Gorgeous fabrics, cute photo shoot, fun patterns!

If I could express my happiness properly in this post, I have done a good job!

Meg and I got a darling stack of fabrics from Birch organic fabric, storyboek line. CUTE!!! I remember seeing this fabric line in Fat Quarter Shops upcoming lines, and I said " I must have that fabric!" We made sure to run into them at Market, thank goodness we did!

Moose, yes, that is what we call him...(my head is hung low) has his pants and hat made up in the line. The shirt was a Gymboree one that I used this winter, it had long sleeves, but since I knew it wouldn't fit him next winter, I chopped them off!  

Are you in LOVE with his pants??? These are the made up from the cutest Oliver and S pattern:  Sailboat Top, Skirt and Pants. I thought I would need my mother, (because I am not the most skilled at clothing construction) but this pattern is so much better than those ones from your average fabric store, with the confusing instructions. This is laid out so nicely, with diagrams for every step of the way. Super easy! I even did the buttons all by myself, I am so proud when I tackle a project like this! More pants to come for sure!

I made them a little big so next year I can cut down the legs, and add new elastic, then I will have shorts!

Just love this photo of Moose head (often we call him that too) He looks like such a little man!  Oh, and if you were wondering, the keys are his security blanket, seriously! He LOVES them. We called 10 dealerships for his birthday to see if they had scrap keys, and found a little stash. It was his favorite present of all! Problem was, within a couple days, he realized the keys did nothing to our cars or doors, and he hates them. So we have to give him our real keys! It has been fun!

Oh, and to top it off, this Birch fabric is SUPER soft! We just kept petting it!

 Details of the photoshoot...we went to the salt flats in western Utah, miles and miles of pure white salt flats, something to do with the salt like, I don't know how they got there, nor do I care. Anyhow, I had been wanting to do this for a while, but turns out it is FAR! It took Meg and I 2 1/2 hours from my house.  

We planned one day before, I knew Wes' outfit, but didn't shop for plan anything else. I had the girls go through their clothes the morning of and said blue, yellow, white and grey.  They did good! To be honest, I wasn't very excited about it. My kids let me down BIG TIME for photoshoots. They never work out. The babies cry and make funny faces and ruin almost every photo!

I was worried because we were going in the noon day sun, and I was worried of proper exposures with all that white salt.  When I came home and we looked through them on the computer, I cried! They are the most beautiful photos I have taken of them all together! I have dozens I can choose from, and I usually can only hope for one! The exposures were almost perfect, the children were super sharp and in focus (due to the high shutter speeds from all the light)

I got darling individuals too, (but only one good one of Addie) lots of squinting from the sun. I will definitely be making this drive again, I will just plan the day better. 

I hope you are in love with Weston's clothes, and the photos as I am!

The cute hat pattern is from Izzy and Ivy, darling for boys and girls, I have made up several!

Freshly Pieced generations quilt

Today we're featuring Lee from Freshly Pieced.  First...make sure you hop on over to her blog.  She has a really cute Christmas advent calendar tutorial and it's not too late to start on that!  Plus a darling baby quilt tutorial, Kissy Fish.

 A lot of times we have great quilts, a lot of times we have great stories, but today we most definitely have both.  Lee has made a beautiful quilt that has pieces of 3 generations of her family.  And she is a great writer, it's a story that made me think how I could do something like this. 

Eighty-eight years ago, a little girl was born on a farm in rural Michigan. She was the second-youngest of nine kids. As a child, this little girl watched her own mother, who was the daughter of German immigrants, sew and quilt—something she did far more out of necessity than enjoyment. It was the Great Depression, and those nine kids needed clothes and bedding. Buying a quilt from a store would have been an unthinkable luxury.

And so, the little girl learned to sew and quilt too, just like her mother before her. It was just one of the many chores that needed to be done around the farm. Yet another item on that list called "Women's Work."
 

Three of my grandma's original five blocks.

The little girl grew up, moved away from the farm, and had five kids of her own. Money was still tight, but not quite like it used to be. She still sewed and quilted here and there, but the necessity of it declined steadily as the years passed. Quilting became something she did more out of habit than anything else. Around the time her youngest child moved out of the house, she hand-pieced five curved pinwheel quilt blocks. Then she put those blocks away and never sewed another. Why? Maybe it was her arthritis flaring up. Or maybe she realized she didn't have to quilt anymore. What had once been a chore no longer was. Store-bought bedding was well within reach financially. And she finally had a little time to herself, to do exactly what she really wanted to do, probably for the first time in her adult life.

Now the little girl obviously wasn't a little girl anymore. In fact, she had three adult daughters of her own. And those grown-up girls had all learned to sew too. Sewing was, after all, still on that list of Women's Work. Even if these girls didn't end up needing this particular skill, they were still expected to have it. So they all dabbled in it a little.

But the world was changing. It was becoming less expensive to buy bedding than it was to make a homemade quilt. Not only that, but that Women's Work list? Was getting turned upside down. Women could do many things now that weren't on that list. In fact, for a while, it became necessary for some women to put the list aside. They had to temporarily distance themselves from it, in order to prove they could do other things. One of the original little girl's grown daughters now had a daughter of her own, and that little girl grew up thinking sewing was just about the most uncool thing imaginable. Seriously. She wouldn't be caught dead sewing her own clothes, bags, or a quilt.

But of course, as that third-generation girl got older, the world changed yet again. Sewing is no longer a life-sentence to dorkiness. In fact, "handmade" is experiencing a coolness renaissance. Maybe this third generation has decided that we've done enough to prove ourselves as women (or at least we're done trying). Maybe we're tired of made-in-China mass-produced comforters and clothing. Maybe all the other things that might keep us from quilting and sewing are now taking a back seat to creative expression. In fact, for so many of us, it's a wonderful way of expressing ourselves and getting a little more fulfillment in life (and we're lucky that we have the time and money to spend on it).

Whatever the reason, I have my mom and my grandma to thank for the fact that I am able to quilt today. I don't do it out of necessity. I don't do it because it's expected of me as "women's work." I do it because I love it. How lucky does that make me? (And all of us!) In a way, I can do it only because of the inroads women made in the previous two generations.

So, a few months ago, I took those five blocks that my grandmother hand-pieced 40 years ago and made 12 more. My mom made a handful as well. And we put them all together into this quilt: The Three Generations Quilt. I tried to make it both a little vintage and a little modern. A little fun and a little serious. I tried to put a little piece of all three of us in there. I tried to make it representative of our stories: Three generations, and what sewing and quilting has meant to us, as women and as creative people.

Size: 86" x 93" (queen size - the picture above is on a king-size bed)
Design: Based on Red Pepper Quilt's Pinwheel Baby Quilt
Fabric: The pinwheels are mostly vintage fabric (my grandma gave a lot of her unused fabric to me). I supplemented that with some of my own, mostly Katie Jump Rope by Denyse Schmidt. The centers are Moda Bella Solids Baby Yellow. The white pinwheel background is Kona White (although I think my grandma's blocks used repurposed sheets). The borders around the blocks are from Darlene Zimmerman's Paper Dolls line, and the sashing is Kona Tan.
Back: Paper Dolls again, plus I pieced blocks of scraps down one side.
Quilting: Stippling in white thread, done by the long-arm quilter at my local quilt shop.

Thanks again Lee, I really love this idea and quilt.  Also, we are having a little feature on Sew Many Mamas Meet-a-Mama Monday, so go check out the story of our last crafty getaway...it's quite embarassing!

Frugal Heritage quilt...

Wow, this is a heritage/memory quilt if I have ever seen one! Becky used fabrics and batting from old family quilts and fabrics. Be sure to visit her site for more fun stuff...

My name is Becky Hogue. I am 30 years old, and I am a fairly new quilter. I have made 3 “human” quilts and 2 doll quilts.  Here is the story of my favorite quilt so far, mostly because there is such a story and so much history in it. I posted about it in two separate entries on my blog http://www.beckyanndesigns.blogspot.com/ too. I love the idea of your new blog. I have several quilts that I have inherited (robbed from my mama’s cedar chest) that nobody knows any history on. It is so sad that we know they came from somewhere in our family but know absolutely nothing beyond that point.

My youngest daughter Abby really helped me with bringing me the next blocks that I needed to sew together so I didn’t have to keep hopping up and down from my sewing machine.


All of the fabrics except the red are from my Great Aunt Bertha. The white one was an old feed or flour sack. I literally cut it apart myself so I could use the fabric. How awesome is that! The solid teal and the white with the blue and teal flowers were pieces of fabric that she (or someone) had purchased and used part of already.

The size right now is 42" x 56". I really like to have plenty of quilt to wrap around me when I watch TV so I am going to try to find some fabric that will coordinate well to use as a border to make it a little larger. But, here it is for now.

Here is the pattern I used by Quilting Treasures.

They have a lot of free quilting patterns on their site.

This was a very frugal quilt. I only spent less than $15 total, including the thread. Now I wouldn't pay even that for a plain throw to use for myself on the couch, but to be able to produce a piece of living history to use and then maybe pass on to another family member one day, I think that is pretty thrifty.


I started with a quilt that came from somewhere on my Daddy's side of the family. With it's solid fabric top and 4 random pieced fabrics on the back, this was definitely a quilt made out of necessity not one to be used for display somewhere. Jay and I used it on our bed in the winter until last year when it was too badly torn to use anymore. I couldn't very well just throw it away, I had to re-use it for something. So, I took pictures, then carefully disassembled it. I used the blanket that was in the middle for my batting, and also one of the large pieces of white from the back for the border of my quilt. After cleaning this piece really well, I could make out the shape of an eagle with it's wings spread and the words Corn Starch, but only vaguely.

I also had some gorgeous fabrics from my Great Aunt Bertha, my Mama's aunt. The solid dark teal, the white print, and the teal flowers (my favorite of all) are all from her fabric stash. So is the lighter teal binding. Apparently she had used the solid dark teal, teal flowers and lighter teal to make something out of and these were the scraps because you could tell there were clothing shaped cutouts. The white one with the print was an actual feedsack, still sewn up. How cool is that!

So like any good quilt maker or sewer, I decided to use all of these family pieces along with a few of my own to make a new quilt. I purchased the red fabric at Heirlooms and Comforts quilt shop in Central, SC, and Donna at Mudpies and Memories with a little help from Angel helped me choose the green paisley backing at Hobby Lobby. Donna really had to convince me to buy it and even promise to buy it from me if I hated it the next day. It ended up being the perfect fit for the quilt. Except for the fact that I should have bought 3 yards but miscalculated and thought I only needed 2 yards. Oops! So, along came the stripe running down one side of the back, which I also turned out to absolutely love. Reminds me of a railroad track.

Almost forgot, this is the first quilt I have ever actually machine quilted. I string tied both of the quilts I made for the girls. I love the look of actual quilting and how they get all crinkly after washing them.


Whew, I finally have all of this documented so that when I am old and senile or laying somewhere with daisies growing on top of me, whoever ends up with this quilt will know the history of it. I have also completed another one of my goals for the new year to finish at least one quilt this year.