life happens lol

I can't believe that I have forgotten I had started this blog last year. So much has happened and yet now I feel I must get back to working on my quilting blog in between enjoying my new home in a new state. I put my house on the market in June 2010 and had to move to Oregon faster than I thought I would, leaving my house on the market but empty. It looks like I have a buyer now though and will close on that colorado chapter of life as I begin this one here on the coast of Oregon. I've unpacked my quilt pictures and will get organzied and get things rolling again on here, and in my quilt room as well! Life got in the way of my working on this, lets hope I can keep things more under control now lol!

log cabin check mate quilt 1994

This quilt had a lot of signifcance for me in 1994, as I decided on the layout of the blocks. To me one of the great things about quilting is how you can change the look of a quilt by taking the same block and putting it in various places. This quilt was the SAME size as my first one for Mindy in the class had been, but as you can see it takes on the form of giant check marks just by the arrangement of the lights and darks in this Log cabin block. I didn't want to struggle again with how to do the borders and knew there was a different way to do them, but I just couldn't remember what it was. So I asked another friend and my mother how to do the borders the 'old way'. I was told to add them to the quilt BEFORE the full qulting process and for me that has been a much easier way to go.
Sometimes with brain damage or with anyone, we each have our own way of learning things and once we find what works to unlock our minds and memories its a great thing to hold on to. For me the way of doing the borders and THEN quilting by machine or hand tying made all of the difference to my learning curve. The summer of 1994 after my youngest daughter's 10th birthday, my oldest daughter (who was 17) and I flew out to the east coast to see her dad and check out colleges for her to attend after her high school graduation in 1995. It had been a fun time for us to get to see her dad, step mom and half sisters again. On this trip we stopped in at an Amish farm house and I found a beautiful Amish quilt in maroon, teal and dusty blue on a black background that followed me home. That quilt in the Dahlia pattern became the master bedroom quilt. So when I was picking colors for the sitting room in our bedroom, for this day bed quilt, that was where I took my inspiration. I wish I'd had the foresight to have bought extra of THE AMISH fabrics, but I just didn't think that far ahead. At any rate once home and both girls were back in school, I started working on this twin quilt. The blocks started to come easier for me as I had so much repetition. I knew I didn't want to do the ;fields and furrows; layout again.
I'd had a conversation with my husband during the time I was making this quilt and I knew he was ready to take his wishesthat he'd spoken to me in 1989, when he told me this was too difficult for him to stay with us and other things came to light as well that were very hard for me to hear. So when I got to the point of placing the blocks to make a design from the lights and darks.... the giant check mark seemed to fit my mood of the moment.
This quilt became my 'check mate' quilt and did indeed go onto the day bed in our room. It was a sad time for me but at the same time I truly understood and I was happy that he felt I was getting well enough he COULD bail and be ok with leaving me to raise the kids. I didn't hold any ill will toward him or my situation but instead embraced it and kept working even harder to be the best I could be.
We had married in 83 and in 87 when my disability hit, I guess it was just too soon in such a young marriage. It was kind of funny though because I began to gather more strength of purpose, stubborness to succed, and my sense of humor really got the best of me with my addlepated mind, because every time I'd walk into our bedroom and see this finished check mate quilt, I would get a smile on my face and think to myself how truly blessed I had been these 7 years. My husband had stood by me and helped me with the kids, along with an army of others who as I got better each year would fall by the wayside and let me take on more of my own mothering and being a wife. So many things were still really hard for me but TRULY I FELT BLESSED that I had come so far! Life was handing me lemons, so I made lemonade and shared it with my friends. I don't drink the stuff, but we sure had good talks over the drinking of the stuff anyway.
I have always been blessed with an abundance of positive thinking and optimism, no matter what my circumstances were, and this was just one more hurdle I had to prove to myself I could overcome. My girls were the greatest kids a mom could have, and while we weren't problem free, we were a family of girls who knew we had love and would get through things, one day at a time, piece by piece, when we let love keep us going. WE knew it had to get better and we would find peace at some point. IT was a VERY hard time of our lives, but at the same time I am sure it wasn't as hard as the last 7 years had been on my girls. Unfortunately with my memory problems as it was back then I wouldn't know how bad it was, if not for the diaries I worked to write in and kept. I'm just glad my girls didn't disown me along the way lol ... and happy we DID have each other.
It is now 2010 and I don't know what happened to this quilt... but I think I gave it to the homeless or something once I no longer needed, nor wanted it around. But again I was happy because this quilt I FINISHED ON MY OWN. NOW I felt ready for whatever came next and was looking forward to my next class.

1st class 1994- log cabin pattern

This is the first quilt I made in a class after my brain damage and disability hit. The gal who taught it worked with disabled and brain injury people as part of their therapy. Elaine was the mom of the manager at the fabric store I always loved shopping at, so this worked well for me. Lauren (the store manager of Hancocks) had told me her mom would be in town and teaching numerous classes so why not try taking a class from her in hopes it would set my mind free in my learning and then I'd be able to quilt more on my own. It was suggested that I make a LOG CABIN quilt because there is a lot of repetition and its a good place to start. So that was the plan. My youngest daughter's 10th birthday was coming up in July so I figured I'd let her pick the fabrics for this quilt and I would give it to her for her birthday. There are bits and pieces of the memory I have lost about this process but I do know it was fun getting my daughter involved along the way. We'd bought the new house in March of 1993, and this was the following spring 1994.
My daughter walked through the whole fabric store of cotton fabrics and then went back and started pulling out 3 fabrics she really liked. I'm glad I was getting my patience back because this was a long process that day. Both of us though really enjoyed fabric stores so it was a good day, and SO fun to watch her eyes light up when she found cool fabrics.
This quilt (Elenor Burns Quilt in a Day LOG Cabin) required 3 darks, 3 lights, a center and 3 border fabrics. Mindy had scored a dark blue background fabric with blues, pink, purples with a bit of light teal in it as one of her fabrics, then she'd found a print that was a medium shade with those colors in it on a white background,and the dark purple. We spent another hour or so there while she continued putting her fabrics together. I marveled at her good color eye and for design. She knew what she liked and it was going to be a beautiful quilt IF I could figure this 'strip quilting' out. Because of this quilt being a twin sized, the layout was going to be 'fields and furrows', like a garden is planted. With these pictures you can see that is what it looks like. The pictures here are of this quilt finished, and a close up of one block so you can see her fabric choices.
This class was supposed to take 3 weeks of coming 2 times a week for 3 hours each class. My brain could only process for about an hour before I had to give up. I did some of the stuff at home in between the classes but it was a really HARD process for me this first time and certainly NOT the ZEN relaxing activity it NOW is for me!I did manage to get the 15 blocks done in the 3 week period BUT the quilting process by machine and those border techniques just confused me!Luckily for me Elaine was here longer and she worked with me for another couple weeks to get me learning how to do the machine quilting and borders done. HOWEVER the way she did the borders in what I now know is called a 'quilt as you go' method, just defeated me, so Elaine did those last parts for me after I had pieced the top and quilted the body of the blocks. Back then I was still having these realy horrendous headaches when something new was too much for my brain to handle, which was part of why this took me so long to do. Once the headache started, I had to stop whatever I was doing for hours or a full day ot let it pass by.
In this class I learned SO MANY QUILTING TECHNIQUES including; that you use a 1/4" seam on all parts. She gave me a little Dr Sholl's pad to use as my guide (something I use today for alll of MY students aged 7 to adult, as they first learn) because its so thick you can't go past it when you sew the 1/4 inch seams. I learned that you don't sew the seams open, as you would for making clothing but instead you iron them together in a certain direction so that makes the blocks lie flatter (each pattern tells you specifically which way to press your seams) and that was so cool to me because by trial and error I could see the WHY behind this method... or as I sometimes heard others say the madness behind the method, lol. I learned about color placement, as well as how to use the cutting mats, rotary cutter and special rulers for cutting. I learned about quilting or walking foot, other feet used in quilting, feed dogs, 1/4" foot, about using a medium gray thread on the obdy of the quilt so it blends into all the various fabrics, about safety pinning in preparation for quilting the top and sandwich of the quilt together, which in this one I did 'stitch in the ditch' and so many other things I am sure right now I am forgetting! THERE WAS SO MUCH information processed during this quilt making project.
I do remember this quilt made my head hurt a LOT but I also know I learned a ton and in the process I was becoming like a person lost in a desert searching for water, seeing an oasis in front of them, driving them on. FOR ME making this first quilt, in this class was the same thing. I had loved quilting and creating before, and I really needed and wanted a creative outlet besides the house projects that were nearly done (wallpapering etc).
After this quilt, I continued to take more classes every time Elaine came to town for another couple years until my divorce started in 1995. BUT THIS FIRST class quilt, to me, was just as important as the one I'd tried the year before on my own! IT turned out beautifully and is still being used today. The cool thing was that after I made this quilt for Mindy, she wanted to try a class on her own, not my teaching her ... WISE child to suggest someone else teach her. I was so proud of her first quilt she made. I think I will find her first quilt and put that in here at some point too because she, now at 25, is a fabulous quilter in her own right after taking a class at the age of 9/10! This first quilt gave Mindy and me a lot more than I think either of us realized back then! Mindy started the class before her 10th birthday and finished it the weekend after she turned 10. We were both sewing a lot and she wanted a machine of her own so we didn't have to take turns, so oln her 10th birthday not only did I give her the quilt I had made but also I gave her a Kenmore as her fist sewing machine, which she still uses and loves today. Since then she has made many quilts, friendship pillows and other things so I feel that gift was one that really opened her up for a creative outlet she enjoys. I will talk more about her 'friendship pillows' later in this blog. I was both a girl scout leader for both of my girls starting in 1984 with my oldest and then with my youngest when she got into first grade, and making log cabin block pillow became something Mindy wanted us to do in girl scouts. So we did. I will see if I can find those pictures and include an entry on here about them soon!

in the beginning, how this came to be and when I was 5...

My girls decided I needed to start a quilting blog around Christmas time 2009. "Mom it will give you a place to share your quilts, get you talking with other people who love to quilt, and give you a chance to start writing about each quilt, how you started quilting, your journey from brain damage to these quilts now and so much more... COME ON MOM YOU can do this!" SO here I am finally starting to try to figure out how to do this thing that will be so fun for me. LOL... I DO LOVE quilting and its has been quite the learning process again after brain damage in 1987.
My journey and love affair of quilting though started when I was a little girl of 5. I learned to quilt while watching my mother and maternal grandmother cut, piece and finish their quilts for our homes. I was in awe of how they would use tracing paper, cardboard patterns and paper sacks to make their pattern pieces. They would lay them out on the fabrics and cut maticulously around them with really sharp scissors. I remember how fun it was to play with their stashes of fabrics which consisted mostly of old clothing we all had worn, or from left over pieces of cloth from the home made clothes we all wore. Back then it was more fun than playing with crayons and blank paper! I learned to thread their needles IF they were doing it all by hand, or just enjoyed watching them pull out their patterns and piecing the blocks on their sewing machines... the old black Singer. My grandmother decided that when I was 5 1/2 I was old enough to make my first quilt when I was visiting her home. I was there for a week. She brought out all of her fabric bags and asked me what colors I wanted to make it. I told her blue, pink and white. So she emptied her bag of blues and told me to pick 3 fabrics I liked, then we did the same thing with the pinks and her whites too, until I had 9 different fabrics. I had no idea white came in so many shades or tone on tone (though I didn't know they were called that back then). We decided I would make what I now know is called a '9 patch' doll quilt that when finished was supposed to be around 9" x 9". She handed me a cardboard square that was 3 1/2" in size and told me to take my pencil and draw around the square on each of my fabrics. She helped me a LOT to do this so it wouldnt look too bad. Then she handed me my own scissors that were left handed! I was in hog heaven! She helped me cut out my blocks and that was the end of my day one lesson. When my granddad came in I had to show him what we had done and he seemed really happy for me. I think he was really amused by my wanting to get this done and not wanting to eat dinner or do anything else. But we were done for the day. The next morning after we did other things, it was time to get my next lesson. I learned how to place the 9 squares in the order I wanted them and then she let me thread a needle and begin to hand sew them together. I had sewn other silly things already when my mom was sewing, in order to keep me still and quiet. Otherwise I was known in my family as 'chatty Kathy'. Between lunch and dinner I had sewn two rows of 3 blocks each together, pricked my fingers many times since I was doing something new, and had been delighted at my progress. The next day I finished the other row and got them all sewn together into one big 'almost' square. THEN grandmother ironed them for me, not trusting me to do it myself, which was fine because ironing was for big girls and I wouldn't be big until I was 6! The next day my grandmother and I ran errands and then settled down again with her bag of blues since she knew that was my favorite color and we found a print that had been a dress my mom had made for me when I was little... that is when I was 4! and we placed my little doll quilt on top of it to again trace around it with a pencil before cutting it out. Then my grandmother showed me the batting and I chose a really fluffy one because she told me the thicker the batting the fluffier the quilt would be and I wanted my doll to be really warm in our Colorado winters. She then showed me how to pin the layers together and get it ready for hand qulting. I wanted to keep working on it that night but I had to put it away for the next day. BUT I was getting impatient... something that was, even back then rare for me. After breakfast the next day my grandmother decided that instead of 'stitching in the ditch' which would take a long time that instead we would just tie each corner and get it done faster so I could go play and do other things during my visit. I didn't quite know how to tie my shoes yet but I was really great at tying a mess of knots! She showed me how to do it and then just let me go ahead and do them all MY way. That didn't take too long to do and then all I remember was bringing the backing fabric over the front and creating a binding that way. I know I made a mess of the seewing at that point becuase I just wanted it done... and when she saw what I had done, she stopped me, made me tear out my stitches and do it more uniformly... which really made a difference. It took me all that night to finish it while we watched some show on tv.
I had that quilt until my high school years when we moved out of state and I really don't know what happened to it. But I do remember it was getting pretty tattered by then with all the use it had gone through. That was the first quilt I made as a child but not the last one.
I still have quilts both my mom and my grandmother made when I was a school aged girl. I will have to see if I can find pictures of these old things because the fabrics will be AHAA moments for anyone who remembers the 40s, 50s and 60s. I will try to get this up and written on more often than seldom so bear with me while I work on this over the next few months.