A big one from Edith

Edith brought me this huge quilt top which is mostly white space to fill up! Her piecing is very precise so I could do pretty much whatever I wanted.   I think it is a pretty quilt and tried to design it so it would look good on a bed.  The circles of feathers will show as scallops on the draped sides of the quilt as it lays on the bed.

I also finished a quilt for Debbie but forgot to get pictures before I got it back to her!  Sometimes I get too busy and my brain just can't keep up.



Today is the first day of the local Quilt Shop Hop.  Peter and I checked out the shops in Wichita, Newton and Salina.  We drove to Salina (about an hour north of us) partly so we would have an excuse to stop in McPherson and eat at the Main Street Deli.  I meant to take a picture of the coconut cream pie we shared for dessert, but it disappeared too quickly!


Salina has lots of beautiful old homes and Art Deco touches on the businesses downtown, like this:

I entered the Northwest Quilting Expo  this year for the first time and just heard that my quilt, Woodland Tapestry won a blue ribbon.  It's a wholecloth quilt; Superior Masterpiece and metallic thread on Cherrywood hand-dyed fabric.

Celebrity turtles and dancing chickens!

I call this little quilt Faberge' Turtles and it was made for the IQA Celebrity Mini Quilt Silent Auction, to be held at Quilt Festival in Houston this November.  I don't know that I qualify as a Celebrity but I was happy to be asked to make a quilt for the auction!  I just barely got it in by the deadline which is today - it's being delivered there today according to UPS!

I made the turtles like the ones in my quilt It's Turtles All the Way Down, using silk and velvet and metallic thread to make them gleam like little jewels. 

It's Turtles all the Way Down

At our last Prairie Quilt Guild meeting our speaker was long-time guild member Carla Anderson.  She had examples of her quilts both hand quilted and machine quilted.  Carla is a very talented, award-winning longarm quilter.

Since it was my last meeting as President, the board presented me with a quilt they had made for me.  I absolutely LOVE it and it was quilted by Carla who has served on the board this year. Here it is being presented to me at the meeting;  that's me at the podium, Vera and Evelyn doing the presenting. 

Vera, the Past President planned the whole thing and even played music and had the board come up and do the chicken dance. It was crazy!  As soon as I get a hanging sleeve on it, I plan to hang it in my studio.

Don't you like these chickens?  This one is obviously a quilter.

Here I am: Chicken Prez!

This is me and Peter as chickens:

They even put Captain Quilt on it:

Thank you Vera and board members - it's a very special quilt and a wonderful remembrance of my year as president!

Thimbleberries and a quilt room tour

Here's a wallhanging made by Marsha the Thimbleberries Lady that I just finished quilting.  True to form, it is well pieced and made with Thimbleberries fabric! 

     note:  Marsha has confessed to me that this is actually made from Kansas Troubles   
               fabrics, not Thimbleberries

Last weekend was the Quilt Room Tour put on by Prairie Quilt Guild every other year.  It's so much fun to visit Guild member's homes and get a peek at their sewing areas, rooms or even separate buildings in some cases.  With permission from the hostesses, I have some pictures to post.

Lynanne has a separate building that she shares with her husband's shop.  She is a doll maker in addition to being a quilter, and her studio is full of her creations. 

She keeps several old sewing machines set up facing each other to use when sewing friends visit: they can sew and talk face to face.

Jen is a pattern designer and has a super organized studio.  She says she moved boxes of stuff out before the tour!  She also collects old sewing machine and has a great way to display them.

Susan has a beautiful sewing room in her new home.  I took a picture of her at her machine and neglected to get pictures of the beautiful view she faces as she sews and the many gorgeous quilts throughout her house.

Kathy with a K has adopted a sewing area for herself in the basement family room.  She says she asked for two big foldable tables for her birthday so she would have a large area to work on. 

Kathy also had some wonderful family quilts like this yellow quilt that she uses as a topper on a bed. 

Cathy with a C has a new house with a fabulous sewing room.  Here are my friend Betty, Peter and myself posing on the porch of Cathy's house which has been decorated with quilts.

She had some good ideas for storage in her sewing room.  All of her fat quarters are stored in these little canvas units (she says they are available from Walmart - on line only)  I like the way she put a colored button on each one  showing what color fabrics are stored inside.

Her ruler storage is hidden by a swinging design wall.





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I was so impressed by her collection of old quilts which she says are all family quilts.  Here is an old red and green quilt - the green has faded to beige.

And this one I would have liked to fold up and take home with me.  The quilting on it was amazing and it was in excellent condition.  She is lucky to have such beautiful quilted family treasures!  There was one more location, but we ran out of time and energy to see it.

It's Shop Hop time again!

It's Shop Hop time again!  I quilted this for Charlotte's Sew Natural for the Central Kansas Quilt Shop Hop - you can read about it in Charlotte's newsletter here. 

Once again they had special Shop Hop fabric designed, this time by Jason Yenter and it features a Kansas theme.

This quilt I just finished for Julie.  It's one of several Christmas quilts I have done for her: she must have the best decorated house at Christmastime!

She says she has lots of fun embellishments to add now that it is quilted - little jingle bells and buttons and so on.  Should be really cute!

Peter accompanied me to the Kansas State Fair one day last week when I was there to judge quilts before the Fair officially opened.  What is it about big machines that fascinates most men?  Peter had to have his picture taken with this shiny new combine.  It was so huge it makes him look tiny when he stands next to it! 

He found out how they got the new tires to look so shiny after he posed with his hand on one: they oiled them.

Quilts for grandchildren

Evelyn made this as a wedding quilt for a grandchild (who has been married for 6 years - but who's counting!).  She thought she would like it quilted with some little circles and since the colors reminded me of the sea, I put little bubbles around the dark blue frames and some sort of kelp-like stuff in the borders.  Evelyn is a very neat and tidy piecer: the back of her tops look  as good as the front!

Sylvia makes the cutest quilts for her grandkids. She doesn't mess around with easy patterns either!  This quilt is small but has many little bitty pieces.   I love the red vintage cowboy fabric in the star centers.

Wichita recently broke a weather record for the most days over 100 degrees in one year: 52 so far this year.  That broke the record set during the 30's.  There are other parts of the country with hotter temperatures, drought, fires, floods, hurricanes etc, so I really shouldn't complain!