Three quilts and a life lesson I will never forget Posted by Virginia "Ginnie" Leiner on April 27, 2014 at 10:28pm View Blog

Right after my college graduation in 2005 (I was 50 years old - it took me 32 years to get my degree in History!) I was hired as the Executive Director of the Ligonier Valley Historical Society. Fancy title, hellish job. It was a very good thing to do for three years although it took everything out of me. The Society has a 1799 Stagecoach stop museum called Compass Inn and we did living history, candlelight tours, school tours, fundraising events, you name it we did it with a staff of two and a handful of volunteers. Each year was a holiday event called the Festival of Lights. We held a silent auction and for three years 2005, 2006 and 2008, I made a Christmas quilt to be auctioned off. The first from 2005 is above. The second year, 2006, my daughter Becky did the cross stitch for this beauty. The theme was sweaters and mittens. I am really sorry this one got away from me because it was spectacular.

In 2007, I did not make them a quilt as my daughter, Jamie was getting married and I was too busy. In 2008 I did however and it turned out to be my last year there as director. Good thing too. I was tired. The board and I were not agreeing on the direction for the society and it was time to go. I had started looking for a new job in October while working on this quilt and announced my departure after the Festival of Lights was ended. Here is the third quilt. Now this quilt has an interesting story, and a fitting end to the saga of Ginnie and the LVHS. Things had gotten pretty rocky at the office - the board knew I was unhappy and frustrated. Becky did the cross stitch again on this quilt and as you can see, there is alot of white fabric. The texture on this one is a mix of satin and corduroy. It is just beautiful. I tell you these details because of what happens next. At the opening night of the Festival of LIghts when the auction items, including this quilt are displayed for the crowd to peruse, someone spills red wine on the white border and does not tell anyone. As soon as the night is over, I discover the spreading burgundy stain and totally lose it. All efforts to remove the stain are in vain so I pulled the quilt from the auction which made me even more popular! I have always wondered if the spill was vandalism. I gave the quilt to Becky as a thank you for all her hard work and we have both decided the stain is just part of its story (a pink stain now).

Lesson learned? Never, ever give away your joy, your creativity, your talent to someone(s) who will not appreciate and treasure it. The funny footnote to the story is that two people kept bidding on the quilt after it was withdrawn and the winner (who also won the 2006 quilt) was so upset that she could not take it home. Did she not notice it was gone, missing, vamoosed? Sure wish I had that 2006 one though.... Gin

Time for another quilt project - this time it's documentation Posted by Virginia "Ginnie" Leiner on May 10, 2014 at 11:00pm View Blog Any of you who check into my site will notice that I am posting quite a few new quilt pictures and creating new albums. Some of them are from the very early days of my quilting life, such as this one from 1975, a quilt I made for my mom and is in fact, the very first quilt I ever quilted. I must not have thought much of the quilting process however, because I went back to tying for several years! And the quilting on this is pretty atrocious!

When my parents moved into a senior living community a few years back, Mom gave me back this quilt so it has come home so to speak. She must not have used it much because it is in very good shape. Ironically, my signature on the back is only half sewn, I will have to finish that!

This was long before I had a fabric stash and I was making quilts from scraps of fabric I had left over from making clothes. I distinctly remember some of the items I made with fabric in this quilt! So, I have been gathering information on all the quilts I have made. I have at least one picture of all of them except #20, which I recorded a long time ago as a baby quilt for a Jennifer Nightingale (Jennifer, if you are out there, send me a photo!) and I know it has three baby ducks on it. That's all I know though. I sincerely cannot remember it at all. My old photo books of my quilts were up to date until #86 or so from my pre-Pennsylvania days or 1997 or so. I had pictures of all the others, just not very well organized. Some were traditional paper photos, some were digital and I got it into my head that I would try to get digital photos of all 141 (yes, 141!) quilts that I had made. A big goal but I was charged up for it. So, I gathered all the digital photos and compiled my list. I identified which ones I did not have digital photos on and if I knew who had them and where they currently were. Then I turned to my facebook friends and started calling in quilt favors. I sent messages to all the owners or their heirs and asked them to send me digital photos of the full front of the quilt, the back where any signature, date, or dedication is, and a few detail shots. And the pictures have started coming in! Prior to 2000, I was making 5 x 7 prints of all the finished quilts so I started printing the digital photos I had as 5 x 7's (a small fortune was spent) and my book is almost complete. I purchased two new photo albums with archival paper and created an blank information card to be filled out on each quilt. So far I have two done. In the process of getting all the quilt records together, I discovered I had mis-numbered the quilts. So there are several places in the list where a number will be repeated with a letter B and sometimes C. I tried to make this work where it made sense, like quilts that went to brothers and sisters. Even though the current quilt I am working on is #133, there are 8 more after it if everyone is to have a unique number, but they were actually made prior to #133. Very confusing. I am not a patient woman but I am willing to wait a few more weeks before sending out 2nd reminders on some of the folks who owe me pictures. One of the most interesting requests for photos went to my prior fiancee who got a gorgeous Norman Rockwell Santa quilt. My daughters are still friendly with him and in fact friends with him on facebook so Becky agreed to ask him for the pictures. We will see if he complies. We did not split amicably. Deep sigh. Oh well. And the funny thing is, he gave me the quilt back. I should have kept it but it found its way to him again. Hope he didn't torch it... I will end with a series of baby quilts I made for brothers and sisters, the digital pictures of which have found their way to me this past week. Thanks to all the folks who so willingly (and happily) supplied the photos, especially to Chuck Luebke and Sandy Taghon. You guys are the best! The Luebke kids' (Beth, Kevin, and Caitlyn) quilts:

The Taghon kids (Katie and Brian)'s quilts:

and finally, the Masengarb kids (Jana and Karin)'s quilts:

All these baby quilts have gotten me into the mood to make a few more small quilts. Good thing too as I will be gramma again in September, this time to a little girl. Happy quilting! Ginnie

I'm back in the saddle again! Working on "Topography" with my cat buddy, Vinnie Posted by Virginia "Ginnie" Leiner on June 26, 2014 at 11:41pm View Blog

Loving how this quilt is coming together but I have run into a slight problem - it is too narrow. This is a wedding quilt for my "third" daughter, Artemis and her husband Tom and it is (at this time) 45 x 84 inches. I thought of adding a row of blocks down the right side. My husband suggested something sand colored so as not to take too much attention away from this "slice of earth and sky" I have created. While talking to my quilting daughter Becky on facebook tonight, she suggested I tilt it slightly and then make it square again with blockwork in the corners I will need to create to make it square. Since I am really trying to quilt outside the box with this one, that idea is appealing to me! Here is a better picture, sans Vincenzo Gato.Time for bed. I will think about this "problem" for awhile and come up with a solution I am sure. Notice how the "earth layers" have shifted in the bottom print.

Outside the box...outside the box.... Keep quilting! Ginnie

What a difference a year makes! Posted by Virginia "Ginnie" Leiner on September 16, 2014 at 8:30pm View Blog

Dear fellow quilters, As you will recall, last year at this time I was frantically quilting the 15 Christmas quilts in my year long project and hardly had time to breathe, let alone do anything else. Well, 2014 has been radically different and as I look back on 2013, I am amazed at how different two years can be. This year I have been working on three different quilts and as the year winds down, I am wondering if I will finish any of them! It has been a year of health challenges and I am sure that is the major reason for the slow down. In mid January, I had a foot surgery to alleviate the pain from arthritis in my right foot (called a mid foot fusion) and I learned to run the sewing machine pedal with my left foot. Actually, I was quilting the 15 Christmas quilts with the left foot most of last year as the right one was hurting pretty badly. I was off my foot for 13 weeks, both in a cast (or two) and a boot and finally was walking and driving by tax day, April 15. The next excursion into Healthcare Land, or "man, it sucks to get old" is bilateral knee replacement on November 17 this year. Yep, you heard me right. I will have BOTH of my knees replaced at the same time two months from now. What fun. What a pleasure to look forward to. I will be out of work for 6 weeks. Right now I am in a physical training program to strengthen my thigh muscles so that rehab and recuperation will be easier (yeah, right.) so I have moved my bicycle up to the living room on its stationary stand, right in front of the TV. I will bicycle away everyday between now and the surgery date and do the same when I come home from rehab around Thanksgiving. As you will remember, we have a multi-level old, old house so I will have to conquer the steps early in the game. I am so up for this because I know it will be no pain (or less) by Christmas. And that will be a real blessing. In the meantime, I will keep working on my three quilts and riding my bike. My new granddaughter is due any day (one of the quilts is for her, a sunflower baby quilt with the lyrics to "you are my sunshine") so I will look forward to a speedy trip to California by the end of the month to meet her. Life is so full. Take care, my friends and we will talk again soon! Ginnie PS: this is the center of the Sunflower quilt. I found the embroidered sunflowers on a pair of pants at the local Goodwill. I wore the pants once and then cut them up for the quilt!

Another cross stitch quilt is added to the Allmendinger women family collection Posted by Virginia "Ginnie" Leiner on October 24, 2014 at 11:30pm View Blog

The fourth in an apparently on-going series, here is the Thanksgiving cross stitch quilt all finished as of tonight. My sweetheart hubby is in New Orleans at a philosophy conference so I have been sewing buttons on like a crazy woman the last two nights and watching epic movies. It is finally done. We started this one many years ago, if fact, the cross stitch squares were originally intented to be an autumn quilt but my girls and I did so many, we got three quilts out of the effort. Here are the cross stitch quilts we have made so far: #1 - the Original cross stitch quilt begun in 1985 and finished in 2002, Christmas:

#2 - the Halloween quilt, finished in 2008:

and #3 the apples and school quilt,, finished in 2009:Becky and I have also made several baby quilts with cross stitching, in fact the baby quilt I am working on right now for my new granddaughter, Ruby Charlotte will have two cross stitched borders done by Becky, but these four quilts are exclusively cross stitch, both blocks and borders. That's a heck of a lot of cross stitching and most of it done by Becky!

One last cross stitch quilt series of pictures as a pictorial survey of how time can change us as well as our quilting. Here I am with cross stitch quilts 1, 2, and 3. I don't spend too much time looking in the mirror each day but I have come to the conclusion that as I get older, time is making more changes to me at a faster rate!

and here I am tonight. Oh vey!

What will the next cross stitch quilt theme be? No clue. Waiting for my daughters to tell me! Happy Quilting everyone! Ginnie

Life with new knees and other miscellany Posted by Virginia "Ginnie" Leiner on December 13, 2014 at 1:22pm View Blog

It's the end of week four after double knee replacement surgery and things are going pretty well. I am making progress and even getting some sewing done. Above is the Christmas stocking I just finished today for new granddaughter Ruby Charlotte who is almost three months old already. I will get it off in the mail to her Monday, arriving in time for Christmas and St. Nick. I am also getting some work done on Topography, which is possibility Artemis and Tom's wedding quilt. So things progress. I have not gotten much of Christmas out this year except for the Christmas quilts and pillows. Here is our feline companion, Vinnie, resting on the heat register on one of my Christmas quilts. Merry Christmas everyone!

New Granddaughter Ruby Charlotte and her baby quilt from Gramma Gigi (that's me) Posted by Virginia "Ginnie" Leiner on August 1, 2015 at 12:50am View Blog

She's 10 months old and has gorgeous blue eyes and a no nonsense attitude. That's my Ruby Charlotte. I finished her quilt in April but never got around to writing this post so here I am on Blue Moon night, unable to sleep and typing away. I first went outside and snapped a few pictures of the gorgeous blue moon and then a few dozen of my porch at night. In the summertime, the porches extend the house by a couple rooms. The front is wide open while the back is screened (great for late night reading and no bugs bothering me). A neighborhood cat whom we feed (we call him "Ghost" or "the old guy") sleeps on the back porch and I am always trying to catch him out there. No luck yet. Anyway, here is my favorite rocking spot by night.

And lastly, here is Ruby's quilt, the original subject of this post. Sorry I got a little distracted there. It must be the blue moon!

Lots of pictures in my albums. I should finish the next quilt, Topography this week and then it is on to the next new Granddaughter's quilt. Sylvia Reagan was born 2 months ago to my quilting daughter, Becky and her husband Todd.