Moving at a snail's pace

I am very gradually getting the Christmas stuff put away and replacing those decorations with something different. I started in the kitchen and replaced the gingerbread boy quilt with this one which I stitched a long long time ago. Sorry these pictures aren't the greatest. It is a gray rainy day. The first pic is of the quilt on the floor in my sewing area.



And here it is hanging on the wall in the kitchen where it is hard to photograph it too.



I love the look of the primitive style but I'm not fond of an overabundance of brown. This quilt was more vibrant when I first stitched it but it hung in my kitchen for years and the sun has faded the border and other parts of it mightily. Nonetheless,I love the free and happy quality of this quilt.

I went through my library of quilt books (boy does that need some cleaning out too) and found the pattern for this quilt. It is called Berries & Birds. It was designed by Sue Spargo and is included in the book, Ladybird, Ladybird by Jan Patek and Alma Allen. The copyright date in this book is 1999 - an oldie but goodie!

In the book the applique is all done by hand, not my forte. So I cut the pieces out with a Heat n Bond backing and ironed them down. I made the quilt sandwich and then appliqued and quilted them at the same time with my blanket stitch.







And if you enlarge the pictures you can see where I stippled the heck out of the background. Boy was I ambitious back then - LOL! In going through my library stash I found a fairly large collection of books with primitive quilt patterns by Jan Patek, Linda Brannock, Sue Spargo, Barb Adams & Alma Allen, Cheri Safiotte,and Gerry Kimmel to name a few. I still like the patterns but I don't see myself becoming a hand applique person. However, I may stitch up a small quilt or two from these books using my blanket stitch (it is one of the main reasons I bought my Janome) and then passing them off to my long arm quilter for the quilting.

I also came across all the patterns for the Garden Club quilt by Country Threads. Kim of Kim's Big Quilting Adventure and some of her buddies are doing this as a quilt along. I have the original issued BOM patterns of this quilt in a folder, for which I probably paid at least $5 a month. You do the math. There are real photographs glued to the inside pages of the pattern and there was a layout for a smaller quilt done just with that month's pattern included in the BOM. A couple of years later they issued the whole quilt in a book by Leisure Arts for around $20 - a third of what I paid for it. Now have I ever started it - ahem.... no! But I just might. I like Kim's version very light and airy.

Well, I should put some more stuff away but its the kind of day that makes you want to take a nap... like Big Dude.



Now that's the life! I'm going to find a quilt of my own to curl up with.

Happy stitching-
carol fun