Thursday, June 23, 2011

Recogition award

Woods and Wildflowers

Woods and Wildflowers was just returned to me from the National Quilt Association show in Columbus, Ohio.  I was surprised to receive the Judge's Recognition award.  It was selected by one of the 3 judges as one of her two favorite quilts.   An honor;  I really respect and admire certified quilt show judges knowing the amount of education required to be certified and what a huge job it is to judge all the beautiful quilts at a major show like this one.

All the winners photos will be posted soon on their website:
www.nqaquilts.org/2011show/

While you're on the website, notice that the header is my quilt Flower Power's border! 


Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Summer solstice

 Show Me a Summer Day in Missouri

Yesterday June 21 was of course, the summer solstice.  It was hard to celebrate based on the weather we've been having in the Northwoods.  But I remembered another summer when I spent a week at my sister Ellen's home in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.  It was late August, and oh my was it summer!  Hot and humid; everything lush and green, cicadas and tree frogs yelling all night.  I just loved it!  I collected leaves from trees different from our  northern Wisconsin trees:  sassafras, sweet gum, pin oak - and when I returned home I designed this quilt around these leaves.

******
So, the rainy, cloudy, cool weather we've been having has forced me back into my sewing room (not a bad thing).  Today I finally morphed the border of my bug quilt and I'm appliqueing the border "swooshes" today.  I got the border idea from a traditional appliqued quilt, made in 1852. I have more details to add to the border where the inner points of the swooshes meet and at the corners - then, it may really be done!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Quilt world

Here I am in my lovely sewing room with the windows open and a breeze coming in from the lake.  How lucky can I be? I've spent many hours outdoors doing yard work lately and have been totally exhausted at the end of the day.  Now that everything is green growing, it seems well worth the efforts.

I still manage to work on projects here in quilt world, though in shorter bursts.  The photo above is our applique group's new project.  It will be donated to the Mercer Library when finished.  I designed this quilt using my Electric quilt software.  The appliques are set on a black pin dot, tone on tone  fabric which everyone loves - purchased at the Quilt Cottage.  We all brought piles of fabrics to chose from for our individual blocks - each of us will applique one block. 




Another work in progress is this quilt of glowing dragonflies and beetles - the blocks pieced together and pinned to my wall are looking at me asking:  What will my borders be??  I have some ideas, but that's it so far.  I really like the way it's turned out so far and am excited to do the borders.

Last week, with a wonderful discount coupon at the Fabric Patch I purchased fabrics (in addition to my stash) to use for my Shore Birds quilt - the design I want to do popped in my head the other morning on my walk.  Have to get out the big graph paper, and sharpen my pencils.