonal line 1″ in from each corner.

Stitch across market line to form a gusset.

Turn right sides out through hemmed opening.  Top stitch both sides where the lining meets the panel.

Make drawstrings by folding long sides of 1″ x 24″ strips toward center.  Press.  Fold in half and topstitch.  

Insert one drawstring left side, bringing it all the way around.  Knot ends together.  Insert the second drawstring into the right side, bringing it all the way around.  Knot ends together.  Fill with special treasures for your special little friend!