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!
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.
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.
The first eleven books of this series are now available on Kindle Unlimited which means if you sign up for Kindle Unlimited on Amazon, you will get the ebooks at no cost beyond the membership fee! This has not yet been extended to the last book in the series (Frayed Edges, A Quilting Cozy, Book 12) but the publisher is working on that.
Also, Amazon is erroneously listing the first eleven books as part of an “11-book series” and this is not correct. There are 12 books in the series and Book #12, Frayed Edges, is on Amazon just not included in the count. I have heard from many readers saying they have just read Book 11 and they hope I’m writing more so I’m hoping to reach those people so they will know there is a Book 12, Frayed Edges.
Okay, with that out of the way – It’s finally springtime at least here in the United States. I’m in West Virginia and the leaves are beginning to come out and my Red Bud is in full bloom. The blossoms took a beating in a surprise snowstorm a couple of days ago. Red Buds are very common in West Virginia and can be seen in the early spring along every winding country road. Story goes that early settlers used the presence of Red Buds as an indication that the area had excellent soil.
And it’s time to begin spring cleanup in the yard and the house. I’m planning to do Spring House Cleaning next week. Yes, I know that’s out of date, but I’m in my 80s and we older (and more traditional) folks still do things like that. I believe, at least in my family, it was necessary during the thirties and forties because of the coal-burning furnaces. Spring was spent clearing away the soot that had accumulated in hidden corners and particular on the wallpaper (yes, wallpaper! remember, I’m old). My grandmother and I would clean the walls with this rubbery stuff which was like silly putty. I was responsible for the bottom two feet! (I was young then!).
I have been making baby quilts for an outreach program in our county. It’s called YoungLives and is directed toward pregnant teenagers and young mothers. One focus is for trained mentors to encourage and help them stay in school and also to provide training in parenting skills and help these ‘children’ transition into parenthood. So far, I’ve made a couple dozen baby quilts and will include more pictures in my next blog.
I want to welcome all our new followers! Pat Sloan has very kindly shared my books with her followers and I have heard from many of you that they are enjoying the series. Thank you, Pat! And welcome newcomers.
I also want to encourage my new followers (and everyone else) to continue leaving a message under ‘Comments’ below or writing to me at QuiltingCozy@gmail.com. I’d love to see pictures of your quilts or other crafts, or simply hear what you’ve been doing. I hope the addition of my series to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited makes it possible for more people to read the books.
A few months ago, a friend asked me to make a quilt for a baby shower she would be attending. The parents, she explained, were water enthusiasts and she knew they would like a baby quilt with a nautical theme. She left the design up to me but gave me a few parameters. She wanted it to be blue, red, and white and she wanted whales included. At one point she said ‘I’m picturing red and white strips somewhere in it.’
What I decided to do was design sailboats for the front and put flannel whales on the back. I found this great piece of flannel which I cleared with her before ordering it and she loved it:
Soft flannel…found it on Etsy
Then for the quilt. I decided to have 12 sailboats, 6 blue boats with red sails and 6 red boats with blue sails. After sketching my simple layout (4 rows of sailboats, 3 in each row, with sashing and a border), I went through my stash and to my favorite online fabric stores and settled on these fabrics:
I searched the web for a free sailboat pattern and ended up designing one using parts of several patterns and making up the rest! I then began cutting fabric and assembled 12 small and 12 large sails, backgrounds (white), 6 boats, and 6 masts.
Once I attached the boats and completed 12 blocks, I laid them out and tried out borders for the blocks. Fortunately, I had a piece of blue that gave the impression of water. I obviously needed something between the blocks so I added a narrow navy blue sashing.
I tried out a red outer border but it demanded too much attention so I changed to a navy fabric with lighter blue dots to compliment the ‘water.’
And here is the finished quilt (approx 38″x48″) with flannel whales on the back:
I had forgotten about the ‘red and white stripe’ my friend had mentioned so you can see where it ended up! She loved the quilt and the new parents were delighted!
The Quilting Cozy series
Book sales have continued to be good despite my long absence from blogging and otherwise spreading the word. But C&T Publishing has continued to plug away with marketing and keeping the word out there for all of its authors.
Do you have all the books in The Quilting Cozy series?
It looks like this will remain a 12-book series. I stopped writing during the pandemic and just haven’t been inspired to write more. For those who have read the whole series including the most recent book, Frayed Edges, you know that all our characters (who have become friends to most of us) were left in good places.
For those of you who have not read the series, I encourage you to start with #1 (Tie Died) so you will be able to follow the relationships as they develop. The mystery is always there but sometimes what goes on between these delightful characters is even better. The series offers great winter reading if you live where the snow falls and my friends in Australia will be enjoying them as relaxing summer reading.
My very best wishes to all my followers. I would love to hear from you. Please leave a message under COMMENTS below or go to my CONTACT ME page and leave me a note. You can also email me directly at QuiltingCozy@gmail.com. Please excuse my long absence from blogging. I’m sure you understand. It’s been an unusual year. Prayers for 2022.
The 12th book in the Quilting Cozy series will be released in a couple of weeks (June 25th) and is available for pre-order on C&T-Publishing’s-website, and on Amazon in print and eBook format. It will also be available at books stores and quilt shops around the country.
Because it is being released this month, C&T asked me to provide a narrative for their June blog. I thought, as followers of my blog, you might like to read it. It will tell you about the new book and, if you are new to the series, it will give you an overview of my Quilting Cozy mystery series. (See link below.)
Stay tuned for information about the 2-book give-away (with 5 winners!) which will appear in my blog the same day the new book is released: June 25, 2021.
Quilters are notorious for finding charity projects. Many individual quilters, quilt clubs and guilds provide hours creating incredible quilts for infants, shelters, children in foster care, veterans, and families in need to mention just a few. I would like to add animal shelters to the list. (more…)
A Quilting Cozy Series - Carol Dean Jones 