Welcome Citizen

One of the joys of being a part of a quilting group is the opportunity to make a quilt block for a special occasion. Last week, one of the members of our group became a United States Citizen. The group quickly mobilized and came up with a gift block strategy.

"Make a block, any block, any size, but be sure to used red, white, and blue. Oh, and it is okay to throw in a gold for a star, if you need to," was the word that went around the group.

I sewed an American flag block with a blue and white star to represent the field of stars. Others made star blocks, a log cabin block, and blocks with patriotic prints. Since our friend, Avril, now has dual citizenship, Irish and American, there was one block with both the Irish flag and the United States flag.

Quilter Avril was delighted with the collection of blocks, blocks that say, in a very tangible way, "Welcome, Citizen!"

Figuring Stuff Out

Tension adjustment on sewing machines can be a real challenge. On a big long arm machine, one that is designed to sew layers together and make a quilt, the tension adjustment is critical. A few weeks ago, I volunteered to do some long arm quilting for my sister's company, Thangles. The fall is always a push-come-shove time for a quilting company because the biggest market of the year, the International Quilt Market in Houston, comes at the end of October.

So this past week found me in my studio with my long arm and I was figuring stuff out. I had already finished a quilt for my grandson in August, so the machine and I had been buddies. Machines can take on a life of their own. My long arm machine, a Gammill, gets these streaks where the best thing you can do is to walk away and start again the next day.

Usually my machine acts up around tension issues. But not this week. I rigged a different tension threading pattern and it worked splendidly. I could turn up the music on my CD player and quilt away.

Sister Mary's quilt, the first of two that I am quilting for her, was in the mail by Wednesday and now I have the weekend to think about the patterns that I will quilt into the second quilt top. She wants feathers, sort of smaller ones, and I will have to work out the loops and curves in one of my art journals.

I don't envy her the process of getting ready for Market. I used to do that, too, and I really don't miss those long days of preparation and travel. What I am getting to do is the fun part -- the quilting -- and, this week, it was good to pull out all of my old skills and figure stuff out again.

Nine Block Tulip Quilt

As antique quilts go, this one is a real stunner. A nine block quilt with sashes and limited border, this quilt barely covers the top of a 60 inch by 80 inch queen size bed. But dramatic is the word for the punch that this quilt brings to a room.

Each block is hand appliqued using a chrome orange background fabric. The individual tulips have soft yellow and muted red violet petals. The leaves, probably a brighter green at one time, have faded to a blue green, kind of a teal. Sashing of the teal and the red violet fabric crosses the quilt.

There are no prints -- only solid fabrics in this antique beauty.

I own several old quilts that contain this chrome orange color. The dye used for this color is quite stable so most of these quilts really stand out with a color that some would call outlandish.

I like to imagine what a quilt like this must have meant way back in the days before television, before magazines were printed in color, before the telephone, before there were automobiles. Someone patiently stitched these blocks and then assembled and quilted this masterpiece.

Spread out on a bed during the daytime, the quilt speaks across the years. Folded up at night, it is a treasure to cherish and pass on to another generation.

Quilt Max

I should remember the name of this teddy bear quilt that I made for grandson Max, but I don't. I fell in love with the applique bears that look out windows that crisscross the quilt. Their little paws, simple oval shapes, take on a charming look, kind of a "I see you and I want to give you a big bear hug" kind of feeling.

I started this quilt for Max before he was born, before we knew that he would be kid who loves purple. If I were to make a quilt for him now, I would include purple since that has become an absolute, all time favorite color of his.

Anyway, the Max Bear Quilt is a favorite of mine. It is a good example of how a little bit of applique (the bears) combines with a little bit of piecing (the diagonal sashes) and a little bit of quilting (the seashell pattern on the cloud fabric) to produce an enchanting quilt for a kid.

Note to quiltmakers: The pattern for this quilt is from Quiltmaker magazine, probably an issue in the mid-1990's. And, yes, I did use Thangles to piece the sashing.

Quilts Blooming

A favorite design for many quilters is the Blooming Nine Patch quilt. Here's the one that I made for Will and Wendy's wedding quilt. It is all batiks and it won a prize at the Thumb Area Quilt Guild show in the summer of 2004 (or was it 2005?)

My mother-in-law, Pauline Geiger Eichler, made the same quilt using green and pink print fabrics. As you can see, it was a prize winner, too. Set on the diagonal, this design uses nine-patch blocks that blend from one fabric to the next.

I can honestly say that I have never seen a bad quilt made from this design!

Quilt Dairy

The second quilting book that I wrote, "Glad Yule," was published in 2007. My mother died in January of that year and I fell way behind in getting the book done. Danielle Damen came to my rescue and helped with sewing samples, editing, and photo styling of many of the pictures in the book.

Here's "Dairy Stars" from Glad Yule. This quilt uses Wisconsin dairy colors -- cheddar, cream, and butter yellow -- combined with two sizes of eight pointed stars to make a holiday quilt that glows with warm, buttery color. The artful cow in the photo was made by a Fond du Lac area artist. Notice the outline of the state of Wisconsin in the Holstein's black and white pattern.

We had a tough time photographing this quilt. Steve Jias, the photographer, used great digital equipment, but the metallic fabrics used for the block backgrounds turned dull in the photos. So we stopped using a lot of metallic fabric in quilts for books or patterns since it is so hard to photograph them.

This quilt has cow fabric on the back of it, a true salute to my home state of Wisconsin, and to all of the dairymen and women in the Hayes and Luedtke families on my side of the family.

Quilt Guys

These guys did NOT make this quilt, but they certainly are proud to be in the picture! The quilt is known as one of the Sharon Quilts, made by my sister MB from blocks donated by friends for Sharon.

I don't even remember the full story of the Sharon Quilts (or remember who Sharon is) but I absolutely love this photo, taken in 1996, of Ed, on the left, and Patrick, on the right, and the quilt which is tacked up on an old chicken coop somewhere west of Washington, D.C, on some acreage along Poolesville Road.

MB quilted at least two Sharon Quilts. She used to say that she honed her machine quilting skills on these wonderful sampler quilts.

Quilt In Progress

On May 2, 2010 the New York Times Lens blog did a project called "Moment in Time" where they asked people all around the world to take a photo at 11 am Eastern Time and submit it to their website. I had a quilt on the design wall in my studio and that's what I photographed that day.

The caption read as follows: "Sunday morning at our lake house and I'm in my quilting studio assembling a quilt for my granddaughter, Hannah Lee, age 8 months, using blocks made by her Great Grandmother, Pauline Eichler, age 82, who has Parkinson's and still loves to sew."

The topic that I submitted the photo under was "Family" and I am proud to say that this photo was published by the New York Times, along with myriads of other Moment in Time snapshots, in the days that followed.

Hannah was featured in a later blog post, along with the completed quilt. What is really cool about this quilt is that it uses secondary colors from the color wheel -- orange, green, and purple. Those are tough colors to work into traditional patchwork, but in this quilt, they work and they work well.

Quilt FO (Finished Object)

My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in June of 1994 and one of the remembrances from that celebration was a quilt that contains the names of family and friends who attended their party. Since yesterday's blog post was about a quilt UFO (unfinished object), today's post shows a finished quilt (FO -- finished object) that was started in June of 1994 and finished by December of 2000.

Each block has a center strip that features signatures of people at the party. Those strips were actually pieces of muslin that had freezer paper ironed on the back so that one could write on the fabric using Pigma pens. The writing was heat set with a warm iron and then each fabric unit was pieced into a quilt block.

The blocks became a quilt and the ensuing photo of Stan and Val, father and mother to seven of us Hayes sibs, is a precious image of dear parents and of the quilt that honors their 50th wedding anniversary.

Quilt UFO

In getting ready to finish a few quilts for the holiday season, my brain has been churning through the large number of Unfinished Objects (known as UFOs in the quilt business) that are in banker boxes, zip lock bags, or the closet in my studio.

Here's a collection of blocks with an autumn theme, either by color or by shape. It looks like I laid out this scheme in June of 2002, just a minor eleven years ago. The blocks still look good together and, yes, this is still in the UFO pile.

Onward and upward to the sewing machine.

Green Val Block

I'm not getting out to golf this November here in Arizona, but the Arizona Val quilt blocks are starting to pile up. Here's one of the latest, all done in various green fabrics with the diagonals (those are Thangles, remember?) being a deep chocolate brown or a rich rusty red.

I need twenty five of these blocks for the quilt that I am making. So I'm cutting strips and making Thangles and running from the sewing machine to the ironing board.

Dad will find this pretty amusing, since he's been used to having the women around him sewing all of his life. Right, Dad?


Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Election Day Thangles

I've been at my sewing machine this Election Day. I voted absentee last week; made my contributions; put up signs.

I'm keeping up with Twitter today, doing my Proposal 3 support for renewable energy. I've said my prayers and will say them again.

I guess I'm like a lot of people today, wondering if I could have done more to help get out the word and get out the vote. Like all things that we believe in, we always wish we could have done more.

So, I'm sewing Thangles for a big block quilt that is a big deal. I'm working on 100 little blocks that will go together to make 25 big blocks. Each little block requires that I make four Thangles. Doing the arithmetic means that I will be sewing 400 Thangles (and maybe more) before this quilt is done.

And, as I sew, I'm hoping for a good election -- one that gives us stability and continuity. One that turns the corners that are necessary, but stays the course where we need it. Like my big block quilt, there are a lot of little pieces coming together today.

And tomorrow, there will be more blocks to sew, more pieces to figure out. Seems like quilting and democracy have a lot in common.

Anyway, that's what I think today.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Just Scrappy

It's a favorite of mine, this scrappy quilt. It uses light and dark fabrics in a sixteen patch block that really mixes things up.

The lights and the darks meet in diagonal lines that cross the quilt and make the primary pattern that moves in a straight line through the blocks.

Maybe a quilt like this gives hope to the partisan nature of this fall election. Two opposing sides, with scads of equal pieces, arranged strategically, crossing and completing each other.

We could hope for such a patchwork pattern that works in our national dialogue.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

A Cardi and a Quilt

I was quilting and knitting five years ago in August of 2007. Grandchild Number Two was on the way and we knew this baby would be a boy. I finished a sweet little sweater, a cardigan for a little guy. I always like to make those first cardigans out of lightweight yarn. The yarn for Griffin's first cardi was a multicolor in pale yellow and blue and cream. Very nice.

Then I made a quilt using a patchwork block that I call the "Val Block," all for that tiny little bundle who will turn five over Labor Day weekend. The Val block is named for my mother who made several quilts using this block. I think of her when I sew Val blocks. In quilting lore, the block is known as "contrary wife." That's kind of a neat name, too.

Finn starts kindergarten this fall, so it is fun to look back five years to knitting and quilting days when I could only picture a baby boy in a handknit cardigan on the Val block quilt.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

PHD in Quilting

I agree with my sister Mary who says that quilters who finish a Baltimore Album applique quilt should be acknowledged as having their PhD in Quilting. My friend Gloria Busch of Pigeon has finished her quilt and it is hanging in the Thumb Area Quilt Guild Show in Pigeon this week.

Well done, Gloria. Your glowing smile shows how proud you are of this accomplishment. Know that your quilting friends are very proud of you and admire your work lovingly. I especially like the border which you designed for your quilt.

Gloria joins these women in my circle of quilting whom I know to have the PhD via the Baltimore quilt route: Vallanee Rose Luedtke Hayes (my mother) of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin; Pauline Beatrice Geiger Eichler (my mother-in-law)of Pigeon who has made two of these quilts; Isabel Leipprandt of Pigeon; Jill Harmon of Beaverton; Debbie Ballard of Midland. (I know I am forgetting some of the quilts and quilters whose Baltimores I have seen. Refresh my memory, friends!)

I taught applique classes at my shop, Pigeon River Mercantile, during the mid-1990's and we worked on these quilts. Many of the Thumb area quilters began their blocks then. I am sure that more of these quilts (including my own) will be completed in the years to come.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Cut Glass Dish Runner

A lovely bouquet of daylilies graces the dining table and showcases one of my favorite quilting designs, the Cut Glass Dish Runner. I used the vintage color known as cheddar for this sample along with the old quilt block called cut glass dish. The block uses tons of Thangles, a wonderful quilting tool invented by my very talented sibling, MB Hayes.

I call this table runner the "cheddar runner" and think that it is a very Wisconsin-ish and dairy-ish way of acknowledging my Wisconsin roots.

I have a selection of green fabrics chosen for the next version of this runner that I want to sew. Green fabrics will accent a pot of ivy in the same way that these daylilies partner with the wonderful glow of the cheddar fabrics set against the warmth of a wood table.

This runner pattern can be found in my book, Tapestry of Texture.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Projects Completed and Jim-Jams

I had projects to finish before we left yesterday. I am a typical Child of Val, sewing and hemming and knitting just before a big event. I'm sure that I was hemming prom dresses and wedding gowns right up to each big day.

Max's quilt is finished. Liesl and Max picked out the fabrics, Liesl pieced and I quilted. It's a long twin, 72 inches wide by 101 inches long. Great job, Max and Liesl. I had a great time with the threadplay that went into quilting this starry quilt for Max.

Miss Vallanee Rose has her first cardi from Grandma Wanda's knitting needles. Vallie is growing fast and I scuttled to get her sweater done and delivered to her house before we left for England.

The redeye flight from Detroit to London was crammed. I had a movie ("Joyful Noise" with Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton) to watch on my Kindle Fire. I slept an hour or two. It was very cool to see the waning moon, still quite bright, floating in the clear dark sky over the cloud deck above the Atlantic.

Here's a British word to consider -- jim-jams. We saw this sign advertising a hotel chain while waiting for the Heathrow Express to take us to Paddington Station. The signs says "Jury's Inn warmly invite you to finish your presentation in your jim-jams."

Jim-jams. After a trans Atlantic flight, five hours of time zone change and adjustment to the city surroundings, I'll be ready for my jim-jams tonight!

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Anti Spatter

I'm already kind of a ditz at the dining table. I'm the one who asks the wait staff for extra napkins and then uses most, if not all, of them. So, when it came time to make some new anti splatter bibs for my dear Mom-in-law Pauline, I figured I had better sew something practical (washable) and pretty (pieced and quilted).

This Anti Splatter Bib will be Mom Eichler's early Mother's Day gift from me. I sure hope that when I get to needing one of these, someone will cozy up to their sewing machine and make me a bib that I can brag about. And, I give to Mom Eichler all the bragging rights that she needs to enjoy this necessity of life in her eighties.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler