Pomona Squares - Andrew's Graduation Quilt

We had a second graduation in our family this year. Our nephew Andrew, son of my sister Nancy in Brentwood, Tenn, graduated from high school and is going to Pomona College in Clairmont, Calif for college.

Naturally a quilt to take to college was called for ... and a quilt in colors that will survive in a young man's college dorm room. So I sorted through all my dark fabrics, especially the seemingly zillion 6" squares I have left from the two years I purchased a 6" square of each fabric that came into a quilt shop in North Carolina. I used the pattern "Romantic Charm" published by the Quilting Squares Studio in Franklin, Tenn, a pattern I bought when visiting Nancy and her family in February this year.

After assembling all the individual blocks for the quilt I laid them out on the living room floor to check the color balance.

A very curious Maggie was peeking out from under the ottoman during the block layout.
I left the room for just one minute and this happened!
To make a long story short I completed the quilt in time for Andrew's graduation in May. A friend quilted the quilt for me on her longarm machine in a meandering pattern. Here is a photo of Andrew and his new quilt.Congratulations to Andrew on your very successful completion of high school, and all the best wishes for good studies and new friends at Pomona.

Summer knitting challenge

One of my good knitting friends, Sharon F, is leaving Northern Virginia and moving to Buffalo this week. Sharon and I have been knitting buddies for about two years now, are in two knitting groups together, and I will miss her terribly!

About a year and a half ago when Sharon was "de-stashing" some of her yarn she offered to me some wool for Children-In-Common knitting (Children-In-Common is an online Yahoo group of people who knit items that are sent to orphanages in Russia and Eastern European nations). Thank you Sharon! Last week when I was rummaging around in my yarn stash I came across the yarn Sharon gave me, and decided that this summer would be a good time to knit up this yarn. Last Thursday I knit a pair of toddler socks of the one skein of Jaeger Dublin yarn.

Then it occurred to me ... a great summer challenge to myself would be to knit the yarn from Sharon and turn all that yarn into useful socks, hats, mittens, and vests for C-I-C. So I took this photo of the yarn in its unknit state (except for the socks already completed).


At the end of July and August I'll post photos of my progress through this beautiful yarn.

Our Caroline in vintage clothes

When Caroline, and her mom Rebecca, visited us in May I took the opportunity to play dress-up with my grand-daughter.

Several years ago I received some of the batiste dresses that my grandmother McClure, my mother's mother in Atlanta, had made for me when I was an infant (I won't tell you how many years ago that was!). After soaking the dresses in sodium perborate dissolved in hot water, an archival-safe chemical used by many museums to remove yellowing and some stains in vintage fabrics, and pressing them, the little dresses have been restored to their glory. The workmanship my grandmother put into these dresses is impeccable - the tiny stitches, the enclosed french seams, the precise embroidery, the teeny tiny buttons and hand-stitched buttonholes.

So I put one of the dress and slip sets on Caroline and started snapping photos. I think this is the best one. Isn't she absolutely adorable! She's seven and a half months old in this photo.
Another photo showing the dress and slip from the side.
I am going to put the dresses on soft little hangers and hang them on a Shaker peg board in my sewing and knitting studio ... a beautiful reminder of the generations of needlewomen in my ancestry.

"Road to Miami" - Liz's Graduation Quilt

My niece Liz just graduated from Lehigh University and is now studying at University of Miami for her DPT (Doctor in Physical Therapy). When she graduated from high school I knit her an afghan instead of making a quilt ... so I decided to make her a quilt for her college graduation.

Because she was moving to Miami the quilt had to reflect the tropical colors there, so I selected bright batiks and used the pattern "Yellow Brick Road" by Atkinson Designs ... hence the quilt's name "Road to Miami." I machine quilted this myself, using a large pumpkin seed design with the curving lines flowing diagonally across the quilt. The borders are quilted with a cable pattern.

Congratulations Liz ... and lots of good wishes for successful studies at U. of Miami!!

Caroline's Comfort Quilt

The Armed Services YMCA runs a program called "Operation Kid Comfort" that provides quilts for children of deployed service members and you can read more about it here: http://www.operationkidcomfort.blogspot.com/. Ann Flaherty, the founder of the program, is a quilting friend of mine from when I lived in North Carolina.

As most of you know our son-in-law Jason deployed to Afghanistan in February for a year. When he deployed I began planning a comfort quilt for grand-daughter Caroline. Instead of using the standard Operation Kid Comfort design I decided to use the "Lucky Star" pattern (by Atkinson Designs). Susan at the main office of the ASYMCA here in Springfield, Virginia very graciously did the photo transfers for Caroline's quilt. The photos are of Jason, Jason in uniform, Jason and Rebecca, Jason and Caroline, and even one including their dog Sadie. The fabrics include a lot of orange, Jason's favorite color. The machine quilting, which I did, begins with stitching around the central star and then parallel lines radiating outward.

After completing the quilt I decided that Caroline also needed a small "quiltie" that she could take with her whever she goes, in the car, to a friend's house, and traveling. So I made a single block with a single photograph (the photo of Jason, Rebecca, and Caroline was taken the night he left on the deployment), and then I put taggies of various ribbons around the outside of the small quilt.

Rebecca and Caroline visited us in May and here is a photo of Caroline and her toys on the quilt.