Sewing and Beyond with Mary Anne Ciccotelli

My First Quilt: With the help of my mother, I embroidered the bear blocks and completed this quilt to display at a church young girls’ activity.

1970’s Red Tied Quilt: I made this quilt to take to college.

1980’s

Seasame Street Quilt (1982): (above) This quilt was made when I was pregnant with my first baby. We Won, We Got the Right Baby!: For Christmas in 1985, I made my 3 year old daughter and her doll each a purple nightgown and tied quilt. Matching infant sized items were made with the left over fabric. After finding out she had a sister, Emily exclaimed – “We won, we got the right baby!”

1990’s

Cow Quilt: Emily loved cows and wanted a “Cow” quilt. Only fabric in the sewing room was used. This was the beginning of “FUN BACKS”. (Back of the cow quilt)

Jennie’s Animal Bedspread with Wooden Animals: Having just learned about machine quilting, I made Jennie this animal bedspread and painted the wooden animals to coordinate with the bedspread.
2000’s

Living Room Easy Pieces: (Left) While taking a log cabin quilting class with Nana (my mother-in-law), I also signed up for an Easy Pieces class. It was during this class that I realized that you could do more with your quilts than just blocks and sashings.

She Quilts – I Cook: (Top right) When I saw this panel, I immediately thought of my dear husband and how supportive and patient he is of my quilting obsession…and it’s a good thing he cooks!!

Living Room Water Color Basket: (Bottom right) This watercolor basket was created to match my New York living room.

Visit my sister’s blog to get the first news on the Quinquagenarian Quilt Quest. It was a great day. Thanks to everyone that came. More from me later.

P.S. We had an very special unexpected visitor – The Mortensen Owl. Thanks Rodney!

This past week I have been busy with LOTS of paperwork and running around trying to get things organized for the QQQ 50 1/2 Birthday Party. I can’t believe that it’s a week from today. (Hopefully at this time next week we will be having a nice relaxed breakfast with all our family – do you think I am DREAMING?????) Our house feels like it is being taken over by quilts. My children’s sewing classes ended on Wednesday so I took a couple of the sewing machine down and put this table up in my studio to stack some of the quilts on. (We actually have a couch in our living room.)

Here is my quilt rack with a bunch of the smaller quilts draping over it.

I have also been working on the plan of how/where to hang each quilt. I have made a template like this for each panel that we will be setting up. I have taken pictures of most of the quilts and have been moving them around to try and get what seems like a logical and appealing way to group and hang the quilts. As I have been doing this I have also remembered some of my older projects that I have up in my attic. I have matching tied quilts and nightgowns that I made for Emily and her doll for Christmas 1985. Along with that I had made matching a baby quilt and sleeper (I was due in February but didn’t know if it was a boy or girl). I have found all these pieces except Emily’s nightgown. Fun to see all this stuff together. I think this will make for a fun panel to show what kind of work I was doing back then.

Anyway, I am cleaning house today. The wave of family starts to arrive today. Let the FUN begin!!!!!! Hope to see you next Saturday.