Quilts and Clouds

Here are some more pictures of the auction quilts on display at the Capital Quilters Guild Thursday night.  (See my previous post for my bee's winning quilt entry!)

 All of these beautiful quilts have been made and donated for the Heritage Days Quilt Auction on October 1.  Here is a big shout-out to all the generous quilt makers who have created these gorgeous quilts for charity.  I am so sorry that I cannot attribute them to their makers, since the "Viewer's Choice" was anonymous.

The one below has a stunning color combination, and I loved the swirly quilting.

I love scrappy quilts, and this one covers a wide range of the color spectrum.

Here is another scrappy beauty.

Here is a bargello quilt in hot colors suitable for this July weather!

This advent tree was one of my favorites.  There are 25 ornaments.

This is a very large, stunning quilt in muted tones.  Lots of piecing here!

Here is yet another beautiful scrappy quilt, in what appear to be Civil War reproduction fabrics.

I like the secondary patterns of circles made from this pattern.

This was one of my favorite quilts in the exhibit.  I like the play of light and the contrast between colors.

Now look at this stunner...all I can say is "Wow!"

This quilt was quite remarkable, and I think it was made by an individual, not a group. Sure would like to have this on the bed in our cabin!

This smaller quilt has a lot of energy.

This next quilt was very popular.  The block is a traditional one known as churn dash or monkey wrench.  But, inside the center of each block are folded triangles, which open to reveal a surprise.

The folded triangles remind me of those fortune tellers or "cootie catchers" we made as school kids.

This one opened to reveal a raccoon.  Isn't this a great idea for a kid's quilt?

The next four pictures show some of the above quilts that won awards in the Viewer's Choice voting.

Things have been very busy since my Thursday night post about the guild meeting. On Friday morning, I had to go back to Rex Hospital in Raleigh for my first blood test since starting anti-coagulant therapy. (I sprained my ankle July 10, and developed a Deep Vein Thrombosis ten days later.) The goal is a PT/INR level of between 2 and 3.  I passed with flying colors with a 2.3. The best part was that I only had to take two more of the hated Lovonox injections after that! Yippee! I took ten total, and have ten bruises to show for it, making my abdomen look very much like a Dalmatian! I'm still on Coumadin.  I went back to Rex again this morning and it was 2.2, so I am doing well on the blood clot treatment.

The ankle is doing much better, as well. We went up to our mountain place and I was VERY careful not to fall again. I just had to dodge the seven children and five dogs, and stay out of the creek. We got a lot done, which is good, since we have a huge crowd coming in next weekend.

When we left Wake Forest Friday afternoon, it was 102 degrees.  We arrived at our mountain place just following a thunderstorm, and it was 72 degrees!  What a relief!  The hot ground air meeting the cooler air from the storm created a blanket of fog that crept across the mountains.

It started in the west...

crept down the valley and obscured the hills...

finally covering everything!

It finally rolled off to the east.  I love these weather phenomena that make for exciting photos!

As always, our Kasey was a happy camper!

A Look Back at North Carolina's Quilting Heritage

If you ever glance at the sidebar of my blog, you will notice a new award today: Top 100 Quilters Blogs! I'm not sure what I did to earn this recognition, but I'll take it! Not only am I on the first page, but I'm number three. Probably something to do with alphabetical order, LOL!

On to the wrap-up of the Ashe County Piecemakers Quilt Guild Show last weekend in West Jefferson, North Carolina. I really enjoyed my quick visit to see these quilts and the vendors. One of the vendors was Karen Comstock of Raleigh, a member of my own guild. She has a fabulous line of quilt patterns called Quiltricks, and had a large display at the vendor mall. I most recently blogged about her trunk show at Etc. Crafts in Cary, NC.

I certainly enjoyed the large exhibit of antiques at the show. Mountain people have a long quilting heritage, going back to the times when women suspended a frame on the farmhouse or cabin ceiling, and lowered it down by pulleys at night to add stitches to the quilts they made to keep their families warm. My husband's family from Rutherford and Cleveland counties in North Carolina had some quilters, but the descendants did not value these homemade "blankets" that were passed down. I think that during the depression, people had to make do with "homemade," when they could not afford store-bought. My late mother-in-law used her family quilts to pad furniture in the moving van, or to sit on at the beach. There were only two left when we cleared out her household. One was being used under the mattress on the convertible sofa bed. That one was in rags. The other I have restored as much as possible. It had many brown "age spots" or water marks that I finally reduced after many efforts with a paste made from denture cream! I will have to get some photographs of those quilts and the hooked rug made by my husband's grandfather.

So, it was delightful to see some treasured family heirlooms that have survived the generations. Here are some of the assembled vignettes of times past at the quilt show.

Here is an old chair and painted table. The china teacups brought back memories of my own mother's collection of dainty cups and saucers, which miraculously remained intact even in a family with seven rambunctious children.

The quilt on the left reminds me of one of my heirloom quilts, and the green one in the middle is much like a quilt top that my sister-in-law's grandmother made and I quilted.

They certainly had an array of hooked rugs to show with these charming old quilts.

And some braided ones, too. Look at the lovely Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt on the rack. And the card table cover and napkins...I have inherited several embroidered card table covers from both Charlie's grandmothers and my own. Bridge, anyone?

And here is my favorite of the antique vignettes...with a beautiful old Singer treadle sewing machine.

Great show, Ashe County quilters!