This is just a quick post to thank everyone who left messages on my last two posts about my preserved vintage embroidery quilts. I’m sorry I didn’t answer each comment individually but I want you to know how much I appreciate all your kind words!
I love hearing from everyone and I know you aren’t all quilters, but I’d love to see pictures of your quilts or any other craft you are involved with. Just send pictures to my website – quiltingcozy@gmail.com.
I got the second quilt back from Judy, the quilter, and she did a great job as usual.
We chose a very open meander so that the quilting wouldn’t interfere with the design.
One reader asked about the quilt my little Casey Jones is sitting on at the end of one of the posts. That is a simple braid and I’ll include that when I do my donated baby quilt post. (Yes, he has his own baby quilt).
Casey is a 7-year-old Imperial Shih Tzu (Imperial refers to a size between a toy and a standard – He’s 10 pounds of love and cuddles).
I hope every one is having a great beginning of 2024. It’s winter for some of us and summer for you lucky folks in Australia. West Virginia has been very fortunate so far with very mild weather including a few spring-like days!
Please continue to leave comments or write to me at QuiltingCozy@gmail.com, and I will try to respond to blog comments individually next time!
My very best wishes to all my blog friends and readers,
In my previous blog, I talked about my hobby of scouring through antique shops and yard sales, looking for vintage embroidery. Hand-embroidered dresser scarves, tablecloths, napkins, and even clothing were trendy during the early 20th century. Many of the crafters of those days have since passed away, and their families don’t know what to do with these items. They often end up in the corner of an antique shop and are always exciting finds for me!
In my earlier blog, I presented what I did with some of the larger pieces, but now I’ll show you how I dealt with those little leftover odd-shaped pieces. I wanted to use the crazy quilt concept, but in trying it out, I found that all those little pieces of various sizes and colors going in every direction made it way too chaotic for me. I needed to simplify it. I searched for ideas for ‘organized chaos’.
I found a suggestion that appealed to me:
Using 2″ strips of fabric and embroidery that have been cut to have 5 sides, place a strip on each side going around counterclockwise (think log cabin). Repeat until it is at least 8″ wide and 8″ long (or whatever size you are making). I made mine 7″ finished so I then laid my 7 1/2″ template on the block and trimmed.
There is a lot of waste, so if that bothers you, this isn’t for you. (One commenter said she sews all her scraps together to make extremely busy placemats.)
I should mention that I added an iron-on thin interfacing since many of the embroidery pieces were thin, and the backs had many seams.
Now, how to put them together? I placed about a dozen blocks side by side, making a solid piece, but I immediately saw that the embroidery had disappeared, and the result was busy. I wanted each piece to stand out, so I used 1/2″ sashing. I then chose a darker border, which I felt made the whole thing pop. (The border has a navy blue background).
Ready for Judy, my quilter and friend. Then Sandi or Sharon, my binder friends, will sit across the table from me while we bind by hand. As much as I dislike hand sewing, sharing the task with friends makes it a fun activity!
So that’s it for my embroidery activities so far. I have a few pieces left that I would like use on tote bags, but that’s for another day. Most of my quilting time is spent making donation baby quilts, and that’s for another blog!
I hope your new year has started off well. Remember, I’m eager to hear from you in a comment below or email to QuiltingCozy@gmail.com. Sorry about the time between blogs. Life Happens!
For many years it has been a hobby of mine to search antique shops and yard sales for discarded embroidery pieces, preferrable damaged ones because I find it difficult to cut into someone’s pristine work. 2023 was the year that I decided to do something with a few of these treasures.
I started with the larger pieces and chose to simply put them into frames and decide later how to present them.
Since they were all different sizes, I decided to cut various sizes of sashing pieces from background fabic to make them all the same sizes and began placing them:
It was then off to the quilter (Judy), binding (Sandi), and it was finished! I have no idea what I will do with it, but at least I have preserved the discarded work of many talented crafters from the past.
That was the first of my projects. The second one was just finished this week and will be going off to the quilter soon. That one was more of a challenge as I wanted to do a crazy quilt, but ended up with a variation. I will get that blog out right away.
In the meantime, don’t forget Sarah and Sophie. If you’ve read the books, please encourage your friends to give them a try Starting with Tie Died. They’re on KindleUnlimited!
This fall, Olivia (one of our blog followers, a Quilting Cozy reader, and a quilt retreat friend of mine) contacted me with some exciting news and she gave me permission to share that news with you!
Remember the quilt featured in this book?
Well, Olivia decided to follow the instructions in the back of the book for making the quilt. She worked on it at our Spring Retreat here in West Virginia and it was fun to watch. I regret that I didn’t take a picture of Olivia surrounded by her neat piles of blocks and her energetic smile. She was clearly having fun. We all checked in with her periodically to see her progress.
This was our first picture of her completed quilt:
This quilt was a reproduction of one of the civil war quilts that was the focus of Book 12: Frayed Edges: A quilting cozy. A beautiful quilt and excellent workmanship! Olivia is a very skilled quilter.
And that’s not just my opinion!
Olivia won 2nd PLACE in the ‘machine pieced and machine quilted‘ category at the Washington County Fair in Pennsylvania! (see her excitement??)
And that’s not all! Olivia also won FIRST PLACE at the smaller local fair in Jacktown PA!
We are all proud of you, Olivia! And I want to thank you for taking the time to make a quilt featured in my Quilting Cozy series. For all you quilters, there is a pattern at the end of each of the 12 books in the series, as well as a mystery, lots of quilting, and the many adventures of our friends living in the Cunningham Village retirement community which exists only in this series (despite the many emails I get from readers wanting to know where the community is so they can move there!)
If anyone has made any of the quilts from my series, I would love to see pictures and with your permission I will feature them on my blog. Send them to me along with a note to QuiltingCozy@gmail.com.
My very best wishes to all my friends and CONGRATULATIONS to Olivia!
Five lucky winners were chosen using the Random Number Generator offered by Random.com. All five winners have been notified by email and will be sending me their addresses so I can mail signed copies of the first two books in the Quilting Cozy series, Tie Died and Running Stitches:
If you weren’t chosen this time, there’s hope. I do these giveaways often.
I hope everyone is enjoying the beginnings of summer. Here in ‘Wild and Wonderful’ West Virginia (where I retired to the eastern panhandle), its been a rainy beginning, but the plants are loving it.
Greeting to my blogging friends (at least I hope you are still my friends after my six-month absence). I have no excuse…I haven’t blogged, but I thought of you often and thank you for
Congratulations to the five followers who were randomly chosen on Friday. Everyone has been notified and has responded with their addresses. Their signed books will be mailed tomorrow. It was fun to see the spread – we had a winner from each of five states: Illinois, Tennessee, Florida, New York, and Virginia! Congratulations to all five winners.
I appreciate everyone’s interest in my series and your comments. Above, along with the picture of the entire series and Frayed Edges, you will see the quilt made by Olivia Guthrie from West Virginia using the pattern that appeared in Frayed Edges. She did a fabulous job of both piecing and color selection. I saw this quilt at a retreat when Olivia was working on it and wish I had thought to take a picture of her totally surrounded by hundreds of little squares!
There is a pattern at the end of every book and I hope anyone who has made any of these quilts will send me pictures to feature in a blog (QuiltingCozy@gmail.com). I also learned that there is a quilt club that decided to make one block a month from each book. I would love to see some of those. What a great activity for a club. Several book clubs have told me they are reading the series together. These books are available from the publisher C&T Publishing, from Amazon in print and ebook format, and from major book stores. You might also find them in your local library.
It’s autumn here in West Virginia, although the trees have been slow to change color here in the eastern panhandle. Now is the perfect time to begin making those holiday gifts! Throws, wallhangings, table runners, placemats…all fun to make and there are lots of patterns online. Enjoy!
I just finished a quilt (below) for my daughter and it’s now waiting for binding (not my favorite part of quilting).
Thank you for entering the drawing…we’ll do lots more. I want to do another drawing of the first two books in the series. The set would make an excellent holiday gift for your quilting friends and older relatives who will enjoy the older characters. I’ll do that drawing in plenty of time for the holidays.
In this twelfth installment of a Quilting Cozy series, excitement grows as the Tuesday Night Quilters plan an antique quilt show. But things go terribly wrong. Sarah and Sophie again throw themselves into the middle of the investigation, but this time Sarah finds herself in real danger. As always, Sarah and her retirement village cohorts offer fun, mystery, and lots of quilting.
This is the final book in the Quilting Cozy series by Carol Dean Jones. It has been a fun series to write, and I’ve been told it is fun to read. As a cozy, it offers a light mystery but with no visible violence or objectionable language. The focus is on the relationships among the characters who are residents of an active retirement community. The characters are in their seventies and eighties, a real treat for those of us who sometimes feel left out of the fictional character world.
For the quilters, this series includes the pattern for the quilt on the cover of each book. In most books, the characters are also making the quilt as part of the storyline.
This past spring, I attended a local quilt retreat and was surprised to see that the quilter at the next table was piecing something very familiar. It turned out she was making the cover quilt from Frayed Edges! I regret that I didn’t take pictures of all the pieces as she cut and organized them, but I did receive a picture of the finished quilt (below).
This quilt looks very complicated, but once you catch on to the pattern, it’s primarily a matter of correctly arranging two blocks: a four-patch and a solid block with two snowball corners. The challenge is in the placement!
The quilter sent me a picture of her finished quilt top, which is awaiting quilting, and I wanted to share it with you.
My quilting friend did a beautiful job of making this quilt. I love her choice of fabrics, color arrangement, and her attention to detail. This will be a family heirloom one day! It also gives me great pleasure to see my quilt being made by one of my readers.
One of my quilting friends made the Rescue Quilt wall hanging and displays the Rescue Quilt book on a table by the wallhanging. She gets many comments!
I wonder how many others have followed the patterns in the back of each book in the series? I would love to hear from you (QuiltingCozy@gmail.com) and send pictures if possible. I’ll do a blog featuring all of them!
Here are a few examples of cover quilts, and each includes the patterns at the end of the book.
And to encourage others to consider making this quilt, I am offering a free signed copy of Frayed Edges, a Quilting Cozy, to five followers of the blog who leave a comment below. Names will be randomly chosen using the Random Number Generator, and the drawing will be in two weeks: Friday, September 23rd. If you received this blog automatically, you are already a follower, but if you saw it on Facebook or other social media, be sure to sign up as a follower, as only followers are eligible for the drawing.
My very best wishes to all my readers and followers. I hope you had a terrific (and healthy) summer.
Three lucky followers have been randomly chosen to receive the first two books in this series, Tie Died and Running Stitches (and I just noticed the books are not in order in this picture. Oops!)
These winners have been notified by email (check your inbox!) and will receive their books as soon as I receive their mailing addresses. CONGRATULATIONS to the winners and if you were not a winner, I promise many more drawings.
In the meantime, as I told you last month, Amazon has included the Quilting Cozy series in their Kindle Unlimited collection which means if you have Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited membership, any books in the series (except for #12) can be read free. This is a great opportunity if you enjoy ebooks. I own over 500 books which are stored in my little 4″x6″ box and am currently rereading a series I purchased in 2015 (and it’s not dusty!)
Again, I encourage you to read them in order. Each book has a mystery that is resolved in that book, however, relationships are developing throughout the series, and reading them in order allows you to enjoy the books at a deeper level. Cozies are about relationships as much as the mystery. Perhaps more. The characters in this series are senior citizens facing problems we will all face at some point and they are dealing with these challenges in unique and interesting ways.
And there is lots of quilting. If you haven’t read any of the series, please give it a try.
I will give you an update on the baby quilt project next week. I have 7 baby quilts all made and quilted sitting in a neat pile waiting to have bindings added. Not my favorite job. That’s why they have piled seven high! But tomorrow I start on them and won’t start another quilt until they are all bound, photographed for you to see, and turned in to the YoungLives program.
My best wishes to everyone. Here in Wild and Wonderful West Virginia spring is here and life is looking up after the past several unpredictable years. I hope everyone is well. I would love to hear from you. Please comment below or drop me a line at QuiltingCozy@gmail.com.
Books #1 (Tie Died) and #2 (Running Stitches) of the 12-book Quilting Cozy series will be signed by the author and sent to the three winners. The drawing will be held on May 18, 2022 using a random number generator.
To enter the drawing, you must be a follower of the blog and leave a comment below. (If you are not already a follower of this blog, be sure you sign up.) Your comment need only state that you want to be included in the drawing, but I love to hear from you and what you’ve been doing.
I want to welcome all our new followers. If you are new to A Quilting Cozy series, this is a 12-book series that takes place in an active retirement community in the mid-West. Sarah and her retired cohorts enjoy quilting, friendship, and the occasional murder!
Amazon is now offering the first 11 books in the series on Kindle Unlimited where they are free to members but they are also offered by Amazon for purchase in ebook or print formats. These books are published by C&T Publishing.
Please don’t forget there is a 12th book, Frayed Edges, released last summer. (You will find places on Amazon where this is referred to as an 11-book series and that is not correct. Hopefully, they will correct that mistake soon.)
For those of you who have read the series, you might like to enter the drawing anyway. These signed books make great gifts for your friends.
I hope everyone is doing well. I’m leaving for a quilt retreat tomorrow, so am making this brief.
My very best to everyone. I look forward to reading your comments.
A Quilting Cozy Series - Carol Dean Jones 