A Day in My Youth

 Created for Project Quilting 17.4 Of Another Era challenge.

For this challenge, I close to go way back to my childhood. I grew up on a dairy farm and was one of 13 kids. I did milk cows before school when I was a teenager and I'm sure it made me a better person, but it wasn't my favorite thing. I learned to sew in 4H and made many of my own clothes. It was where my passion for sewing began and I even won a trip to the state fair for a few days and modeled my dress in the daily style shows there. 

So, I decided to go back to those days and looked for some garment fabrics in my stash. There were a few, but, fortunately none that old. Polyester was the hot new thing then! I did find a few pieces that I thought I might use for an embellishment or something one day.  

I cut squares from them and stitched them together. And it was not fun. They slipped and stretched and I wanted to go back to cottons. I pinned every seam and I very seldom pin anything when I make quilts. When I got ready for binding, regular cotton did not go with these shiny fabrics and there was no way I was going to make a binding from any of the fabrics in the quilt. So I found some satin ribbons and braided them together and hot glued them on. Yes, I hot glued them to the quilt.....

Then, being me, I thought it needed a tree. This tree represents the apple tree that was in our back yard. I was home for hide and seek and home plate was under it when we played softball almost every night after chores. I never became much of a ball player, but I have many fond memories of those games. 

My youngest brother was 12 years younger than me and when he was about 4, my older brother decided this tree would be used to play monkey in the tree. That meant my little brother was put on a low branch and my big brother would ride up on his horse and grab him, then gallop back to the starting spot. Pretty scary for me to think about today, but nobody got hurt and it was great fun.

The tree trunk is miscellaneous fibers twisted together and stitched down. The leaves were made by sandwiching snippets of green fabrics between 2 layers of water soluble stabilizer and adding lots of stitching until they stayed together. 

Diane Lapacek, Poynette, WI

12" x 15"

Shade for My Horse

Created for Project Quilting 17.3 Year of the Horse challenge. 

The year of the horse is being celebrated in the upcoming Chinese New Year. Instructions were to "find your inspiration from the turn of the year, in the animal, in our hopes and desires for the near future". I was not inspired by the horse or the hopes and dreams of the near future.

I clicked on the link provided by Trish and discovered that red is used in almost all Chinese New Year decorations. Red is something I can be inspired by. So I went with that. Since I'm the scrappy strip quilt lady, I opted for string blocks using as many red fabrics as I could find and adding in touches of gold because all the images of the Chinese New Year included pops of gold. I sewed them together in rail fence fashion, then quilted it with gold metallic thread because it seemed appropriate.

I liked it, but thought it needed something. Not a horse because I'm not into horses. Maube a tree. I like textural trees and have added them to several quilts in the past. But did this fit the theme this time? Well, yes. I made a ltree and added it to my quilt. Next summer that tree will provide shade for my horse. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

And I have a quilt that will go on my wall and make me happy.

Created by Diane Lapacek, Poynette, WI.

16" x 20"