The Changing of the Quilts!

Are you ready to be amused?  Hopefully you won't be as frustrated as I am at the moment so I'm going to put a cheerful spin on things or I'll never get this done.  I'm getting a headache trying to learn my way around a new photo managing program so you'll just have to tilt your head to one side.  I got the photos edited and rotated, but those changes don't seem to be transferring here.  So onwards!!

 

I've quilted for a long time (40 years) and I've taught for a long time (35 years) so I have quite an accumulation of quilts.  Lots of them are on display in my home.   In an effort to enjoy as many of them as I can, I rotate them with the seasons.  The ideal is to change them on the first day of the new season, but that didn't happen until this past weekend this spring.

 

My office has lots of windows but there is one small space where I display a collection of small quilts designed by The Country Threads team of Connie and Mary in the first quilt shop book published by That Patchwork Place -- probably in the late 1980's?  They are poster size.  The winter one (first) was a pattern, but the spring one (second) was in the book.  Connie and Mary still have a shop and offer lots of charming patterns with a quirky country feel. 

Spring laid around half finished for many years and was just finished last spring so this is only it's second season on display. 

In the dining room, I have space for a lap robe size piece.  For many years, the same quilt hung in there but last year, I began to rotate the quilts in there, too.  So this basket quilt which belongs to my daughter and house mate spent the winter cheering us up.

  It's replacement for spring is my first finish from 2013, an old UFQ adaptation of The Quilted Village, a very popular block of the month designed by Janet at The City Stitcher.  I left out some parts in a push to finish it after 15 years and think it looks like spring with trees leafing out and quilted it to look like a spring wind moving through the scene.

In the living room, there are always five or six quilts out.  One is draped over the back of the couch and is chosen for its snuggle-ability.  This winter, it was my blue and white with a bit of yellow Storm at Sea teaching sample.  I used Marti Michell's Template Sets A and Storm at Sea to make it -- it's a universally challenging quilt but those pre-trimmed points on the triangles make it so much simpler!

As you can tell from the picture, there is only room on the couch for me and my handwork of the moment.  The spring replacement is a much simpler quilt we made for the 25th anniversary of my shop (Erie Street Quilts, Willoughby, Ohio -- which closed in 2005) that we dubbed Just Squares Plus.  It was featured in my pattern collection entitled Quilters Just Wanna' Have Fun.  (Do you know where your copy is?)  As you can see, the couch has been (temporarily) cleared off during spring cleaning -- it won't last! 

The quilt that is draped over the rocking chair is used more often by a cat nestling up against it than by one of us.  This was an early stack of fat quarters and I think a Buggy Barn pattern for log cabin.  It was my first project with one of their patterns and blue and yellow is my favorite color combination so I've hung onto this quilt.

It has been replaced by this simple checkerboard which was another pattern that we used in my  shop.   We sold "jelly rolls" of floral strips before anyone knew what jelly rolls were.  Customers added their own background fabric and borders and we changed the fabric assortments with the seasons.  It's another one of those patterns found in Quilter's Just Wanna Have Fun which I still offer on my website.   I have one in Christmas prints, too and recently donated a third made with fall leaf prints to the Lake Farmparks Quilt Show.   A fourth one using polka dots and plaids is awaiting the birth of one of my BFF's granddaughter, and I think there might be one more on the "to be quilted" shelf.

The walls are covered with local watercolor paintings of rivers and barns but there is still space for two quilts.  One is always one of my "arty" pieces.  The winter one has been this beautiful  foundation pieced design from Eileen of The Designer's Workshop.   I'm not a great fan of paper-piecing but I love Eileen's designs and have done several over the years.   

It's spring replacement is my own inspiration -- for many years I drove to South Carolina every spring to spend the Easter weekend with my oldest daughter and one of my favorite parts of that drive was the redbud trees coming into bloom along the West Virginia turnpike.  It's a glorious sight.  One of the observations I made was that the trees, which were just beginning to leaf out, were mostly yellow-greens and when I brought a blooming branch of redbud into my studio, the red-violets were the right colors.  When you look at a color wheel with 12 colors (primary, secondary, and tertiary), those two colors are exact opposites of each other!! 

Well, that is an much as I got done over the weekend -- there are still a few quilts left to change but the process of cleaning as I moved through the house slowed me down.  And how glad I am that I got some of the spring quilts up -- this morning we woke up to a couple inches of wet snow after two balmy 70 degree days -- all because of some old saying about "snow on the daffodils".

 

So let's have my first give-away -- leave a comment about what you enjoy about my blog and next Tuesday, I'll draw a name out of the hat to win a copy of Quilters Just Wanna Have Fun!!

 

Welcome to my visitors from http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/  and Link a Finish Friday today!!

 

Mary Huey

www.maryhueyquilts.com