Deana & Lyn: Dad's Horse Quilt

Mom and I got together a couple of years ago and each made a horse quilt.  Mine was given to my son and has silhouettes of him in the border.  Mom's is for Dad and I am helping her with the silhouettes.  It is pretty full because Dad has a long life involving horses. 

Below are pictures of Dad's quilt in progress.  The white figurines are paper patterns and will be black fabric when the quilt is finished.

This quilt has been fun as my dad, son, and husband have all given their opinion.  I was receiving emails and texts from my sisters and sisters-in-law just yesterday as I gathered photos of all Dad's grandchildren.  All 21 of them are featured somewhere on the quilt.

I love the cut out of my son when he was very young looking up at his pony, Scout.  Now he is nearly 19 and off to Germany this summer for a two year church mission.  I am going to miss him so much!

Here is a photo of my son's finished horse quilt.

Mom does not like to do machine applique' so I am doing that for her.  In trade, she  finished the hand quilting on my Dorinda quilt.  I had it close to done but took it off the frames and replaced it with a quilt that had a deadline.  It sat for many years and she really wanted me to finish it.  Hence, we traded work.

Below is a photo of my Dorinda Quilt that Mom finished for me.  This quilt has an extensive story and history and led to the birth of this blog.

I am linking up with:

Main Crush Monday

Fabric Tuesday

Monday Making

Design Board Monday

Patchwork Times Design Wall Monday

Sew Cute Tuesday

Freemotion by the River

Deana: Dorinda Quilt is bound!

She's finally bound!  These photos show the hand quilting a little better - love it!

Tuesday Linkies include:

Freemotion by the River

Fabric Tuesday

I was featured at Fabric Tuesday for my Flowering Snowball quilt top that is finished - Yay!

Show N Tell Tuesday

Sew Cute Tuesday

Also, I was featured at Blossom Heart Quilts - Yay!  I guess she liked my flowering snowball quilt as well.

Deana: Weekend Progress

After years and years (7 years actually) of working (and not working) on this quilt it finally is quilted and has the binding attached.  I will get the handwork done on the binding before July is out.  

You probably noticed that this quilt is in the banner along with three others like it.  This quilt is a family heirloom (or will be).  My mother, her two cousins, Ann & Marie, and myself set out on an ancestry journey to recreate our Great Great Great Grandmother Dorinda's quilt.  Add an extra "Great" for me as I am a generation behind them.  Grandma Dorinda was an amazing woman who made this quilt in 1892 when she was 84 years old.  Unlike my grandmother who took only six weeks to hand quilt hers, mine has taken much longer.  Two years after Dorinda's death the Sunburst Quilt won a first prize at the 1897 Pioneer Jubilee Fair in Utah.  

Grandma Dorinda dyed her own fabrics from local plants.  Because of this, my mother and I hand dyed our fabrics using Dharma dye products.  It was fun and just felt right.  We hand appliqued all of the flowers and vine.  We paper pieced the "sunbursts" and joined them together using curved piecing methods.  I recreated the pattern from the photo below.  It took some intense study and designing to re-create the sunbursts.  I literally enlarged the applique until it was the size I wanted and then traced it off.

Below is a picture of the original Dorinda quilt.  You can see that each of us did ours a little bit different and none of us put the yellow/black border between the blocks or did half blocks at the top.  While our colors are all similar to Dorinda's, all of us made a few changes.  I added purple flowers, Mom has a yellow dyed background, and Marie did hers on black.  

Ann added some ancestry photos to the centers of her flowers and changed the style of her flowers.  Dorinda is pictured below.

Ann's mother Marian and grandmother Mamie are pictured.  Mamie is my Great Grandmother whom I knew well and loved deeply.  I lived with her for two summers during my college years.

The bond I have with Dorinda and my mother's cousins is so strong because of this project.  My quilt, after years of sitting with one border left unquilted, is finished because my mom insisted that she would finish it for me.  I am trading her work on her horse quilt.  So, that just makes it that much more special.  Thanks Mom!


I went back through old posts and decided to make this little timeline for this project:

2008 Fall (August-ish) four of us began this project - Marie, Ann, Lyn, and Deana.  None of us live in the same city and are actually two or more hours apart.

2009 February - Marie had two sides appliqued.  She placed a quarter on it to show how small her pieces were.  Ours were much larger.

 Look at the size difference as Marie and I worked on our own together one day.  Can you see it on her lap?

 2009 March 27 - Ann had two sides appliqued

2009 April 9 - Lyn (Mom) had three sides appliqued and had a good start on the 4th

2009 May 12 - We had a piecing retreat where we met at Marie's and began paper piecing the center blocks.

2009 Dec 1 - Mom's top is done approximately 1 1/2 years after starting.

2010 April 19 - Ann's quilt is hand quilted and finished - 20 months after starting.  She had help from her sister Dorine and her mother Marian among others.

2010 May 28 - I finished my top approximately 21 months after starting.

2010 May 9 - Mom's quilt is hand quilted and finished - 21 months after starting.  She quilted it by herself.

I began quilting mine on June 20, 2010 and had to take it off the frames with one border left in November 2010.  Mom even came and helped me quilt a couple of days.  I quilted on it for 5 months.  I had a commission quilt that needed hand quilted so I bumped it ahead of Dorinda.  It took mom all of 1 week to finish it for me.

2011 February - Marie's finished and hand quilted - 2 and 1/2 years after starting.

Ann and Marie's sister, Dorine, did not make the Sunburst quilt with us, but she did re-make one of Dorinda's quilts.  It is shown below.

Several years back the five of us traveled to Southern Utah to Pine Valley where Dorinda lived the end of her life.  We found the church where Dorinda attended and her grave.  It was a most meaningful and memorable trip.

Deana: Heirloom quilting and hand quilting go together!

Thanks Esther, at ipatchandquilt, for the invitation to join the fun!  If you haven’t seen Esther’s work, be ready to be amazed!  She is fabulous quilter.
Welcome! If this is your first visit, I hope you explore beyond this post. Visit the special pages section on the right.
1) What am I working on?
- See more at: http://livingwaterquilter.com/post/96355153632/around-the-world-blog-hop#sthash.NbFQN4q0.dpufThanks France, at francenadeau.com/blog, for the invitation to join the Around the World Blog Hop.  

Today is Tuesday Archives with Val over at Val's Quilting Studio.  The topic is heirloom quilts and hand quilting.  I have them both rolled up into one quilt.   

HEADS UP to some of you may have all ready read tidbits of this post because it is similar to the one I did for the "Around the World Blog Hop".   

I want to give a brief history about this blog which was established in 2008 in honor of my Great, Great, Great, Great Grandmother Dorinda Moody.  I discovered quilting years before I discovered her, but I gained a deep love and respect for Grandma as I found us to be kindred spirits.  She was an industrious woman who pioneered the West as she settled in Pine Valley, Utah with her family.  She grew her own cotton to make her own batting, hand dyed her fabrics from local plants, and made award winning quilts which nearly every family in her small community possessed.  She also won best of show at the world fair in Chicago on a quilt she designed and made.  

In her memory, my mother Lyn, her two cousins, Marie and Ann, and myself remade Dorinda's masterpiece quilt at which time we started this blog.   Those quilts are featured in the banner at the top of this blog with the four of us.  Another cousin, Dorine, also remade a different quilt of Dorinda's featured here.  See all the posts about the entire project here.  We all visited Pine Valley together in 2010 to see the little church where she worshiped and served as the Relief Society President for her ward for about 30 years. She was and we are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  It was an emotional experience for us - see the post here.  Dorinda was also a very small woman, around 5 ft tall, and was able to get a lot accomplished in a short amount of time.  I too am about 5 ft tall and have her genetic gift of speed.

Below is a photo of my Dorinda re-make which I started in 2008.  I have a goal to complete the hand quilting this year.  My mother and I chose to hand dye our fabrics in her memory using professional dyes from Dharma.  I did my best to recreate the pattern from photos of her quilt, the original of which I have never seen.  I love the look of scrappy (various) background fabrics.  It gives it an "old" look to me.  The applique' is all done by hand.
 

 Before quilting...

 Mostly quilted...

I had to take it off the frames to hand quilt a quilt for a lady and never got back to it.

I am also linking up with 

Show N Tell Tuesday,  

Fabric Tuesday, 

and  

Fremotion by the River

 

MARIE'S DORINDA QUILT IS FINISHED!!

This is a happy day for me!!  Finally, after 2-1/2 years of work, my Dorinda quilt is finished.  I started working up my pattern in August, 2008 and finished piecing it May 31, 2010.  I started hand quilting it June 2010 and finished quilting and binding February 9, 2011.

I spent many hours doing applique.  I took it with me everywhere I went for months and worked on it whenever I could.  The quilt is 42" square and there are 1750 pieces in this quilt.  The sunbursts are a combination of machine and hand piecing, and the applique is needle turn applique.  

The best part has been getting to know Ann, Lyn and Deana better as we each did our own "Dorinda" quilt, and also learning about our ancestor Dorinda Melissa Moody Slade who created the pattern in the first place. 

The first picture was taken outside, and the second inside.  There certainly is a difference in the way the colors look.

 Notice the quarter on the right side, which puts the size in perspective.

I'm glad I made this quilt, but I don't intend to make another like it.

Progress so far this week...

I started making stars for the December assignment of "Granny Went Star Crazy".  We don't have the instructions out yet, but I'm sewing them up anyway because Dec is always CRAZY.

I quilted on Dorinda for 2 hours this morning.  I had just rolled previous to this, so what you see is what I accomplished in 2 hours.  I am into the last set of blocks and all that will be left is the final border.

There are a MILLION seams in this section, so don't look too close at my stitches in those areas.  It's the best it can be.

I am beginning to attach my half blocks to the outside of the quilt.  I did this different from the pattern in that I changed the background fabric to a rust color to create sort of a border.  I think I like it.

Canton Village Quilt Works: Are You In The Mood?

When I saw this link, I instantly thought of the little church that we claim as Dorinda's in Pine Valley. Wouldn't be lovely to someday have a quilt show down there?

Canton Village Quilt Works: Are You In The Mood?

Dorine's Dorinda Quilt

This is my Pine Tree Quilt that I made for Gina about eight years ago using Dorinda's pattern. I used paper piecing for the little triangles, and the quilt was pretty easy to make. It is pictured here on Gina's guest bed in their new home. It really made me feel at home when we stayed there before and after our family reunion.


Thanks DJ for inviting me to contribute to the blog! I'll add more quilts as I make them . I'm currently working on a Card Tricks Quilt. It's pretty fun.

A trip to the past

Marie, Ann, Lyn, Dorine, Gary, and I had a wonderful trip this week. Our intention was to go to Pine Valley together to visit the community where Great Great Great Great Grandma Dorinda lived and particularly the little church where she served as relief society president for nearly twenty years.

Gary was gracious enough to photograph the five of us on the staircase of the Pine Valley church. 
This trip was meant to be the close of our two year long venture to make Dorinda's masterpiece quilt.  Marie and I have ours still on the quilting frames -- about half hand quilted.  Ann and Lyn completed theirs several months ago, and Dorine helped Ann hand quilt hers.  Dorine has also made another quilt of Dorindas.
 

Marie was able to play the old pump organ on our tour.  She played "The Spirit of God", and it was beautiful. 

This room was probably never occupied by Dorinda because she died before the upstairs of the church was completed.  Her daughter and my Great Great Great Grandmother, Eliza, attended church in this upstairs chapel.  Pictures of Dorinda and some of her works along with a plaque are on the wall in the back of the "stage area" of the chapel.

Here is another photo of the chapel.

This was an emotional experience to me.  My ancestors became so real to me just being here.

Dorinda's trunk that she brought all the way from Texas is sitting just behind Dorine to the very right of the picture.