Betty's Bali Star

This is Judy Niemeyer's Bali Star pattern made by my fellow Prairie Quilt Guild member Betty.  She did a beautiful job on the piecing.  Quilting this nearly did me in - totally my own fault for coming up with a time-consuming quilting design that ate up thread at an alarming rate!

 

I love pieced quilts, but quilting 56 of the same block is mind numbing.  Now that it is finished I do think it looks great. 

It's quilted with Superior So Fine.

Back to work on Gail's show quilt.  Happy Easter!

Musical quilts

This is a pretty striking place to display quilts, don't you think?  My guild, Prairie Quilt Guild, was contacted by the faculty brass quintet at WSU to display quilts at their recital.  One of the pieces on the program was Fabrics by John Stevens which has four movements, each named for a different quilt block.  They wanted to have examples of those blocks on stage during the concert.  I thought it was a neat idea so volunteered to be in charge of rounding up the quilts.  The musicians were very enthusiastic about having the quilts there and invited the audience up on stage during intermission to see them up close.

 

 

I'm also in charge of the guild challenge for Prairie Quilt Guild and the quilts were displayed at our meeting this week.  I'll show some of the winning quilts after our meeting next month when the results are announced. 


I volunteered to help organize an exhibit of quilts by PQG members at CityArts in downtown Wichita this spring (obviously I need to sit on my hands the next time someone asks for a volunteer!)  On a tour of the very impressive CityArts building I just loved this display of 'taxidermy' made by one of the kid's classes. I'd like a few of them for my studio!

My quilt Remembrance came home from it's first show without any ribbons - not even the booby prize!  It did receive very positive comments from the judges.  Here is a link to the winners.

Remembrance again

Thank you for all the nice comments on my quilt!  I sent it off to Indiana Heritage Quilt Show yesterday and have my fingers crossed that it gets there in time.  We didn't get the 15 inches of snow that were predicted but enough to slow down air and truck travel.  I had planned to enter it in Lancaster but didn't get it finished in time, so it is entered in Paducah and I am waiting to hear if it is accepted.

The flowers were not painted, it is all done with thread.  Here is a close up that shows that better.

 

  The flowers are done with Superior Masterpiece thread which I love - the colors are so clear and beautiful.  The polka dots are french knots.

 

 

 

 

Remembrance

I'm getting my wholecloth ready to send off to it's first show this week, so it's time to post  pictures. 

It's so hard to get a good picture of a wholecloth quilt; it's hard to get the quilting to show and the color never seems right with photography lights or without.

 

This is the quilt that kept me occupied after Peter died - really kept me sane. I named it Remembrance because I thought about him a lot as I quilted it, remembered a lot of good times.

This is also the quilt that I spent almost three weeks picking stitches out of.   Seriously, I think I picked out each stitch at least once!  Here's a picture before  I picked:

This is after.  Despite the trauma of picking stitches for three weeks, I think it was worth the effort.  Do you agree?

Although I liked the colorful checkerboard, it really took over when you looked at the whole quilt.  It overwhelmed the center. Now that my hands have recovered , I'm glad I did it! Thanks to Gail for encouraging  telling me to do it.


We're looking at another foot of snow tonight.  The last 15 inches was just starting to melt away after 2 days of sunshine.  It's just more incentive to stay inside and quilt!

Baby quilts and thundersnow

I'm starting to work on a new quilt with Gail but she sent me these two baby quilts to sneak in first.

I like that they are not wimpy pastels.

It's finally winter here in Kansas - we had a big snowstorm complete with thundersnow.  We received over a foot here in Sedgwick and no one is complaining despite all the shoveling and snowy roads.  It's so desperately dry here that the snow is most welcome!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American Jane pattern

This is Gina's quilt made from an American Jane pattern.  Such a cute design and when I saw all that nice open white space I knew it would be fun to quilt.

Lots of polka dots in the fabrics so I put them in the quilting too.  I love polka dots!

 

 

I love old buttons too and years ago I bought a lot of old buttons at an auction. It turns out that Gina is a serious button collector and she was nice enought to root through my buttons and tell me about them. I learned a lot about my old buttons! 

I was surprised to find a box of these gorgeous flowers on my doorstep yesterday - delivered fresh from Hawaii!  Peter's cousin sent them to me, I guess he knew I would be thinking of Peter on Valentine's Day.  Don't they look exotic on my Kansas mantel? 

So that's where I put my watch

Ann made this quilt at a retreat with Toby Lischko and it's a beauty.   Unfortunately it is so dark that I wasn't able to get a picture that showed the quilting very well. 

I used some silver metallic and it shows up a bit better.  Oh well, you'll have to take my word for it that it is quilted and looks nice in the right lighting!

 

I've spent the weekend cleaning and rearranging my studio. It was a total mess and I found all kinds of interesting things that I hadn't seen in a long time: my watch, the new white Clover markers I was SURE I had bought and several UFO's that hadn't seen the light of day in quite a while.