Autumn Garden

I absolutely love the change of seasons, especially when winter turns to spring and summer to autumn. Our trees are just starting to turn color here in Wake Forest. In this picture you can see a maple reflected in the glass storm door on our porch.

I planted a "burning bush" or Euonymus in our front bed many years ago, and it is starting to catch fire!

I am still trying to learn how to use Photoshop Elements 7 software. Here are some mums with an artistic filter applied.


And a surprise bloom in the shrub bed on the far side of the house. Why is a rhododendron blooming now? They usually bloom in the spring or early summer.

Quilts on Wheels Delivery

Two other CyberBee members and I delivered ten large bags of "Quilts on Wheels" to a rest home in North Raleigh to be given to fifty residents for Christmas gifts. These are meant to be used for those in wheelchairs to keep them warm. It was so much fun to see the Activities Director and Art Therapist unfold each quilt and exclaim with delight.

There was a nice variety of colors, and some that could be used for a man or woman. All the quilts were made by members of the Capital Quilters Guild in Raleigh, NC. There were several residents in the room making claims on which quilt they wanted- very fun to see. I was proud to be a part of the guild today!

Some of the quilts are so decorative that they asked if they could hang them for seasonal decorations to cheer up some of the common rooms. We suggested installing curtain rods and using the cafe-curtain rings with clips, since most of the quilts do not have hanging sleeves.

We were in the art room, where an activity decorating hot-air balloons was ready to begin. I was ready to sit down and join in the painting and applying of tissue for 3-D designs- it looked like fun! This tapestry on the wall caught my eye: it was made by the art therapist from "student" designs. The birds were made from painted fabrics. They were fused or glued to a burlap backing.

I was very impressed with this home, the people who worked there, and the cleanliness and appearance of the facility. They even have a sun room with comfortable furniture and glorious sunlight streaming in.

Okay, kids, if I ever have to go in "the home," I want one where I can still paint fabric,make wall-hangings, and sit in a pretty sun room!

Remembering Maggy

This little dog was thrown off the back of a truck when she was a few weeks old. She was rescued by a teacher friend of mine, and we adopted her just days after losing our twelve-year old collie. We had all been so sad, and she cheered us up right away. She always looked at us with one ear up and one ear down, like she was listening and trying to understand.

Sometimes she seemed to be smiling.

She loved to watch squirrels out the window. Her goal in life was to catch one, but I don't think she ever did.

She loved our rare snowfalls, and her powerful back legs cut through the deep snow easily.But mostly, she loved to run up the mountain. She always wanted to lead the Gator up the trails.

She would stop and wait for us to catch up.

She and my sister's dog Fred would gallop through the Christmas tree farms looking for rabbits.And we always stopped at the creek when we came back for a cool drink.

Maggy made her last trip up the mountain a week ago.

I hope that for her, Doggie Heaven is a big mountain in the sky. Goodbye, old friend.

Cold Mountain Weekend

We got a little taste of winter this weekend in the North Carolina mountains, with temps down to the thirties and an occasional snow flake. Our son brought our two grandkids up for the weekend and we had lots of outdoor fun despite the cold weather.
I let Lily pick all the flowers that she wanted, since they probably won't last much longer. We tried to light that big pile of wood behind her from our recent land-clearing, but it was too wet.

Here she is coloring outside with some of the flower tops she picked off.We followed the Halloween trail to Ricky and Mary's housewhere they got light-up Halloween masks

and party favors.

In fact, Avery was in disguise most of the weekend as "Batman."
On Sunday the sun finally came out, and we had a pretty but cold ride across the mountain.

A very nice weekend!

Bloggers Fall Quilt Festival

Time for my last-minute (almost) entry into the Bloggers Fall Quilt Festival coordinated by Park City Girl. No voting or judging, but lots of nice prizes!

I entered Autumn Wedding, an appropriate quilt for this time of year. I gave this quilt to my oldest son and his wife for a wedding gift.

The center medallion has the spinning star pattern that I bought at an Amish Quilt Sale in Raleigh. The colors seem to glow!

The pieced border is made of a smaller spinning star from the pattern, and the Sharyn Craig Challenge blocks I swapped with the CyberBee.

We each made a set of blocks with the same (difficult!) pattern, and then each made a quilt from the set. There were fourteen in all, so I made three pillows to go with the quilt from my extras.

This quilt is heavily quilted with oak leaves, acorns, and other motifs that do not show up very well in the photos.



The deadline is tomorrow at midnight if you want to enter the contest!

A Bright Quilt for a Gloomy Day

Gloomy and gray...that would describe our weather here in central North Carolina for the last two days. Throw in wet...pretty yucky. I chose to work on this beautiful quilt top for my friend Jean.

The pattern is Bento Box by Tracey Brookshire. Made up in batiks, it is sure to be treasured by the high school graduate/college freshman for whom it is a gift.

I used the Signature TieDye cotton variegated thread for the top, and a medium gray Bottom Line thread on the bottom. This is the largest quilt I have done in quite awhile, after all the kids' quilts and wheelchair quilts lately.

What the heck is a Bento Box, anyway? Found out here on Wikipedia. A fancy Japanese single-serving lunch box.

This week, the International Quilt Festival is in Houston, with lots of eye candy quilts, classes, and shopping opportunities. I have never been to the show, but it is one of my lifetime goals to have one of my quilts there. Hmmm, that means I would have to finish one and also enter it. Some day I will complete a masterpiece to enter, maybe! Anyway, since I am saving so much money by not going to Houston, I treated myself to some yummy silk fibers from Myrna Ficken's website, A Quilter's Choice.

These fibers are hand-dyed silk tussah tops. They come in the rope-like coils you see in the photo. You gently pull them apart, and can use them for needle-felting, silk fusion, or projects like the fiber shawls that I make on the longarm.

I am wearing another one in my sidebar photo. I did a three-part tutorial on how to make these starting here.

By the way, this year I am participating in my CyberBee's Secret Santa gift exchange. My Secret Santa sent me a secret message that I was to stop purchasing quilt books! Well, since you must be one of my blog readers, SS, I would encourage you to check out Myrna's website for these silk tops. MMMMM! By the way, Myrna has personally called me each time I have ordered from her to check out the order and assure the availability. Great service!

Wednesday Works-in-Progress

Got back to a little long-arming yesterday. First project up was a piece of hand-dyed fabric that I purchased at the N.C. Quilt Symposium in May from Artistic Artifacts. Judy from Virginia brought a large selection of vintage fabrics and fibers hand-dyed into luscious colors. In fact, just about everyone I knew saw me at her booth as it also had fabric paint, art quilt supplies, collage kits, you name it. This piece has chain-stitch embroidery forming vines and leaves. I was using it "as is" for a tablecloth on a large wooden table in my kitchen. However, it did not have enough "heft" to lay flat on the table, the edges were fraying, and I was afraid some of the embroidery would wear off.

Solution: I used a similar shade of coral fabric for a backing, Warm and Natural batting, and a TieDye variegated cotton thread to quilt it! The first picture shows the part that is quilted on top, and unquilted below.

I basically followed the vines and leaves, adding loops and more leaves in the bare spots.

I guess this piece can be reversible if I want to use the less intense color. The bobbin thread was a medium brown "Bottom Line" Super-Bob.

This one will be done when it gets a binding.

Then I quilted another charity top for the Capital Quilters Guild "Quilts on Wheels" project. At the September meeting, the quilts from a summer challenge called "Iron Chef Challenge" were presented. The block party chairs gave out bags of "ugly fabric," and the participants had to use at least one of the block party designs for that year. The challenge quilts were amazing- none of them looked ugly to me. After the challenge show-and-tell, many of the "ugly fabric" quilts were donated to the guilds charities. I will be doing four of these.

Here is the first one. I would call this a good lesson in "value" as the colors are not as important as the contrast. To lesson the impact of the lavender solid fabric used as the background in the star blocks, there are several strips of sashing. I still would not have used lavender, but this top turned out to be a nice, soft little wheelchair quilt. I used an olive green Madeira trilobal polyester thread, did an informal feather around the border and freeform quilting everywhere else.

At first I thought this was a pieced backing, since many people are using stash fabrics these days for quilt backings. But, no, it is a print with four different reproduction-type prints.

I don't know the makers of these challenge quilt tops, so I hope some CyberBee members will volunteer to do the bindings.