Beach to the Mountains

I have been working on a Trip Around the World quilt for my friend Marcia.  Last week, I spent a few days with Marcia and her husband at Topsail Beach, NC.  They have a lovely home that faces the Intercoastal Waterway and is just a short walk to the beach.

Look at my bed in the guest room!  This is another of Marcia's mother's quilts, a Grandmother's Flower Garden.  So pretty!

The weather was not good...cold and drizzly.  We were able to walk on the beach and sit out in their screened room near the water.

This is a sea turtle nest, protected from predators by wire fencing, sticks, boards, and signs (for the human predators.)

There was an osprey, or sea hawk, perched on a scraggly tree right behind the house.

On Thursday morning I drove back to Raleigh, hopped in the truck with my husband, and went to our mountain place.  About halfway there, the sun came out and the skies turned blue.

The leaves are just starting to turn color.  The mornings were misty and the colors looked stronger against the gray.

With so much rain this summer, my flowers on the front porch of the cabin have flourished!

This weekend's project was to build steps between our upper and lower driveways.  I was not expecting them to look this fine!  The project is still not finished.  Our friends from Raleigh, Tom and Pauline, came up to work on the steps and the wall.

Someday the wall will be covered with something...stucco or stone.

I got to entertain Tom's mother, who came along to enjoy the mountains.  We went to the Church of the Frescoes in Glendale Springs, where there is a huge plaster painting of The Last Supper.

We also rode up Mount Jefferson and were treated to a clear view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I guess that is enough scenery for one post!  I am burying thread tales on Carolyn's quilt, stitching the binding on Marcia's, and now must replace the binding on a quilt I made for a high school grad years ago.  And tomorrow I am spending the day at an art museum with friends!  

Life is good!

Some Finished Projects- and Animals of Hawaii

I have slowly  been getting back into quilting gear after my vacation in Hawaii.  Here are some projects to show you.

First up is a charity quilt that I quilted for the Capital Quilters' Guild of Raleigh.  It will be a wheelchair quilt.  The maker took a piece of what we call "cheater cloth,"  because it looks like patchwork but is just a print.  She added a narrow plaid inner border and two outer borders.  When quilted, it is difficult to tell that it is not actually pieced and appliqued. 

I used a good blender thread in a khaki color called Baguette by Signature.  This is free-motion quilting with a few bunches of cherries here and there.

The backing is a pale blue solid, but this is one of the ones that I had to extend with a strip of my own fabric to make it large enough to mount on the long-arm machine.

Today I finished a quilt that I thought I had almost finished before I left for Hawaii.  It was made by Tonya May, a blogger who I met at the Carolina Longarm Quilt Show back in September.  I picked up her quilt top in North Wilkesboro at a grocery store parking lot! 

Tonya loves turtles, and this cute quilt has pieced turtles.  The head is pointed to the right corner.  Can you see it?

I had fun stitching the shells with various designs.

Here are the borders.

The backing is a turquoise polka-dot print. The thread is a Signature cotton in a new yellow-green shade called "Bamboo."

This quilt was really fun to work on!  I'll get it back to Tonya on our next trip to the mountains in a week or so.

On the subject of turtles, we actually were swimming with sea turtles or "honu" in Hawaii.  The resort has a "lagoon" with real sea water and sea creatures.  The water was so clear that you could see the fish without a snorkel.  Did not like seeing the eels swimming around, but was thrilled to swim along with sea turtles.  When we visited a black sand beach, there was one lying near the waves, not moving.  Charlie thought it was dead or dying, but I found a sign that said the turtles would come out of the Pacific to "rest" on the beaches.

We spotted another one doing the same thing just below the bridge over the lagoon at the resort.

I was standing in the shallow water, peering through the crystal-clear water at the fish, when a sea turtle went swimming right past me, about two feet away!

In addition to the sea creatures, myna birds and doves at the resort, there were feral cats and, of all things, ferrets at the resort!  The ferrets were imported to Hawaii to keep out snakes, I believe.  We noticed them the first morning from our lanai as they skittered in and out of the shrub borders.  (No pics- they were too fast!)

The feral cats are actually fed by a volunteer group known as "Advocats."  They were all over the resort, and help to keep down the mice.

There are also feral pigs and wild donkeys on the Big Island, but we did not see any.  The wild animal I was most thrilled to spot were the many humpback whales off the coast.  We could look for their spouts and watch them breach while sitting at the resort or sometimes even driving along the coast road.

For a more up-close look at ocean mammals, you could visit the dolphin pool right at the resort.  We had a dolphin encounter in Nassau ten years ago, so we just watched from the sides this time.

More next time!