Beautiful Customer Quilt

I finally finished quilting Carolyn Ormond's sampler quilt.  What a stunner!

The edges are both angular and circular.  She should have fun binding it!  I decided to use white thread and do mostly background quilting to make the dark motifs pop. 

Some of the shapes were too large to be left unquilted, so I added some lines to enhance the motifs.

It was a pleasure to work on such a pretty quilt!

The mountains are starting to change color.  We had some pretty rides last weekend.

We continued to work on the landscaping.  I moved a lot of dirt and gravel around as Charlie filled in with the tractor.

Just a few steps and the Great Wall project will be finished.

We will eventually paint, stucco, or add cultured stone to the cinder block, which is now painted with dry-lock.

We were all tired after the weekend...even the dogs (we had our grand-dog Roo with us.)

A Pretty Customer Quilt...and Art Quilts from the Mid-Atlantic

Here is a quilt I just finished for Ann.  She made it in a class sponsored by Capital Quilters Guild of Raleigh a couple of years ago.  Neither of us could remember the name of the instructor, but she figured out a way to incorporate fancy borders into the piecing of the blocks.  I think she called this inner border "Salt Water Taffy."  The long skinny shadows are from my windowpanes!  (Thanks to CQG friend Katie Greenwood for supplying the teacher's name- Sally Schneider!)

I quilted it with leafy, twirly vines all over.  Some of the fabrics had the same motif.  I love to use curving quilting designs to soften the strong points of star quilts.

On to the Mid-Atlantic again.  There were many special exhibits with very original quilts, in addition to the Art Quilt category and Innovative category.  Here are a few that I loved.

The first one is from the SAQA special exhibit, Layers of Memory.  It is called The Fern Flower, by Valentina Maximova.  Such a joyous combination of colors and scenes from nature.

Look at this exuberant pieced bloom!

From tropical foliage, let's go to snowy winter hillsides.  In The Bleak Mid-Winter is by well-known art quilter Ruth Powers.  Look at all the colors and hues that actually are used to create what the eye perceives as white snow.



In the Bleak Mid-Winter, by Ruth S. Powers





Here is a lovely mermaid napping on the ocean floor.  The maker is Eileen Williams, whose work was inspired by another fabulous art quilter named Ruth McDowell.



Shell Study #1 by Eileen Williams



In addition to the fabulous pieced seashells, there are real shells attached as embellishment (and perhaps some shell buttons?)

I love the colors and images in the next quilt.  It makes me happy just to look at it.  Not sure if it is actually an art quilt, but it certainly compels the viewer to come in for a closer look.



Traveling Sunshine, by Becky Guinn

In addition to the whimsical images, there is some very fine quilting in this piece.



I absolutely adore the next one, a very realistic rendition of an ocean wave.  It is in my favorite color.  I pulled up a chair and sat under this quilt when my friend Mary was white-gloving and I was too tired to walk any farther.  Very relaxing quilt!



The Wave, by Sandy Curran



Just one more for today.  Unusual shapes really catch the eye at a big show.  This group quilt has a series of floral quilts hung almost like banners, or perhaps a valance.



Floral Promise, by Fiber Art Friends



It is interesting how each quilter worked with the same basic daisy shape to make their own unique quilt in different colorways.

I will leave you among this bevy of blossoms, but don't worry, there are many more quilts to show another time!



Two Customer Quilts

I've been busy doing some longarm quilting on two fun quilts for my friends, Jean and Carolyn.  First I did Jean's latest quilt for a niece's high school graduation.  The girl wanted cowboy boots and sunsets.  I think this quilt fits the bill!

Jean had a great time choosing fabrics for the boots. The one in the upper left in the picture below has outhouses!

Here are some more

The sunset is machine-appliqued.  Jean said she liked the Stars and Loops quilting motif, so I did mine freehand even though I own that pantograph.  I hate doing pantos!

The flannel backing complements the top perfectly.

The other quilt is from the Warm Wishes pattern, which is offered as a Project Linus baby pattern.  Several members of my bee have been making quilts from this easy pattern, and they all look different.  This one is in very bright colors and a floral theme.

I have been quilting for Carolyn so long that often she just hands her projects to me at our bee meeting and doesn't even make any suggestions.  The floral had such cute stylized flowers and swirls that I went with that theme for the quilting. 

I used Buttercup yellow thread.

The back of this quilt is an eye-popping pink and gold print. This quilt will be so cheerful on a cold dreary day!

Yesterday I took the dog for a walk down North Main Street in the historic district of Wake Forest, NC.  Little did I know that the "Victorian Ladies" would be so decked out for Halloween!  The big front porches were laden with ghosts, spiders, and skeletons!

Anyone care to stay in the Bates Motel?  At first I thought the sign said Bats Motel.

This one had life-size skeletons hanging from the trees.

A lot of the homes had lots of fake cobwebs.

At first I did not see anything unusual about the sculptures on this garden bench.  Then I realized that the girl and boy had a new scarecrow friend.

Here is the garden at the Wake Forest College museum.  (Wake Forest University moved to Winston-Salem in the 1950's, but originally was here in the town it was named for.)

This is the top of the arched canopy.

It was a gorgeous day to walk down this pretty part of town.

Today I made an expensive mistake.  I backed into our garage door!  Since our house is eighteen years old, I figured that I would not only have to replace that door, but the other one so they would match.  Luckily, I have already had a visit from The Garage Door Doctor.  He will come out to fix the problem tomorrow morning, and the repair cost is less than four hundred dollars.  Not what I would have chosen to spend money on right before Christmas.  Oh well, could have been much worse, and the car did not seem to be damaged.  And he is going to replace all the rusty metal rollers with nylon ones, so the both doors should slide much more smoothly.