Jacqueline de Jonge Class

While I was visiting in Oklahoma, my daughter and I took a three-day class from Jacqueline de Jonge on Monday July 21st through Wednesday, July 23rd. It was held at the retreat center of Prairie Quilts in the town of Hennessey, 1 hr 22 minutes and 72.5 miles north of my daughter's home in Oklahoma City.

The Prairie Quilts store is on the main street of Hennessey and behind it is a brick building called The Hive, devoted to holding quilting retreats. The classroom is spacious and a delicious lunch with dessert was served daily. Robin and I stayed overnight three nights at the Sleep Inn & Suites, 0.5 miles north of Prairie Quilts on Main Street.

 

Robin has a second sewing machine so she loaded it in the car for my use. We set up across from each other near a bright sunny window. 

Here are the orange toned colors in my autumn table runner kit. The dark chocolate background, shown in an image from the instructions, is a deep luscious contrast that ties in well with the other lighter toned batiks.

The paper piecing is very labor intensive and time consuming. The smaller interior circle shown had 32 pieces. An outer ring that wraps around it had over 100 pieces. I was too absorbed and busy stitching away to take any in-progress photos of that section. This paper piecing technique contrasts sharply with a method like chain piecing. Even the removal of all the paper takes a good amount of time and effort. I guess, as with any process, once I get better at it, it will go more quickly.

The class did not have a formal agenda; students each had their own project they chose to work on. Jacqueline continuously circled the classroom, stopping at each person and assisting them with where they were at in their specific creation, many quite large and intricate. I chose a moderately sized table runner in an autumn colorway, which finishes at 20" by 60", as a small kit to learn the techniques. Although I have been sewing for over 60 years and quilting for over 50 years, I found myself the slowest student in the class of maybe a dozen or so folks. 

Here is a closeup of a portion of the outer ring. The tiniest orange piece is directly under the one inch mark on the ruler. I looked at that teensy piece and said "Jacqueline. Really?" She replied, "Yes. Really. If you do not do that I will haunt you!"

At the end of the third day both my daughter and I took photos with Jacqueline showing our progress. I am holding the sum total of my efforts — one circle with a tail — and, that center yellow sun still needs to be stitched down via appliqué. I asked Jacqueline how long it would take her to sew this table runner. She estimated about four hours. The saying attributed to Theadore Roosevelt, "Comparison is the thief of joy," can be so true if you let it. I am impressed with her answer, but I am not going to let it discourage me. I will continue to work on this table runner a bit at at time between other projects.

In the following photo, on the left, Robin has two additional stars similar to the one she is holding to show for her accomplishments. By the third star, her points were absolutely perfect!

The final photo is my goal. In the three day class I completed only one full circle. I still have two more full circles to go and four quarter-circles at the corners. Then the set in process for all these components will prove to be challenging I am sure. Perhaps by next autumn I will be finished...?

OKC Quilt Show

On July 16th, Frank and I went to Oklahoma to visit my daughter Robin, our son-in-law, and their two kids. We timed our visit to coincide with the Central Oklahoma Quilters Guild show. The show had 329 quilt entries and 22 vendors.

QUILTS
My daughter is a member of this guild. She had entered five quilts in the show: four she's made over the years and one I'd made for her and her husband as a belated wedding present. First off I will show those five quilts. My daughter's most recent creation was named Every Heart Beats True, completed in 2021.

The second and third quilt entries were ones my daughter had made for the nursery, one each for her daughter and for her son. The Winnie the Pooh themed one titled Rumbly in my Tumbly was for her daughter, shown at nearly 13 in front of her infant quilt. Robin put the final stitches on the binding of Rumbly in my Tumbly while in labor. A dinosaur themed one titled Isaiah Saurus was for her son. He came to the show, too, on the second day, but, alas, we have no photo of him in front of his infant quilt.

Robin's fourth entry was titled Slices of Sunset. I loved her combination of pinks, oranges, and purples.

My daughter surprised me with a special ribbon in honor of me to be placed on a quilt of my choosing.

I chose to put it on a quilt with no other ribbons so the maker would be surprised. My choice was Posh Penelope by Joyce Curtis. I loved all the colors and it inspired me to try out my own curved rulers by Sew Kind of Wonderful, a challenge that has be on my "to do" list for a while.

My daughter's fifth entry was a quilt I made for her for her wedding. Masquerade was made from mask fabric cut and assembled with the stack and whack method and the construction is detailed in my blog post for 10/16/2020. Robin was married in in May of 2011. Taking 9 ½ years to complete a quilt is not so bad, is it? It did sit squirreled away untouched for part of that time. My husband Frank and I are posed in front of Masquerader and he reminded me how during its construction I often referred to it as "The Quilt from Hell".

With 329 quilts in the show I could not show pictures of them all. I chose to limit myself to 5% or 16 quilts and state a reason why I selected each. Here are the remaining 10, in no particular order.

1) Blue Heron by Allison Vaccarro used the same stack and whack technique I used on Masquerade, with the added design feature of incorporating the hexagons around a central scenic panel. The way she blended the hexes with the panel in appropriate places around made for great transitions. Next time I have a panel that inspires me, I would like to try the same technique.

2) Hextravaganza by Frieda Grischkowski  used Tula pink fabrics, which I positively love. I could also appreciate the planning involved in the particular fabric placement. The name is way cool, too.

3) The unique color combination in Taste of Morocco by Donna Lemmons caught my eye and I could appreciate all the non-45° angles. (As a random note, this quilt and its maker seem to be fond of double consonants.) Taste of Morocco was a first time entry.

4) Crimson Christmas by Marsha Kirby, quilted by Jeremy Dickerson, had such crisp poinsettias I just had to capture it. The quilt is very striking, even more so by the strong color choices and 60° designs of Krista Moser.

5) This cosmic kitty by Frieda Gischkowski, aka Multiverse Cat 1,  made me smile. He seemed out of this world and the colorway and fabric choices supported the illusion.

6) The shapes and color choices selected by Karen Mott for Alhambra Rosette make for a strikingly stunning quilt. I am beginning to recognize in myself how I am drawn to quilts in solid colors yet I tend to sew predominantly in prints for myself. Self knowledge can grow from quilt shows.

7) Aha. In striking contrast to the previous quilt is solids, Dandelion Fine by Mary Miller is a celebration of prints. She was besotted with the Dandelion fabric as was I. I bought some of it in March of 2019 at the Sacramento Quilt, Craft, and Sewing Festival because it reminded me of a phrase in one of my son's  childhood books, I am a Bunny by Richard Scarry. "I blow the dandelion seeds into the air."

8) Zigzagging in October by Amy Stanley inspired me to another way to use the square in a square blocks I am fond of producing. It will showcase another use for my jelly roll creations when paired with a common background fabric. I have a jelly roll of polka dots and another of stripes. Both would work the way Amy Stanley designed her quilt. Zigzagging is fun to look at whether in a quilt or a slalom!

These two quilts are in my blog posts for 4/23/25 and 1/20/25 respectively.

These final two selections are quilts I would never attempt for myself. They are so labor intensive, especially when I refer to appliqué as "the A word".  Both quilts truly merit mentions.

9) Holiday House by Kathy Patty has no associated story. The quilter just loves holiday themes.

10)  Donna Lemmons used many different techniques to complete her quilt titled Christmas in Oklahoma. I am in awe of the joyful cacophony of everything Christmas.

I did not show all 329 quilts but I thought this 26 second video I took at the end when the quilts were being taken down might be fun to watch and show a few other quilts.

PURCHASES
In addition to the 329 quilts, the COQG show Symphony of Color also had 22 vendors. My daughter was in charge of securing vendors, signing contracts with them, and attending to the logistics of their set up and breakdown. It was a big job and I am so proud of her. Of course I had to buy stuff from these vendors.

Recently I had purchased a Lella Boutique pattern for a Frankenstein pillow. The vendor, Good with Sugar, had kits put together with fabric only in just the right combination of colors, especially those spot-on greens, so I picked up one kit. 

On the left of the next photo I bought the Quilted Projects for All Seasons book from Prairie Quilts. The funny story about that book is that I looked at it and put it back without buying it. I shopped at other vendors and came back to Prairie Quilts idly browsing some more. When I did not spot that book I got a clutchy feeling of, "Oh, no! I really wanted that book." The books had been merely rearranged and once I found it again, I bought it right then and there. Remember the song Big Yellow Taxi by Counting Crows? An excerpt from the lyrics is

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

On the right in the same photo is a Coriander Quilts Wooly Stars sheep pattern I have been eyeing for some time since when I first saw it at the The Quilts by the Bay show in Pacific Grove this past May 2025. It came from the Good with Sugar booth.

 

My good intention for this show was to not buy much fabric. My stash is overflowing and my suitcase from travel could not tolerate a lot of extra weight. Ever noticed how heavy fabric is?  But being on a fabric diet is like being on a real diet. You eat around everything except what you really want. That is how I accumulated theses notions and tidbits.

Coasters came from Grana’s Front Porch Fabrics and ​Christmas zipper pulls from Good with Sugar. Parrot scissors came from Sherry Worley and silicone tools from Prairie Quilts.

Well, just like a food diet, you can eat around a bunch of stuff before caving and indulging in what you really want. Here are the fabrics I bought. From 2 Busy Beez in Edgewood, NM I bought three one yard pieces that coordinated. I could not pass up that lovely peacock focal print. And I really do not have a lot of floral prints. This was the largest of my fabric lapses.

From Grana’s Front Porch Fabrics I bought this 1¾ yd remnant for the remarkable price of $5. How could I pass that up? Remember, I really do not have a lot of floral prints plus this is a Robert Kaufman. 

From Among Friends (Topeka, Kansas), this fireworks fabric was too outstanding to pass up. I only have a yard but is it too pretty to cut apart so it will most likely become a backing for something patriotic ... or perhaps a tote bag ... or maybe pillows...

I have a horse lovin' granddaughter so this panel will be something for her.

Although I'd gone to the show Friday, I also went in the afternoon on Saturday, the second day of the show. My grandson went in the morning on Saturday. He and his other grandma had fun digging through three long troughs of fat quarters on a hunt of horse themed ones for his cousin. They found six.

The whole family enjoyed the show a great deal and it was special, all the more so, due to my daughter's heavy engagement in its success.