FLAMINGO FUN! – Around The Frame

Once again, I had a great time at the Maumee Valley Antique Steam & Gas Association Show. The corn-on-the-cob still at $1 an ear was great and the quilt show was full of wonderful vibrant quilts.

You couldn’t help spot the vivid pink flamingo quilt. Its vibrant colors drew me over for a closer look. It didn’t surprise me at all that it won the second-place people’s choice award.

The maker, Janice Bradtmiller, wasn’t present, so I caught up with her another day. Janice lives in New Haven with her husband of 61 years, Lester. They raised three daughters Teresa, Elaine and Tammy and now enjoy retired life. Janice learned to quilt when she and her mother visited an aunt who was at church “putting in” a quilt. Once the quilt was in the frame her aunt proceded to teach her how to quilt. She created her first hand-pieced, hand-quilted when she was twenty years old. It was a Bethlehem quilt that sadly is no more.

Janice purchased the Flamingo quilt wall hanging pattern at a quilt show in Fort Wayne. After she created the flamingo portion, her daughter Elaine saw it and she declared she wanted it for her bed. Using a traditional card trick pattern, Janice made the quilt top big enough to fit a bed. She loves to start with a pattern and then adding her own creative touches to make the design her own. It was machine quilted by Karen Martinez of Montgomery, Michigan. Janice asked Elaine’s permission to enter the quilt in the MVASGA show and she told her, for all means do it. Janice was flabbergasted when she heard she took second place because she had never won a contest before in her life. Her daughter, Elaine, is delighted to inform her friends that the quilt her mother made her is an award winner!

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Asking if she had any sewing or quilting advice, her reply was, “If you are going to get involved in any type of sewing, a seam ripper is your best friend.” I couldn’t have said it better!