Ready or not, here it comes and for once, I AM ready!  Three quilts from our house will make appearances under trees this year and the tops are all completed!  Two are already with Karen, the long armer genius and one will make its way there this weekend I hope.  Here they are with a bit of their stories:

First up is one I am calling "It All Started with a Mouse."  A few years back, my friend and maintenance contractor for our rental houses, Jeff asked me in a round about way, if I…

Where does time go? When you are in a pandemic, it moves incredibly slow while you are living it and incredibly fast in retrospect.  Since I last wrote, I have finished five more quilts and started four others,  Today was "appraise the finished quilts day."  Jan Rodgers, my talented appraiser, got nine quilts done.  We have maybe four more to do but that will have to wait for another day. 

Who knew dragging quilts out to be appraised, the appraisals, and then putting them all away…

The global nightmare which began in March continues into summer as you all know and those of us in the good ole US of A, if we are paying attention and minding our Ps and Qs, have been sticking around home alot.  While this is a real bummer for those of us with kids and grandkids, parents and siblings, and friends in general far, far away (like more than a few hours' drive), it is a good thing for getting things done around the house and in my quilt rooms in particular.  Over the summer, I…

Remember my Floral print quilt challenge I gave myself the year we were remodeling the attic and I was stuck making quilt tops in the dining room in summer 2018? I wanted to prove that design is EVERYTHING in quilting; that…

When I was a young bride the first time around in the early 70's, I started out making quilts from scraps of material left over from clothing sewing projects.  The first ones were patchwork and tied, not quilted and quite honestly, pretty ugly.  I have pictures of all of my quilts and from time to time, I look at them to understand the process and the progress of change in my ideas and my quilting ability.  I actually enjoy looking at them but one in particular always leaves me with a…

Just finished the quilt top for the "Fox in the Christmas Hen House" and I am pretty darn pleased with it.  Turned out to be bigger than I originally planned (it's approximately 80 x 94 inches) but I always believe the quilt decide what size it will be, not me.  The back will be the same chicken print as the fussy cut chickens in the final border.  I do not…

My daughters, Jamie and Becky, have insisted I have a thing for chickens ever since the 2013 - Year of the Christmas Quilt project (see prior blog posts for details) and yes, I did make two chicken quilts that year and yes, this is my THIRD chicken quilt but, damn it, the fabric is just so darn cute!  How can I resist chickens with knit Christmas scarves and…

This is a quilt with a history and not all of it is happy, just like life, right?  I started making it in summer of 2018 as a wedding gift for my German AFS foreign exchange son, Atilla and his bride.  They were married in 2016 and my husband and I were so lucky to be with them in Germany on their special day.  As is usually my habit, the wedding quilt gets…

As you may remember from my last post, two of the quilts I made and gave to my mother were presumably lost in her household move from Oceanside, CA to Robinson, IL.  I am happy to report that "The Old Man's Log Cabin" (shown above) has been located.  Apparently the quilts were not in the same box but in two separate boxes and one was with their household…

I am asking for your help with this post.  My mother recently moved from Vista, CA to Robinson, IL.  She packed the two quilts I made for her in a box and had it placed in the moving van coming east.  They did not arrive.  Here is the first one, a Boston Commons quilt with a Card Trick border.  it is approximately 100 x 100" and is signed, dated and dedicated…

I'm calling it Marmalade.  What I mean when I say that is, like an orange Marmalade cat, but what keeps running through my head is the song "Marmalade." The lyrics kept haunting me while I made this quickie quilt (two weeks, start to finish using a couple of jelly rolls). "I met Marmalade down in old New Orleans, strutting her stuff on the streets."

I…

This is my granddaughter, Sylvia.  She is beautiful and wacky and crazy and kind. One of a kind.  I love her with all my heart and when it was time to make her a baby quilt, life got in the way and I never got to it while she was a baby (she is almost four).  Things were further delayed by the fact that her momma, my daughter Becky, wanted to cross stitch…

Every once in awhile, you meet a person who is so very special in so many ways and you feel so fortunate to know them.  This is true of my friend and former supervisor, Catena Bergevin.  Catena and I worked together for about four years at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art and she hated anyone to introduce her as "my boss." This October, she married her…

My first born granddaughter, Ruby Charlotte is only 4 years old.  She is normal sized as 4 year olds go, maybe a little tall and fun to be with.  She and her brother (and mom and dad of course) spent nine days with us at Thanksgiving and as soon as they left, I got started on finishing up her Christmas quilt and here it is.  The funny thing is (and the reason…

If 2013 was the year of the Christmas quilt for me, this year was the year of the Christmas pillow.  I got this crazy idea that I could make Christmas pillows out of ugly (or not so ugly) Christmas sweaters so off to the Thrift stores I trotted.  I ended up making 18 pillows.  You can see all but one in my album, "Christmas 2018 Pillows." After making a few, I…

Hello Campers:

I have not posted since winter had us by the throat and would not let loose (it lasted til the end of April, for God’s sake) so here I am again to give you an update on what is happening around the quilting house of Leiner Inc.  In a nutshell, I am stuck on making quilt tops (and only quilt tops) that have “inchers,” or one inch squares as I am told they are called.  There is a reason for this, of course.  There always is a reason and that is the story for…

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/arts/design/quilts-ken-burns-international-quilt-study-center-museum.html?smid=fb-share

While browsing facebook in my pj today (a rainy Sunday), I found this short piece on Ken Burns and his quilts.  Awesome.  This man is brilliant!  Aren't you all so proud to be of this tradition?  I particularly like the idea that…

I haven't talked about it much here but I have decided I am a tired old dog.  I have an excuse of course.  Every old dog does and here is mine.

In March 2017, I had my artificial knee on the left replaced with a new artificial knee as the old one came loose and moved left.

In October 2017, they determined the right artificial knee was infected and took it out, replacing it with a spacer for 5 weeks.  Turns out they were wrong, it was not infected (good news for me) but the…

It's January and apparently a slow news week.   I made the newspaper (print and online version) with a short video and print interview about quilting.  The reporter, Shirley, is a museum friend and called asking me if I would like to talk about quilting.  Can you imagine me saying no???

She asked me to bring my latest project so I brought in Ruby's Christmas quilt.  The top is finished and I think I will wait until I have Sylvia's done as well before I pin and quilt them both.  Maybe…

Merry Christmas morning to you all!  As I sit here this snowy morning, alternately sipping my Christmas tea and Diet Coke, I am contemplating the year soon to end and another about to begin.  I once told someone a good year was three quilts completed and by that definition, this was a good year.  I finished Becky's wedding quilt (finally!), made a new Halloween pumpkin quilt…