Archive

I hope everyone had a wonderful and restful Thanksgiving. I had a lovely trip up north to Veazie to visit my mother and sisters and their families. As I think most families do we have our set traditions and it makes for a very relaxing visit. This week has been a bit of a loss […]

I’ve been trying to figure out how to sew the squares together. With the quilts I’ve done to date I’ve sewn the pieces together on a pellon (interfacing) backing and then lined the squares up, overlapped the pellon backing and sewn the squares together. I’ve used heavy black thread with a zigzag overstitching technique and […]

I’m working more on the individual squares for Grace’s quilt and have pieced a few together. They are sewing together rather nicely, all straightforward geometric pieces. Getting the squares to go together is another thing entirely. It’s always more difficult to get the squares to fit together, they end up being slightly different sizes and […]

The good thing about feeling poorly the last week or so is it has given me a chance to reassess the project and do some planning. I had planned from the start to make a total of nine memorial quilts. This is largely because I am making an extra square for each to join together […]

I’ve been doing some research into calico prints from the early to mid 20th century, the time that my great-grandmother Grace would have been quilting. I’ve also been taking a closer look at the photos that I have of the crazy quilt that hangs at the Veazie Congrational Church (pictured above), the one quilt that […]

We will not speak of the Bruins Habs game. Not a lot to say today what with the holidays and all. I got a bit ahead of myself and took advantage of being home for the holidays to have my mother help me out with my next quilt in line, the quilt for my great-grandmother […]

One of the things that intrigues me about working in wax is it’s ability to preserve things. Flowers are pressed between pages of waxed paper, bronze sculpture is sealed with wax to prevent tarnishing and fruit is covered in a wax coating to keep it appearing fresh a little bit longer. In his treatise, “On […]

My grandmother Halice was big in the local Grange in Levant. Our family had a camp in Stetson and we would generally stop in to visit her on the way out to camp. I can remember going to suppers or fairs going on at the Grange. Everyone referred to my grandmother as “M’am” or “Mrs. […]

A corollary of this is don’t take cold medicine and try to work with hot things or sharp objects. Hence I’ve not been doing much artwork the last few days, as I seem to be coming down with a rather nasty cold. So this week seems to be a good time to talk about memorial […]

I was reminded this week to go slow and pay attention to what I’m doing, both by my sewing machine and by the terribly helpful people (Tyler and Anita) at Sew Portland, where I took my little Janome 2222. I had I become convinced that the timing must be off because it kept jamming (it […]