Cynthia Helton sent photos of this quilt that her mom, Shirley Ray Hatley Alford, started in 1995. Shirley passed away in July, 2007. Cynthia, thank you for sharing her quilt with us, I know you all must treasure it.
I remember Shirley! She was in my North Pole class at Sharon’s Quilt Depot way back in 1995 when the book, A Sampling of Santas, was new. Shirley was a lovely woman and I have a smile on my face when I remember her.
This is excerpted from the very well-written documentation patch:
Shirley hand appliqued the blocks and machine pieced them together. As her health began to decline due to breast cancer, Shirley invited Corinne Lageose to finish the hand quilting. Carolyn MIller sewed on the outer binding by hand. And Shirley’s daughter, Cynthia Rae Alford Helton sewed on the red berry buttons and other embellishments. This quilt was lovingly finished by Cynthia while sitting at the bedside of Shirley in July, 2007. This is Shirley’s Masterpiece!
If you are interested in the pattern, A Sampling of Santas is included in our ebook, A Slice of Christmas.
I just had to share this with you. I know you will get a kick out of it!!
So to backup…tonight is our quilt club meeting and we are having a hands-on demo, how-to EPP project. We will be somehow making ❤️ Hearts!! What paper shape it is, beats me. EPP is new to me, but I picked up a little kit and made a “Dilly” bag. It’s super cute. Hexagons. I think I may be hooked. Another skill, right?
Anyway, everyone that attends the meeting will get a little packet (to make a ❤️??) and if we want to participate in a gift exchange we can, but it has to have a ❤️ on it. I want to join in but it had to be quick and easy. (Because I just got home from Florida). I also wanted it to be useful but not another mug-rug.
Enter the chicken pincushion from your last post. I love pincushions, can’t have too many of them (unlike mug-rugs😝)!! So I decided to give it a shot and put a ❤️ on her/his chest. Turned out so darn cute.
I may have to make one for myself. For sure if my friend Chris Peterson doesn’t get it tonight in the drawing. She loves chickens, has her sewing room decorated with chickens. She made a rooster quilt. And I think she has a metal nesting box outside that she displays plants/flower pots on her patio. She’s a MN farm girl just like most of us and proud of it. Lives in town, so this is next best thing.
But wait! There’s more!
Yay!! Chris got the chicken and she loved it. It will go with her menagerie of chickens 🐓. 😝
Another funny (jokes-on-me thing) that happened while I was assembling the chicken was I sewed up the wrong side 😑 (across from the beak, same side as beak 🤷♀️??). They are small, so hard to see what side is what (can I think of any more excuses🤔), mine were 3” squares. Nice size.
In any case, when I unfurled the chicken, the tail ended up under her chin (beak) and instead of a tail it looked chicken legs!!😝😂
There you go, a new twist on the pattern. Add 2 strips of wool with a knot at each end for funny legs/feet!! Could be cute or weird!! Maybe I’ll try one for real for myself. (Or my sister in Atlanta, she’s a chicken person. She wants the real chickens to feed/water clean up after!! Not me. I’m done with that; pincushions are better!!)
So that’s my chicken report.
I will make a couple more for friends Jackie & Vicky for our retreat “up Nort” as they say.
Happy stitches to you,
Joan
Many thanks to you, Joan, for sharing the story of your chicken! And may you, too, have many happy stitches!
Susan Keck sent me this photo of her Whimsical Garden quilt. This is her 2nd quilting project ever and she won best of show!
Susan, I’m proud of you for tackling this as a new quilter. You have sewing skills and it shows. Well done and may you continue to have many happy stitches as you start on Steve’s Birds, in wool!
The random number generator chose Lynn J. from Wisconsin and she will receive the nice grouping of small items that are mostly from Moda. This week we gave away 2 small notebooks, some acrylic templates, a sewing charm bracelet and (not from Moda) a bag of wooden owl buttons!
I’ll be back with another Giveaway next Wednesday. Until then you can shop for all sorts of sewing notions, books, and other fun stuff at pieceocake.com!
I bought the pattern shortly after it came out and then set it aside. When we were having some remodeling done in 2013 and I was relegated to the upstairs, I decided to unearth the pattern and fabric I’d picked out earlier and started to sew. I made the signature block first (next time I’ll make it last), and worked on the baskets every single day while the crew was downstairs sawing, pounding and painting. It kept me sane. I’d been doing needle turn appliqué for a long time, but this is the first project that I made using laminated templates and vinyl overlays. I loved it!
I worked on Fresh Picked Posies long after the remodeling was done, in-between other projects and it was my pick up and go retreat project, which was great because I didn’t have to pack a sewing machine. I finally finished the top, had it quilted and showed the quilt last spring in the Quilter’s Anonymous quilt show in Seattle. That show got me connected with the Garden of Quilts people in Lehi UT, who invited me to teach. I taught… and Fresh Picked Posies, along with 3 of my other quilts, was hung in the Garden of Quilts show at Ashton Botanical Gardens.
Sue Lynch wrote to say “Love your designs so I will share my wonderful whimsical garden with you!” Thank you, Sue, for sharing your lovely quilt. The brown backgrounds always remind me of chocolate and who doesn’t love chocolate!
Piece O Cake Blog 