It has been almost six months since I closed my retail business on July 1 and announced my “semi” retirement. It is hard to figure out where all the time goes. But I have certainly kept busy traveling to visit family and having friends and family visit my home. I had three different trips planned with Craftours and, because of the pandemic, all of those had been postponed and rescheduled. I was able to go on my first trip with them in October and what a trip that was! When I told people I was going on my first overseas trip since before the pandemic, they would ask where I was going. When I sa ..read more

Козицкая Ольга. Первое место в номинации “Ручная работа”                                                                                          &nbs ..read more

For the last few months, I have been sharing with you some of the quilts from my antique charm quilt collection. I have told you that one of the easiest ways to work with them is to create a unit and then use the same value placement in each block. But many quiltmakers experimented with other layouts of the pieces in ways to showcase each of the different fabrics. The quilt at the beginning of this newsletter is one example. Quite a few of my charm quilts have radiating rings going from the center outwards. The right triangle in last month’s quilt can be used for these radiation ring designs a ..read more

  This series of posts on Charm Quilts has generated a lot of interest, comments and questions. We welcome those comments and love to hear what you are working on. For this post we will show more options for creating a charm quilt using squares. For all my quilts, I like to create a “unit” that repeats over and over to make the entire quilt. Within that unit the shapes are arranged by value, then each unit follows the same “formula.” I make stacks of those units until there are enough for the quilt top. So perhaps after gathering a lot of fabrics and cutting the shapes the next step is t ..read more

We have had a lot of interest in the last blog post about Charm Quilts. In general a charm quilt, made with one shape, is where each piece is cut from a different fabric. However in my research I have seen ones where all the different patches are alternated with a common fabric. I still call that a charm quilt.     Here was an interesting question from one of our readers, Nancy B. “Jinny, must every square be different for it to be called “charm”? I ask because I have been making 5 “ squares of 5 rows of 5 one inch squares for several years and think of it as a “journal quilt”. I ha ..read more

So, what is a Charm Quilt? A charm quilt is a quilt that is usually made with a single shape and where each piece is cut from a different fabric. Squares, rectangles, hexagons, triangles and diamonds are probably the most common shapes used but others can be used as well. This is a fun project to work on in a quilting group, where you can trade fabrics with each other. In this blog we start off with probably the easiest shape to work with, a square. The squares can be arranged in a variety of different configurations. But the best way to proceed is to have some type of unit. Then just sew unit ..read more

Jinny’s Windows quilt, made to honor the victims of the 9/11 attacks.   As we approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I want to share with you once again, the quilt I made to commemorate that tragic day. I wanted to honor all those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001. My goal was to have at least one piece for each of the victims. There are 4,777 pieces in the quilt. The one in the center is for my friend, Barbara Olson, who was in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. I began the quilt that week of September 11 and hoped to finish it just one year later by September 11, 2002 ..read more

My first quilt was a grandmother’s flower garden made with Indian hand block printed fabrics. It was done with all dark colors. When it came time to quilt it, I went looking for thread. There were no quilting stores in my area in 1972, only quilting areas in other types of handicraft stores. I went into a predominantly needlework shop and asked for navy blue thread for quilting. I was told in no uncertain terms that you never quilt with colored thread. Quilting is done in only cream or white and if you ever used a different color thread and entered a competition, the quilt would be disqualifie ..read more

One day I was walking along the Potomac River near my home and met a man who was studying one of the plants with great interest. I asked him what was so fascinating about the plant. He told me that the name of the plant is Horse Tail and that he was very curious about the sections of the stem and how they seem to follow some sort of pattern. I took one look at the stem and immediately knew what it was. Then I also realized that I had the same plant growing in the fish pond in my yard. I was anxious to get home and see if my theory was correct.     Several times in the past I have wr ..read more

The first July 4th after we were married, John and I were invited to a pot luck barbecue with other graduate students. One of the dishes was an incredible pork and beans casserole. I asked for the recipe and was surprised at how easy it was to make. I have made several changes over the years and refined it and it has been part of our holiday barbecue ever since. This year since we are beginning to gather again, I want to share it with you. Jinny’s Baked Beans recipe 2 Large cans Campbell’s pork and beans (28oz) 1 can Campbell’s cream of tomato soup ¼ cup brown sugar 1 lb. “hot” Jimmy Dean or B ..read more