Sewing Table Retrofit

Fall has definitely progressed while I was away.....I had wonderful travels, and have more ahead of me over the next 2 weeks...but for now I am back in the saddle here at home in the sewing room and loving it.

Before I begin quilting all of the quilts for Mark's family, I just had to finish up the curved piecing sample I started in class in Wichita.  I loved the fabrics and colors and couldn't tear myself away from them.

I am really enjoying this collage applique style of crazy block construction.  It is so totally right brain and free form.
And it doesn't take long.

This measures 18"X 22".
Some detail shots.....

Apparently some of my vintage blocks and fabrics are finding their way into the mix these days.

And I am very glad to see them!

But now it is time to get those quilts for Mark's family completed.  I knew that I needed the best possible surface for quilting these, but I don't have a recessed sewing machine table.  What to do?
I found my answer on Squidoo.  My humble and heartfelt thanks go out to Alaskan quilter Marguerita McManus, who has some YouTubes up about how to make a foam core sewing table.  This is such a brilliant solution!!!!

With the foam core and heavy vinyl sheet over it, I have a large flat slippery surface flush with my needle on the old Juki.

Admittedly it is not the most elegant solution, but it works great and was very inexpensive!

And so it begins.....a long quilting journey over the five quilts.  Mark, Lee, Manny, Don, Madison and Ashley will keep me good company along the way....

Mark's Quilts....Madison's

This quilt is laid out and pinned, and in the process of being hand basted.  I've decided that instead of going over my basting with machine zigzag, I will leave my own stitches in place and skip the unnecessary machine step.  So I'm doing a more detailed job with the basting.

These quilts will all be quite heavily machine quilted, which is something I haven't done in awhile.
In order to get up to speed, I'll be attending an all day machine quilting class with David Taylor at the Machine Quilters Exposition, which happens to be in Portland this week.
I'm excited!

We were instructed to bring a quilt sandwich to class--either a top, or just plain muslin.  I have lots of different scenarios in which I might want to try new ways of machine quiltwork, so my sample looks like this:

I have an extra running figure from Mark's shirts.  I'm so glad I can practice on this before going to work on the quilts!  The quilt block above it will give me a chance to play with quilting on a crazy quilt block--something I have resisted for years.  The printed landscape photograph will give me a chance to use quilting as thread painting over imagery, something I'm sort of intruiged by.  The four block "X" is from my ongoing
"Go Crazy" project that I started last fall.  And finally, May the cat on the doily is another new situation for machine quilting.
I hope to have this sample filled by the end of class on Thursday.  I'll show you what happens!

Mark's Quilts....Ashley's

This is the third quilt of five for Mark's family. You can read the story about this project here.

It is very helpful to have a surface large enough for laying out the whole quilt at once!

I'm so glad I revamped the sewing room, it was just in time.
Laying the quilt out this way helps me get a more balanced design than I could have otherwsie.  It's tricky with all these images and disparate fabrics.  But it is flowing well....

Mark's Quilts....

I want you to meet Officer Mark Vasquez of the Manhattan Beach, California police force.

By the time he was done with them, people used to thank Mark for giving them tickets. Really!  He conveyed his genuine interest in peoples' safety, and he was funny.  Who could resist that smile?

...and here is his family...

This is my favorite picture of the Vasquez family: Mark, his wife Lee, and daughters Madison and Ashley.  It captures their spirit!
Mark and Lee fell in love in high school; I think Lee was 15 and Mark was 16.  Because Lee is my "niece-in-law" (my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's daughter), over the years I've watched Mark and Lee go through college--each on atheletic scholarships--get married, and have their children together.  Their love has been a joy to the whole family, and to everyone who has known them.

Always, Mark was upbeat, energetic, full of strength.  So when he was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma (a cancer of the blood) four years ago, he took it on like the Superman he was.  He underwent arduous treatments, raised money for research for a cure, continued to work as long as he could, and even served as his daughter's softball coach this spring before his body could no longer tolerate treatment and he died. 

At his funeral, the Chief of the Manhattan Beach Police told the hundreds of us gathered that Mark in his six years of service on the force touched more people than he himself had in thirty years as a police officer.  Knowing Mark, we all knew this humble police chief had spoken the truth.

So you can imagine what an honor it is for me to be making memorial quilts for Lee, Madison, Ashley, Manny--Mark's dad--and Don, Lee's dad.  I've been working with Mark's extensive t-shirt collection and some of his other garments, with the goal of creating each of them a cozy blanket to wrap up in, full of Mark's energy and memories.

Here are some of the tshirts...it gives you a little insight into the life of a committed policeman....

Mark trained hard, had fun, and on the serious side, he definitely took care of business.

I used my rotary cutter to trim out the shirts.

....until I had a pile of the graphics.

Because Lee has continually thought of these quilts as "blankets", I decided to make them as cozy as I could. I am appliquing the tshirt graphics onto thick polar fleece, then will machine quilt them.  Technically, this makes the most sense to me too, rather than trying to interface and then piece all those knits, and then layer them with batting and backing.

So I've started on Manny's blanket first (Lee sent me five boxes of shirts and other garments of Mark's, specifically chosen for each person)....

I laid out the main elements first directly onto the polar fleece, and then filled in the horizontal and verticle spaces with fabrics from other garments, pinning everything into place.

The next step is to hand baste everything down.

Then I will machine applique over the basting, and then machine quilt overall.  A binding will finish the blanket.

I've been thinking a lot about Manny (shown here) and Mark, of course, as I work....about fathers, and how great they are.

I did suffer an accident, unrelated, in the last week...burned my left thumb quite badly making jam!  So my work on this project has been slowed down considerably for the moment.  But it is what will be going on here for the next several weeks.  It is good work, and I am so happy to be doing it.