Take a Look

Stephanie just finished the Quilting ala Carte Classes where she made a quilt for her son. This is her second quilt- a beautiful scrappy quilt from 30’s prints – that she made for a friend. Stephanie does her own quilting, too! Looks like she learned her lessons well!  

Embroidery Sunbonnet Sue

Such a sweet Sunbonnet Sue quilt! Joyce embroidered all the blocks and chose a simple setting to highlight them.

 

Patchwork of the Crosses

It’s time to start thinking about background fabric.  Lucy Boston used a plain white fabric for the background of her quilt, but I chose a soft creamy background with a subtle vine print for mine because  I liked the added visual texture and softness of the print.

Folio Basic by Henry Glass & Co., Inc.

Whatever you decide to use, be sure to pick something neutral that will show off your beautiful blocks to advantage. 

Background honeycombs need to be added around each block –that’s 24 honeycombs per block. Just a word of wisdom:  Don’t get caught up in the creativity of making the blocks and leave all the background honeycombs for the end.  They’re way to boring to do all at once – better to space them out and add them as you go!

It’s always difficult to calculate exactly how much background fabric to purchase, but if you’re planning to make a quilt the size of the original quilt, 88” x 99”, you will need approximately 8 – 8½ yd. after washing.   If you’re planning a smaller version, purchase accordingly.  The Henry Glass Folio fabric I’m using for my background is available on our website – click here to order by the yard.  If you prefer a background fabric closer to the original quilt, I would recommend either Kona White (pure white) or Kona Snow (soft, antique white) both of which are available by calling the shop.

You will not need to fussy cut the background fabric.  I found it easy to cut my fabric into 2½” strips and then subcut using the acrylic honeycomb template.  There will be almost no waste with this method.  Of course, Inklingo is ideal for this step allowing you to print large quantities of perfect honeycomb shapes onto your background fabric quickly and accurately on your Inkjet printer.  Check out Inklingo here for more information.

Once shapes are cut, glue baste them to the papers and they’re ready to add to your quilt.

Don’t forget:   If you need additional honeycomb paper pieces or glue refills, they are available on our website.  Honeycomb papers are also available in economical 600/pack or 1200/pack bulk packages.

For those of you new to Patchwork of the Crosses, click here to follow the Blog Along from the beginning.  It’s not too late to join in the fun!

June fabric packs are available - don't forget to stop by the shop to pick up your pack!

Redwork Splendor

Lana shared this darling Redwork project that she just finished. Pattern is Winter Wonderland by Crabapple Hill.

Row by Row Experience Shop Hop

Our fabric plate says it all. . . we love quilting and are "Sew Happy" to be participating in the Row by Row Experience Shop Hop this summer. If you're planning a trip to Georgia, be sure to include us in your itinerary. Collect Fabric Plates from all the shops you visit - use them to make tote bags or labels for the back of your Shop Hop quilt. They make a nice reminder of the shops you visited during your travels!

Lovely stories and photos

Staff member Linda R. shared several things she inherited from her Grandmother and Great-Grandmother. The antique spool chest holds original spools of thread that came in the box and have been passed down in Linda’s family.

  Linda’s Grandmother and Great-Grandmother worked together on this beautiful antique hooked rug. When Linda brought it home with her, there were several holes in it that Linda wanted to get repaired. She took it to an Oriental rug store for suggestions on how to fix it and the little Chinese lady who was helping her took the wool scarf she was wearing and cut it into strips to make the repairs for Linda! The finished rug is now framed and hanging and looks good as new!

 

 

A giving Heart x 2.

Bobbie came in with her service dog to show us her quilt. She made this quilt using Little Darlings fabric from Little Quilts. Bobbie makes quilts and donates them to a program called "Baby Love" at the Family Resource Center & Health Department in Bryson City NC. What a great gift for a struggling family..... Quilts make the best comforters.

Patchwork of the Crosses

It's time for another block!  These are the fabrics I used:

You can use the same fabrics and get totally different looks.  For example, here are two blocks I made using the same fabrics.

It's fun to play with the fabrics and see what you can come up with. 

For both of these blocks, I used a narrow stripe from the gray striped fabric for the center fussy-cut honeycombs.  Cut conservatively and  be sure to save the rest of this fabric as we'll be using it again in another block - it's just one of those fabrics that you want to use every square inch of!

Churn Dash for baby

Sharon just finished a great baby quilt for a co-workers new grandbaby. Very cute…

 

Words To Live By

Jean is trying to keep up with her “Words to Live By” block of the month. She’s doing the wool version. To make the words stand out a little more, Jean is embroidering them instead of inking. What a beautiful block, Jean!

Designed by Lisa Bonjean of Primitive Gatherings. Jean is showing the "joy" block

 

Little Quilts Annual Garage Sale...this Saturday

Calling all quilters, patchworkers, and stitchers…..

Saturday May 31^st – 10am – 3pm - 1 Day only…in our classroom you will find...

 select Fabric $3 yd. – Fat 1/4ths $1 each

Books, Patterns, models, quilts, dolls. patchwork blocks, and much more….

10% of the proceeds will go to Cobb County Battered Women’s Shelter.

Treasures galore…

 

 

Patchwork of the Crosses

We have been working on Lucy Boston blocks for several weeks now, and, I thought you might like a little information about Lucy herself.

Lucy Maria Wood was born Dec. 10, 1892 in Lancashire, England.  She was the fifth of six children with two older brothers, two older sisters and one younger brother.  In her own words, from her memoir Perverse and Foolish, Lucy describes her home life as “a typically solid and affluent middle class Victorian family of committed Wesleyans.”

Lucy’s father, James Wood, was an engineer and sometimes mayor of Southport.  He was a bit of an eccentric, but Lucy adored him and very much admired him.  He was a small, dynamic man with a great sense of humor, very religious, and 20 years older than his wife.  Supposedly, Lucy bore a striking resemblance to him.

Lucy’s mother was only 20 when she married James.  She was one of seven daughters of a Wesleyan minister, and the marriage was more of an arrangement to get one of the daughters married off than a love match.  Lucy described her mother as extremely sensitive and delicate.  She bore a child every year as was expected of a dutiful Victorian wife, but had very few maternal instincts.  Lucy always felt her mother should have been a nun – she was very gentle, but extremely rigid in her religious views and in the inerrant truth of Scripture.

Prior to their marriage, James had a house built for the family he intended to have.  It was quite a house with religious friezes and Bible verses painted in every room.  The “triumph of his eccentricity” was the study.  James had visited the Holy Land and brought back many things with the idea of creating “a holy and uplifting room.”  The walls of the study were painted in a continuous frieze of the landscape along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  From the ceiling hung lamps similar to those that would have hung in Solomon’s temple. Recesses in the walls were divided with Moorish onion dome arcades.  Glass fronted cupboards held beautiful brass objects and other rarities.  It didn’t look as garish as it sounds, but was more like the gentleman’s room of a near lunatic according to Lucy.

What a strange couple they must have been.  James, passionate and highly religious but with an appreciation for the aesthetic side of life, and Lucy’s mother with her devout, abstemious ways.  In her role as wife of the mayor, Lucy’s mother would have been expected to do a lot of entertaining -something that must have been very difficult for her especially since her idea of food was that it was a sad necessity.  Apparently after her husband’s death, she began to think it wasn’t even necessary and there were many times when the children went hungry.  As Lucy grew up she seems to have inherited the passionate side of her father’s nature as evidenced in her own passion for art, music and nature, while much of her development into a young woman seems to have been partly driven by a need to cast off her mother’s repressive influence.

Lucy’s father died when she was only six and his death marked a huge change in the family fortunes.  Laws of the day left the widow with only enough money to keep the house together while each of the children was left with a small fortune to be spent on their education.  Consequently, all the children were sent to school.

His death also resulted in the family’s move to the countryside.  The move was supposedly made for her mother’s health, but whatever the reason, the children loved being out of the city.  The new house was on an estuary of the river Kent where they were free to wander woods and fields exploring the cliffs and coves of the river.  And so it was that at an early age Lucy developed an awareness of plants and gardens that fueled her passion for developing the beautiful gardens of the Manor at Hemingsford Way later in her life.

When her schooling was complete, Lucy enrolled in college to become a nurse, but left the University of Oxford after only two terms to work in a military hospital in France during World War I.  She was great with the wounded soldiers, but almost lost her job when the American charge nurse became outraged to see her sitting on the bedside of one of the patients!

Lucy married her cousin’s stepson, Harold Boston, who was a flying corps officer, in 1917. After the war they lived in Cheshire where Harold was the director of the family tannery.  Their only son, Peter Boston, was born in September of 1918. The marriage ended in 1935 after 18 years.

After the divorce, Lucy left England to study painting in Austria.  With the outbreak of World War II she returned to England and rented rooms in Cambridge where her son Peter, who was now 19, was an undergraduate. When she heard the house was available, she purchased the Manor, Hemingsford Way, which is near Cambridge.  With Peter, who had become an architect, she slowly restored the decaying house and gardens with a passion that she likened to falling in love.

She lived at the Manor for over 50 years until her death at age 97 on May 25, 1990.

WWII Show and Tell treat

Sue stopped by looking for a backing fabric for this quilt top she finished with plaids, homespuns, and tiny blocks. While she was here, another customer who is a Native American, identified the pattern for the quilt as the Navajo Code Talker Quilt. During World War II, when military codes were being deciphered too easily, Navajo Native Americans were used to code the messages into their language – a language that only they could understand. The Navajo language is extremely difficult to understand except by those raised speaking it. Its tonal qualities and syntax make it almost unintelligible to anybody without extensive training and exposure. Also, there were no books available in Navajo for anyone to learn the language. It turned out to be the perfect coding system and the same code system was used in the Korean War as well. The tiny blocks in the quilt represent some of the code symbols. It was an interesting part of World War II history and was eventually made into a documentary.

Of Thee I Sing Quilt WINS

One of our teachers, Dena submitted her quilt to the quilt show sponsored by the Smokey Mountain Quilt  Guild. She got "the call" that her quilt won a prize.  She won third place and went this weekend to see it displayed. Way to go Dena.

Memorial Day Inspiration

Making pieced letters has never been easier using the book “Spell It With Fabric!” by Moda. Use JellyRoll strips and fat eighths to make all the letters of the alphabet. Book also includes a cute alphabet quilt. Wouldn’t it be a great idea to put a child’s name in big letters on the back of his quilt? Or make a quick banner like ours for the patriotic holidays!

Wool Applique wonder

Paula loves primitive quilts and working with wool. She always brings fabulous Show & Tell to Primitive Club. Here is an assortment of some of her work - wall hangings, candle mats, even some wool Easter eggs!

 

Paula also brought this small quilt using scraps of homespuns and wool. Cute as it can be!

Patchwork of the Crosses

Block 3 will involve some fussy cutting for the center shapes. 

The fabrics I used for this block:

One of our blog participants sent some pictures of her four-hour round trip commute to and from work.  The beautiful ocean ferry ride takes only twenty minutes. . .

The not so fun part - waiting in the queue - unfortunately, takes the longest.  

Her commute has gotten a lot more fun now that she's doing POTC blocks!  Her first block is shown below. I love the bright colors, Annie!

If you'd like to see our Pinterest board with more blocks from other bloggers, click here.

Click here for the begining of our Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses Blog Along. Stitch along with us - it's addictive!

Happy Stitching!

Who Loves Sunbonnet Sue?

Such a sweet Sunbonnet Sue quilt! Joyce embroidered all the blocks and chose a simple setting to highlight them.

Congraulatioins to Lisa Bongean

Mary Ellen was in Paducah and took picture of the First Place winner in the Longarm/Midarm Machine Quilted category. Winner is our good friend Lisa Bongean of Primitive Gatherings shown here with her machine quilter, Linda Hrcka. We can’t stop looking at the quilting - it’s beautifully patterned and superbly done! Way to go, Lisa and Linda – it’s a work of art!

 

 

Ready for Memorial Day

We love stars and everything patriotic here at Little Quilts and when summer gets here with the 

 Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day holidays all in a row we just want to stand up and cheer!   

There's still time to get patriotic wall hangings, table runners, and towels ready for the holidays with our quick and easy kits. The table runners and towels take only ten minutes to finish and they make great hostess gifts!