Quilting: One of My Passionate Hobbies

By Theresa E. Dow Saffold

When I decided to take up the art of quilting, my mind turned toward decorating my quilts with landscapes. After a bit of exploratory research, I realized it was going to be trial and error.
    My quilts all have a top and a bottom layer of fabric, with batting for filling – batting is a layer or sheet of raw cotton or wool.
    For coloring the top fabric, I use fabric appliqués and inks especially made for fabrics:

• Fabric appliqués are patches that are layered onto a foundation fabric, then stitched in place by hand or machine with the raw edges turned under or covered with decorative stitching. I create my own appliqués with colored fabric and inks/crayon or fabric paint, although I only recently took up painting (I loved art as a youngster).
• Fabric inks are applied by brush, pen, or markers, like painting on canvas. They are washable.

The first quilt I made:

48" x 68"

For my second quilt, I did another water landscape using similar methods, but there is a lot more appliqué and ink. My in-laws like birds, so I included a couple of wood ducks, which are shown in the second, close-up photo below:

48" x 68"

The ducks and the plants are painted on separate fabric
and appliquéd on. The “soil” is painted directly onto the fabric.

My third quilt was a lap quilt for my mother, who had to move into a nursing facility. She loved gardens and birds. The center fountain depicts one she had in her garden. This quilt was an experiment in using melted crayon to “paint” the pictures, some of them directly on the fabric square, some of them painted separately and appliquéd on:

32" x 40"

    In the close-up below (of the second panel down from the top right, after the addition of butterlies), the green background and the wooden post are appliquéd fabric. The bluebird was painted with melted crayon, and then stitched to make it stand out a bit more. The butterflies were cut from a printed fabric and appliquéd on. You can see differences in stitches used for appliqués, at my discretion.

I have a sister who lives in the Adirondacks in New York State. For her I made a lap quilt with an Adirondack theme (shown below). The center panel had in mind her son who loves canoeing and hiking in the mountains. The bottom panel is a view from Rogers Rock over Lake George. Balloon festivals are a big event up there, and my sister loves them. I created the panels using a combination of melted crayon and fabric inks:

32" x 40"

As Paul Harvey used to say, that’s the rest of my quilting story. Moristotle has invited me to share some more of this adventure as it unfolds, and I plan to take him up on that.
    He has also expressed an interest in my other arts. I have always loved the creative process and am happiest when I am working on a project. I guess I am a jack of all trades and master of none kind of person.
    My many loves are gardening and creating landscapes, photography, and birdwatching (often together). I adore being outside. I also create greeting cards with my photos (for personal use, not for sale).
    Among my other interests are jewelry making and rock collecting. I play guitar and love to sing, and I read almost anything I can get my hands on. (Moristotle has lent me and my husband several of his books.)
 

Copyright © 2023 by Theresa E. Dow Saffold Theresa was born and raised in farm country in Upstate New York. She and her husband moved to West Virginia for 14 years and then, in 2020, to North Carolina. They find much to love about those parts of our country.