Blue and White Ohio Stars

Early last month, my cousin Sam was finishing up dispersing the remaining bits of his parents' estate. Uncle Nick and Aunt Margaret (Maggie) were such fun, and we all loved spending time with them and Sam - which didn't happen nearly enough, as Uncle Nick's job required lots of traveling all around the US. They lived in far-off places: Alaska, New Mexico, Kansas, Tennessee, Maryland. Too far from family here in southern Ohio.

Over the years, Aunt Margaret took up quilting as a hobby and - yes, you guessed it - Sam handed off her quilting tubs to me. In the midst of all my purging, I took those tubs and sifted through - very selectively, I will say - for fabrics and UFOs I thought I would use and finish.

I am pleased to report that one of Maggie's UFOs has now been finished. In the depths of her tubs, I found a stack of hand-pieced Ohio Star blocks, all in blues with a white-on-white background. Stored right there, too, was her remaining yardage of background fabric and the remaining blues used in the stars. 

Having no idea what plan she had for completing this quilt, I decided to make setting blocks in the Stepping Stones pattern. This was her mother's (my grandma) go-to setting, so it made sense to connect the three generations with this common element. 

Finishing this was so enjoyable. It gave me hours of time to think about Aunt Maggie and all the great memories of her. As my mom's younger sister, there were plenty of stories told about her. From her love of kittens to barefoot antics on the farm to her being 'daddy's little girl,' she was the life of any party when she was home for a visit.

So far, all fabric used has been Aunt Maggie's, but for borders I am going to dive into my stash. I am sure I have some suitable options in my blue stash that will work for borders. I am thinking a narrow dark blue first, then a floral outer border. I will be auditioning options this next week.

It's pretty sweet to have finished this quilt. I have to think that Aunt Maggie would wholeheartedly approve of my choice of using the Stepping Stone blocks with her stars. It really makes such a pretty quilt.

I'm off today to visit with the Frankfort Girls! Our bi-weekly Friday morning session will be at Sharon O's house. I will stitch on Lake Effect - yes, I am still plugging away on it.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne

Bits And Pieces From the Purge

I might create a little series of posts called Bits and Pieces. With the ongoing Purge and Organize Initiative, I have come across dozens of projects that need just the tiniest bit of time or attention to finish. Most come from Grandma's many boxes, but new sources of quilting items have come my way recently. 

I have a new collection of quilting items from my Aunt Margaret who passed in 2016. Her son my cousin Sam, after having sifted through items from his parents' estate, handed off his mom's quilting tubs to me. (More stuff!!) Plus, Jan of the Frankfort Girls has been purging. (Is it contagious??) I was selective in taking some of her stuff, too.

I know. Just say no, right? I could have done that, but there were good things to be had, and like I said, I was selective. I donated a several boxes of fabric to my Mennonite neighbors who do a tremendous amount of charitable work. Most recently they have been making comforters and quilts for North Carolina flooding victims. They were thrilled to get my fabric. I was glad to see my donation being used for this purpose.

But I digress...Getting back to my Bits and Pieces. Today I will share a couple of recent projects needing just the smallest amount of attention. Dealing with them clears space for more similarly simple finishes.

The cross-stitched portion of this pillow came out of my grandmother's things. Back in the 1980's, I sewed it into a pillow for Grandma which she kept on the back of her front room sofa. Alas, it came back to me. I removed the pillow form (to use elsewhere, no doubt) and stored the rest in my stuff. After recently coming across it in the POI (Purge and Organize Initiative),  I removed the dated '80s fabric and ruffle, and stitched up a fresh, new version. 

Another old thing I found needing the easiest of finishing touches - a whole-cloth flannel quilt that never had the binding attached. Twenty-some years ago, the quilt came back from the quilter with a zig-zag finish on the raw edges; heck, we just used it that way. Who needs binding on a quilt that was meant to be utilitarian from the get-go?

Utilitarian quilts can be bound with remnant bindings, so I pulled 3 remnants out of the binding box and properly finished this cozy, well-used quilt.

Now, let me show you a project that requires a little bit more than a quick-fix. In Aunt Margaret's stuff, I found 13 Ohio Stars, all blue and white, and all hand-pieced.

After laying them out on the bed, I decided how I could put them all together. I made one more star, out of the same stack of blue fabrics (shown below) and the background. Now I am making stepping stones blocks to place in between each star. Easy, but takes a little more time, and I am perfectly okay with that.

I will need 13-14 of these, and they could be done today. Last evening I made 4 pretty quickly, so I expect to be putting together a quilt top soon.

I am kinda' stoked to work on this and sew the quilt top. It will be so pretty, and since Aunt Margaret had a November birthday, I am thinking a lot about her - and missing her - as I work on these blocks.  

Oh, yes, there will be more little projects coming. I sometimes feel overwhelmed at the amount of things I am finding. Not enough hands to do them all. So many projects. I am at time stymied by the options.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne

Family Room Curtains

In keeping with my tendencies to drag out easy tasks forever and ever, I can at last share with you all our family room curtains. These have been up for about a week and a half, and I am just now getting around to sharing. *smh*

This addition changes the feel of the room quite dramatically. I have to say, I am glad of it, too. The wall was empty and needed both the curtains and the wall art to be hung. It feels much more welcoming in this room now.

We couldn't hang the art until the curtains were in place. Isn't that always the way with jobs around the house - they either bring on additional jobs or can't be accomplished until something else is done first.

Anyway, let's have a look at that wall art, for it is very special. Back in June of 1979, we received this counted cross-stitch sampler as a wedding gift from my Aunt Margaret - Maggie, as she was also known. With her untimely passing a year ago, it has gained importance in our home, so I definitely wanted it to be displayed. She was a very special aunt, no doubt about it. I will always treasure this gift from her.

One more job around the house complete, with these curtains hung. So what's next? I would love to replace the furniture in this room, and DH says he is willing to paint that television armoire - I'm thinking shabby chic white?

Happy Quilting, Friends!

July Concludes

My posting for the month of July has been erratic at best. Like most months, I begin with renewed focus and eager anticipation of what all can be accomplished in the new month. Some months end up being more productive than others; honestly, this is the normal ebb and flow nature of the quilter's work.

It's funny how so much of what we do requires a certain mindset - one that is positive; an all-systems-go sort of outlook. July 2016 found me having sad news to face, and it has been difficult to focus my attention on both quilting and blogging. Just to try to get July tucked away and move on to a happier August, I will share the sad news with you readers; not to garner sympathy, but more just to move on and adjust.

Early in the month I learned of the passing of Mary Harwood, the fun lady with the cute little barn (above) in Grove City who opened her doors for quilters a few times each month. Not only had I sewn at her place 4 or 5 times, she had come down to Frankfort to sew with us at Terry's on more than one occasion. Click here to read about my first trip to her barn.

In the photo above, Mary is showing off a quilt she was preparing to bind. This was taken on one of the trips to sew at her barn.

What a wonderful lady, and no truer friend could you find. While I did not know her as well as other quilters in my extended circle of friends - she was as genuine as could be. She announced back in January that she had been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive cancer and would be suspending her barn gatherings; soon she announced encouraging news that the diagnosis was not as dreadful as earlier suspected. Well, 6 months later, we learned of her passing. Apparently, it was aggressive, and many quilting friends were caught unawares. Here's a link to another blogger's tribute to Mary.

While digesting this news, our own family was dealing with a tragedy - the death of my Aunt Margaret - or Maggie, as she'd come to be called. Maggie is my mom's younger sister; the one who helped out so much during my grandmother's final months in 2015. After retiring in the spring of '15, helping with Grandma's affairs in the summer of '15, and moving with her husband, Uncle Nick, from Kansas back to Ohio in the fall of '15, Maggie began to have some mysterious health issues - mostly sleeplessness. The real alarms began this past May, when by the end of the month she was in the hospital and being tested for all sorts of neurological problems. The preliminary diagnosis was rapidly progressive dementia. Later, after some very specific test results, we learned a name for this disease - CJD, a terminal condition with no known treatment. She died on July 20.

This 2012 picture is possibly the most recent I have of Maggie - along with my mother and me. We were celebrating an OSU football victory at IU. Maggie was fun-loving; she quilted; she loved a party; she loved family. We are just so devastated by her sudden passing - from diagnosis to death was just 3 weeks.

Above is Maggie with her son, my cousin Sam at his wedding (1997), one of hundreds of pictures we enjoyed in a slide show at Maggie's memorial service yesterday. One of her very dear friends who came all the way from Wyoming made a few remarks and ended with this Native American prayer, which was particularly touching:

I give you this one thought to keep -
I am with you still - I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the sweet uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not think of me as gone -
I am with you still in each new dawn.

And now to my ambivalence about quilting and blogging.

My focusing issues have been exacerbated by troubleshooting how to quilt the big commission I need to be finishing. I've felt in a quandary for weeks now. Ugh!

I do think I have turned a corner, however. Elisa's quilt is beginning to come together more successfully, and an end is in sight. Above I have one of the sections in a prepping stage on the kitchen counter. I pressed the backing and stretched it out using painter's tape to keep it secure. I then pressed the top to the batting, and I used a lot of spray starch to give it some stiffness. Then I pinned the three layers together. I've been quilting and having some pretty decent success. (I will keep quiet about any "unsewing" I've done.)

Let's look forward to August, and see if I can get my mojo back!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Aunt Margaret - Quilt #1

My mother's younger sister Margaret has sent me some pics of quilts that Grandma made. This will be my first effort at gathering pictures from family members for the purpose of adding to my record of "Grandma's Quilts" up there in the bar at the bottom of the header.

Margaret sent 4 pictures of this first quilt. It was made in early in the 1960's, as Margaret graduated from high school in 1961. All the flowers are made from Margaret's dress scraps, and the fabrics are all from the late 1940's through early 1950's.

Margaret said she always liked this fabric with the Western themed motifs - an Indian in a canoe, a bucking horse and cowboy are 2 that I can identify. It's hard for me to imagine that this was a dress, however!

Here are 2 more flowers. I like that paisley! The graphic one on the right looks interesting -- maybe a country scene?

Here you can see where Grandma replaced part of the border. Margaret said she used this quilt so much that she wore out the entire top border. So Grandma replaced it -- the darker green is the new part. Not a bad repair job, if you look at that wonderful quilting! Margaret said the repair was likely done in the 1970's.

And, did you notice?? The standard pattern that Grandma most often used on borders -- the cable pattern that she traced from a cardboard template.

So this is the first of several quilts that Aunt Margaret is sharing with me. I will try to post them in a timely manner. And, if this works out well, I will move on to other aunts and then cousins to do the same.

We three were together a week ago at the Ohio State-Indiana football game in Bloomington, IN. Uncle Nick took this picture of us. I'm the one on denim; Mom is in back; Aunt Margaret is in front.

Go Buckeyes!

Happy Quilting, Friends!