"Family Makes It a Home" by Jan Girod

I am very late with my "Home" piece for the final challenge. Honestly, life just kept getting in my way....work, family holiday plans, and illness. I have always felt that home was wherever my family is, so began my thoughts for this piece. The house photo was printed on pre-treated inkjet cotton fabric and the family photos are printed on ExtravOrganza. The fabric was so perfect that I could not resist using it, the fabric is called Etchings by 3sisters for Moda.
The piece was machine quilted, then the family photos were attached over the house photo with hand embroidery stitches. Simply embellished with my Grandmothers' mother-of-pearl buttons, a small key and a Habitat for Humanity charm that says "Bless this House", exactly the right concept for this challenge quilt.

When I read what the final word would be "Home", my musings were that it seemed so fitting...our first word was "Sanctuary" and our final word was "Home". Many times I've said, "my home is my sanctuary" and I've always hoped that I've created a "home" for my family that gives them that warmhearted feeling.

Homespun

Lately I have been feeling nostalgic for my early quilting days. In the 1980's we had solid cottons and calicos and my first quilts were Log Cabin, Ohio Star and Double Irish Chain. Nowadays quilt shops are filled with batiks, novelty prints and all manner of geometrics and designs have expanded in complexity and refinement - all of which I love. The changing landscape is the reason quiltmaking has held my attention all these years.

But I have been looking back and find myself longing for the simplicity of those early efforts. I ran across this piece of black and white homespun - a piece from my mother's stash - and I was transported. I hand-quilted two rows with buttonhole thread and beefy stitches and topstitched the outside border by hand with a sewing-weight thread. The tiny, white buttons are from some long-forgotten project. I purchased the knitted roses at Britex a week ago thinking I would sew them on a sweater, but find they work perfectly here.







This piece reminds me of the basement at J.C. Penny's in Sunnyvale in the 1960s. My mother and I shopped in the fabric department that, at the time, inlcuded sewing pattterns, notions, yarn and fabric as well as sewing machines. The fabric and buttons connect me to my sewing roots and the roses reflect the present and my latest obsession with all things ruffled and flowered.

I enjoyed participating in this final challenge.

Susan H. in San Francisco

HOME

What means home to me? A person, family, a room, a house, feelings, a scent, memories, a scenery or an area?
Well, for me it is a combination of a person, a house, an area and a scenery.
At home with my husband, looking out of the kitchen window to the colorful and changing scenery of a sunset. The roofs of the houses and the clocktower of our church dark in the opposite light.
I see with my inner eyes the land, which lays between the sunset and our home - villages and a few towns - roads and railroad tracks - forests and rich farmland, on which vegetables, salads and corn grows - small ways for bycicles and hikers - three lakes with fish and other animals and shores for swimming and camping.

I worked with fototransfer (a map of our area and 3 pictures), watercolor, felting and quilting.

This is our last challenge. These two years helped me to stay tuned, work with a theme and finish in a certain time. Thank you to all!

Heidi

All Squared Away by Jan Girod

When the word "Square" was announced on August 1st I thought of a "town square" or a "game board", but these just didn't excite me enough to provide the motivation to create a piece of work, so......! Procrastination seems to be what has happened with the last several words and this one was no different, at the last minute Tuesday, September 27th this came about.

For the last several years I have been working on water soluble fabrics, allowing me to create small machine embroideries, dimensional work such as the leaves in "Kudzu" or needle felted backgrounds for embroidery. The small trees were done in such a manner, then framed within this small quilted frame. The little quilt was machine quilted in a simple square grid pattern.

SQUARE

The start of this challenge was August 1st, our Nationalday.
Our national flag is a red square with a white cross. So I decided red to be my color.

Square came to my mind, when I was thinking of quilt patterns. Many of them are based on squares. I like traditional quilts as much as I like designing my own ideas.

I machine stitched with white thread squares on a red background. Then I cut 4 different red fabrics into smaller squares, mixed them and machine stitched the piles in the middle of these squares.
With threads, beads and buttons, I embellished this quilt.

Square - Heidi Stucki

Heidi

Yes, In Any Language by Jan Girod

This is not the quilt that I set out to make. How many times has that happened to you? The idea of using the word "Yes" in several languages was part of my thought process for this challenge from the beginning, but not the techniques used or the end result. Once again my daughter had to flat out tell me that I was hung up on the techniques, clearly they were not getting me where I wanted to go and that I needed to forget the plan. Well she was so very right. I actually had to grovel tonight. I thanked her for the "kick in the pants", that I actually love the way this piece turned out and that it is probably better than expected. Actually kissed her cheek in gratitude for her bluntness...which by the way she is very good at.

I am sorry that the colors in the photo's seem so different, I wanted to get these posted and did not wish to take time to set up my photography lighting. The top photo is the accurate photo, but in order for you to see the writing clearly I had to illuminate my design wall with my work lamp.

New Word for August and September 2011

SQUARE
•

a flat shape with four sides of equal length and four angles of 90°

•

any square-shaped object

•

an area of approximately square-shaped land in a city or a town, often including the buildings that surround it

•

a particular space on a board used for playing games

•

the number that is the result of multiplying one number by itself

or have a look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/square

Use what you want of the meanings and technique possibilities within the work.
I wish you happy and inspiring hours working on this.

Heidi