This Winter Day

Here is one of my art quilts that is appropriate for this cold, dreary December day.  My group Cyberbee issued a challenge eight years ago to make a quilt based on Maya Angelou's poem, This Winter Day.

I wove the front of the quilt from strips of hand-painted and commercial fabrics.  The green and white striped fabric was made with Shiva paint sticks, and made good tops for the button vegetables!

I made up for the gray palette on the front with a wildly colorful back.  I wrote the words to the poem on the hanging sleeve.

In case you cannot read them, the poem reads:

The kitchen is in readiness

white green and orange things

leak their blood selves in the soup

Ritual sacrifice that snaps

an odor at my nose, and starts

my tongue to march,

slipping in the liquid of its drip.

The day, silver striped

in rain, is balked against

my window and the soup.

A Pretty Quilt

Back to reality...home from the beach.  Got to start cleaning out rooms and closets again!

While I was gone, the Cyberbee had their quarterly meeting.  Finally, a secret project was revealed!  This quilt was made by members of the group for Holly Sweet, in honor of her seventieth birthday.

All the participants made and signed the star blocks, using the same background fabric.  The applique border by some VERY dedicated volunteers really adds a wow factor.  Isn't it beautiful hanging on Holly's freshly painted wall?  It was hand quilted using the "big stitch" method by Jenny Copeland.  

Cyberbee Show-and-Tell

I just realized that I never posted any pics from the Cyberbee meeting last Thursday evening.  Cyberbee is a sub-group of Capital Quilters Guild in Raleigh.  We formed back in the mid-nineties when we were the only ones in the guild actively using e-mail...can you remember how different things were technology-wise just a short time ago?  We meet occasionally during the year, and always have an interesting show-and-tell.This time we met at the Cameron Village Library.  Several of us met for dinner ahead of time at Moe's Southwest Grill. 

Here are a few of our Show-and-Tell photos.

We all wanted to grab Margaret's Bali Basket and go!  She made it using directions from the book Bali Bowls.  I absolutely love her color scheme.

Here is a purse made by Jean from the Two-Hour Tulip Purse pattern by our own Janice Pope of the Capital Quilters Guild. 

Carolyn made a very cute Flip-Flop quilt, using silk flowers to embellish the sandals.

She also made a cute child's quilt with lavender log cabin heats.

Joyce is working on an applique quilt featuring squirrels from the Bunny Hill pattern Pumpkin Hill. Only one block to go!

Joyce also showed us her Crayon Farm quilt.  She used regular crayons to make these adorable farm scenes.

Here is a closer look at some of the blocks.  She did a big-stitch stipple by hand for the quilting.

I was particularly fond of the the turkey!

Joyce also is one of the guild leaders for our Heritage Day Quilt Auction on October 1.  She has been working hard to make American Girl doll clothes for the guild's boutique sale of hand-made items.  She had three bridal gowns complete with veils and bouquets.

Susan shared a bright and cheerful baby quilt.

June showed two very large pieced blocks from the Cabin on the Shore pattern by Minick and Simpson.

We are heading to our mountain cabin for the long holiday weekend tonight.  We will be taking both our dog, Kasey, and our son's dog, Roo. 

Dave and Emily are off on a dream vacation to Spain and France.  Bon Voyage, kids, and have a safe, memorable trip!

Re-Vision Quilt Project: The Beginning

While I was at the beach, my awesome quilt group, Cyberbee, had an all-day meeting during which the Re-Vision Quilt project was launched. 

We have been toying with the idea for this swap for a long time, since Michelle read about the idea on Judy Rys' blog.

 I sent my project (a Ricky Tims Harmonic Convergence quilt top) along in a stapled brown paper bag, and Jean picked up a brown bag project for me.  When I found out it was from Mary Corcoran, I got excited because Mary is an awesome quilter who uses vibrant color combinations.

Yesterday, Jean and I had lunch, and we opened my bag to see the quilt Mary had bestowed on me.

Wow!

The idea behind Re-Vision projects is to give away a quilt project that you either do not like or just do not want to finish.  Once you give it away, you lose all control over what the new owner does to it.  And you don't get it back.  Typically, you might give away a project that would remain a UFO (Un-Finished Object) forever.

Our group has set December as the completion date for the Re-Vision quilt projects.  The quilts can be disassembled, cut up, painted, over-dyed, made into jackets or bags...whatever!

Here is my problem...I already love this quilt. It has fabulous borders, precise piecing, and is made from batiks in teal with bright accents. My living room happens to be teal with bright accent colors...

Why cut it up or paint it?  I think I may add an additional border and quilt it and have a gorgeous quilt to snuggle under while engaging in couch potato-ing.

It is going to be 101 today.  Can anyone really even be thinking about quilting?

Oh, yes!

Secret Santa Reveal

The other day I posted about the lovely Secret Santa gifts from my friend Jean. I also showed a teaser of the project I was working on. The actual exchange was on Saturday, during my family party, and I can now reveal what I made for Jenny Copeland. It was kind of funny that I was her Secret Santa, because I am one of the more "Artsy" quilters in the CyberBee, and she is probably THE most traditional. She likes country colors, folk art, applique, hand-quilting...and chickens! I decided to make another Great Big Tote Bag, like the two I made last year, except in her preferred color palette.




The instructions for this bag are from the Selvage Blog. It would take a lot of selvages and sewing to make this MONGO bag!


You start out by making a quilt, complete with binding. I selected most of these fabrics at Loving Stitches quilt shop in Fayetteville, NC, when I was there to buy a roll of batting. But Alert Readers will remember the beautiful green sun-printed pine needle fabric as part of my prize from Vicki Welsh's November Postcard Challenge. I still have some left for other projects! The orange hand-dye and the brown stripe were from my stash.




After constructing the striped top and the pieced lining, I quilted the project on my Gammill, in designs inspired by Nichole Webb's Floribunda Feathers.



At the same time, I quilted two five-inch pieces for the shoulder straps. After doing that, I realized I was supposed to fold the five-inch fabric strip in half over the batting before quilting. So, I cut my quilted straps in half, and then had to make a binding for them. I sewed them to the inside of the bag, reinforcing with X-stitching. The bound edges of the quilt are hand-stitched together.


Since I now had an extra strip of quilted five-inch wide fabric, I decided to make a little pouch that could be used to carry rotary cutters or scissors. It closes with Velcro, and I added a little fiber to the zig-zagged raw edge of the flap.





You can see how big the tote bag is in relation to the approximately eight-inch long pouch.




I also tucked in a pot-holder made by my friend Carolyn Ormond for her church's bazaar, and a coffee mug filled with coordinating fabrics.



If you would like to see another awesome Secret Santa gift from the CyberBee exchange, visit my friend Janice's blog to see what she created for Jean.

Sharyn Craig Challenges

Another quilt shown at our CyberBee meeting last Saturday was Alice's Sharyn Craig Challenge that she made with members of her quilt bee.

Sharyn Craig is a very prolific quilter, teacher, and author of quilting books. She visited our guild several years ago and got many of us inspired to take orphan blocks and make them into finished quilts with various sashing and setting techniques. She also was in a televised appearance, I think on Simply Quilts, where she described a challenge that she set for her quilting bee.

Each member was to make the same block, using one fabric that was provided, but choosing all other fabrics to suit her taste. In six months, the members would exchange their blocks. In another six months, they would all complete a quilt top using their blocks.

The CyberBee had a very successful Sharyn Craig challenge several years ago, in which I participated. We started with a Moda bittersweet print fabric in white, orange, and russet. The two project chairs chose a star-shaped pattern, which turned out to be very difficult to piece because it was printed in a smaller size than original. Let me tell you, it was not easy getting those points to match!

Here are some of the different star blocks that we excitedly exchanged. (These are from my quilt, already quilted.)

They look totally different in the different color schemes and with different parts of the block highlighted. A couple people said they never even saw the "star" in the design.

The best part was when we got together to reveal the quilt tops. Here is where each quilter really made their quilts individual.

Holly enlarged the original block to make a center medallion, added applique of bittersweet flowers, and log cabin blocks in the border. She was a big winner at the North Carolina State Fair with this outstanding quilt.

When I saw the browns, rusts, oranges and greens, I decided my quilt would be a wedding gift for my son Bryson and his wife, who were married in October. Those were their colors. I added a spinning star for the center medallion, using fabrics that I intended to "glow". I also added a smaller spinning star in the border. The remaining SCC blocks were made into pillows for their king-size bed.

Here is one with lots of additional applique and piecework by Jean. I think some of those blocks may have been from a CyberBee row-by-row.

Janice also made a beautiful applique center medallion for her quilt. Some of the flowers have thread-painting. It was not quite finished in this photo.Part of the challenge was to find a setting that would work for fourteen blocks. Many creative settings were utilized. Sharyn's books, such as Setting Solutions, were a great help.

Here is Margaret's quilt top.

Susan's whole quilt top resembles the original block.

Here is Tess's quilt.

Jenny's quilt went together beautifully with extra sashings around each block. (Obviously taken at the group "reveal" meeting... don't you love all the white tennis shoes?

And Dorothy's.

And Carolyn's setting was probably the most unique.

If you have a group of quilting friends, you might want to challenge yourselves a la Sharyn Craig. We had a blast doing this, and really got some great quilts out of those blocks.

It's getting better!

Yesterday, I got the OK from my SIL Debbie to add more quilting to her grandmother's butterfly quilt. So I spent a couple of hours doing some "Jeannie" flowers on the sashings. There is not a noticeable difference on the front since the thread blends in to the flowery sashing fabric. (Except that the sashings don't pouf out like they did before.)


But, oh, the back! I am so much happier with it now. Once I work on some of the stains and sew down some of the pleats, this could almost be a reversible quilt with a beautiful white backing!

The sashings are not any straighter, but they sure are prettier!

Now I must go shopping either in my stash or at the quilt store for a binding fabric. I am thinking of the light mossy green in the sashing leaves, but will audition several possibilities.

I have a new project for a customer who is a member of the Cyberbee, a local quilt group to which I have belonged for about fifteen years. I am not ready to post photos of this art quilt yet, but I hope to once she has given the quilt to her son for his (late) birthday present. This lady is a quilt artist, but due to getting on in years, she was having trouble maneuvering the quilt under her sewing machine for free-motion quilting. Here is what she wants me to do: quilt music notes in plain white areas, put wood grain on a guitar, and write the names of both rock musicians and classic composers around the border! How fun to add "Van Halen" and "Rochmaninov" on the same quilt!

Challenges: this quilt is partially quilted and has practically no extra backing or batting on the borders. Does this sound familiar? This is the second quilt in a row with those problems. However, JoAnn's quilt is lovely and flat and even so I am not expecting the pucker problem. I will have to sew some muslin strips to the borders in order to write the names.



By the way, in yesterday's comments, my friend Cathie (Cleveland Girlie) referred to those puckers on the back as "kisses from Grandma." I love that image!

Slice Quilts and Mountain Trip

Thursday night, a group I belong to called the Cyberbee had its quarterly meeting. We formed back in the nineties when there were not that many people who were using the Internet. We ended up with fifty members. Not that many attend any meeting, but the quarterly meetings have fabulous show-and-tell. Of course, the show-and-tell at Guild is fabulous, too, but you don't get the up-close view and chance to ask questions of the maker.

Five members of Cyberbee are participating in a "Slice Quilt" project. They each selected a picture they would like made into a quilt, and at each quarterly meeting, one of the members gets the slices of their quilt. Here are the ones from Thursday's meeting:

Here are four of the five slices of Cathie's Van Gogh quilt next to the original poster. Aren't they spectacular? Combinations of applique, thread painting, and fabric painting.


















Joann received her slices at the last meeting, and has sewn them together.


















Dorothy has also sewn her slices together.


















After I got home on Friday afternoon, DH and I took off for our little place in the North Carolina mountains. We were thinking it would probably rain all weekend. Happily, it only rained during the night Friday night. We had lovely weather to be outdoors and visit with my sister and brother-in-law and the various nieces and nephews and friends that were there this weekend. I was afraid I might have missed my mountain daffodils since we have not been there in several weeks. However, they were bobbing their lovely golden heads along the driveway and in the little garden I planted by the back door.



















Here is a neighbor's horse in a pasture below our property, enjoying the fresh green grass after the night's rain.

Of course, Maggy and I went for a walk looking for photo ops. Here is the pond as seen through a bough of a huge hemlock tree beside our driveway.

And another photo of the pond from the dam, with reflections of the trees starting to bud out.

Here is the creek upstream from our place.

And here is the new bend in the creek, created when the beaver dam broke up during the winter. Maggy is checking out the current before plunking herself in the deeper area.

And finally, here is the new wooden floor that our friends Ricky and Mary installed in the new mountain home they are building. Didn't they do a beautiful job?