An Idyllic Setting for Creating!

These are "the boys" looking out my living room window. George is the orange tabby and Cheney is the black one. George came to us with that name but Cheney was Butterball which didn't fit at all. We figured that wherever George was, there must be a Cheney lurking nearby and since the black cat was a bit of a lurker......

Well after so much time away, I headed out to Marcia's for a sewing day at her home set in the most wonderful spring (or anytime for that matter) setting. Again the colors of the lilacs just beginning to bloom along with her remaining tulips -- the deer trimmed the rest of her tulips rather well, she says.

This is the view towards the back of the pasture where a herd of deer now spends time grazing along with a very well fed ground hog, who was immortalized on an earlier blog.

This is the view toward the pond which is sometimes alive with Canada Geese but not today. Spring colors are almost as good as fall colors!

Marcia is working with a very different pallet since coming back from her last Nancy Crow workshop. I am in love with these new pieces but then again, anything with purple...... She made good use of many of the hand dyes we have made together.

This is the beginnings of the new lillies piece I am doing. I have made the drawing, traced it to tissue paper, numbered everything, colored it in and then transferred it to the freezer paper and have done all my markings! Now I am rethinking the lillies themselves as they look a bit complex but we shall see. I have a habit of changing things as I go!! I want to make sure that the petals are well differentiated without the use of too much thread work. We shall see.


I finally finished the quilting on this quilt, the binding is done and I am DONE. It is far far from perfect but I am far from perfect, so that is okay. I realized when I couldn't find the binding that I had set aside, that it became the green border!! So I had to come up with a new vintage binding so yellow it was!! Oh well, it is by far the most complex quilt with the most quilting that I have ever done. Some of the blocks (they are all 4 inches square) have more than 100 pieces and many have more than 50!! Quilting by hand was not fun...... This is one of those quilts best viewed from about six feet away!! It is about 90 inches by 85 inches. Double clicking will show more detail!

First February Fun Day!

When Jeanne and I left Webster to go to Marcia's, the sun was brightly shining and there were blue skies. The closer we got to Palmyra, the foggier it got (what a switch from our usual story). I couldn't resist taking this picture from the door of Marcia's studio looking out to the barn. It was a black and white world!

This is one of the two "I Spy" baby quilts that I have bordered and basted and ready to machine quilt! The back of this one is covered with pigs doing all sorts of things. The other one (my grandchild's) has dinosaurs all over it.

This is the Depression Extreme Sampler with it's borders. It has a 1/2 inch yellow border, then the green and the lavender and I think it calms it down quite a bit. The hand quilting is coming along and it may actually get done in time for the quilt show!!

This is of course Suki helping me out while I am making tick marks on the heron! She only goes to the places I am specifically working on!

The heron has been drawn, redrawn, marked, traced, ticked and I am still not entirely happy with it. I am working on a lily now and tried a different approach which is a little better but still not totally okay. The heron was difficult because it is shades of gray and so very hard to keep track of where you are and what color pieces should be. When I originally started drawing my lines, I didn't first break the picture down which was a big mistake and caused much redrawing but this is a learning process -- how to abstract very realistic images. My biggest lesson was that "if you can't break it down easily into sections, the beginning composition might be the problem!" Both my pelican and the Birds of Paradise were fairly easy to break down. Even though I have spent many, many days on the heron, it may never see the light of "quilt".

Both Nancy and Marcia were working on pieces to be donated to Women Helping Girls for their auction. This is Nancy's piece with a camel she drew as the main motif.(www.communitywishbook.com/WomenHelpingGirls.html)
This is Marcia's piece with zebras. I think we have an animal theme working here!

Jeanne was working on finishing a piece from the Sharon Craig workshop we took a year ago. Her colors and choice of fabrics were exceptional. I did love this workshop also and it is too bad that Sharon Craig will no longer be teaching as she is fantastic!

Back to the Studio for the New Year!

It was so good to get back to Marcia's and join with Priscilla in a wonderful day of solving the world problems and getting some sewing done. Unfortunately, her beloved horse became very ill while we were there so we didn't see as much of Marcia as we would like but Bill kept us up to date on what was happening.

As we left, the full moon was brightly shining through the trees even though it was still daylight. I couldn't resist a couple of pictures.

This is Priscilla's Wolf quilt which is just beautiful and a stunning tribute to this beautiful animal. I was lucky to see one in the wild in Alaska (although not at Yellowstone). I had to capture the Singer Featherweight which is also my machine of choice for this travelling piecing!



This is a closeup of one of the cross-stitched pieces on the quilt. Notice the wolves all facing to the left.

This wolf is looking right at you and is definitely the focal point of the quilt. She had to eliminate some of her selections because the wolves were facing in the wrong direction!!


This is the front of Priscilla's "Jacket from Hell" as she affectionately calls it. She was desparately trying to give either Marcia or I the pattern for the jacket yesterday but we weren't falling for it!

This is the back of the jacket. The jacket is literally just one piece and therein "lies the rub".

This is a piece that Marcia recently finished quilting and I love the colors and the feeling of the piece -- very soothing.

This is the first of my two hexagon tops. If you look closely (by double clicking), you will see family pictures in the hexagons as well as many different critters and "stuff". I tried to add things that would be meaningful to the family in both of these two hexagon quilts. Different novelty fabrics were included from local as well as email pals! I must have had close to 600 different prints in the end!!

This is the depression quilt put back together. I quilted by hand 70 of the blocks so far and now just have to do the blocks on the outside and the two middle rows -- this adds up to 62 blocks and I also have to add the borders yet and quilt those. Hmmmm -- will it get done in time for our quilt show? Double click to see the detail of these blocks. As I have mentioned before, all but the backing and the natural colored muslin were vintage fabrics. The blocks are all 30's era blocks as were derived from a quilt I saw on ebay and the patterns sold by http://www.sentimentalstitches.com/. I never finished all the blocks in the original quilt and added a few of my own that I got out of Electric Quilt's Barbara Brackman CD which contains the derivations of all the blocks.

A Very Productive Day at Marcia's!

Well, after a rather tough weekend, I had the pleasure of spending my day at my friend Marcia's (www.decampstudio.blogspot.com). She has about 30 linear feet of design wall so I thought a good idea would be to organize several sets of blocks that I had so that I could so them together this weekend at our annual Spring Fling at Genesee Valley Quilt Club. I needed some projects to work on as it is not easy for me to do design in that kind of setting.

I THOUGHT I had finished up most everything when I was on vacation but when looking through my unfinished projects, several more came up to bite me. Of course at the time, I thought I might do more on some of these. However, as part of my new path, I am not going to concentrate on these very traditional quilts so they are hereby declared finished except for putting together, putting borders on, quilting and then finding them a good home. A couple are fairly complex with lots of blocks.



These are the blocks that are all made out of vintage fabric from the 1930's and 1940's. I combined blocks from a quilt I saw on ebay (and later got the pattern for) and some from my quilting software (Electric Quilt and Blockbase where I picked blocks that were originally designed in the 30's). Originally I had planned on it being much larger but have decided to concentrate my efforts elsewhere. So I am going to put a strip of solid color around each block and then put them together with muslin (off white) strips between each block. The solid color strip will coordinate with each block and will be different colors but still of the 30's fabric. Each of these blocks is only 4 inches by 4 inches and several have over 100 pieces -- see why I am declaring this one finished!


This is one of my first quilt tops made in the late 1980's -- about 20 years ago. The fabric shows its age and this was my sampler to learn how to hand applique and several of the blocks show it. Again, this used to be what I loved to do and I did many of these blocks while traveling on business and on planes and in hotel rooms. I was going to do two - one for each daughter but again am declaring this one done except for a border that I am designing and will also applique!!


This is a small quilt top made with blocks I gathered as part of a basket exchange in 2005 (I think). It deserves to be finished!!
Just needs to be sewn together and some borders applied, then it will be hand quilted I think if I don't have the Baltimore Album one done.



These are batik Dear Jane (4 1/2 inch) blocks that I did as part of an online exchange many years ago. I found I had 111 so decided I could make a 9 x 12 block top. I will be "sashing" this with a nice rich navy blue (if I can find it before Friday). I have just the fabric but the place where I got it no longer carries it -- darn.



Last but not least is this 35 block quilt top which is made with blocks left over from another quilt I made as a shower present for a new bride a couple of years ago. It also deserves to be finished.

Now wasn't that a productive day! I might also add we went out to lunch and also did some fabric shopping at a store that is going out of business!