Three New Postcards

I had a group of my teacher friends over for supper a couple weeks ago, and they were all abuzz about the idea of fabric postcards. None of them are quilters, although one's mom used to do traditional quilts. Anyway, they were all interested in purchasing a fabric postcard or two! I did have one on hand to show them, the peacock feather that my friend Michelle sent to me. No way I'm selling that one! I finished up three new ones and have several others under way. These little guys are fun to make. I used various combinations of Paintstix, Angelina, inks, and assorted trims. My favorite of these is "Undersea Garden." The pink flowers and the fish are Angelina.

I also finished quilting a wall-hanging that will be donated by the customer to a church in Raleigh to hang in its foyer. I spent a long time on this one since it is for a church, but the fabrics are so busy that the quilting really does not show. Here is a picture:

Quilting Gardeners

Have you ever noticed how many quilters are also gardeners, or at least flower lovers? Perhaps we just like pretty things! My roses started blooming on Thursday last week. It is a fine time to work in the yard, before it gets too hot! And the roses have yet to develop black spot or attract aphids or Japanese beetles.

The mountains were starting to really turn green as the leaves have emerged. The ferns are up and the wild azalea has started to bloom.

Of course, in the mountains, the rhododendrun or "laurel" as the natives call it, won't bloom for at least another month. It is breathtaking when the entire creek bank is covered with tall flowering shrubs. We spent the weekend up there again, working on the cabin. OK, so I did the shopping and cooking and watched the men mud the sheetrock and install the garage door openers.

At home I have two bluebird boxes, one of which is now occupied by an infant bluebird and his unhatched sibling in the egg. At least I think there is only one baby- when I checked the box this morning, the mama was sitting on the nest and didn't budge when I opened the door.

Time for me to quit fooling with pictures and finish the quilting on the Three Crosses wallhanging. I should have it finished in the next day or so.

Check out all the Round Robins on Webshots

Today I added photographs of all the Round Robin quilts from the recent CyberBee exchange to my Webshots album. Thanks to Holly Sweet for allowing me to use some of her photographs that recorded each round of the exchange. Since Webshots now enables posting of video photography, I was able to add the moving lights on the Elvis Jukebox quilt. That was so much fun! My husband and I went to a disco party last fall, and they gave us necklaces that light up via watch batteries. I added these to the "jukebox" quilt by inserting them into organza pockets which I attached with velcro to the quilt. I would recommend viewing the album as a Slideshow. Sit back with your cuppa or glass of wine and enjoy the work of these talented and creative quilters!

Lighting up the jukebox

Bonnie McCaffery Pod-casts

This morning I enjoyed spending some time on Bonnie McCaffery's website. She has been posting videos or podcasts of interviews with quilters and artists from around the world. I have found them to be very inspiring and done well- no shaky camera, audio drifting in and out of range. The latest vid-cast is with fiber artist Melinda Schwakhofer. Wow, she made me want to grab my Angelina fibers, beads, and wires, pen some lines of poetry, and create something fabulous! I have so many neat materials upstairs in my messy studio that I have never even tried, like Lutradur, Misty Fuse, and Lumiere paints. I better get going! By the way, I saw Bonnie once when I was in Richmond at the charming Quilting Adventures store. She was just coming in to teach a class on Portrait Quilts- another project I want to do some day! I have the book, the paints...

In case anyone wants to see the picture of the full quilt that I just finished for my sister-in-law Debbie, here is a picture. I added more to my Webshots site in the album 2007 Longarm Quilting. The quilt top was made by her late grandmother in the 1970's.

I also made the discovery that now Webshots is allowing the posting of videos! Great!

Building Our Little Cabin

Our dream of a little mountain home is getting close to reality. We are building a garage apartment in Laurel Springs, NC, which some day will be attached to a larger log cabin home. When that happens, the room over the garage will be my sewing studio! You can bet I have asked for lots of built-in storage and electrical outlets. Last week the builders finished framing the windows and adding doors and hardwood floors. On Saturday, a crew of family and friends hung the sheet rock in the garage, led by able master carpenter Jason Hall, my sister's son. Our volunteer electrician got stuck with the duty of installing the screws with the electric drill, since at 6'9" he can reach the ceiling without standing on a ladder! Thanks, guys! My father came over for lunch on Saturday. He lives in a retirement center in Boone, about 45 minutes away. It is so great that he will be close by when we are visiting the mountains. Until a couple years ago, I had always lived close to home, but he finally sold the family house in Cary and moved to Boone, where two of my brothers live. The picture above shows my sister Katy with my father in front of the cabin.

The mountains are definitely showing signs of the spring season with ferns, trillium, may apples, and even dogwood blooms. The dogwoods look like the frost got them, because all the white petals had a brownish tinge. But, it is nice to see new leaves on the trees and a little sign of greenery! The beavers have started work on this year's beaver dam, just below our lot, which will provide us once again with a swimming hole once the weather warms enough to brave the mountain waters. Last year we had fun throwing tubes in the creek and floating around on hot days.

Fayetteville Quilt Show

I had a nice afternoon in Fayetteville yesterday at the Dogwood Splendor quilt show. The quilts were all hung and judged, and all we had to do was look at the ones displaying signs that they had been quilted on a longarm. There was a nice variety of quilts of all sizes, and some lovely work. I wish I had been assigned a quilt show prior to the Machine Quilters Expo, because those quilts had a completely different standard of machine quilting. But we eventually selected a favorite, which is now wearing the huge Carolina Machine Quilters ribbon, sometimes mistaken for a sunbonnet. Congratulations to Iris Noitalay for winning the longarm award! Ironically, both of my favorite quilts in the show were hand-quilted. One was a lovely mosaic tile design, which won Best of Show, and the other used hand-dyed or batik fabrics in floral applique on black background, with gold embroidery. Stunning!

Now, off to the mountains to work on our little cabin some more.

Here Comes the Judge...Me!

Today I am off to a new adventure in quilting. I have been asked to be part of a team to award the Best Longarm Quilting ribbon at the Tarheel Quilters Guild Show in Fayetteville! It will definitely be a new experience to be on the "other side" of quilt show awards. Tess and I are driving down to Fayetteville today and will meet Judy there. The three of us will fill out evaluation forms and pick the lucky winner of the beautiful, humongous ribbon sponsored by the Carolina Machine Quilters. I hope that we will get to see most of the quilts in the show, but don't know how that will play out since the show is probably not hung yet.

The show, titled "Dogwood Splendor," will be at the Honeycutt Recreation Center on Devers St. and Ft. Bragg Road in Fayetteville on Friday and Saturday. It is their twentieth bi-annual show. I am looking forward to it!