World in Stitches

This isn’t utterly original. I found a camel in a coloring book and copied it. I love the batik fabric, with it’s mottled variations, and I love the background fabric, which was probably an upholstery fabric (I found it in Qatar and loved it’s desert coloring).

As I stitched it, I found myself thinking how very much I love hand applique.

The friend I made it for has a soul for adventure. I travelled with her once, and learned to admire her steadfast calm, her utter sang froid, and her ability to manage people without ever once appearing bossy. We will all miss her presence, and her invaluable role-model.

The Center medallion for Whirling Tulips was designed as the world was whirling, September 11, 2001. Although glued to the TV, I couldn’t bear all the grey and all the despair, and I countered it with a bright fuschia/orange batik and deep green leaves, whiriling around a center left blank for some hand quilting. I used freezer paper to get exactly the curl and bend I wanted the leaves to have, and a very stylized tulip form.

I loved working on it. I use it for a card table tablecloth.

As I unfolded this to photograph for this blog/journal/record, I reminded myself to fold at angles, and never the same way twice, to avoid those deep folds that are forming from storing too long folded one way.

My friend Shirley and I were bored, and we challenged one another to this quilt. We had the patternm by Mimi Shimp, but we both changed it dramatically - I wanted the blocks in the order they were sung, so enlarged them all to 18 x 18. We also used the beautiful duppioni silks readily available in Doha, and other more difficult fabrics.

The main motif was totally hand appliqued, but the minor motifs were machine appliqued.

We had given ourself 6 months to get the blocks finished, and another year to hand quilt the resulting top. The reality - after 2 1/2 years, I machine quilted the finished top just to get it done. I am not unhappy. I love this quilt, and I will hang it for one month every year, from December 6th - the Feast of St. Nicholas - until January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany.

I made this for the first challenge the Qatar Quilters ever held. A khanjar is a curved daggar worn at the waist, primarily in Oman and Yemen. I wanted to use a piece of Damascus silk brocade left over from an evening dress (my husband had brought me the silk from Syria) and I wanted to do some embroidery and embellishment with the fabulous silver thread they use in Oman. I machine quilted a palm tree and my name in black thread on the black background. I kept it. I love this piece.

Huh. I guess it’s a pattern. I hadn’t thought about it. This quilt I also made for my sister. I was making it for myself when we talked on the phone, and she said “if you were going to make me a quilt, I would want it to be one about the beach.”

I was in the middle of cutting this one out for myself, so I cut two, and I pieced both together at the same time, but mine remains just a top, I still need to do the applique shells and the hand quilting of the waves around the border. I do love the colors, and the top hangs on my project wall just so I can look at it. We all love the beach, and working with these seaside-y, sun faded colors was a treat.

There’s also a great story behind finding the fabric, which I love love love. When my son was getting married, I decided to scout out a fabric shop in Panama City. As I was looking at fabric, I heard someone say “I think I know you!” and I said “I don’t think so, I spend most of my time overseas,” at which point she shrieked and grinned and said “Germany! I know you from the quilt guild in Germany!” and I remembered working on a project with her and her telling me about her dream of owning her own quilt shop. And here she was, she owned her own quilt shop Quilting by the Bay. Woooo Hooooooo, Sandeeeeeee!! Good on Ya! If you go to her website, be sure to download her fantastic newsletter. Her shop is amazing.

I used a pattern to make the quilt top, called Seaside Cottage, I believe. It had an applique flower border, and I changed it to a hand quilted wave border with applique shells, to my mind, more in keeping with a beach theme.

This is one of my earliest quilts, made for my dear friend Barbara’s first grandchild. I wanted the quilt to give Emily a lot of power in her life, and I wanted it to be a blend of Chinese and American. And I wanted her to know that the world was hers for the taking.

The Chinese dragon with the ball that is the world is a very ancient motif, it’s rendition is totally my own.

I drew it out on freezer paper, then painfully hand appliqued it to the background, inserting prairie points as scales along the back and tail. I inserted seminole piecing as an inner border. I wanted the eyes to be intimidating, without scaring a sweet little girl.

The dragon itself is hand quilted, using a modified clamshell, which made great scales. The background is machine quilted, using long wavy vertical lines - it was one of my first forays into machine quilting.