Happy 250th Birthday, America!

Posted on September 10, 2026 by Jenny

Last year, our Quilt Guild talked about how we would like to have this year’s Peach Days show be a Patriotic theme because of America 250. I got really excited. I bought the book Traditions with a Twist, by Blanche Young and her daughter Dalene Stone. I was really excited about it because, while she has passed, I cherish a special spot in my heart for Blanche. She was in the same guild as me for many years, and her amazing daughter Lynette Bingham is the mastermind behind the Piecemakers’ Peach Days Quilt Display. I digress. I bought the book, and I determined that I would make a Double Irish Chain for the Peach Days show.

I finished the quilt in late spring.

Then, in late summer, some heck broke loose in my personal life, and a large number of stressful events in a short period of time lead to my brain function not being up to its usual par. I missed a few quilt guild meetings, and texted Lynette to get the form to submit my quilt. In reading the photo of it on my phone, my brain mixed up Tuesday and Thursday. I got my quilt all ready to submit and my form pinned in place on Thursday morning. When I arrived at work I realized, “It is Thursday. Always in the past we have turned them in on Tuesday.” I called Lynette, and sure enough, it was too late.

So this quilt, which I specifically made for the Peach Days patriotic quilt display in honor of America 250, did not get to hang with her homies in the show. I was pretty bummed out, but I posted it on social media, and I will post it here before it goes to its final home which will be a great secret for a few more months.

So without further ado, I give you “Sweet Freedom,” my celebration of our country.

I tried a new technique called graffiti quilting on the borders. I have been following Karlee Porter and buying her books to help me learn. She is awesome! Check her out.

I did three passes of the quilt so that the threads would blend with their own colors, red, blue, and gold on the white, with a few spots of gold for contrast on the blue.

The curves in the small blocks are called orange peel quilting.

A beginner attempt at graffiti quilting.

I feel like I learn new things with every quilt I make. With this one I learned, ALWAYS TURN YOUR QUILT IN ON TIME! Haha. I still enjoyed seeing all the wonderful quilts at the show immensely. There were many truly beautiful pieces there.

Zion National Park Quilt – Peach Days Peoples Choice 2024

Posted on April 19, 2025 by Jenny

This quilt took me about four years from when I started with the idea of it. I took this photo below in 2018, and I decided I wanted to quilt it.

I started looking for fabrics, and even started this quilt with a different sky fabric before I found the one I ended up with. To execute this quilt, I printed the photo in four 8×10 photos, and drew a grid of 1″ blocks on the back. I labeled them in alphabetical columns and numerical rows (A1, B1, etc.) Then I took each 1″ square and made an 8.5″ block (8″ finished) from each one.

The quilting reflects what part of nature is shown, with airwaves in the sky, rocky lines in the mountains, and swirls in the river. I used a fair amount of gold thread in sky and river, and the threads in the earth and greenery blend with those. I love Superior threads for long arm quilting, and I am sad they moved their headquarters out of my local county. Thank goodness I can still get their goodies online!

I decided to display it in Peach Days with the Zion Piecemakers Quilt Guild (my local guild) in 2024. The Guild’s Peach Days show is a peoples’ choice competition, and to my surprise, I won! I was a little humbled by that, because there were many wonderful quilts that were created with much more technical skill than this one in the show. However, Zion National Park has always been a breathtakingly beautiful place of spiritual renewal for me. I was very grateful to realize that the park that speaks to me also spoke to others.

Another Try at Landscape

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Jenny

When I made those three little quilts for my nieces last year, I realized that I wanted to make a bigger landscape quilt. One of my longtime friends really liked the purple and blue mountainy one, and I decided to try my hand at designing one from my own pattern.

Last spring I took a portraiture art class, and one of the key things I learned was how to look at shadows, and what colors to use for them. My professor showed us how in flesh tones, a nice dark purple color is the perfect shadow, and sometimes a dark green will work. I decided that I might like to try making one of the photographs I took of the Watchman in Zion National Park into a quilt. However, I’ve never made a more artistic quilt, so I wanted to warm up with something simple to test colors.

My husband and I went to shoot the moonrise because it’s pretty gorgeous around here, and when I got home and saw this picture, I knew it was the perfect inspiration for my next quilt’s colorway.

Okay, I know, the finished quilt looks nothing like this photo. Still, I enjoyed having a muse while I made it. I would love to figure out how to better capture a moonrise sometime.

Quilt #71

Posted on November 22, 2020 by Jenny

I finished this “Corona Quilt” a month or two ago. It is scrappy, and now lives on my bed. It turns out I had forgotten to put my daughter’s plaid quilt in my journal. Thus, the jump from #69 to #71.

Anyway, my friend and quilt mentor Sariah made one of these quilts a few years ago, and I love everything she does. I tucked the pattern in the back of my mind for something to try down the road. When the early quarantine happened, I started hacking away at these scraps. I finished it in August, which made this one of the fastest large quilts I have ever made. Typically a big, small pieced bed quilt will take me over a year. That just goes to show you how much therapy I needed during quarantine.

I am happy with how my feather quilting is coming along, and I liked my little flames on the mountains. You can also lay this quilt out as a Chinese lantern quilt. However, I thought that looked a little too much like a certain virus we are all trying to avoid like the plague. I decided to do a sunrise layout, and the quilt cheers me up every time I make my bed in the morning or climb into it at night.

Quilt #69

Posted on June 12, 2020 by Jenny

I finished this quilt. Did I tell you I keep a log of all the quilts I have ever made? My grandma told me to do that when I was in my early twenties, and at that point I had made few enough that I could remember them all and to whom they were given. For that reason, I know that this is the 69th quilt I have made. It is the first quilt I have tried to sell, though. I have another site called Honor Caregivers in which I share the stories of great people who take time out of their lives to care for other humans. The site that hosts it charges an annual fee to allow the site to be ad-free, so I have decided to consign this quilt in the hope that it will support my other passion project being ad free. When I told my mom about wanting to transition to ad-free, she sent me money to pay for the first year, so I’ve already had a lucky leg up there.

Hopefully this quilt will support my site next year. If not, I’ll just put it in Peach Days after Labor Day, and then give it to the next baby to show up in the family. Either way, win, win.