Monday, April 02, 2007

Happy Birthday Mom!

April 1st is my Mom's birthday, and some of the family gathered to celebrate yesterday. My gift to her was a fun book by Sybil Rampen called "The Grannies" , who was a speaker at our quilt guild in January. Sybil autographed this book for my Mom and we have enjoyed not only reading the story, but also looking at the photographs. Here is a summary: "One day, 75-year-old Sybil Rampen realized she was growing old and decided she wouldn't go quietly. So she wrote a book and formed a motorcycle gang of grannies: they wear leather, they have a clubhouse, they do TV shows, pose for photographs and generally raise hell, love and laughter. "
While I was visiting Mom, I took the opportunity to take some photos of a quilt I made for her retirement in the 90's. Mom was a teacher librarian, so of course I made her a bookshelf quilt! It is from a pattern in the Quick Quilts magazine, although there was nothing "quick" about this quilt! I had a lot of technical trouble working with it, but I still like how it turned out overall. The book blocks are pieced from scraps, and the tilted books are machine appliqued, as are the baskets and vases. I added a few buttons here and there that have school themes...like a big yellow school bus, an apple, etc. I appliqued three photos of my children reading, or Mom reading to them, with two more photos on the back with the label that were not as good in quality. These photo transfers were a nightmare, using the old method of tranfer using a white goopy substance, which resulted a poor quality transfer. I had a friend machine embroider the names of all the schools my Mom taught at on some of the tilted books. Because I was working on a tight deadline (I found the pattern 2 weeks before the retirement party), everything is by machine, including the binding. Everytime I see that binding I think that I should fix it...and I haven't done a machine finished binding since then! However I must say that it is a very cherished keepsake of my Mom's and I am delighted that she loved it so much.

2 comments:

Greenmare said...

I love the bookshelf quilt!!!!! I thought about doing one like that for my daughter who is an English major. You did a great job! I think it's great you put the pictures in it too. Excellent!

Sweet P said...

Happy birthday to mom! I love her bookshelf quilt.