Last Day at Marcia's for Awhile

Don't know anything about mushrooms but had to snap a picture of these (and there were a lot more) growing in  a pile of mulch in our neighbor's yard.  We used to have tons of mushrooms in our yard of all sorts of variety but they really don't come back to exactly the same place year after  year.

Marcia finished the quilting on this beautiful quilt in her jet trails series.  Loved the colors in this one.

It was a great day and good to reconnect with another art quilting friend who happened to be there as well as Priscilla.  I managed to pin baste 5 full sized quilts yesterday on Marcia's big tables so was very happy about my progress.  Now I will put them into one of those big bags, vacuum out the air and take them to the beach.  It will be awhile before I get back to visit with Marcia and Priscilla but they promised to keep their blogs up to date so I wouldn't miss out on anything!

This picture was taken by Scott Veal and was of a waterspout that turned into a tornado just down the way from my beach house (our renters watched from our porch) last Thursday!!  Of course a month ago we were hit by lightening.  After the tornado, I knew a hurricane would be coming.....

Of course, my plans had to be rather drastically altered because of the Irene so all of you wish me luck!!  I am heading first to Charlotte rather than the beach (and next week instead of this one), pick up my daughter's two kitties which I will then drive down to the beach.  Hopefully all will still be standing and in livable condition.  Our house is a block from the beach with nothing between us and the water.  We had to pay someone to come in and close all our hurricane shutters (thankfully we purchased them last year and had them installed).  The storm was poised for a direct hit (as of Tues morning) but looks like we will get less impact now (although winds estimated to be 60-70 currently).  I was down there last year for 50 mph winds and I don't want to repeat that experience any time soon!  Dear husband will be holding the fort up here in Western NY.

I turned over ten comfort quilts which I completed to Marcia to turn in at our monthly GVQC meeting so that clears up some of the clutter.  Getting the other seven real quilts pin basted has organized things a bit more.  I will machine quilt them down at the beach where they will eventually live.  I now have a few more days to get things together to keep me busy!  I did manage to get to Borders and get audio tapes for 40% off for the ride down -- it makes it so much easier when you are by yourself!

Patricia's Summer Quilt Show

Well, today was the official unveiling of the Serengetti Lion quilt which I decided to have hung at Patricia's summer quilt show.  I wanted to have it done for the GVQC show but it took a long time for the machine quilting.


It was in a great place so that you could stand back and see it and I got some very nice comments.  Judging by what people were staring at, the mouth area of the male lion is the focal point!

I thought this was such a nice little quilt which an excellent use of those Laurel Birch fabrics that I love all fussy cut.  It was by Gratia Pfromm.

This was a beautiful little kalaidoscope by Cindy Merrow.  Loved the colors in it.

This was a nice variation on the traditional Drunkard's Path by Audrey Andrus.

Icicles by Lynn Hayes.  This was a beautiful use of batiks.

This was an original pattern done by Lynn Wigstone-Birch as a divorce quilt.

Of course, no day would be complete without the requisite butterfly although I did get one request that I pass on some butterflies in my blog!!  This is the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on the Butterfly Bush in my neighbor's yard.  This is her underside.


I have been madly madly machine quilting and putting binding on comfort quilts the last week.  I will have 13 done by Monday hopefully, 10 of which will get donated, 2 gifted and one for good measure to be kept for a miscellaneous baby someone is sure to have!  I still have 9 regular sized tops to machine quilt, 7 of which also need to be basted as well.


There were a lot of other nice quilts in the show but it was hard to get back far enough to photo many of these.  I definitely got some ideas!

Butterflies are Sure Difficult to Identify!

Well, after much conjecture, I think I can safely say that this is a female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.  It looks almost identical to a western variety of swallowtail.  The male isn't as colorful and that is what most of the illustrations I found pictured.

This is a side view of the above butterfly.

This, I believe, is a Black Swallowtail but it looks a bit like the Spicebush Swallowtail as well.  Two swallowtails in one day!!  They are the prettiest of our local butterflies I think.

I also spotted the Monarch again today but it was too fast for me.  There were several of the milky white butterflies as well.  The weather has finally cooled down to very pleasant which affords me the opportunity to sit outside, read and watch for new species.

Trying to get things ready to do in NC, I have gotten together almost all my  unfinished quilts, found or made backs and cut batting.  It is a daunting task to finish all these which include:
5 disappearing four patches, 5 disappearing nine-patches (these nine are comfort quilts to be donated), 4 one block wonders (at least double bed sized), 2 random unfinished tops, and the three quilts I made from the strips.  I know that there are at least three other tops stashed somewhere as well as my basket quilt and my Baltimore Album which needs an appliqued border.  So, what does one do?  I think this one will buy myself a midarm as soon as I hit NC so that I can machine quilt these suckers quickly!!  Several of them are destined for beds down there anyway.

These are the beautiful flowers that my dear husband got me for my birthday this week.  I love orchids, Birds of Paradise and orchids so these were all included.  I do love my birthday flowers each year.  They are always all the exotic varieties that I love!

August RAFA Meeting - Lots of Class Pieces and a Slow Photographer

A number of people at RAFA this week brought in the pieces that they had created in the mono printing demonstration/mini-workshop that I did last month.  I got a lot of positive feedback and a few who said they would be doing more of this.  This was one of Patty's pieces.

Joyce is a nationally  known wearable artist and she had already taken her mono printed fabrics and put them together into a new vest.

Janet must have brought in six or seven pieces to share.  This was from her  recent week long class with Katie Pasquini-Mausopust.  The students painted canvases, cut into the various canvas pieces and then recombined with commercial fabrics.  Janet's were stunning.  She is incredibly prolific as well as a very intuitive designer.

Priscilla also took this class and had a couple of pieces but she moved much too quickly for this photographer.  Hers were beautiful and she loved the class!

Two of the people in the meeting had also tried the ice cube and powdered MX dye technique illustrated in the most recent Quilting Arts magazine.  This is the results of Elaine's efforts -- a stunning piece.  I was a little concerned about this article when I saw it as I feel so strongly that you should always use a mask when working with the powdered dyes and sprinkling over a large surface is just asking for trouble but the results were spectacular. People often think that wearing a mask is just for the overly cautious and don't.  I am not a cautious person for the most part but this and wearing a chemical mask when working with Chlorox are two of my hot buttons.  I would think that using a very high concentration of liquid dyes would work just as well.