For My Father

I was blessed to have a wonderful father.  He has been gone four years now and I still miss him every day, especially on Father's Day.    A few years ago, I made a quilt for my mother using his flannel plaid shirts , and this past year I decided to make a quilt for myself using his cotton summer shirts.

Dad's favorite color was blue, and it was reflected in the clothing he chose.  I had 12 different summer plaid shirts to work with, and most of them were blue so they played together nicely.

The pattern I chose was called "Cool Summer Porch" by Eleanor Burns.  The title alone seemed to make it the perfect pattern choice.

To start, I deconstructed the shirts and ironed the pieces flat.

Each shirt sleeve yielded two squares of fabric which I then subcut on the diagonal.  I cut them all individually so that I could be sure to line up the plaids with the straight edge of the ruler.

One triangle was sewn to each side of a white strip of fabric:

The resulting quilt was supposed to look something like this, according to my Electric Quilt software:

In the end, I eliminated the horizontal and vertical white sashing because it competed visually with the lines in the plaids, and I rearranged the direction of the white stripe.

The final result is this:

Of the 12 shirts I used, I was able to find a photos of my Dad wearing 9 of them.  I will be adding a pocket to the back of the quilt with copies of the photos as a keepsake.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads.  💗

Dad's Plaids become Mom's quilt

It was 2 years ago today that my father left this earth.  He had a peaceful passing at 87 years old, but we still miss him every day.  This is especially true of my mother who was happily married to him for 63 years.

As you can see from the photo, Dad loved a plaid shirt.  His closet was full of flannel ones:

I wanted to use them to make a quilt, but it was hard to think about cutting into them.  This past Christmas, I decided it was finally time to make the quilt.  I wanted to showcase the plaids as much as possible, so I cut out large squares using the sleeves and bordered them with black flannel:

This was my first time using flannel.  I found that cutting narrow strips from the loosely woven fabric  was a bit difficult.  Then I remembered that I had recently acquired a Stripology ruler.  I hadn't even tried it yet, but this was the exact right time to use it.

I only mention this because one of my Dad's favorite expressions was "the right tool for the right job".  It seemed so perfect that I had the exact tool for this job while making a quilt from Dad's shirts.  He would have greatly appreciated that.  The strips were then easily cut, all at the same time.

I laid the blocks out to give a basket weave effect:

With Christmas fast approaching, I needed to get this quilted quickly.  My friend, Rosemary was kind enough to do a beautiful job of stippling to get the project done with a quick turnaround time.

On Christmas Eve, I gave the quilt to my mother.  She was immensely surprised, pleased and, of course, emotional.  She told me she loved it, and has been using it on her bed ever since. She tells me that she sleeps better with the quilt over her.  I could not have asked for anything more.

I have kept all the remaining shirt fabrics for some future keepsakes, even the small scraps.  It was a healing experience for me to work with them and I'm so happy with how it all turned out.

Basting. It's not just for turkeys.

I spent yesterday afternoon getting my memory quilt ready for quilting.  I want to have this ready to give to my mother-in-law at Christmas so I need to get cracking.

I set a goal in November to try and blog daily, and I was doing fairly well until the middle of the month when my mother was unexpectedly admitted to the hospital.  Naturally, crafting and blogging were put on the back burner for a while.  Thankfully, she is doing better now and is back at home, recuperating.  We managed to have a nice, if very low key, Thanksgiving, and this weekend I had a little time to get back to quilting.

The stars have it

Veteran's Day was the perfect time to work on a patriotic quilt.  I had the stars all appliqued, but needed to work out how to set them.  The beauty of designing with Electric Quilt software is that it is so easy to make changes and see what they might look like.   My first thought was a straight forward setting, alternating with striped blocks:

I thought that the striped blocks might be too dark, so I lightened them up:

Now the stripes are competing with the stars.  Maybe if I framed the stars to make them stand out?

Better, but omething about the stripes looked unbalanced to me, so I tried a different alternate square:

Almost went with this setting, but I really wanted some stripes.   Maybe all the stripes going in the same direction would make it look more balanced.

One more change, making the stripes less prominent:

At last, I got the setting I had been searching for.  It sort of looked like the framed stars were hanging from striped ribbons.  The stars made from shirt fabrics are highlighted nicely, and I also liked that the stripes look a little like the ribbons you would find on a military uniform.

Here's the resulting quilt top:

You'll have to take my word for it, the red fabric is not that bright.   The actual colors are more like this:

Oh, and if it looks like there are wrinkles in the upper corners, that's because of this:

Can't wait to get this quilted up, and given to my mother-in-law.

Got the Stars, Need the Stripes

I've got seven stars appliqued to backgrounds, and now I need to think about adding some stripes.  I picked out some navy, blue and red fabrics that I thought would complement the shirt colors and will experiment with some striped blocks.

Using Electric Quilt software, I have come up with this design:

I'm not yet sure if this will be the final layout, but it's a start.

I must say that I am really glad I chose to hand applique the stars.  As I worked on each one, it gave me a chance to think about Al and remember what a kind and generous man he was.

Are the Stars out tonight?

Here are the first five stars for my memory quilt, basted and ready for applique:

I will be hand appliqueing the stars to background squares, and the method I prefer is to hand baste each piece to freeze paper first.  That way, I can work out and secure all the seam allowances with the basting stitches, and then the actual applique is a breeze.

Each point of the star takes a bit of coaxing to make a nice point, so it has taken me a while just to do five stars.  Here's what they look like on the back:

I'm happy with the way the fabrics have behaved so far, even the blue seersucker.  The edges are a  little bumpy, but it passes inspection..

In the photos, the stars are just sitting on a background fabric that I am planning to use, but I'm not quite sure if the narrow stripe in the background will compete with the stripes in the shirts.  I'm just making this up as I go along, letting the fabrics tell me what to do....

While I'm on the subject of stars,  have you heard about the astronaut who has been quilting on the space shuttle?  NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg has spent the last 5 months on the International Space Station, and she has brought her quilting supplies with her.  There's an interesting video showing Karen in space, explaining the difficulties of quilting in zero gravity.    You can watch it  here.

All this talk of stars has reminded me that tonight is Dancing With the Stars on TV.  I'm off to watch and maybe baste some more stars of my own.

Carry On

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am going to make a memory quilt using shirts that belonged to my very dear father-in-law, who passed away in July.

I'm leaning towards a patriotic/military theme, and so I want to have stars as part of the pattern. The only thing  I have decided on as yet is to applique a star (or stars) from each shirt fabric onto a plain background.

I was poking around the yard sale items at our quilt guild's latest show and I came across these cardboard stars:

Perfect templates for applique, and 3 sizes to choose from!  The best thing is that they had the name of the quilter who had donated them written on the back.  Her name is Dot, and she is the sweetest lady in our guild.  She is well into her eighties, and I have known her for many years.   I gladly paid my 25 cents for the templates, and went to find Dot among the quilters at the show.  She was tickled pink when I told her that I would be using her templates for a memory quilt.

Today I made seven freezer paper stars by tracing the template, and ironed them to the shirt fabrics to be ready for applique.

This will be a challenge to applique all those points.  At least 2 of the shirts were polyester, and the light blue in the upper right corner is seersucker.    In the words of Tim Gunn , I'm just going to  have to "make it work".