August 19th, 2025
Hard to believe, I am posting again in the same month. Boy what a busy month it has been!!! I have 3 more Fairs, one this month and 2 more in September, all with different pieces obviously. Stay tuned to see how it all works out!
My big accomplishment this month was finishing my Japanese Memories quilt. Since several wanted to know the back story of why I did this quilt, I thought I would just post it here.
We spent 4 years, 1957 to 1961, in Japan, due to my father being Air Force. I have so many fond memories of growing up there, from 6 years old to 10.
My mother had been an artist since a child herself, and learned oils, acrylics, water color, and charcoal when we were stationed in Japan.
Here's her artwork in my house:
Here in my classroom, two of my Under the Sea framed, along with one of her charcoal drawings.
Her beach pictures were always my favorites, as they were with the tourists that visited every year. So I photographed the above picture to make the embellished piece below.
She also loved to paint pictures of my cats over the years!
She could literally paint on anything!
So one year when visiting, I had some Aida cloth with me, and asked her to paint some beach scenes on it!
One of my favorite treasures, a FB private message popped up, can't remember her name to find it right now, but she said she was sure they had one of mom's paintings, and would like to give it back to the family!!!! Was I ever surprised. So I paid for the shipping, she didn't want any money for it.
I had never seen any of boats by my mother, but her signature was on it!!!
The small hanging crazy quilt is done in seer sucker fabrics, front and back by Sandy's mom, which we didn't know she knew crazy quilts till after she had passed. Oh, the hours we could have had fun together stitching!
Some memories of Japan:
My inspiration for the color of this piece:
Here's mom's drawings from PowerPoint:
Below is a picture of one of her brochures that she passed out when doing street shows in Florida,
So, because her original drawings are large, many 14" by 17 ", I don't have wall space to frame them all. The next best thing I could think of is to put them all in a wall hanging quilt. I was originally going to do it in hexies, but then the pictures had to be too small. So I decided it had to be squares. Hexie will be another day!
So I will post each individual block first, and then the finished piece, with the backing. Starting with the right side, middle and then the left side.
Top of middle row..
Top of left side:
My mother also loved to garden, especially designing her own Japanese Garden!
So that is the whole story...it will be entered into the Lewiston Fair in September, so I will post how my quilts due at the end of the month!!!!
Now a memory quilt is floating in my head about my dad!!!
Happy Stitching! would love to see you following me here!!!
follow my Flickr site also: https://www.flickr.com/photos/60882932@N06/
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