Kay brought two HUGE tops for me to quilt for her. She is another one of those over achieving quilters that only makes big quilts with a million pieces in them! This is Tonga Rhapsody which is a BOM being done by Charlotte's Sew Natural in Newton.
At first I was overwhelmed by the bright batiks and busy blocks and couldn't figure out what to do. I ended up ignoring the piecing in the sampler blocks and doing a different curvy design in each one. I drew the design with chalk on each block as I advanced the quilt.
I like the way it turned out and I'm glad I didn't wimp out and do an edge to edge design.
I have served as president of Prairie Quilt Guild for the past year and last night was my last board meeting as president. Traditionally, the president makes gifts for the board members that have worked so hard all year. I made 16 of these cute pincushions (from a pattern called Pinballs by Vanilla House Designs) for my board members.
Don't they look like a strange alien garden? I had to visit every thrift shop in Wichita to find all the old candlesticks!
To beat the heat I have been taking my walk early in the day; when I leave the house the stars are still out. This little guy gets up early too.
This quilt of Ann's is a beauty! It's big and has about a million little pieces in it - just thinking about all that piecing makes me a little queasy. But Ann is a precision piecer and does wonderful work. I love the border print she used around the edge.
I'm not usually a fan of civil war reproduction fabrics but I love these fabrics - in fact I realized I had bought the same fabrics for a quilt I started three years ago. This is how far I have gotten on it:
Peter and I drove to Manhattan to see quilt appraiser Carol Elmore and have her appraise a quilt for me. It was foggy when we left home in the morning and the sun broke through as we were driving through the Flint Hills. I saw this:
And realized it was HUNDREDS of orb spider webs wet with moisture from the fog and glistening in the sunlight.
It was beautiful, but I wouldn't want to meet the hundreds of spiders that went with them!
From our most recent Prairie Quilt Guild meeting: who is that masked man?
It's Captain Quilt (aka Peter) He's everywhere, he's everywhere!
This is such an elegant little quilt! Merilyn made it as a sample for our local Wichita quilt shop, Material Girls. She said the fabric also comes in red and cream but I think the taupe and cream is beautiful.
Merilyn didn't want heavy background quilting so the applique blocks are really just done with SID quilting.
This is from a few days ago:
Fortunately it has cooled down - to only 100 degrees and we have had a good rain. This morning it was 72 degrees out, the coolest it had been in weeks. It felt heavenly! But at the Farmer's Market this morning I heard a little girl complaining about being cold to her mother, so I guess we all have our own personal thermostat.
This was Peter's breakfast recently: I think his tastebuds are dying. (That's a sliced cold wienie on his popcorn)
I just finished this quilt for Judy, I think it is probably the 12th one of this pattern that I have quilted. Luckily, I do like the design! Judy wanted heavy quilting which is time consuming but really my favorite way to quilt. She is new to quilting and did a nice job on this rather complicated design.
Some people are tired of stippling, but Judy requested it as a background pattern. I like it too, although I do think it was overused for a while. Anything gets tiresome if it is used everywhere, whether it is stippling, McTavishing, feathers or the current favorite: curved crosshatching.
It's been so hot here for so long that no one has been able to grow tomatoes in their backyard. I have three big healthy plants that I keep watering but it is so hot that what blossoms they manage to produce just drop off. Peter and I have been driving in to Wichita early every Saturday morning to go to the Farmer's Market. We have to get there early or the Tomato Man runs out of tomatoes. Here is the line at his stall.
As we left the Market the line had more than doubled but I had my bag full of tomatoes safely in my hand. We eat them at just about every meal - YUM.
Annette's quilt looks so cool - I mean in temperature. I'll take cool however I can get it in this heat wave! She wanted an edge to edge design in the center and something pretty in the borders.
The inner kitties get their outside fix by going out on the porch. Here is Lily on the porch looking in at Elsie in the house.
My committee and I finished the top for our guild's Opportunity Quilt and it is gorgeous! It goes to my friend Siriporn for quilting - I can't wait to post a picture here, but we keep it under wraps until we can show our guild the finished quilt.
I finished this big quilt for Carol. She started it years ago for her daughter and wanted to finally get it done for her 40th birthday this fall. She wanted me to do simple custom quilting so I tried to not use my rulers so much - but I have a hard time putting them down. I just like the way the quilt looks so much better with some stitch-in-the-ditch and straight line quilting.
Jeez, it's still really hot in Wichita! I hope our air conditioner doesn't conk out or we will have to move into the studio with all four cats. Mr. Rohrschach refuses to come inside during the daytime, even in triple digit temperatures. He hides behind the rain barrel in a spot that stays shady all day long.
Our speaker for Prairie Quilt Guild last week was David Taylor and he was wonderful! He had everyone laughing and admiring his amazing work. I recommend him highly as a speaker and a teacher! Here is one of his quilts, front:
and back:
That's a lot of quilting! At the end of his talk guild members swarmed around his quilts to admire them up close.
I also took his workshop and picked up some interesting tips and information. His style of hand applique is different from traditional applique. I'm determined to try and finish the class project using his method- it certainly works well for him!
