Spunky Author, Roseanne Dowell, Shares Her Other Talents

One of my favorite things to do when I’m not writing is embroidery. Another is quilting. I’ve found a way to combine the two. First, I made baby quilts for my nieces. White on white, I machine embroidered them with the darning stitch so I had control. They turned out so nice, but I really love to hand embroidery. That’s when I discovered red-work. During a quilting shop-hop, one of the stores highlighted red-work. For those who don’t know what red-work is – it’s embroidery done in all red floss. Just the outline of the picture, not filled in like other embroidery patterns. 

A Christmas Wall Hanging Done by Roseanne

Anyway, I fell in love with it. Every year I make something for Christmas (usually a Santa) for my six children and give it to them on Thanksgiving. Sometimes it’s ceramic, sometimes wood. I found a Santa pattern and did it all in red-work, framed it and gave it to them.

That’s when I decided to make a baby quilt for each of my grandchildren – not for them, but for their first born. I had already made lap quilts for each of them. But where to find patterns? I started out with coloring books for designs. I traced the images onto 12x12 squares of muslin.  After I finished embroidering the squares, I cut sashing and sewed them together. For the backing I used various fabrics, not nursery print. None of the quilts have nursery fabric in them at all. I’ve used patterns from animals to Winnie the Pooh.

Eventually, I found transfer books and started using them for designs. I looked everywhere for baby designs. Thirteen of them are finished, but I now have 14 grandchildren, that’s a lot of baby quilts. Most of the quilts are done in red work, but several are done with various colors, too. I just finished the quilt top of the 14^th. Now, I have to put it together and quilt it.



The others have been finished for a couple of years. It took a several years to embroider all the squares. Since then, I also made quilts for my niece’s twins. One of the patterns is kittens and the other is bunnies. She had a girl and boy, so I thought the bunnies would be good for him. Now, she’s having another child. A boy–so I’m working on baby animals for her.

I gave my first grandchild’s quilt to my oldest granddaughter, who had a baby boy, my first great grandchild.  For my fourteenth grandchild, another boy, I found the perfect quilt pattern for him. Ducks.

I couldn’t wait to get it done, even though it’s going to be many years before he’ll need it. I’ve marked each quilt with the name of the grandchild they’re supposed to go to in case I’m not around to give it to them. My daughters have been instructed to pass them out. I hope I’m still around to give each child their quilt, but if I’m not they’ll each have a piece of me. I hope they treasure them. To store them, I put them in one of those quilt bags you get from the store. Yes, I bought a quilt for my bed. But I did make one too, I embroidered wild flowers in each square – and yes, I filled them in, not just outlined. It took over a year to do it, but it was worth it. Besides, I have nothing better to do in the evening while I’m watching TV. That’s the nice thing about embroidery, you can sit in front of the TV and still work on it.

If you’d like to know more about me or my books, check out my website www.roseannedowell.com and you can find my books at Amazon   http://amzn.to/tnqgR2