April, 2025

Lyons Quilting; Special Olympics; stale beer; quilt math; 75 years; William Tell; and more

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Greetings quilting friends,

The days are longer and warmer. Spring always feels like such an emotional rebirth. Apart from my allergies, I love it! And spring means baseball is back. Let’s kick this off with the national pastime…

Colemanisms

Jerry Coleman was a second baseman who played in 6 World Series for the Yankees in the 1950’s. He was also a fighter pilot in both World War II and Korea, the only major leaguer to see combat in both wars. Coleman’s better known today as a Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster, primarily for the San Diego Padres. As a broadcaster, he was prone to saying some colorful things that in some cases weren’t quite what he intended.

“Rich Folkers is throwing up in the bullpen.”

“On the mound is Randy Jones, the left-hander with the Karl Marx hairdo.”

“Eric Show will be oh-for-ten if that pop fly comes down.”

“Those amateur umpires are certainly flexing their fangs tonight.”

Quilt shop in Lyons

My exhibit of Star quilts at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum drew to a close this month. We drove to Colorado to collect the quilts and see friends. While there, we detoured slightly to visit Tracey Barber’s shop, Lyons Quilting. It’s in the beautiful town of Lyons on the road between Boulder and the Rocky Mountain National Park.

Tracey is an exceptional quiltmaker who has made many of my designs, including the version of O Beautiful! (below) that appears in Red, White & Blue Star Quilts.

Her classroom was adorned with quilts she and her customers made from my patterns. That’s where I signed autographs and talked about quilts for a while with some of the sharpest quilters I’ve ever met.

If you’re ever in Denver or doing a college visit in Boulder or Fort Collins or touring Rocky Mountain National Park, you must budget some time to take in Lyons Quilting. It’s a great quilt shop. You’ll thank me as you fill your car with all your new fabric and supplies!

Special Olympics

We raced back from Colorado with a car full of quilts in order to see our daughter Kate compete in Special Olympics. The competition was held at Grinnell College, so that made it easier on us after all the traveling we had done during the week.

The Special Olympics oath states, “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.” Well let’s just say in the morning during the softball throw Kate was brave in the attempt. She finished fourth but threw about as well as she can.

After lunch, though, she punched her ticket to the State games on the campus of Iowa State University by winning the 50-meter dash. As always, we’re very proud of her, win or lose.

Stale Beer

Here’s a tagline that should get your attention. Judy Martin’s quilting newsletter: Come for the quilting; stay for the stale beer!

In my last newsletter I shared some folk remedy hair care suggestions that might be of a questionable nature. One was that Budweiser is a good hair conditioner. I had a number of beer-swillin’ quilters back up that assertion. One, Cynthia, had this to say: “Beer has been touted as being good for the hair as long as I can remember! I am 77 so I do have a few memories! Must say, personally, I never tried the beer but knew several who swore by it! If I remember correctly it should be stale. Think the gals would have hubby pour a couple fingers and then let it sit. As I said, I didn’t try it. Never have liked beer ever!”

I learned something new! And I agree with Cynthia about having never liked beer

Does 4 Fat Quarters Equal a Yard?

Patricia wrote with this important question. “In some of your earlier books, say I'm doing one of your scrap quilts, and it calls for approximately 4 yards of darks, and 3-1/2 yards of lights, how do I know I have enough when I'm trying to cut from my scraps or yardage. I had thought that if I divided the four yards into fat quarters I would need 16 but it does not seem to be enough. Can I be pretty sure of doing it this way? Thanks for the reply.”

Here’s my reply. The nice thing about making scrap quilts from fat quarters is that if you run out, you can always buy another (different) fat quarter to substitute (or be proactive by buying a couple of extra fat quarters before you begin, and if you don’t need them, add them to your stash for the next quilt. This will also give you more scrap variety in your quilt.

In general, 4 fat quarters equals a yard works if your patches are not large (like alternate blocks) or if you start by cutting the large patches and then cut smaller patches from the leftover strip ends. I never place the same fabric in the same place in each block, and that helps, too. For Log Cabins, I’ll cut all log lengths from each fabric. I start with the longest logs, and cut some of the shorter logs from the leftover strip ends.

So, do 4 fat quarters equal a yard? Maybe, if you’re not cutting large patches and if you start with the longest strips and then cut the shorter ones. If you buy an extra couple of fat quarters to hedge your bets, you’ve got a start on building your stash for the next project.

Judy’s Diamond Jubilee

Earlier this month I celebrated my 75^th birthday. The day of my birthday Steve and I had a meeting of our book club, plus Kate came over for her weekly Zoom dance class. That meant that any big celebration wasn’t in the cards. No matter. We simply made plans to do it the following weekend instead.

About a week prior Kate was prodding me to think about how I wanted to celebrate. After a little thought, I told Steve and Kate what I’d really love is to go to Oak Park, Des Moines’ best restaurant, and have Will and Lauren drive in from Chicago to join us. Steve checked online for reservations and reported back it was too close to the date to get anything.

So my actual birthday was nothing special. I talked to Will on the phone. Kate came over for her dance class, and we ate leftover Fightin’ Irish balls (one of my faves). Steve gave me a brilliant cookbook, Sweet Tooth by Sarah Fennel which validates a lot of my baking ideas. The next day I whipped up a batch of her coffee cake cookies. Yum!

Come Saturday Steve and Kate announced they were taking me to a new restaurant in Des Moines for dinner. I was concentrating at my sewing machine when I heard, “Happy birthday, Mom!” It was Will! I jumped out of my chair and hugged him. Then imagine my further delight when the “new” restaurant turned out to be Oak Park! My request for a birthday celebration had nothing to do with their plans: My genius family had been planning this for a couple of months.

Sunday morning Will made the best almond croissants I have ever eaten. He followed it up by making beef bourguignon poutine and roasted brussels sprouts. Wow. Just wow.

Best birthday ever! I got exactly what I wanted: to be surrounded by family for a few days; to go to my favorite restaurant; and to share kitchen time making a lot of delicious meals and treats.

Back in School Again

For the first time since I graduated from college over a half century ago, I was back in the classroom for something other than parent-teacher conferences. The local home ec teacher had been in the paper with her students showing off quilts they had made. Steve suggested I contact her about talking to her class about my career in quilting. That’s what I did.

I began by talking about my own sewing journey from learning how to sew by making my own clothes from commercial patterns to making my first quilt at 19 (and being hooked!) to designing my own rudimentary quilts to selling quilts at craft markets to landing my dream job at Quilters Newsletter Magazine to going off on my own to write and publish quilt books to having my quilts displayed in museums and major one-woman exhibitions.

Then I showed them a number of my quilts to try to give the students a sense of what quilts could be if they just let their fancies take flight. I also brought some quilt blocks so they could play with arrangements on a design wall.

I don’t know if I inspired the next quilt designer you need to pay attention to. It delights me to think that might have occurred that day, but I know the odds say I probably didn’t. I’m pretty sure, though, I fostered a greater appreciation of quilts and quilt makers. That’s always a good thing. Perhaps a couple of the students will become avid quilters. That would be an even better thing. A week later I got a thank you card from the class. One student wrote she was going to quilt with her grandma that weekend!

It was a fun afternoon. I hope I get the opportunity to do it again.

Upcoming Schedule

I’ll be out and about doing some lectures over the next many weeks. I hope to meet some of you!

On May 27 I’ll do not one but two(!) lectures at the Des Moines Area Quilters Guild at 1:00 and 6:30. The meetings are at the West Des Moines Christian Church at 4501 Mills Civic Parkway. I’ll be doing one lecture on Log Cabin quilts and one on Star quilts. As I write this, I don’t know which one will be at which time.

On June 10 I’ll be with the Ankeny (Iowa) Area Quilters Guild at 6:30 for my Log Cabin lecture. The meeting is at the First United Methodist Church at 206 SW Walnut Street in Ankeny.

Finally, I’ll be at the Quilters Hall of Fame in Marion, Indiana for the induction of the noted quilt scholar, researcher, and author Laurel McKay Horton. The Celebration runs from July 17-19. I’ll be doing my lecture, One Quilt Leads to Another, on one of those days. (I’m sure I’ve been told when, but I can’t find it right now. Details will be up on the website soon.)

The Lone Ranger and Pizza Rolls

Finally, here’s a video that’s guaranteed to put a smile on your face and a spring in your step.

And then there’s this clever campaign:

Hi-Yo, Silver! Away! Until next time…

Judy Martin
http://www.judymartin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/QuiltingWithJudyMartin
info@judymartin.com