Antique Florida pattern, or more from the Alabama barn

As it happens, we were living in Miami, Florida at the time of a visit to my father's home town of Greenville, Alabama. Great Aunt Carl went looking again in the barn and found this for a present to me. She wanted to keep it in the family since her mother made it. It is hand pieced and hand quilted. There are some feedsacks in this quilt as well. I put a new red binding on it. Funny thing is that the only name of the pattern I could find was "Florida". So I guess that the gift was meant to be!! Aunt Carl also had bags of her old clothing (in the barn) that she had kept forever. I took that home and my sister and I washed it, cut it up and I made it into a one patch quilt for her bed. Even though it was machine made, she was absolutely delighted!!

Charlotte NC Quilt Symposium check it out

WEBSITE: http://www.charlottequiltsymposium.org

BLOG: http://nothingcouldbefinersymposium.blogspot.com/

June 3-6, 2010 at Johnson and Wales University, Charlotte, North Carolina

FUN, so check it out!!

Scraps From My Basket-2010

I just finished this quilt...all but the label. It is another example of making a quilt from "made fabric" like I showed in the last post. I had made pieces from my leftover batiks over the past 6 months or so that I had thrown in my scrap basket. For this quilt I just cut them all into 6 1/2 inch blocks, put them on the design wall for color arrangement and sewed them together. I had a few batik cat blocks hanging around for years feeling neglected ..so I put them in for random interest. Easy, no pattern to worry about, and fun! How much better can that be....

Making fabric

It is my opinion that one of the most relaxing part of quilting is "making fabric" from stash scraps. Just to sit and sew together bits and pieces leftover from other projects or sliced from larger pieces is sooo much fun. When I am stressed, sometimes I chill by doing this. Then later I look at all of what I have made and cut them into projects. The purse at the end of this post was made this way.

This purse was cut from fabric that I had "made" by sewing cut strips together and then appliqued the bird on top.

Grandma's pig

My grandmother collected pigs. She remembered from her childhood in Sweden how smart the pigs were and she just loved them. One Christmas, I made her this quilted, stuffed pig. I hand appliqued and hand quilted it. I see that I signed it, 1978. Now I have it on my bedside....one more reminder of Grandma Franzen.

Antique Strippy Quilt from Oklahoma City

When I was working with the airlines 20 some years ago, I had a trip to Oklahoma City. Now, Pan Am and Delta had just merged and although I had travelled all around the world, I had never been to Oklahoma City. I was sooo excited. Usually we stayed in a downtown hotel, per union contract, so we would have access to tourist things without a car. Oklahoma City was different. We were on the outskirts and there was no car. Well, I was so disappointed and when I expressed that (whining) to the hotel clerks, they both said..well you can just use my car. No one in Miami where I lived would ever have offer their car to a stranger. I just was dumbfounded. But, I took them up on it, and they mapped out antique stores for my heart's content. It was a wonderful day. I bought this quilt then. It is a turn of the last century top, evidently sandwiched later with a purple plaid on the back. It is tied with postal string every two inches. I really love looking at this quilt and all the old vintage fabric. It is unusual in how it is set with the Ohio Star blocks in the center framed with Album blocks (unsigned). I treasure the look of this quilt and also the memory behind it. On my next trip to Oklahoma City, I brought the clerks big Florida avocados from the tree in my backyard. They were so big that the staff thought they were giant zucchini!

Antique Whig Rose summer spread

So a few years later after purchasing my Whig Rose of the last post, I was visiting Great Aunt Carl in Greenville, Alabama. I popped into the Red Barn antique store and guess what I found for $25. I almost dropped dead with delight. An antique Whig Rose summer spread......all hand appliqued, no batting and no quilting. It has a backing of the muslin which of course is perfect for hot Alabama summers. The colors are much more vibrant than my Whig Rose quilt, because this one looks like it has never been used. My cup runneth over!!

Antique Whig Rose

This quilt was bought at the Metrolina Antique Show in Miami, Fla about 24 years ago. I used it forever on the wall in my house in Miami. I just loved it to death so it is faded, but otherwise in good shape. My guess it is from the middle to late 1800's but I could be wrong. It is all hand appliqued and hand pieced and hand quilted.

With Heart and Hands.....: Free St.Patricks Day Quilt/ Block Patterns

With Heart and Hands.....: Free St.Patricks Day Quilt/ Block Patterns Check this out! Thank you Michele.

All Things Quilty: CyberBee Pin Cushion Swap

All Things Quilty: CyberBee Pin Cushion Swap check this out. Thank you Jeanne.

With Heart and Hands.....: Free Sewing Room Accessories Patterns

With Heart and Hands.....: Free Sewing Room Accessories Patterns

This is great sharing and fun for all. A great thanks to With Heart and Hands!

Muldoon Irish Soda Bread

So I see on several blogs, smittenkitchen.com , angry chicken »the soda bread of the season. Thought I might as well join in the mix with my version. This good wife tries to see that her Irish husband has this available most mornings for his breakfast. The cooked bread can be quartered and frozen.

Muldoon Irish Soda Bread

Ingredients: 1 cup white flour
3 cups whole wheat flour
1.5 teaspoons baking soda
3 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 of stick of butter sliced and stirred in
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup old fashion oatmeal
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups of buttermilk

Mix all ingredients together and add buttermilk. It
will be a bit hard to mix, so you can knead it if the
spoon is too hard to use. Cook in an iron frying pan or
large glass pie dish sprayed with Mazola. Bless with
knife by making a cross in the dough in the dish. Cook
in oven at 325 for one hour and 10 min. Enjoy.

Exciting work from Japan/

go look at these now! from this blogsite, Be*mused »

Tiny block Tutorial from Oh, Fransson...check it out

From the blog, Oh Fransson...

Elizabeth’s Fabric Focus ~ Quick-Piece Tiny Squares
Elizabeth from Oh, Fransson does it again with a fabulous project for your scraps.

Snowballs (post 2)

This lap quilt is made from my collection of African type prints and Australian ones. On one of our Ruthathons..when Ruth and Emily and I got together to sew for a weekend...we all made a large snowball quilt. Mine is not quite finished but finished enough to show now. I have done some machine quilting, some tying and some hand big stitching with pearl cotton. I am thinking about more big stitching and possibly some buttons..we will see. The back design is from the corners of the front snowballs..double stitching the corners to make the snowballs gave me triangle squares which I made into flying geese for the backing. This is one of my favorite quilts.

Snowballs large, snowballs small (post 1)

This is a design wall posting. I am working with 30's prints to showcase pieces of my grandmother's needlework on napkins/doilies, etc that have been a bit damaged. At this time, I have all the snowballs made and I am in the process of going thru the linens and finding suitable pieces to show.

Here you can see doggies from a napkin set grandma made for her canasta games.

This piece is from a small pillow cover that was almost completely disintegrated. It says "Good Night" in Swedish.

If you checkout a past posting of mine called Moonlit Path...you will see my first snowball quilt. The two I am posting now are not finished but I decided to post them anyway so you could see some of my work in progress. Thank you Ruth for your inspiration to get going on these.

Caoimhe Muldoon, Galway, Ireland

So what a surprise this morning to find this on the email. The wedding quilt I made for my nephew, Kieran and his wife Barbara a few years back...and just look at the cute little 8 month old girl on it...well life does change and it makes me so happy that they enjoyed the quilt I made them for their fall wedding.

Random baby quilts I made

The above quilt I just finished from scraps from the pink Trip Around the World from an earlier post. I machine quilted it with my favorite stitch of all...the wiggle stitch...I can hum along at a fast clip while designing in my head my next project....sooo relaxing. It is a cuddle quilt for the guild. My New Year's plan is to make one donation quilt a month for 2010.

Since we are Muldoons, the Irish chain is a frequent pleasure. I hand quilted this red one, changing thread colors from red to white as the stars went into the border. It hangs over my desk in my office.

This blue one was made for my son Eamon when he was a baby 25 years ago. It is also hand quilted and also he never touched it once he passed the infant stage!! Remember he was the wild one. His favorite activity was playing in mud puddles and climbing 20 feet up the Norfolk Island pine tree in our yard in Miami when he was three.

Antique Pink Star

This quilt is in terrible condition, but I bought it anyway because number one, the quilting is fantastic and number two because the man who had it, said that his grandmother made it when they were living in Cuba. We were living in Miami at the time and it was a Cuban man who sold it to me. Just like the brown Lone Star quilt of a previous post, the centers of the white flowers here were another color which has disintegrated with time. It is hand pieced and hand quilted.

Enchiladas from Creativeitchblogspot.com

Check out Mom's Best Chicken Enchiladas at: Creativeitchblogspot.com. We had them tonight and they were yummy.

Emily's doll quilt

Emily just turned 27. When she was 4, her father made her a doll cradle which we still have in the attic. I made this doll quilt appliqued and embroidered by hand for her cradle. I have quilted the date, 1983, the place, Miami and Love, Mommy in the corners.

Antique Lone Star, brown

This quilt was purchased in Miami 25 years ago from an antique dealer. It is from New Hampshire, turn of last century. It is a good example of overdyed fabric where certain parts decayed before others. This quilt is not in good shape. You can see in the close-ups, the fabric and colors that are gone, especially in the pink fabric where the flowers or polkadots have decayed and are just holes now while the rest of the fabric is intact. The backing fabric is crisp. I have enjoyed this quilt hanging on the wall in my office when I was the school counselor at the Miccosukee Indian Reservation in the Everglades outside of Miami, Florida.

p.s. i quilt: pinwheel sampler quilt along: block two.

p.s. i quilt: pinwheel sampler quilt along: block two. This is a great way to reduce bulk in the block...This site has great tutorials. Check it out.

Joy today

See the sewing joy as it goes from one generation to another at Ruth's blog. http://ruthsloan.blogspot.com/ My cup runneth over. Hugs to Ruth and Happy 27th Birthday to my Emily.

Emily's Cat Quilt

From the book, No Ordinary Cats, by Mary Tendall and Connie Tesene comes one of Emily's quilts. Today is Emily' 27th birthday which is quite amazing to me and I am finally realizing that she is grown up and gone...like why did it take me so long??? This book was published in 1993 and I probably made the quilt soon after that. That means that my girl was 10??? NO... Well anyway...here it is. I am not showing the backing, but the backing is from scraps of music fabric since Emily is an accomplished musician. It is very good for me to put my quilts online because I can see how far I have come. This is a very comfortable quilt and I just love the plaids, but if I were quilting it today, it would have alot more quilting in it. Actually, I am tempted to go back and add more machine quilting.