Heritage Days Quilt Auction

Saturday, October 2, is the day that Capital Quilters Guild is holding a Quilt Auction and Raffle at the farmhouse at Historic Oak View Park, Carya Drive, Raleigh, (off Poole Road).  Boutique and Auction registration start at 10 am, Auction starts at 2 pm.

Here is our raffle quilt, Lil Orphan Annie.  It is hand-quilted and appliqued.

You can see some of the hand-made donated quilts for sale at the auction on my blog post here.

Our charity partner again this year is Military Missions in Action.  This group is a non-profit that helps wounded veterans and their families in North Carolina.  They are completely funded by donations and the members are all volunteers.  Their services include household improvements and home maintenance that encourage independent living for disabled veterans.

The boutique has over 350 hand-made items for sale.  I turned in a whole bag full of quilted, painted, bejeweled bookmarks.

This group has purple foil on red and blue hand-dyed fabric.

In this group, the blue and copper are painted, foiled batting.

 This group has hand-painted fabric with embellished fibers and Swarovski crystals.

It was fun to work on these colorful projects while North Carolina was being deluged with rain all week.  The weekend is supposed to be very nice, however, and I saw a beautiful rainbow tonight.

Christmas Quilts

The Grove Park Inn got me in the spirit to start decorating for Christmas. So, yesterday, I got out the Christmas quilts and started changing out my decor for the holidays.

This is my version of Gingerbread Houses, from a block party exchange at Capital Quilters' Guild many years ago. I added the border of gingerbread men that are personalized with the hobbies of the members of my family.I used to participate in many block exchanges. This quilt has blocks from a Cyberbee Santa swap and an Internet Snowman swap.

This little guy came from a kit I purchased in a Crafters' club long ago. I don't think I was a quilter then. I kind of like the wobbly flying geese. I did not quilt this until years later.

I also made a whole stack of bookmarks to give as Christmas favors. Most of them are made from a fabric I painted, stamped, and foiled last year. I added some shiny stitches and fibers.

New Project

Here is a peek at a new patchwork project that is underway. This is all I can show until after Christmas...yes, I am actually starting some Christmas gifts before the second week in December. I love the bright colors popping against the black prints.

When I was making my second journal for my online class, I had lots of narrow pieces of watercolor paper left over from trimming the papers to size. These are perfect for bookmarks and experimenting with different types of embellishment.

The top one has a strip of hand-dyed fabric fused to the watercolor paper, and then I doodled on the fabric with gel pens. The center one also has fused fabric and some fiber and ribbon embellishments. I printed some words on a transparency master in different fonts. The word "laughter" is just stitched on to this bookmark. I like the effect. The bottom one had a light lavender wash of paint, and I just doodled over it with the gel pens.

In fact, I doodled my way to the mountains on Friday while DH was driving. The scenery was not too good in the gray fog and rain, so it was fun to work with bright colors. Here are a couple of new pages in my art journal.

The spiral feather is similar to the floribunda feathers I learned from machine quilter Nichole Webb. I used them on the white wedding quilt I made for Dave and Emily. Now I am working on another project to go with the quilt, so I need a little practice on these.

I have an interview lined up on Thursday for a teaching job at an elementary school in North Raleigh. The job begins January 2. I started making appointments for doctor visits in the event that I get the job. Today I am off for my annual mammogram. I also made an appointment with the ophthalmologist who performed my Lasik surgery back in the 90's. My last eye check was in 2001! That is awful. I have been squinting at my crossword puzzles, so I know my near vision has gotten worse as I have gotten closer to the big 6-0.

Winding Down

Only two more days of school...my classroom walls are bare and the back of my car is full of plastic storage units. After school today, I got a pedicure and manicure. Oh, my tootsies were aching and I was tired. There is nothing like a little pampering to restore the soul. And my feet are always definitely in need of professional help, with my little clubby toes and bunions. I picked a delicious shade of peachy pink polish.


When I spoke at the Piedmont Quilt Guild earlier this year, I made bookmarks out of my Mini-Moo business cards. I decided to do the same thing for the people in the office and the teachers and assistants I have worked with most closely. I taught children from four fourth grade and four third grade classes. Two are for men, the principal and a fourth grade teacher. Hope they don't mind a little colorful fiber in their lives!



My granddaughter, Lily, was born while we were on our beach vacation two years ago. I have been wrapping her birthday gifts and decorating her card and envelope with glitter glue and inks. She is getting a new bathing suit, shorts outfit, hat and backpack, and a net to catch little fish in the surf. There is a gift shop close to my home called Lily Mae's- almost personalized wrapping for DGD Lily Rhea! This is a little silver necklace. What fun to finally have a little girl! I can't wait for Friday!

This may be my last post until after our beach vacation. The people we rent our cottage from are somewhat Luddite...I doubt they have added Wi-Fi to the cottage. So, have a great week! Our temps are supposed to be around 99 for the next week. I hope there will be a breeze! If not, the surf during the day and frozen Margaritas at night will have to do the trick.

A Day of Fiber Fun

Yesterday was one of those miserably hot and humid days that we often experience here in the southern US. Just too hot to handle a big quilt. My sewing room is on the third floor, actually a converted attic space. Even though it is air-conditioned, it never really gets cool on days when it is in the mid-nineties. So, I decided to play with small pieces. I found a small piece of Sulky Solvy water-soluble stabilizer, and made a small sample of Fantasy Fabric using fibers, ribbons, shiny thread, and Angelina. This piece is very small, maybe four by six inches. It looks like ocean to me! And each side looks a little different, because I used turquoise thread on top and a lime green on the bottom.

While I had the Angelina handy, I tried fusing some to Bounce dryer sheets, to get a sort of transparent shimmery stuff. I also fused some Angelina to bright hand-dyed fabric, along with some silk sari ribbon that has a silver center. I used Bo-Nash powder to fuse all this to the fabric. These might make good postcard backgrounds.

Then I fused some Angelina'ed fabric and laundry sheets to a leftover piece of Timtex, the stiff interfacing I use in fabric postcards. I made some funky-shaped bookmarks, then added some beads.

Then I remembered my vow to do all the sample projects in Vikki Pignatelli's book Quilting by Improvisation, and went to the section on improvising blocks. This time I used a light stabilizer by Sulky, and made improvisational log cabins. You just cut the strips for each round in a funky manner, iron under the edge that will cover the previous round, and stitch down with an invisible zigzag or blanket stitch. I got two of these done. I used darks on the center and outer layers, and light or bright greens on the second layer. This might look kind of woodsy if I ever finish enough to make a quilt.

CLA Challenge Quilt and Artsy Bookmarks

I belong to a group of Longarm quilters from North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina, called the Carolina Longarm Association. We are having a quilt show in November, for which I have entered the challenge. A kit was provided with fabric and instructions for this star quilt. Very simple design with lots of quilting opportunities. The whole thing is only about 24 inches square. HMMMN, do I do a traditional feather design? Venture into trapunto? Use wild shiny threads? This will be fun.

Since I got my sewing room semi-orderly yesterday, I decided to immediately mess it up by finishing some artsy bookmarks. I used my Tsukineko inks and Shiva Paintstiks to add some designs to heavy watercolor paper, then cut them into bookmarks. I was going to use them "as is," but decided it would be much more fun to add some fiber "tails." After I did that, I thought it would be fun to add some sparkle with Angelina fibers. I sprinkled a little Bo-Nash powder and ironed on the Angelina between sheets of parchment.

This is one reason I keep every little scrap of ribbon, beading, or other potential embellishment around for inspiration. Wonder if my library book pages will be sparkling when I turn them in?

These were lots of fun. Next time I will add the Angelina before cutting out the bookmarks so the edges are a little cleaner. I stitched around a few of them with invisible thread to hold down the fibers.

This is the other side of the same bookmarks.