Night and Day

At last - some customer quilts!  These are for Eddie, who makes huge quilts for her grandchildren.  This one is the Eleanor Burns pattern called Night and Day for a grandson from Texas that wanted a red, white and blue quilt.  Humongous pieced quilts like this are a bit tedious to do but look nice in the end.

A non-huge quilt from Eddie - this one has all the properly trademarked embroidery for KSU in the school colors. 

 

 

 

I mentioned Ollie the cat  a while back, a stray that I was trying to find a home for.  He had so much personality and was neutered and declawed, I just couldn't stand to send him to the Humane Society.  After taking care of him for 3-4 months and getting very attached to him, a friend found someone that was just moving into a new house and wanted a cat to adopt.  Ollie really lucked in to a wonderful home.  They sent me this picture of him relaxing as they unpacked.  Does he look comfortable and happy or what?  I nice ending to that stray cat story.

A little bit of Christmas

Yesterday was my little sewing group's Christmas party.  We brought a gift that we had made and then drew numbers and each picked a gift from the pile of goodies.  The quilt pictured above was not a Christmas gift, but one that I had quilted for Jean several years ago and she wanted to show it to everyone all bound and finished.  She made the cross stitched blocks and I put them together in this quilt for her.  The center is done with shadow trapunto.  It was fun  to see it again and made me wonder why I haven't tried more shadow trapunto!

Here is Jean with the tablerunner that Betty made.  Our meeting was held at Jean's house and you can see that with her red walls it is a great place for a Christmas party!  She had decorated her house beautifully and I'm kicking myself for not taking some pictures.

 

This is Kelly with her placemats made by Evelyn. I remember once making placemats and realizing even though they are small they need a lot of binding!

This is Virginia with her tabletopper made by Kelly.  I should have gotten a close up of it, the fabric had sewing notions on it - very cute.

 

 

 

 

Evelyn received this tabletopper made by Dee.  She lives next door to Dee and had helped her with it!

Jean embroidered this tea towel for Dee...

and gave her this pretty scarf.

Sherry received this quilt from Virginia.  Virginia had us all give her our signatures and she then embroidered a block for each of us and made it into this quilt.  It is made from doubleknit polyester and is very heavy and warm!  Virginia loves to make quilts from doubleknit and has a secret stash of it.

Betty received this wall hanging from Madeline.  Madeline quilted a Christmas panel to make it.

 

 

Madeline ended up with this pincushion which I made.  It's from a pattern called The Warbler by The Blackberry Patch. It's kind of hard to see - it blends into Madeline's sweater!

 

 

 

I was lucky to receive this cool little quilt made by Sherry.

 

 

 

 

 

I love to receive hand made gifts - I wish I would take the time to make more of my own gifts for friends and family.

 

 

 

 

 

Quilting break - it's hat time!

I'm still working on my wholecloth but I did take some time off over Thanksgiving to visit with friends from Colorado Springs.  Sandy wanted to goto Hatman Jack's - it's a great hat shop in Wichita.  If any of you are planning to attend MQS this May, it's walking distance from the show. 

I have pretty much given up wearing hats because women's hat makers think all women have the same itty bitty sized head.  I happen to have a big fat head and the typical women's hat perches on it like a toy hat.  The only hat I could find at Hatman Jack's that fit me was a men's large or extra large!  I wish it was due to lots of brains.


Sandy has the opposite problem - she's a pin head. 

Even women's hats are too big for her - this one comes complete with blond wig.

She tried one of those side-of-the-head pancake things.

Tom's head size seems to be more in the normal range.

Back to quilting!

I can't believe I'm doing this

I'm still slogging along on my wholecloth. Once I had finished about 3/4 of the quilting I took the quilt off my longarm and pinned it to my design wall. I realized one part of the design wasn't working - just too much thread.  It overwhelmed the rest of the quilt.  So I have been picking it out for the last two weeks!  I must be insane. It should all be out by Thanksgiving and I know it will be a better quilt for all this picking. 

I'll eventually post before and after pictures and you can tell me if I did the right thing!

Postcard from Houston

I'm still hard at work on my wholecloth so no photos there yet.  Gail Stepanek attended the show in Houston and I asked her  to send me a picture of our quilt hanging there. I wish I could have been there too!  Maybe next year I will make it to the show.


Here is Gail with Mistaken Identity and an Honorable Mention ribbon! 

About my last post: someone asked what kind of chalk I used - it is just plain old  schoolroom chalk.  I stick with white and have no problems brushing it off with a soft cloth.

A new quilt

I haven't had anything to post for a while because I have been busy working on a large wholecloth of my own.  I won't post pictures of it just yet, but this is some of the thread I'm using.  You can see from this that it's not going to be a traditional whitework quilt!

 

 

Since the quilt I worked on with Gail Stepanek is now in Houston all judged and ready to hang in the show, Gail told me I could go ahead and post pictures.  This is Mistaken Identity and I think it's a beauty!  Gail's workmanship is impeccable and I loved working on it with her. 

When I asked her if she had any suggestions for the quilting she thought a radiating design might be appropriate.  That seemed like a good idea to me so I went with that.

Working on the dark fabric was a challenge and I was very thankful to have my little light from IKEA.  But it was still hard to see when I did the tiny stipple around the feathers.  I ended up drawing over that area with white chalk and I could then see my stitches as I
quilted.

 

 

 

The chalk wipes off easily.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are having beautiful fall weather here in Kansas.  This is a neighborhood cat enjoying the sun in my bag of weeds. He looks very Halloween-y.

 

 

 

 

 

Fall and yarn bombing

This sculpture by Tom Otterness appeared in the Wichita paper last week after being 'yarn bombed'.  I really like the sculpture unclothed, but with all the little ankle warmers it is too cute!

It feels like fall now in Kansas; the days are still warm but the nights cool down comfortably.  I'm sure the farmers see these as a pest, but they sure are pretty along the roads.

Thank you to all my blog friends for your condolences .  Every comment meant a lot to me - thank you so much!

He's gone

I lost my sweetie.

 

 

Peter Hutchison

May 12, 1938 - September 17, 2012

Thank you Madame President

i

 

In Prairie Quilt Guild, my guild in Wichita, traditionally the past president is in charge of making a quilt for the outgoing president with the help of the rest of the Board.  It was my job this year to come up with a quilt for Gail.  Because she loves old quilts and studies their history, I chose to make an antique-style signature quilt. 

 

 

 

 

The Board members made the star signature blocks and I did the rest.  Most of the fabric comes from Barbara Brackman's Lately Arrived from London fabric line.  The center medallion I found at Reproduction Fabrics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wanted the look of trapunto without the hassle of cut - away trupunto or the heft of two batts.  So I cheated and just cut strips of wool batting which I then glued with Elmer's purple school glue stick to the back of the quilt in the borders where I wanted the feathers to stand out.   I quilted heavily around the feathers and since I only used wool batting, it doesn't feel stiff.  Some times cheating pays off!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was not able to be at the meeting yesterday when she received the quilt - I hope she likes it!

 

 

 

 

 

Critters

 

 

 

 

This is Trudy's quilt, the very last of my customer quilts, and she has been patiently waiting for me to finish it.  Trudy does gorgeous needleturn applique, but was inspired by Susan Carlson's book Serendipity Quilts to make this raw edge applique quilt.  I think she did a fabulous job!  One of the best parts of this quilt is it's name - Frankly Scarlet.

 

 

 

 

To continue with the animal theme, this is Ollie.  He wants so badly to adopt me!  He showed up about a month ago and I just hate to take him to the Humane Society - he obviously was somebody's cat.  I don't know if he was dumped or is lost but he is the friendliest cat.  To me, anyway.  He scares my cats away and won't let them in the house which is why I need to find a home for him. He has tried to make friends with them but they won't have any of it.  Any takers?

 

 

 

 

 

Just look at that face!  He loves quilts too.

No traditional feathers here!

 

 

 

 

This is Susan's quilt which has taken me weeks to finish since I only have a few hours each day to quilt.  Peter is now off of chemo and we have called in Hospice - they are such a help.

 

The border fabric on this quilt is wild!  Susan has done a wonderful job of finding fabrics to go with it.  At first I was stumped trying to come up with ideas for quilting  - my old standby of traditional feathers just didn't seem right here.  I ended up using the leaves in the fabric for inspiration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My sister Kathy and BIL Don came to visit last week.  We had a wonderful  visit and celebrated both Kathy and my birthdays.  Here is a picture of me opening my birthday card which had flying pigs on it.  Fortunately I had my pig nose handy.  For some reason I can't make this photo any larger.  Maybe that's a blessing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the way I saw Don much of the time - gazing into his iPod.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made a great video of my sister cutting open this watermelon but couldn't get it to download properly from my phone.

 

 

 

 

 

One more customer quilt to finish and I can work on my own quilts!