Quilting can be a way to maintain a bit of stability when your world is turned sideways. The focus of having to spend a certain amount of time doing something you have control over allows you to momentarily forget the world. In - out- in -out pull, repeat, repeat. The turmoil in your mind subsides. Then you stop and voila ! see how much has been accomplished.

I bought 3 blended/variagated colored threads for the OZ quilt; a yellow, green and a pink.The center panel of movie stills is all done. I used the pink and green alternately in the 4 small stills in the center, outlining elements of the pictures as I felt necessary. For the BIG Glinda pic- pink, Wicked Witch - green. For one of the large Dorothy?Toto pictures I used a light bright blue and in the other a dark purple.I outlined elements of these pictures also.Think reverse coloring book.

Three of the four narrow yellow brick road borders around the center panel are done with the yellow thread in horizontal rows. Two the wider long side borders of the Munchkinland montage are done in pink thread, vertical rows. It will be back to the green thread for the two W.W.W. corner squares. Not sure what color thread I will use for the ruby slippers on yellow corner squares, then back to horizontal rows of yellow for the outside yellow brick border.

Laid the quilt on our bed the other day to see how it is all coming together. I was very happy. I also needed sunglasses- the colors in the fabric are very bright.

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Last weekend my wife and I went to the Shelburne Museum, in Shelburne Vt. it was museum day - sponsored by the Smithsonian. We figured if they are going to give us free admission - why not!
The Shelburn is a variety of life style snapshots back thru this countries history. One of the exhibits was on Quilting past and as present Art. The older quilts on display - one made with 1″ squares - over 12,000 different squares, were really something to see. Although they were made for the most part as practical everyday quilts the way in which they were crafted by hand - they are works of art.
Then there were the present day Art Quilts - a couple of them were very nice, the rest were quilting craft gone wrong. One in particular had started out very nice then the “artist” just went nuts with freehand stitching, there was no rime nor reason, in fact it detracted from the original work.
I can’t say that the Quilting Art exhibit was the highlight of the days visit, but getting the chance to see some of the 100 year old handcrafted quilts was very interesting - the older quilts where very much “works of art”.

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This is the start of my adventure with my first quilt. It will be a wall hanging. I don’t want to take on to much to start with and if it does not come out to well it can hang in the back of the closet.
My wife who is the quilter has had me help some on a new baby quilt. Yes another one, remember the Wedding Quilt saga - well we got the news that the newly weds are to have a blessed event.
I have helped to cut squares - sounds easy but it does take some careful laying out with the template to make sure that they are all square and the same size.
The squares then had a small triangle sewn onto each corner. The fabric of the original square was then cut off and the resulting new corner was then ironed flat - which i got to do - so that each square now has a corner triangle of different material.
I was then handed all of the squares and told to lay out the quilt top - making sure that the squares conners did not match and that i had a good random pattern. The original squares where cut from color prints and pattern print fabric.
With just a little bit of rearranging we soon had a quilt top laid out we both like. Each square was then pinned to the old sheet they were laid out on and we now have the top ready to begin sewing together.
I still have not quite settled on what I am going to do for my wall hanging but should have it planned out for the next blog entry - wish me luck

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It is done HURRAH! Not only done but in the mail with weeks to spare. Was I completely satisfied with the final results, no, I rarely am. It seems that no matter how carefully I pin seams for sewing, vertical elements somehow don’t match up somewhere. I have come to accept this as a fact of my quilting life, so I no longer lose sleep, or get grey hairs over it. Check back for picture of the quilt process later once we get them printed, sorted, and saved.
If I had enough foresight I would have pieced the top as one whole unit with under sashing, but this was a SUMMER quilt project. I wasn’t supposed to spend so many evenings wrapped up under a quilt while reading or watching tv.
On the small crafts front - I have eight Halloween cards partially finished. Will buy a baby’s first Halloween one for the newly arrived granddaughter. Then it is on to the start of Christmas cards. The next quilt project is pin basted, ready to quilt once the weather cools off - pushing 90 in Vermont in the first week of September, where was that in August? This one is a Wizard of OZ quilt for our daughter and her man friend, (well he’s not a boy)! More about the Wiz later.

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My daughter asked for a new larger quilt for Christmas. No options given for color or design. Looking through a Keepsake Quilters catalog in the children’s section: Wizard of Oz print fabric.
The fabric was a panel of movie stills - the largest 4″s square. I pulled out a pattern I had made before that makes good use of large scale prints. Lanacaster as seen in the Sept/Oct ‘03 issue of Quiltmaker.
Order the material. I like using this shop for mail order, I put the check in the mail one day and it seems like the order arrives the next. I have also been into their shop in NH.
The fabric order was 2 panels, a montage, with yellow bricks, wicked witch, and ruby slippers. I had the fabric mentally in place and then it arrived!
First sign that maybe this wasn’t going to go as planned was an “oops” note from Keepsake. Seems the panel’s largest square was 16″ not 4″. I could send the fabric back - no questions asked. Instead I shuffled fabric, bought another yard of montage from Jo-Ann’s & viola a quilt top was born. This pattern is BIG squares & rectangles. After all that I ended up with enough extra fabric for the better part of a wall hanging. (Lemonade from Lemons with extra juice for a chaser)
So don’t be afraid to think outside the box - or square - who knows what you can craft!

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Wall Hanging
Pattern: My own based on the pattern from Once Upon A Quilt by Bonnie Kaster and Virgina Athey
Machine pieced and hand appliqued. Hand quilted

This was the fourth grandchild’s worlds quilt, and the second based on Once Upon A Quilt. The third grandchild’s quilt is very similar but with Hansel and Gretel’s Gingerbread House in the center. In addition to fussy cut fabric applique there are also commerical appliques, home printed fabric, buttons, beads, and faux jewels.

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Pattern: Designer Log Cabins, June Ryker
Quilters Newsletter Magazine Dec 1992
Machine Pieced, Hand Tied

This is the fifth quilt for a new grandchild made using this pattern. I use FAT batting for the filling so it can be used under the child. I rarely use blanket binding on a quilt, but the Finding Nemo binding just called out to be used with the border fabric. The design on the binding complimented the backing fabric with a rubber duckie design. The quilt is hand tied using 3 strands of embroidery floss.

The star of the show!

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Using the Flexi-curve technique, explained in the book, I made blocks for each season, with topical quilting motifs; (examples) pumpkin-fall, mittens-winter, ice cream cone-summer, tulip-spring, in the four corners of each block. The four squares have the same block pattern motif so when they were joined they create the diamonds and triangles. This makes it look like four suns that flow from one season into the next. The quilting on the light blue border is a continuous weave which ties the four blocks into one whole world as it were. The two oldest boys enjoyed this in their room for years, and it is now part of the kitchen wall rotation.

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This is the second quilt I have made using this block combo. I fussy cut the 6 kaleidoscope triangles and then sewed them into hexagon blocks. The Milky-way blocks were paper pieced. (When I first read about paper piecing I got the impression this was a good way to use up scrap material - not so!) The blocks were then machine joined together into a rough center piece rectangle. The rectangle was then hand appliqued to the border frame. The gold lame bias tape was then hand sewn around each block. Spider web hexagons were hand quilted onto the border frame. Each of the star blocks is outline quilted and the kaleidoscope blocks are quilted following the design on each block. It makes for a very spectacular bed display. My husband uses the first one of these as his bed quilt when he goes to run the kitchen at summer camp for the Girl Scouts on Cape Cod each year.

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