Category Archives: family

Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes

by Dawn Posted on October 19, 2025

Oh wait, that’s not right. This is more like it: Hubby Needs a New Bathrobe.

And now he has one:

Yes, the Dear Husband has a new bathrobe to replace the last one I made him, which was completely worn out. I confess: it was more than worn out. The cuffs on the sleeves were so frayed that I resorted to turning the ends inside and stitching new hems as a temporary measure while I made him a new robe.

I found the perfect fabric at Montavilla Sewing Center in Lake Oswego where I teach: a honeycomb design on a midnight blue background, part of the “Patchwork Blue” line from Maywood Studio. It paired beautifully with the midnight blue blender (“Shadow Play,” also from Maywood) that I used for the front band, tie belt, and pocket trim:

My view of the DH reading the newspaper every morning at the dining room table just got better!

Posted in bathrobe, family, garment sewing, update | 4 Comments

Christmas in July

by Dawn Posted on July 30, 2025

If you’re a quilter who subscribes to quilt shop websites or has been in a quilt shop recently, you probably know that July is the month that holiday and Christmas-themed fabric lines hit the quilt shops. It may seem funny to be thinking about such things at the height of summer but when dazzling arrays of holiday prints start appearing in shops and flooding your phone and tablet screens — well, let’s just say some of those fabrics can be mighty hard to resist any time of year.

I’ve been tempted by several new collections but it’s a line of fabric from 2024 that caught my eye: “Enchanted Christmas” by Makower UK Fabrics. The Dear Husband and I took a little road trip to Walla Walla, Washington in June, which is where I came across these lovely fabrics at a quilt shop called Stash:

I could visualize these prints in a kaleidoscope quilt with the reindeer fussy-cut to show them off to best advantage. But I needed a few more fabrics. Back home in Portland I raided my stash and added these to the mix:

And then just a few days ago I found the perfect background fabric at the quilt shop where I teach, the Lake Oswego branch of Montavilla Sewing Centers:

That’s a creamy white Grunge from BasicGrey for Moda Fabrics — and it has gold sparkles in it!

And the kaleidoscope quilt pattern? It just happens to be one of my own:

I’ve already made a version of Season to Taste with holiday fabrics . . .

. . . but I wound up giving it as a Christmas gift to my twin sister Diane in 2021. Funny, I didn’t remember until pulling up the photo just now that it also has reindeer in it.

By the way, the name of my quilt pattern is a reference to making wall hangings or table runners that reflect the four seasons. Here are my four:

You can probably tell the order of seasons in the photo above is spring, summer, fall, and winter.

I’m so looking forward to cutting into my new fabrics but I won’t allow myself to begin until I’ve finished my current project. And just so you know, quilting has commenced!

Posted in family, home dec, kaleidoscope quilts, table runner, update, wall hanging | 4 Comments

A Pillowcase for Jan

by Dawn Posted on July 24, 2025

Today I visited a dear family friend I have known since I was six years old and delivered this sweet pillowcase as a surprise for her:

It was made using my own free tutorial.

Jan is now in her late 80s and living in a residential memory care facility. Fortunately, it’s less than two miles from my home so I’m able to stop by and visit her a couple times a week. When Jan was moved there last December, I gave her a quilt I had recently completed so her new home would have a splash of color:

Perhaps you recognize the Picnic Quilt, the first of three quilts I made last year from a free pattern from Cloud 9 Fabrics called Ribbon Box. I chose the fabrics for Jan’s pillowcase with the Picnic Quilt in mind.

Here’s a close-up of the pillowcase fabrics because the photo at the top of this post doesn’t do them justice:

The main body of the pillowcase is a leaf print from the “Garden Dreams” line by Amber Elliot for Riley Blake Designs. The narrow uneven stripe used for the bottom band is from the Tilda Classic Basics Collection. (The selvage information calls it “Pen Stripe Light Blue” but it definitely reads as aqua to me.) I bought those two fabrics specifically for Jan’s pillowcase — and I liked the fabrics so much I bought enough to make a pair for the Portland White House. The sage green fabric used for the folded flange is an older piece from my stash, designed by Barbara Brackman for one of the “Morris Tapestry” lines for Moda.

I’m delighted to report that 1) the pillowcase looks great with the quilt, and 2) Jan loves them both!

Posted in family, home dec, picnic quilt, pillowcases, Ribbon Box quilt, tutorial, update | 3 Comments

Floral Fracture: Framed

by Dawn Posted on July 21, 2025

It’s taken forever and a day (or so it seems) to get the folded flange and border attached to my fractured image:

I blame the weather. It’s been so sunny and dry in Portland since my last post that the Dear Husband and I have been spending an inordinate amount of time outside. Watering and weeding, weeding and watering. (Big sigh.) I shouldn’t complain because we’ve been enjoying the bounty our small urban garden is providing: rhubarb, raspberries, French filet bush beans, perfectly plump Early Girl tomatoes, potatoes, apples, and all manner of herbs. It’s ever so satisfying to venture out into the backyard and gather whatever herbs are going into our dinner. I’ve already made a big batch of pesto using basil, parsley, and sorrel — and now all three are begging to be picked again. Oh, and we are going to have an artichoke!

Now that my floral fracture is framed (so to speak), it’s time to make a quilt sandwich and get to the quilting. I’m auditioning a variety of thread colors by pooling them on the quilt top:

It’s rather hard to see the thread but that’s the point: I want the quilting to add subtle texture without it being the first thing you notice when you look at the finished product. I’ve decided to quilt simple wavy lines diagonally across the quilt. I may wind up testing the thread colors on a scrap to help me decide whether to go with green, aqua, or a variegated green/blue thread.

I’d really like to get this wrapped up in order to move on to the next project, which I am already dreaming about.

Posted in family, fractured image, update | 5 Comments

Floral Fracture, Before and After

by Dawn Posted on June 30, 2025

My fractured image is complete but before I show it to you, take a look at the original floral design:

Isn’t that gorgeous? It’s the focus fabric from Jason Yenter’s “Unusual Garden” line for In the Beginning Fabrics dating back to 2017.

Now look at my fractured image:

You’re getting the full ripples-in-a-pond effect that fracturing an image creates.

As I was looking at this on my design wall, I wondered what it would look like turned on its side:

Wow! I really like the look of that. Most floral designs have a definite top and bottom but Jason Yenter’s design is more versatile than that. Maybe that’s why he named it “Unusual Garden.”

Just for fun, I gave my image another quarter turn:

And then another:

I must say I like them all, even though I do have a favorite. (Do you?) Since this is going to be a wall hanging, I don’t really have to choose, do I? I could hang it any one of four ways. As my twin sister Diane (visiting from Georgia) pointed out, “You can’t lose!”

Following the lead of my friend Lynn, who fractured the very same image, I’m going to add a very narrow flange of mossy green and finish it with a narrow solid black border. Since this is so small I’ll quilt it myself. The next big decisions are what color thread to use and what quilt design to employ. Stay tuned!

Posted in family, fractured image, update | 6 Comments

Berried Treasure Is Back from the Quilter

by Dawn Posted on May 15, 2025

A heartfelt thank you to all my friends and followers who responded with words of condolence and comfort following my last post about our beloved cat Coco’s departure from this world. So many quilters are also pet owners and they love their furry friends as much as the Dear Husband and I loved our Coco. We want you to know how much we appreciate your messages. We miss her so much.

Last week I picked up my Berried Treasure quilt from longarmer Karlee Sandell at SewInspired2Day. Karlee sent me a teaser shot of the quilt while it was still on her longarm quilting machine:

As usual, I am thrilled with the result!

I chose “Embellish” by Quilts Complete as the quilting motif. It’s the fourth time I’ve asked Karlee to use this quilt design; it seems it is becoming my “go to” motif. At my request she used a pale green thread to blend with the outer border. It also blends well with the yellow background in the 4-Patch Wonder blocks and looks good against the vibrant blue in the sashing strips and setting triangles.

Here are a few shots of the quilting:

Notice in the photo above how the quilting goes beyond the raw edges of the quilt top? I always ask Karlee to do that. The main reason is that the quilting stitches hold all three layers together after the quilt is trimmed, making it much easier to apply the binding. There’s another reason: I often cut my outer borders an inch or so wider than my planned border width. That gives me the option to keep that extra width in the final quilt, trim the excess batting and backing right at the raw edge line, or trim the borders to make them a little narrower. I like to have options.

Here’s a look at the back of the quilt with the focus fabric on display:

You can see that I have the binding ready to go. It’s the same green floral print as the outer border. With Berried Treasure I didn’t have enough border fabric to cut my strips a bit wider because I needed to save a few inches for the binding strips. I used up every last bit of that green floral fabric!

Now the quilt has been trimmed . . .

. . . and the binding is ready to go:

Oh, how satisfying it is to pen the words “Binding has commenced!”

Posted in 4-Patch Wonder, cats, family, faux-kaleido quilts, kaleidoscope quilts, update | 3 Comments

Remembering Coco

by Dawn Posted on May 3, 2025

It’s been a rough week. Last Sunday the Dear Husband and I had our beautiful calico cat Princess Cordelia – known to many as Coco — put to sleep. Although she appeared healthy at her annual exam last July, the visit was followed by a series of medical setbacks, all requiring medications she was notoriously uncooperative about taking.

Early Friday morning of last week she threw up and wouldn’t eat anything all that day and well into Saturday. Coco’s regular vet was unable to see her Saturday afternoon so I took her to a veterinary pet hospital open 24/7. A battery of tests revealed no medical reason why she would be refusing food. Still no change by Sunday night. With no way to tell if Coco would start eating on her own if we took her home and knowing that every trip to the vet would cause her additional stress, we made the agonizing decision.

Coco brought so much joy into our lives. She could be loving but feisty (a trait of her breed), playful but laid back, serene but goofy. She adored my husband right from the start; in fact, I think she preferred him to me. If we were watching TV in the evening, it was Charlie’s lap she would usually settle on. Or she would sit right next to him with one paw on his arm in what I can only describe as a proprietary gesture. The very first day we brought her home, she staked her claim on Charlie:

I have my dear friend Colleen to thank for bringing Coco into our lives nine years ago as a stray cat needing a forever home. You can read how it happened here.

My special time with Coco was in the morning. My routine is to sit on the couch with my first cup of coffee and my iPad, reading my email followed by a look at my website to see how many visitors I had the day before, then Instagram, then The Oregonian, and finally the New York Times Spelling Bee. After her breakfast Coco would come sit on my lap for five or 10 minutes. Then she would move to a place on the couch right next to me or close by. Returning from the kitchen with my second cup of coffee, I would invariably find she had taken my spot on the couch.

Coco liked to hang out with both of us. If it was the Dear Husband, it was most likely in the garden where she could supervise his weeding and planting. She was a frequent visitor in my sewing room. If I was taking photos of a quilt top or a backing or a finished quilt, she would appear out of nowhere and flop down on it (“Miss Floppy” was one of her many nicknames):

It wasn’t just quilts she would flop on. She would flop on my ironing board . . .

. . . my cutting table . . .

. . . my sewing machine table:

If she wasn’t on something . . .

. . . she was in something:

Over the last several days I have returned again and again to my blog posts and Instagram feed, filled as they are with pictures of Coco photobombing my photo shoots or just being so adorable I couldn’t resist reaching for my camera.

The Dear Husband and I are still reeling from losing her. She was only 9½ years old; we fully expected to have her for many more years. But we cannot dwell on that; we need to remember the nine years we did have with her and celebrate every one.

Here is a handful of my favorite photos of Princess Cordelia over the years:

Posted in cats, family, update | 17 Comments

Backing for Berried Treasure

by Dawn Posted on April 19, 2025

Here is the very simple pieced backing for my recently completed 4-Patch Wonder quilt top, Berried Treasure. The quilt back measures 77″ x 91″ — four inches more on all sides than the quilt top measuring 69″ x 83″. That’s standard for a quilt that’s going to be quilted on a longarm machine by a professional quilter.

The bottom half of the quilt back came from my stash and was chosen because it was the perfect shade of green. The design is a map of Manhattan. (The Dear Husband has been fascinated by maps since he was a small boy and as a result I have acquired several fabrics in my stash that feature actual maps.)

Whenever I make a kaleidoscope quilt (or in this case a faux-kaleido quilt), I like to include a piece of the original focus fabric on the back. Why? For the simple reason that people always want to know what fabric design created such an amazing diversity of blocks. The floral fabric you see above (an older piece of Lakehouse Dry Goods’ “Raspberries and Hydrangea” fabric line in the blue colorway) was stacked and cut into identical squares and then rotated to create the individual blocks, which you can see on this photo of the quilt front before the borders were added:

I’m hoping to deliver the quilt and backing to my longarm quilter early next week. It would be lovely to get this beauty quilted and bound by the end of the month. One can hope!

Posted in 4-Patch Wonder, family, faux-kaleido quilts, kaleidoscope quilts, update | 3 Comments

It’s a Wrap: Wonderful World

by Dawn Posted on January 1, 2025

Happy New Year, friends! The year 2024 is a wrap and so is my final finish of the year, Wonderful World, so named because the text print in the quilt contains the lyrics to “What a Wonderful World,” first recorded and made famous by Louis Armstrong:

Truth be told, I didn’t finish hand-stitching the label to the back until today but I hope you will indulge me and let me count it as a finish for 2024.

The photo above and the following ones were taken late this afternoon as the weak winter light was waning but I think you can get a good idea of how my third version of the free Ribbon Box quilt pattern turned out.

Here’s a flat shot of the front . . .

. . . and of the back:

It measures 51″ x 64½” and contains six prints from the “Gingham Foundry” line of fabrics by Riley Blake that came out in 2021.

Even though I was in a hurry to finish this quilt, I took the extra step of adding a contrasting ring to my trademark round quilt label:

And where is Coco, my photobombing cat who can usually be found lounging on a newly finished quilt? She has spent a good part of the afternoon on the Dear Husband’s lap while he watched college football games on TV.

I’ve already decided that Wonderful World is going to be my new go-to lap quilt so you can expect to see a photo in the near future of Her Majesty — Coco’s full name is Princess Cordelia — in slumber and/or repose.

Thank you all for continuing to follow me at First Light Designs! It cheers me so much to see your kind comments and spurs me to keep creating with fabric and posting about it.

All the best to you in 2025!

Posted in cats, family, update | 7 Comments

“What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”

by Dawn Posted on December 31, 2024

Do you know that lovely song written in 1947 by Frank Loesser? If not, you owe it to yourself to listen to the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald’s lush rendition. You can do that right here. This New Year’s Eve I’ll be putting the finishing touches on my final quilt finish of the year, Wonderful World. It will be the subject of my first post of 2025.

In the meantime, here are a few images of our decorating at the Portland White House to keep the holiday vibe going. I love seeing the elaborate decorations some of my fellow quilters have posted on their blogs and Instagram pages, especially because my decorating seems to get more minimal every year. We do keep our decorations up until Twelfth Night (January 6) so we have a few more days to enjoy them.

I bought this lovely wreath at Trader Joe’s in early December and added the clusters of red bells:

We had the exterior of our house painted this year. The door and mailbox were painted a lovely shade of green. The lights you see reflected in the door and windows are icicle lights on the curved arch on the front porch. From the sidewalk you can see our tiny tree and my little round quilt, Holliberry Circle: