Make a Joyful Song...in German!

Up close view of appliqued piano keys.


Today, IF I have any spare time, like during the children's debate club meeting tonight, I will continue sewing the piano keys on this musically-themed wall hanging. I thought it might be fun to show the quilt in the 'raw' stage and then post it when finished.

My daughter-in-law's father, Klaus Dieter-Weber spent a week with us this month, and we are going to visit him for three weeks in December. He is a professional musician who plays piano, trumpet, violin and who knows what else and also sings in a professional choir. We will be attending 2-3 concerts a week in Germany!

I wanted to give him a Christmas gift, and he didn't want us to 'buy' anything, so I thought I'd make him a small quilt reflecting his interest in music. The quote in the center will be printed on cloth and I still have to check to make sure my German words are saying what I think they are. I would have put, " Making a joyful noise to God...but Klaus doesn't make noise...so I changed it to song.

I'm considering printing photos of our family playing our various instruments in oval shapes after 'antiquing' them with photo shop to applique in the corners of the quilt. There is still some planning to do here..and lots of quilting and applique. It will be interesting to see how it turns out!

Pacific Coast Northwest Indian Button Blanket

"Best of Show"!! I entered this blanket in our Grace Community Church Art festival and it won! I'm so thrilled as I've never sewn anything of this genre before. There are so many truly talented artists who submitted such incredible photos, paintings, and other works of art, that it didn't seem possible. At any rate, I'm glad the judges like it. This blanket is a gift to my husband's brother and his wife, who is a Native American from the northwest. Mary is a lawyer representing her tribe from Washington State. I titled this work "Family" since that really represents what the Rodgers family stands for better than anything I can think of. The fish are salmon which are a very important symbol to the indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest. The central circle is a salmon egg which represents Tad and Mary's daughter, Jordan. I have sewn 300 abalone shell buttons (imported from Hong Kong) on it to insure it is truly an authentic ceremonial button blanket. The only thing that would have made it more authentic would have been to sew it from wool, but I wanted it to be 'cuddly' too for Jordan's sake. I would really like to do more work in this field since it is almost impossible to find a button blanket. I know of only one artist who does this. I saw some of her work, but it was very busy and not what I was aiming for. I used the buttons like white paint to highlight the form of the salmon and I think the effect was pretty amazing.

Rebekah in Civil War Ball Dress

It took me six months to sew this dress! It includes french puff sleeves, cartridge pleats, six rows of hand sewn bias trim eight rose corsages and six rows of ruffles plus a very complicated bertha coller. She was one of the runner's up in the Most Beautiful Victorian Lady contest at Dicken's On the Strand in Galveston last year. Doesn't she look beautiful?

Ohio Star Quilt

This is the first quilt I ever finished. It is queen size and hand-quilted.
An up close view of handquilting 8 continuous tulips on my Ohio Star quilt.

Checkerboard Sampler Quilt

I finally finished this quilt last year! I love the colors in this one, which is machine quilted.

This was the first banner "sample" of 12 names of God banners that I made for Grace Community Church. Shannon Mucha is the artist who drew the pictures that I had in mind for each name. Hopefully, I will get pictures of the actual finished banners on here soon. (Check out Shannon's website at the link on my blog page.)

Forgiven

I sewed this picture of Jesus comforting a praying man for Donna Dickey's husband. Mike Orr drew an outline line drawing and I sort of 'soft-sculptured' this picture. Their original idea was just a flat applique, using her husband's clothes, but I got to playing around with the clothes and realized I could do an actual soft sculpture. The result was so powerful! It made me cry every time I looked at it. I call it "Forgiven".

Darcy Anne Ramos' Baby Quilt

Last month, I was privileged to be able to finish sewing a baby quilt for Darcy Anne Ramos, who lived only 14 days. The family asked me to make a 'family tree' quilt with all seven children's names and their own embroidered on it. In the picture below, I had just finished piecing the top. In the picture above, you see Darcy Anne under the blanket with her special square on top. Her block was the only one with blanket stitching and ribbon on her name leaf. I used a block from Quilter's Cache called, Baby bud for the blocks on point, and designed my own coordinating block to allow for a 'tree' pattern. The idea for leaves for the names came from the need to have something to embroider the names on that didn't have such a busy background print. Darcy Anne had trisomyie 18 so we knew she would not live long, but still it was so very sad to have to say good-bye. Please keep her family in your prayers! The family put her foot prints on her block after she was born which made this a very special quilt indeed. If you would like to read more about the story of this incredible family and their baby, check out www.darcyanne.weebly.com. The top two photos were taken by Shona Cole. She is a fabulous artist and photographer. See her work at http://shonastudio.blogspot.com/.

Shona's Art Class Quilt

Shona Cole taught and art class to several children at our church and printed their work on cloth. She and Terry Brenon asked me to make it into a quilt. Here you see it almost finished.