Project Updates

It has been a busy few days here at McBrayer house. Here is a list of updates and quilty news:

I have been gathering up more quilts for the show-and-tell part of the lecture at the Piedmont Quilters' Guild on Thursday. I now have Emily's Mermaid quilt ( shown above with the mermaid herself), her new fiber shawl, and the white wedding quilt. I think each of those items has a good story to tell, especially the white quilt which survived the fire that destroyed their apartment building.

I got a lovely e-mail from Bonnie McCaffery, thanking me for blogging about her vid-casts. Isn't the Internet great!

Another surprise e-mail came from the creator of the delightful Strawberry Shortcake Gingerbread House at the Grove Park Inn, which I wrote about in my post of November 27. Turns out that she is a cake maker with a lovely website called E.B. Cakes. If you are within 100 miles of northern Georgia, you have a wonderful resource for specialty cakes! Thanks for contacting me, Elizabeth, you are a true artist.

My sister-in-law Phylis took her kitty quilt, Golden Memories, to work with her, and I may have a commission to do a chihuahua quilt for a co-worker! If they agree to the price, anyway.

I am almost finished with my green trapuntoed quilt, Carolina Woodland Spring. I have cut the border into an undulating wave, bound it with a hand-dyed spring green fabric, added beads and crystals, and took it to my bee Thursday night for approval. They all liked the changes and embellishments. One of the nice things about a support group like a quilt bee is soliciting their opinions on your work and ideas. I showed them the quilt and my apple green hand-dyed silk ribbon from Waechter's Silk Shop in Asheville. I got the thumbs up on adding the ribbon to the outer green border with beads and perhaps some white Angelina flowers. I am still trying to soften the effect of the green squares in the outer border, which seem a little strong next to the delicate trapuntoed areas. So, I will try to do that today and post the picture of the completed quilt. And, it will be ready to unveil at the Piedmont Quilters' Guild on Thursday night.

I spent a fun afternoon browsing Michael's and Jo-Ann's on Friday. Michael's had a sale on all ribbons and yarn, and I stocked up quite a bit. I also got some children's paintbrushes, which have a built-in gripper in the center. Great for little hands, great for older ladies' hands with some arthritis! Then on Friday night, I happily added embellishments to my Mini-Moo business cards to turn them into glittery bookmarks. I will probably hand these out at the guild meeting. Unfortunately, my computer is not recognizing the memory card slot at the moment, so I can't post any new pics until I figure out what's wrong. Edit: Got it working and adding photos!

Saturday afternoon we went to the NC State- Presbyterian College basketball game, which was quite a dud. We won, but State only scored 50 points and was behind at halftime against a team which is 1-18. I am dreading the game next Saturday against our arch-rival, #1 ranked North Carolina. If State does not play at a higher level, UNC will eat them up and spit them out.