Childhood: Parallel Parking
Most of my little quilts have something to do with my childhood and I didn’t want to repeat them. This quilt represents learning to parallel park which takes you from childhood into the big world where adults let you go out on your own sometimes.
Childhood in the country means that you are miles away from town. So, when you turn 15 you get a driving permit and at 16 you are free to drive to town or school on your own. Not riding the school bus is a big deal!
To teach me how to parallel park my brave sister, Susan took me to the small town of Vandalia, Missouri where I wouldn’t know anyone and they had a lot of parallel parking. I don’t know how long she had me drive around the block and try it again and again, but possibly 2 hours. I had to do it between real cars so that I could get the process down.
The treat was being able to go into the fabulous candy store afterwards. As you stepped into the store you were greeted by the old fashion glass counter where they would scoop out the candy you wanted and place it in the white paper bag. Oh my gosh! The coconut bonbons, bridge mix, and so many others to choose from. Childhood at it’s best!
Now I take quilting friends on retreats or outings and sometimes I have to parallel park in McKinney, Texas. I have discovered that I really do a great job parking on the left side of the street.
The funny thing about parallel parking is that when I did it for my drivers license test I was horrible! They only had poles set up to park between (for obvious reasons), but I couldn’t line up with the tires, gauge the distance I would be beside the other car, and visualize how to match up with the other car as I turned into the space. As I park downtown in Waco, Texas those things are always running through my mind so that I can just slide into the parallel space. Thank you, Susan!
I enjoyed seeing the pictures of Andrea's 30 day Sketchbook challenge she shared on Instagram and our blog. Never considering myself able to draw either, I decided to challenge myself to sketch all of these fond memories. I used a plain cotton lawn and a micron pen to sketch the images. A combination of micron pens and inktense pencils were used to add color and detail. All of the images were carefully cut out and then fused to another background piece of cotton lawn. I was too scared to sketch all of the items onto one piece of fabric as I was soooo afraid one bad drawing could ruin the whole piece and I would have to start anew. This process worked well and I continued to add to my sketchbook page. When I was satisfied with the collection of images, I started to add descriptive words and other details to fill in the page. Next, I cut the fabric to look like a page from a sketchbook and fused it onto the black fabric.
I then did some machine quilting to accentuate the open book page. The dates of '55 to '67 include the 10 years of my young life. Nedra's Childhood Sketchbook is quilted in the black background but is hard to see.
This was a fun piece to work on and brought back many wonderful memories!! Here is a picture of one of them that I included. My tricycle with a personalized vanity license plate which I adored!!!!!
My family moved to Austin and to Spring Lane when I was three years old. I lived there until I got married. It was an idyllic place for children! The bottom photo shows all of us from toddlers to teens who lived on Spring Lane. Right across the street from our house were two girls, Kitty and Judy, who became, along with Betsy who lived down the street, my earliest friends.
An earlier photo of me, my older sister Kathy, and younger brother Joe is the top photo. (Our little sister Martha hadn't yet been born.) Growing up on Spring Lane in the '40s and '50s really was idyllic. These were the days before air conditioning, and the hot Texas afternoons were often spent with Kitty and me, with sometimes our brothers (hers was also named Joe), playing cards and board games on a quilt under the trees in our front yard. At times Kitty and I made paper dolls or doll clothes for our Story Book Dolls. (My earliest sewing projects!)
The long summer evenings held exciting, block-long games of Hide and Seek. In the mornings before it got too hot, we rode bikes, venturing far from home and no one's mother worried about where we were, and we always made it home in time for lunch. One memorable summer we played a summer-long game of War. The bigger boys dug trenches in a vacant lot behind Kitty's and Judy's two houses and our weapons were mud balls. We younger kids were assigned the task of making the mud balls, a boring but a less scary occupation than actually taking part in the battles!
For my quilt I chose black and white fabrics to coordinate with my black and white images. The checkerboard fabric reminded me of the endless games of checkers we played on that quilt! I decided since I was featuring "vintage" photos, I'd make a vintage, traditional block for the background, one called Double Four Patch. I machine quilted simple diagonal straight stitches and then used a serpentine stitch for the borders. I've zoomed in on the two photos and posted them below, in order for others to see them better!
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| Kitty stands beside me in the photo. I’m the little girl with shoulder length hair, the fifth child from the right. On my other side is my brother Joe. And I have my hands on the shoulders of little sister Martha right in front of me. Our big sister Kathy is the next to tallest girl on the far left. |
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| I'm sitting on the arm of the chair beside big sister Kathy, and Joe is sitting on the ground. As I said above, little sister Martha had not yet been born. |
With books being banned in this day and age I’m stunned. I can’t imagine growing up being told you can’t read a book because it was bad. When I was in high school I helped the librarian by typing up cards of the new books for the card catalog. The bonus is that I was able to read the ones I wanted before anyone else did. There were several I chose and was shocked with what was in there, but I got to decide if I wanted to finish reading it or not. If I wanted to learn more I was able to go out there to see what someone else’s point of view was.
I love my libraries and bookstores. They are places that hold so many treasures. When I walk in I just relax and savor my time there. Growing up the little town library had beautiful picture books. As I got older, my favorite books were the little orange books about people like Clara Barton and George Washington Carver. A couple years ago I spent time again in that little library using their internet for researching Missouri counties. From that research I was able to make a quilt block that was chosen to be included in the quilt for the state bicentennial. That quilt was going to be unveiled in a special celebration at the Missouri governors mansion on March 26, 2020. I was going to be there for that but when Covid hit I never got to see it. That year they also made an ornament of my block for the Governors Christmas tree. The sweet thing is that all of my sisters and my Mom were able to see the quilt as it traveled around the state.
The big town 15 miles away had a grand library with a winding marble staircase up to the children’s department. Summers were the best because there was always a summer reading program and you got a sticker for each book you read.
When my husband and I moved to Idaho Falls, Idaho I walked into their beautiful library to find a Christmas tree that was positioned so that it went all the way up to the second floor. Imagine a 2 story tall tree in the center of the library!
I always took my sons and then grandson to story hour here in Waco and Hewitt. It was hard to see the libraries close here because of Covid, but I was so thankful they did curbside pick ups. The libraries did a great job getting story hour online when we couldn’t go. Now story hours are coming back! There is just something special hearing someone read to you.
The background fabric is some leftover from the millennium. I love that it has it written in so many languages. I was just going to put the lightbulb above the pages, but the Hoffman fabric was so bright and vibrant that I could see the joy flowing out of the book.
Enjoy a book of your choice today!!!!!
Tricia's Open Window
I chose a hand-painted fabric in sun-filled colors by Laura Wasalowski for the background. I took a course from Laura many year ago, and I adore her use of whimsy and bright colors. I found an old tree stencil in my stash of “things for quilts” and modified it for my bare-branched tree. I drew the tree onto a light tan batik fabric and then painted it with Intense Ink Pencils. When it was dry, I used Primacolor Pencils to sketch in shadows and lines. My next step was to choose scraps of Kaffe fabrics and hand-dyed fabrics for “hands” to serve as leaves for the tree. I selected different colors and textures to mimic the great variety of people in our world.
The tree with Wonder Under was carefully cut out and fused to the background. Then I drew roots for the tree directly onto the background. I colored them in with multiple colors of Primacolor Pencils. After making the “4-layer sandwich” with batting, Timtex and backing fabric, I machine stitched the tree and roots.
Next came the placement of the hearts. I decided to make 3 hearts flying away from the tree and 4 hearts growing up from the roots. To do this, I felt like I first needed to create some grass and leafy stems. I drew them directly onto the background, stitched around them, and then colored them in with multiple layers of green Primacolor Pencils. With each step when using pencils, I “set” the colors with a hot iron.
The final step was the binding. For that, I chose a Kaffe Collective fabric that complemented the fabrics used for the hands. I hope you will enjoy my interpretation of "Open".
We were given a new theme each day to work with. I decided to sketch in a concertina/accordion sketchbook:
A heart came to my mind right away when we received this challenge word, but I struggled with the heart, pieces, colors, etc. I pondered pieces of some special dish I would feed my family and the pieces I use to make it. Jigsaw puzzles came into the picture and of course quilts, but I still couldn’t get the heart out of my mind.
I was never keen on the anatomical heart, but with the Covid-19 time we have been in, I thought of all the times my heart physically hurt, rejoiced, yearned, and many other feelings.
I mostly see the good in life and others, so the colors had to be bright. I used this one piece of ombre fabric from Jenny Bryer Fallert collection.
Sitting down and quilting all the words took a lot longer than I thought. They needed to fit in the space. Many words were thought of and I have a whole list that I will be adding to. It’s a good feeling to write down those words and bring back memories. Since it is in my journal I’ll be able to look at all the extra words that wouldn’t fit on the little quilt.
I think this Little Quilt truly meets the definition of "Pieces" ! !
The Central Motif for this quilt was a 9" x 7" piece of fabric I picked up at a Garage Sale, or perhaps I'd already had "stashed away" in my Studio !
The Green borders are pieces of fabric that had been used in different projects, and they seemed to coordinate well with the colors of all the fruits and vegetables. A different coordinating green fabric was used on the back of the quilt.
Using Monofilament Thread, I "Free-Motion" Quilted around each of the Fruits and Veggies, and then Free-Motioned through the background.
Each of the borders was stitched down using a "Walking Foot" to keep the stitches straight, and to help the fabrics "Behave" while they were being quilted :-D
I think this "Little Quilt" is going to become one of our "Standard Thanksgiving Day" Quilts !
Peace and blessings to all.... Kathy Harte
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Two ideas jumped into my head as soon as I heard that Pieces would be our next theme. I thought of jig saw puzzle pieces and the pieces that make up a quilt block. Jig saw puzzles had been a great diversion for me during the pandemic lock-down days! I tried to think of a clever way to compose a quilt using fabric cut into jig saw shapes, but that seemed daunting to me somehow. So quilt pieces it would be!
First I looked for a quilt block that has squares, rectangles, and triangles. I used Marsha McCloskey's BLOCK PARTY book, which has been a mainstay in my quilting life. I quickly honed in on the block called Friendship since it had the requisite shapes I wanted to use. I decided that I would I would actually construct this quilt block, using scraps from a recent Kaffe Fassett diamond quilt. The diamonds were bordered with Kaffe's fabrics called Spot and I thought it would be fun to use chiefly those. I wanted this quilt block to be the backing for my Pieces quilt. So here's the block:
I have always loved working on jigsaw puzzles. They are just filled with pieces. I thought it would be fun to try and create a simple jigsaw puzzle quilt. I took the photo this September at a friends summer house in Northern Maine. I just love the sunset colors on the flowers. Here is the photo that I used to start.
