Take your pick

Jan Z. saw this pattern in Paducah last year and had to have it - she loves handwork and knew she would enjoy all the embroidery.

Not a lot of room for big quilting designs but I managed to fit in some feathers.

Tammy started these feathered star blocks when I asked her to help me with piecing one for myself.  I never even finished one block and she ended up with a quilt.

I designed the border for her and love how this quilt turned out!  Quilting it was fun.

     After receiving several questions about this quilt I decided I had better include a few more details about the quilting.  I wanted to use trapunto on this quilt, the cut-away kind of trapunto, not just stacking two batts.  Because it is extremely time-consuming it's not a technique I usually do on customer quilts.  Tammy agreed to be the oneto do all the trimming away of excess batting - a process that takes many,many hours of careful snipping.  To me, it is well worth the effort because you end up with well defined quilting and a quilt that is still soft and drapes well.  I do use double batts for show quilts but you end up with a stiff, heavy quilt that works better on a wall than on a bed. 

     I marked this quilt with a blue washable marker, tracing the stems, curvy things and dots so that they would be exact.  To remove the marker and the soluble thread, this quilt had to be washed and blocked.

Typical wacky Kansas weather.  It's been dry and very windy so there are fire warnings all around the state.  Yesterday afternoon there were major grass fires in south central Kansas, tornado risk in eastern and northeastern Kansas, a blizzard in northwest Kansas and 80 degree temperatures in northeast Kansas.  Take your pick.

Lots of quilts and a big ribbon

This is Mayleen's quilt that she started in a class with Kaffe Fassett at Quilt Festival in Houston this last fall.  Mayleen is no shrinking violet when it comes to  color so it seems to me she is right at home with all these bright fabrics.

The quilting isn't going to show up much in such a bright busy quilt.  I outlined the flowers in the blocks.

And did straight and curvy lines in the border.

The backing is very cool. 

The members of my small quilting group were feeling uninspired and down in the winter doldrums so we decided to do a monthly color challenge.  Each month we choose a color combo and have to finish a small quilt by the next month using those colors.

Our first challenge was to use only neutrals with a small accent of color.  We have to come up with our own design - no patterns allowed!

This is my quilt:

Mayleen had never done a landscape quilt or worked without a pattern:

 

 

Tammy also did her own design for the first time:

Nancy didn't quite get hers finished. That month slips by really quickly!

We're going to continue our challenge after our guild quilt show this June.




Four years ago Peter and I went to the Dallas Quilt Show and posed in front of my first wholecloth, which won a blue ribbon that year.  We had just found out that Peter had cancer and it was his last trip to a quilt show - something we loved to do together.

 

 

 

This year, my second wholecloth won Best of Show at the Dallas Quilt Show.  I worked on this quilt in the months following Peter's death and it kept me busy during that difficult time.  I thought a lot about him as I worked on it which is why the quilt is called 'Remembrance'.  I know he would have been proud of that big
ribbon!