The Magnificent Toby

 

 

 

Cheryl requested no flowers, leaves, hearts, puppies or anything representational in the quilting of this wall hanging.  I stuck to my trusty ruler for the most part. My incredible photographic skills have distorted the shape a bit.

 

 

 

It will hang on a dark blue wall and will look smashing there!



I delivered the quilt to her house so that I could meet, at long last, her amazing Maine Coon cat.  This is Toby.  He looks almost normal here - but he is enormous!  He weighs 27 pounds and is absolutely magnificent! 

Here you can see him in relation to a normal sized human (Cheryl) and you can see he is quite large.  If I didn't already have four totally psychotic rescued feral cats I would have kit-napped him.

This morning I got up early and headed to the Farmer's Market in Wichita.  It opens at 7 am and I got there 15 minutes early because today was Tomato Day and a total zoo.  There were already 20 people in line at the Tomato Man's stall and when I turned around and looked at the line behind me I saw this:

 

 

It was worth it though - other vendors sell tomatoes but his are THE BEST.  I brought home quite a haul.  Yum.

Catching up on my quilting

 

 

 

 

It's been a while since I last posted because I have been having problems with Blogger and they have been less than helpful.  I just finished this quilt for Renee - she wanted lots of quilting and plans to enter it in her guild's show. 

It was a challenge to choose a thread color that didn't totally disappear into that vibrant green fabric.  Green blended in too well and became invisible.  I ended up with a medium turquoise blue.

This is Judy's quilt - it's a BIG one.  You can see it hangs off my design wall in the photo. 

Judy is a quilter after my own heart - she loves sparkly stuff!  The snowflakes are all made from Fairy Frost fabric and the stripe has lots of gold metallic.  I discouraged her from using gold metallic thread over the entire quilt because she does want to use this on her bed.  I did use some but mostly used Glide  thread in gold - it gives something like the same effect as real metallic thread.

 

 

 

 

 

I wish I had picked all the threads off this before I took the picture - they drive me crazy! 

 

I  carried the snowflake theme into the blocks as well.

I'm almost caught up on my quilting list!

A good day for Jan Z.

I was happy to hear from Jan Zimmerman that the quilt I had quilted for her a while back won Best of Show at the Oklahoma City Guild Show.  She sent me this picture from the show.  I'm not surprised it did well - she hand pieced this quilt for accuracy and the workmanship is impeccable. 

Another one of her quilts won Best Hand Quilting. It was a good day for Jan!

I'm hoping this posts okay - my blog has been misbehaving.

Bunny Hill snowmen

If you can't see later posts than this one, try refreshing this page.  Click on July in the archives. 

This Bunny Hill pattern was made by Mary, who always does an impeccable job on her machine applique.  She also lets me use wool batting - my favorite.


Love the red truck!

I was afraid a heavy background fill done in light thread on the blocks with red background fabric would look messy and distracting - so I just stuck with straight lines in those blocks.

 

 

Mary hasn't finished putting eyes and smiles on all the snowmen - so some of them only
have noses.

They come in threes

I finished another appliqued quilt, this one for Trudy.  She wanted a leafy vine so I did a leafy version of feathers around the border.


I considered using metallic thread but Trudy said she likes green and it looks pretty dramatic on the dark blue background.  I like the way the crosshatching softens the blocks from a distance.

Trudy did a lot of three-dimensional applique and beading which looks cool up close.

I have another appliqued quilt on my longarm now, they must come in threes -  just like my orange cats!

My magnetic personality

This is Connie's applique quilt  - she spends her winters in Arizona and found this pattern there.  Her applique is beautifully done and her fabric choices are wonderful. Connie has a world class stash, in fact after my husband Peter saw it he started calling Connie "Mrs. Stash". 

Connie also has a world class collection of polka dots.  She used a different polka dot fabric for almost all of the cactus sections without repeating a fabric - and there are 12 of these cactus blocks!

 

 

 

 

What is it about me and orange cats?  Last summer there were two orange strays that I fed.  One ended up at the humane society and one I managed to find a new home for.  Now I have three orange cats on my doorstep - I must be an orange cat magnet!

 

 

 

Back to work again

I have finally finished quilting the quilt I'm working on with Gail Stepanek.  We are both excited about this quilt (it's called Stars on Mars- great name!) and I will eventually show pictures of it.  It took me much longer to do than I had anticipated so I am now WAY behind schedule on my customer quilts.


The quilt at the top is one that Joyce has been waiting patiently for me to quilt.  I love this quilt designed by Charlotte Wolfe of Charlotte's Sew Natural.  Joyce wanted metallic thread but we decided to use Glide thread in a gold color which gives the same effect but is stronger and stands up better to use.