TOM 11 St Charles Star for Louisa Alexander

We are getting close to the end of the Thread of Memory project with this entry, the St Charles Star. You might recognize it as we have seen at least two earlier blocks that are quite similar.

We have had a few blocks now that have the star appearing to rest on something. For this one several of us making the blocks have taken to saying our star is sitting on a doily.

The challenge for me is again what to do with that big central 4" block. Right back at the beginning I purchased a fat quarter of the grey fabric with big circles of white dots. It seemed too bold to use until this month when I determined that it could provide a new look for the center.

The pattern as given allowed for piecing or appliqueing the "doily"; I decided hand applique would give me the result I wanted even if it was not at the speed I wanted. In addition to the "doily" applique I also needed to applique the center big dot along with my fussy cut of the little bird.

In the end I was quite happy with how my block looks. Of course you need to remember that I am setting the blocks on point.

My helper and I had fun setting up this photo. If you have read the history story behind the block this month you will know that Louisa Alexander escaped her slavery position by hiding under a load of cornshucks in a wagon drawn by oxen. Lacking both the cornshucks and the oxen I decided to make do with a wagon of hay to remind us that Louisa's owner Jim Hollman, was part of a group called "Haystack Secessionists".

This week I have had few reasons to be away from home and thus had expected to be able to take some time with my camera and my quilts. Alas, the weather has been not at all co-operative. But for an escape story the very overcast weather provided a suitable backdrop for my photo set-up.

I better get busy again with the setting blocks - they were started several weeks back but have been untouched since early November and I want this quilt top finished by early January to go to the longarm quilter.

Where Poppies Grow in November

I see I have been remiss in not always remembering to tell you the name of each of these blocks. Sorry about that. For November the block we were given is titled Mothers Dream.

 As you can see from the photos I have had a big problem in photographing my block this month. Additionally, I set myself up for a big challenge with my fabric choices.

Moving right along. In the back story for the block this month, Denniele again talks about the death of Almo (the focal character for this project who was also her great grandfather).

As you might remember, I am making my quilt to honor the service of my grandfather, James Patrick Coughlan. He was a survivor of the Great War and came home again much to the relief of his mother Caroline.

 Here I am showing you that a few short years after the war, this photograph was sent, with a hand written inscription "with love from Richard and Jimmie to Grandma C". (Jimmie and Richard are James Patrick's sons.)

Up close, the taller/older boy is my Dad, James William Coughlan with his younger brother Richard.

This project has now given us 11 blocks with just one more to come before we must set our blocks together and turn this project into a finished quilt. While I am looking forward to the last block I will be sorry for the project to come to an end as I have enjoyed very much the challenge of sewing some lesser known blocks that require a good amount of skill.

Where Poppies Grow in October

This was not a block for the fainthearted! I made it twice. And wondered about making it a third time until I had a stern discussion with myself.

When done well this is a good looking block. But the way to make it involves the use of templates which takes some of us back more than a couple of decades when everything was made that way.

I made my first version while away on a retreat with my quilt guild. In packing my things to go I had carefully printed the downloaded pattern from Pickledish and, to be sure I had everything, I also went to Blockbase and printed out their templates. It took me several hours to make the block and then I packed it away. Alas, once I got home and laid my 9 1/2" ruler on top my block was not up to size and I had to make the decision to start over.

Denniele, the designer, had also perhaps had some experience with this because she had redrafted the templates and, oh happy day, using those required straight line piecing and not the set in seams using the blockbase templates. So for version two I used Denniele's templates. Result? A correctly sized block.

For a fun photo I decided to play a little with the name of the block. The sun was strong and casting good shadows so I laid my block down and accessorized it with a red and a blue "dove".

Looking at Grandpop's service record for the month of October I find that he was appointed to the rank of Temporary Corporal on October 28, 1916. On October 2, 1917 he was attached to the base at Etaples and later in that month he was posted to the 3rd and then the 1st Battalion, Otago Regiment.

Sadly, in the writeup for the October block in the Remembering Almo project we discover that Almo O'Kell, in whose memory this project was created, died of peritonitis on January 12, 1919 while still in Europe and thus was never reunited with his family.

With only two more blocks for this project I wonder what else we will find out about Almo's service.

TOM 10 Britain's Star for Charlotte Henson

For the October block I had a dilemma - how to include the bird fabric. In the end I have not used it for this month's block and I am pondering how to make that seem like a good idea.

 I was still going with my other, self imposed "rules" and using the splash of the lime green and the solid grey fabric and,additionally, trying to use different fabrics in each block. That stripe is rather bold so I had been trying to wait for a block to incorporate it in a way that was not too strong. I'm hoping it is balanced by the strong solid grey.

If you are also reading along on the Barbara Brackman page for this project, http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/ you will know that the story this week is about Charlotte Henson and her husband, Josiah Henson who escaped slavery and found refuge in Canada. Josiah became an author and visited Britain where he caught the interest of Queen Victoria which gave me the inspiration for my "fun photo" for this month.

Although it was widely thought that Josiah was the real-life model for the main character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" you can see it was not so by reading the history that Ms Brackman has provided for us.

With only two blocks to go I have started work on the setting blocks for my quilt. Over the weekend I was at a retreat with my quilting guild and I put up my sample setting block only to hear "no, that fabric is too dark". Darn it, they agreed with me although they had not been on the four store odyssey with me trying to find a good fabric.

At the beginning of the project I had bought just one yard of that solid grey not knowing how I was going to use it. Realizing I should have bought more I went back to the store a few short weeks later only to find they no longer had it in stock. I prefer to buy my fabrics in person in a quilt shop so I kept hoping I would find either the right solid or a tone on tone that would work well with it. The fabric I had purchased, hoping it could look good, was not the one after all.  Last night I had to admit defeat and resort to online shopping. While I wait I can get busy cutting the other fabrics planned for the setting blocks.

Also to do is wonder how I can get around the dilemma I set up for myself by not using the bird fabric in this block. Some kind member from the flickr site suggested that if I don't include the bird fabric in the next two blocks it will make this one blend in and not look like a rule breaker.

Something to think about.

Remembering Kerry

October is a sad month for me; both my parents and my older sister all passed away, in different years, in this month.  October 29 is the first anniversary of when we lost my sister Kerry.

At the recent Studio Tour I displayed GW Quilt and I am going to share that with you now.

This quilt was made by Kerry and I to give to our parents on their Golden Wedding Anniversary on May 3, 1997.

The quilt was made as a joint venture and begun at a time when I lived in New Jersey and Kerry was in Cambridge, New Zealand.  I purchased the multi colored print you see in the second to last border and together we chose fabrics to go with it. The decision was made to create a medallion style quilt with a Carpenters Wheel block at the center - in part a homage to our maternal grandfather who was a carpenter. We also decided on the outer pieced border which turned out to be one of the first pieces made for the quilt because we wanted to be sure we had enough fabric for it. Of course this also meant that we could not make too many changes to the design because the border, cut and pieced by me, had to fit the quilt.

As I recall, I made the center block and then mailed it to Kerry who made the blocks for the next round and sent it back to me to make the next round. About that time I discovered my family and I were relocating to live in Australia so that made it a little easier to be in contact about the quilt.

For the round with the big 12" blocks we each made eight blocks. Next, Kerry stitched up the flying geese and then added the other borders. Finally, our friend Donna Ward quilted GW Quilt, a name bestowed upon it as we were creating it. That name was not intended to be the real name but somehow over the months the quilt grew with that identity and once it was finished we did not have the inclination to bestow a new name on our quilt of love.

The finished quilt measures about 90" square.  Each of three daughters, 3 sons-in-law and six grandchildren created their own label with a personal message which were stitched onto  the reverse side along with four more blocks.

Our parents slept under it, covered by our love, for only a few short months until we lost Mum in October 1997. And now it has come to live with me.

We three sisters  (l to r, Cathy, Dorry, Kerry) had a great time at the Queenstown National Quilt Symposium in April 2011. Although Cathy is not a quilter Kerry and I were delighted that she was able to come with us to Queenstown.

Kerry and I had shared a love of quilting, mostly from one side of the world to the other, from the time I introduced her to a new hobby I had found in early 1981. Although GW Quilt was the only quilt we made as a pair we did sew together in a round robin group beginning in January 1999 until 2013. Some of those quilts I have shown on earlier posts on this blog.

I miss my beloved big sister so very much. On this day Cathy and I are each remembering her in our own way from one side of the globe to the other.

In Memoriam

Kerry Lynne Payne (nee Coughlan)

March 3 1951 - October 29 2013

Studio Tour 2014

It has been a whirlwind four days for me as a participant in the Great Falls Studios annual Studio Tour. The idea is to welcome visitors in to the places where we create our art, give them the opportunity to chat directly with the artists and maybe achieve some sales. 

Not all of us have a home studio that is suitable for visitors to come to so I was delighted to once more set up in the living room of the home of my water-color artist friend Linda Jones. This year we were joined by silversmith Richard Masaniello; the combination of art techniques was a good variety and made spending time at our studio stop worthwhile.

 My timing for this post is not terrific because the tour is over now. But we were just so busy that I kept forgetting to take a few photographs. Fortunately the weather was kind enough not to rain and the sunny skies combined with the lots of opportunity for leaf peeping made for a gorgeous Fall day to be out and about exploring the back roads and stopping off at the open art studios. The wind was fierce though and by day three, when the temperature had dropped, we had to move the greeter and welcome materials that had been on the table with the wedding ring quilt inside the front door. But my "Purple Passion" quilt let people know they were at the right place.

 Inside the front door my quilt "The Luscious Lilies" complimented the colors in many of Linda's artworks hanging on the right stair wall while my much smaller "There's One in Every Crowd" did the same for other pieces on the left. Down a short flight of stairs was my area.

 The theme for my display this year was history and I was showcasing both completed and current pieces that draw their inspiration from history. The big piece in the center is a commission item I made earlier this year I titled "Work Clothes" - it is made from fabrics cut from the suits, sport coats, shirts, ties, suspenders and pants belonging to a retired friend. I'm now working on pillows that go with the lapquilt and you can see three of them just to the left of Work Clothes. Visitors loved to hear the story of those pieces.

In the back left I had pinned up my two current block of the month projects; Threads of Memory and Where Poppies Grow. Folded up and laying underneath "Strawberries and Cream" (the red and white one) is "St Patrick's Day", the Remarkable Round Robin quilt I am finishing that belonged to my sister. I am thinking about her constantly right now as it is coming up on the first anniversary of her passing away.

The low coffee table held my binder with information and my copy of "Inspired by the Beatles - An Art Quilt Challenge" open to "my" page (I was one of the 150 fiber artists who made a piece based on the title of a Beatles song - the complete collection debuts at the imminent Houston Quilt Show). Each day I gave away a small thanks-for-visiting bag containing a cookie made from an old family recipe, to go with the history theme, and I had them displayed in one of the cake tins that I remember my Mum always had full of a wide variety of delicious cakes/cookies/slices. On Friday visitors received an Anzac Biscuit which also fit nicely with my World War I project on the wall. Saturday's treat was Hokey Pokey Biscuits and Sunday it was Yo-Yoes.

Moving around the room I had five of my challenge pieces from the June Bride and There is a Season collections displayed on the screens with more quilts draped over the sofa.

Each day when I got home I was really tired from being on my feet all day and talking so much. Saturday it was 4.30pm before I was able to grab a few minutes and eat my lunch. Each evening my own kitchen became the scene of the production of the cookies for the next day; my son did most of the baking and I quickly packaged them up invariably forgetting to even taste one myself. So I was delighted to come home on Sunday to find he had made another batch of Yo-Yoes just for us to enjoy.

If you are reading this blog for the first time because I met you on Studio Tour I hope you had a great visit. Thanks to everyone who took the time to listen to - or read here - all my stories about making memories with fabric.

TOM 9 Lancaster Star for Deborah Simmons Coates

As promised, a fast post to catch up with my TOM blocks.

For September we had another block requiring that 4" center cut. I tried to make it a little more interesting.

I am all set up for a three day weekend Studio Tour with Great Falls Studios. My TOM blocks are pinned up on a temporary design wall behind my sewing table.

Day One of the Tour is tomorrow so I hope to have some photos to post of that event.

And just maybe, if you are in the area, you might stop in and see me!