Julia Rose

July 31, 2008
My beautiful blond little sister, Julia Rose, was on this earth only 55 years and one day. We will never know how many lives her kindness and amazing courage touched, but she was one of a kind. She was a wonderful sister and as our cousin Lois said today, she leaves an incredible legacy in her two children. We shared many things: love of our family (yes), Scrabble (not so much), and quilting (definitely). When MS took her ability to continue hand quilting, I had the honor of quilting her quilt tops for several more years. She drafted cryptograms during the many hours she had to lay in bed, but when she would be at her voice controlled computer, they would be encrypted and sent for us to enjoy. They are on her website http://www.jgpuzzles.com/. For those of you who knew her, you can read her obituary in the Sunday Eureka Times Standard online http://www.times-standard.com/. We will leave Julia's blue jewel box quilt up for the next few days. We will get back to quilting and living with a hole in our heart that has lots of memories. Your inspiration will be with us forever, Julia.
-love Onie


Jen just sent me the link to Julia's online memorial for those interested: http://www.jenfein.com/Main/Julia.html
My heart is with my family today, who have all lost someone very special. My thoughts today will be on Scrabble games and homemade desserts, of which we had many with my Aunt Julia.
Love to all,
Karen

Quilt 76 - Julia's Blue Jewel Box

2000, 64" X 80"

For several years I made a jewel box quilt for one of my siblings each Christmas. This is the quilt that was made for Julia. I often start with a color scheme or border fabric and match all the "jewel" pieces to that.

Julia, You are my inspiration. Love and Memories last forever.

-posted by Ione

Quilt 75 - Julia's Red and Yellow Quilt

Year?, 50 x 50
Aunt Glad and Aunt Julia went to a quilt retreat at which Julia made this quilt. I love the vibrancy of this color combination. (This picture is about 3/4 of the quilt.) She sent it to Mom to do the quilting. The quilting design in the blocks was meant to resemble flames. (Hey Mom, is the border fabric on this quilt the same fabric you used for the red blocks on her Scrabble quilt?? On purpose or just a coincidence?)

Quilt 74 - Scrabble Quilt

1998, 24" X 24"

This week we will be posting quilts to honor the birth date of Aunt Julia to Karen and sister to Ione. Julia's scores in Scrabble have always been numbers that would truly amaze others. In 1998 I was making a lot of color wash quilts and one day thought it would be fun to make a scrabble board. Scrabble players look at this quilt and know it is a scrabble board even without the words or letters on it.

Quilt 73 - Midnight Star in the Garden of Hope

Midnight Star was made for the Gig Harbor Quilt Festival in 2006. Approximately 30 x 30".

The Gig Harbor Quilt Festival raises money for local breast cancer charities, and has a silent auction as well as a challenge for small wall hangings each year. Mom and I made this quilt together as part of the color challenge for that year.

We started it at a quilt retreat in Staples, MN, and finished it shortly there after. Definitely outside our box as far as color and technique. (It was my idea to do these blocks, which take forever, and have now been relegated to the "been there done that, never doing those again" list!) We added the dark triangles as an after thought, and loved the dark star that appeared. We put a small pink ribbon on all of our quilts for the Quilt Festival, and this one was no exception.

We decided to buy this one back ourselves and gave it to my Aunt Connie Whitney as her survivor quilt.

More information on the Gig Harbor Quilt Festival can be found on their website: www.gigharborquiltfestival.org

Quilt 72 - Jan's Purple Leaves

Many of my quilt ideas start from simply seeing two fabrics in my stash (or more likely in Mom's stash!) that look good together. More than one quilt has been conceived because a pile of fabric has been tossed around and suddenly a wonderful color scheme appears. Such was the case with this quilt.

On my birthday trip to the ocean in 2007, the fabrics in this quilt ended up on the same pile when we were unloading our quilting bags. I loved the contrast of the golds and purple (Go, Huskies!) and the tone on tone purple could not have been a better match to the leaves on the batik.

I whipped up some leaf blocks and filled in with some coordinating batik. The block I used usually has a bias or applique stem on the leaf, but I decided to leave it off. I did the quilting myself on my small machine, and tried to accent the leaves with stems and veins in a variegated thread.

For good measure, I've included a picture of the back, which has a third coordinating batik with dragon flies.

I always have a show and tell at work after my ocean trips to show my boss all the projects we made. She absolutely loved this one, so I saved it and gave it to her for a birthday present later that year.

Quilt 71 - Adele's Patriotic Stars

2000, 50" x 75 "
On May 7 (Quilt 42), we posted Ione's quilt using these same exchange blocks. This is Adele's Patriotic Star Quilt done for the Sister's Gazebo exchange. It is always fun to see how everyone sets the blocks differently!