Curmudgeonly me

Halloween is not my favorite holiday but I have quilted several cute Halloween quilts lately.  This was made by Mary who always has does an excellent job on her applique, this time it is machine applique.  I really like the whimsical pumpkin-houses.

Mary says these bats will have orange crystals for eyes and there are buttons to add now that it is quilted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm one of those curmudgeonly people that turn out the lights and hide on Halloween.  At least, that's what I did last year.  When I do buy Halloween candy I have to buy icky candy so I don't eat it - like Sweet Tarts or Nerds.  Ick.

It's a mystery quilt

This is Sharon's quilt; she made it as a Mystery Quilt at a local quilt shop.  When I asked about using colored thread she didn't sound very enthusiastic but I couldn't resist using some pink and green thread in addition to the dark grey I used for the feathers.  (It looks kind of blue in the pictures)  I hope she likes the result!

I love quilts with a black background even though it is hard to see what you're doing when quilting them. All that black really makes the colors pop! I used black batting on this quilt since both top and backing are black and Omni thread.

Quilting Zombies

 

 

Sheri had me quilt this BOM for her. I like the combination of piecing and applique.

I used straight lines to contrast with the curvy feathers and scroll-y background quilting.

Sheri and I have discovered we share more than quilting as an interest; we both are addicted to the game Plants vs Zombies. A new version of the game has just been released and we spent an embarrassing amount of time talking about it and comparing strategies. Does this make us Quilting Zombies?

Merilyn brought me this little applique wallhanging.  It was a fun one to quilt.

 

 

I was worried that anything I quilted in the floral fabric squares would be lost in the busy pattern, so settled on my old favorite: ruled lines. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of quilting to do but maybe first I'll sneak in a little Zombie time.

 

 

 

Jan Z. and her amazing quilt

 

 

This is Jan Z. and her amazing quilt.  It is beautifully appliqued and embroidered with so many little details!  She says it is a Piecemakers pattern from  2003 that she has been working on for a long time.

 

 

 

 

She embroidered around each applique piece with black floss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My goal in quilting was to stay out of the way of all her work while highlighting it with stitch in the ditch - a LOT of stitch in the ditch.  I used Invisifil and Bottom Line thread for almost the whole thing.  Invisifil is great for stitching around applique; it is so extremely fine and comes in colors, unlike monofilament.

 
 

 

I love the tiny little piglets made out of narrow ribbon.  They are so small they are hard to see in this picture - look for the tiny pink blobs next to the big pigs.

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She added details of her own, like the tractors.

It was fun to examine all the little details as I quilted. 



 

More fruity news

 

 

This is Gail's quilt and it is beautifully hand pieced and appliqued.

I was stumped for a while, coming up with a design for the border.  Unsymmetrical designs are more of a challenge for me.

 

 

Sharon wanted me to finish this in time for her to enter in the Kansas State Fair.  The blocks are from this year's Prairie Quilt Guild Block of the Month designed by guild member Debbie Johnson.  Debbie is a talented pattern designer, you can see her website here

The blocks all have the theme of Fun and Fanciful Fruit, so Sharon made the embroidered fruit tree blocks in the same theme.

 

 

 

 

 

More fruity news: my friend Betty and I visited a local orchard to pick late peaches.  Yum.

 
 

 

 

Lots of quilts

This is Renee's cute Halloween quilt.  She did a great job on the embroidery and I had fun quilting it.

 

 

I quilted spider webs in the setting triangles:

 

 

 

And pumpkins in the background pebbles.

Lori used some really wonderful African fabric in her quilt.  I didn't want to clutter up the  blocks so mostly followed the lines in the fabric. 

 

 

 

 

 

It's hard to see in the photographs on that dark fabric.

In the border I quilted a zebra skin design.

 

 

Barbara said she had been working a long time on this Piece of Cake design. 

I love all the plaids she used in the applique.

Today I went to Salina for the auction of the estate of a quilt shop owner, Shirley Wolf who owned the Quilting Bee.  She was quite a collector of many things: fabric, quilts, linens, patterns as well as matchbook covers, advertising art and 19th century restaurant china.  I spoke with a woman who used to work at the shop and she told me that Shirley had them cut three yards from new bolts of fabric for her own personal stash.  There was a LOT of
fabric.

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It was sold in stacks about 1 1/2 tall and they mostly sold for $50-60.  A bargain, with fabric selling for $12-13 a yard these days.  I didn't buy anything, amazingly enough.  I can't find the time to use the fabric I do have but there were a lot of other people beefing up their stash! 

I think it is appropriate that my quilt appears during the week of my birthday in the AQS Quilting Arts Calendar. 

In need of sunflowers

Barb is redoing her sewing room with a sunflower theme so brought me five small sunflower quilts to quilt.  She will definitely have the best dressed sewing room around!

 

 

When she brought me the quilts, the pieces had started to fall off two of them - probably from sitting in her car and getting hot.  She took those back to re-iron the pieces back on.  It was hard to get them to stick so I told her to use Elmer's School Gluestick to keep them on long enough for me to quilt down.  I don't think we lost any little pieces!

The fun challenge of quilting fused applique is stitching around all the little pieces.

This has been an unusually cool and damp summer in Wichita this year with lots of rain.  Sedgwick had it's share of flooding and I have had a damp basement to deal with. 

This was taken before the water rose high enough that the road had to be closed.  Usually the water level is far below the bridge, far enough that you can't see it very well as you cross.

This is taken from the other side of the bridge - you can just see the top of a fence in that field. Welcome to Sedgwick!  Bring your boat.