April Journal Quilt

OK, OK, I know it is May 28th and here I am blogging about April's journal quilt. Let's just say I've had a lot going on.

I've been working on gifts for my daughter's teachers and they have been turning out quite nicely. (I'll post them at a future date.) They are wonderful teachers and really deserve a special gift so that's no problem. I've enjoyed creating their gifts.

Oh, and I'm having my second child, a son (Charlie) in about 10 weeks. My scheduled day is Friday July 31st. So, I've been distracted by nesting and cute little baby things...and eating...and resting...and trying to relish in my big pregnant self as this is most likely the last time I'll be pregnant. (I'm old and we only have a 2 bedroom house and a 4 seater car...in other words...we're full.)

OK, so here's what I've done with April so far in between everything else....

I like this pink commercial fabric that has a hand dyed look and my daughter had this cool waste cardboard from a bingo game in a Kid's Meal that looked to me like a great stencil and I just got a bigger container of pearl Lumiere paint.SOOOO....


I laid the stencil on the fabric...

Used a sponge brush to paint on the pearl paint...

And kept repeating until the whole cloth was covered.... TA-DAH!

I have since rubber stamped the words "Mommy's Belly is Getting Bigger and Charlie is Getting Stronger!" (this is what my daughter said in April and what the teacher wrote down on the class notepad when it was her turn for sharing time in pre-school) in black ink to a section of the fabric and I have layered it and will quilt it soon. I will probably quilt free motion circles around the stenciled circled with black thread...not sure exactly when I'll do that;but, it's nice that I have a plan.

Now...need to start thinking of MAY!!!!

Love, Grandma Betty

Grandma Betty-Katrina Block
Originally uploaded by bybethstudio

This block is in memory of my grandmother, Elizabeth Lay Eastwood MacConnell, a long time resident of the French Quarter who died while evacuated in Texas on September 29, 2005 exactly one month from Katrina’s landfall.

The main photograph of my grandma was taken by a photographer in 2005 at The Quarter Scene Restaurant where she ate breakfast daily. It really captures the essence of my grandmother. The smaller picture is one of the four generations (Grandma, Mom, myself and my daughter) that was published in the Times-Picayune shortly after my daughter’s birth in 2003. The excerpt is from a collection of letters written to me by my grandmother. It states, “It was nice to have Beth and Claire here for a visit-We enjoyed showing off 4 generations of girls at our favorite restaurant. We didn’t tell them-they figured it out by themselves-I guess there must be a resemblance between us.”

I used cat fabrics for both the front and back of the block as my grandmother was a “cat lady”. The beads are an old pair of glass Mardi Gras beads which remind me of the necklaces that my grandmother would wear regularly and they also represent her love of New Orleans.

One of the blessings of the evacuation (although, we didn’t see it as a blessing at the time ) was that my mother, my father, my husband, my daughter and myself were able to spend every day for a month together before Grandma got sick and died peacefully. My grandmother told my mother earlier that she dreamt that she would go to a small town and die there. Although she missed New Orleans terribly during the evacuation, small town Lampasas, TX reminded grandma in many ways of her small town childhood home, Owego, NY.