Skip Navigation Website Accessibility

 

 

Customer Spotlight: Sheryl Dalpe and her Custom Indian Buffalo Wall Hanging


During our longarm certification training and support for customers doing their quilting at Cupcake Quilts, our associates enjoy collaborating with our customers to help add the actual quilting for their cherished quilt tops, wall hangings and other items.  We often have customers who have pieced their first quilts as a special gift or a cherished remembrance using clothing items of a loved one as the fabric for the quilt.

It is exciting to work on design selection, threads and backing fabrics with our customers. Then, as these customers continue to rent Cupcake’s Longarm Machines for additional projects, to see their skills and project complexity broaden.

Sheryl Dalpe, a long-time customer at Cupcake Quilts, has quilted several pieces with us over the last 2 years. Sheryl had a vision and passion in choosing the actual designs used in the quilting to fully complement her pieces. While Cupcake has multiple longarm designs to choose from, Sheryl enjoys finding just the ‘perfect’ design and in the rare instance, that she cannot find a design, she has been known to do her own digitizing and then have the digitized file converted by the Cupcake Associates to the proper format for the longarm.

Recently Sheryl made a Buffalo Head Quilted Wall Hanging at the request of her son-in-law Max.  Max’s uncle was a Jesuit Brother with the Oglala Sioux Tribe at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The family goes on a family reunion every other summer. This year, during July, they are going to be staying a night at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. While at the reunion, they will participate in a potluck and exchange gifts with the Sioux Tribe. Sheryl’s son-in-law asked her to help design a quilted wall hanging to be given to the Oglala Tribe in memory of his uncle who passed away 30 years ago.  This is a surprise for her son-in-law’s mother and aunts.

Sheryl and Max collaborated over phone calls, texts, and pictures so that she could create a quilted wall hanging that they felt represented the Oglala Tribe. Sheryl designed and pieced a large buffalo head on a light-colored background fabric, bordered with black sashing and multiple red and white tribal flags.



She created designs from scratch and then digitized specific designs in her embroidery software to use for the longarm quilting design. Sheryl worked with Julie Dippel at Cupcake Quilts to bring them into the correct format (BQM) through an additional software program specific for Longarm Quilting known as Art and Stitch. Once they had converted the files, they did some test stitching to double check placement and size before stitching on her masterpiece.

The buffalo head design in the center of the quilt was about 20 x 28 inches. The first custom design looked like ‘fur’ and when stitched with variegated thread, the quilting added dimension and texture to the buffalo head. Sheryl then did ruler work to create a crosshatch design to fill the background fabric right up to the irregular edges of the buffalo head.  Her custom ruler work created depth and a cleanliness to the overall piece.


Sheryl bordered the buffalo head with sixteen 6-inch blocks which represented the Oglala Tribal flag. Once again, Sheryl digitalized another custom quilting design for the flag blocks which included an eight-point star in the center circle of each flag with a radiating triangular design in the four corners of each flag block.


The last piece of quilting for this wall hanging included using a Native American design in each of the black sashing pieces, but required sizing modifications so that the design would fit within the small 2-inch by 6-inch sashing border pieces.


This art piece will be displayed as a wall hanging and the dimensions are 38-inches by 38-inches. Sheryl added a sleeve to make it easy to hang and display; she used Nebraska Themed Fabric for the backing. Max’s uncle was a big Nebraska fan; hence the red background fabric represents all the Nebraska teams.


Remember to add a label to your projects to include details as the name of the project, who made it as well as the date. We want others who see the work in the future to know part of the history and the original creator. Thathanka is an Indian word which is translated ‘Sitting Bull’.

Sheryl shared with us how much she enjoyed working alongside her son-in-law on this special project.  She was honored that he would ask, and they were able to share ideas and plan this art piece together. She has a passion to create and when able to share that passion with loved ones, her heart is full and happy.