A Little Help from a Friend

I was admiring the beautiful Sedum in our front yard by the light fixture. It turns such a gorgeous dark pink in the fall. It is lime green throughout the summer. I just trimmed the bushes around the post last week and see what I found growing there?

A stalk of corn. How did that get there? I guess one of my goofy chipmunk friends must have carried a seed over from the neighbor's garden. If they didn't wake me up at such a ridiculously early hour chipping away, I could love them a little more.

Yikes!

I sat down to sew yesterday and my machine was not plugged in. I unplugged it before we went on vacation --- in August. AUGUST?? What have I been doing? mostly reading plus a lot of housecleaning because we had overnight guests and hosted a gathering of church folks one evening. Hmmm. Not much to show for almost a month.

Well I sat down to sew and when I moved some papers, I found the pieces of a square that I had not finished for the latest quilt I was working on before vacation. I thought I had finished it, but no. So yesterday and today I am finishing that one block. It is the Pine Burr and its horrible, no-good, terrible, very bad set- in seams. I am so ready to be done with this block and this quilt. Funny how I was so in love with the pattern when I saw it in the Fons & Porter magazine and when I cut out all those pieces and when I sewed those 350 or was it 450 HST's which seemed like 4500 HST"S. All was good til I got to those set-in seams. There ought to be a law! The worst is almost over and then I can do some nice straight seams for awhile. LOL!

Two really good things: tonite is my stitching group get-together and this weekend is another quilt show. So much to look forward to.

Time for a Change

It's officially fall, so it's time to get out the fall decorations. This is a little wall quilt I made a long time ago. I like it because it is a design for fall and not Halloween which means I get a lot more mileage out of it - decorating wise. There is something about that scarecrow's head though that I just don't like. He needs some hair or straw or something.

We are having a blustery day!

Happy Birthday to Me

My birthday was over 2 weeks ago and I am still celebrating. Last week I went out to lunch with some of my friends and they brought me beautiful flowers and chocolate covered blueberries and other treats. Yesterday in the mail I received this beautiful gift box with lotions and creams from Crabtree & Evelyn. It came from my daughter who live in Canada. I feel so special.

Go Boilers!

Woo Hoo! Purdue 24 - Ball State 13.

Fun stuff

Here are the two things I bought at Quilt Expo. The Pretty 'n Pink pattern is from Don't Look Now, an Australian design company. She has a similar free pattern on her website, if you like this one. I think her designs are so new and cute.

The Cotton Theory book has been demonstrated on Sewing With Nancy. I like the idea, but it looks like there is a lot of cutting involved, esp. the batting.

One of my friends who went with me to Quilt Expo is new to quilting and she bought some really great finds. She just got a Bernina and is anxious to try out lots of things. We are going to have a session on paper piecing soon. It is one of my favorite techniques, so I guess I am the designated teacher.

All of the above quilts were part of a special exhibit at Quilt Expo and were all made by one lady named Mildred Sorrells. She has made over 200 quilts and won many awards. The quilt at the top is call Cathedral Ceiling which won Best of Show last year at Quilt Expo. Another of her quilts called Charisma won an award at Paducah this year and is in the museum there. What a prolific quilter!

One other important note: There were TWO Dear Jane Quilts in the show. One was on white background fabric and the other was on tan. Otherwise they were in reproduction fabrics and really beautiful. I am always excited to see one completed. Two put me over the moon! I'm easily entertained.

That concludes the slideshow of the Quilt Expo. Wasn't that fun? Wish you could have been there with me.

Here are more pictures of the Quilt Expo. I hope you are enjoying them.

The close up of the diamond shapes in photo # 3 is the border of the quilt in photo # 4. The fabric is solid black and the quilter created diamonds with gold thread and then filled in each diamond with quilting. Each diamond is a different color thread and quilt design. Fantastic!

The daffodils are a hand dyed quilt by Frieda Anderson.

The overall yellow quilt is a whole cloth with fabulous quilting and cutwork edges.

More Wonderful Quilts

Here are more quilts from Quilt Expo.

The first quilt is about the pantry and has a red gingham curtain that is attached to the front of the quilt and is pulled back with a tie. I thought that was pretty clever.

The 2nd quilt is a Rose of Sharon type quilt - one of my all time favorite patterns. The 3rd quilt won the best of show and was called A Thousand and One Berries. They were all perfectly appliqued circles. Very impressive.

The next is a New York Beauty style with some applique at the bottom.

The next is a quilt with all different blocks several with American flags and a couple with Abraham Lincoln like the close up shot. It was really interesting and beautifully done.

The next is a Buckeye Beauty which has now gone on list of quilts to make. Very scrappy and a fairly simple pattern, I think. What I like best is the maker constructed the sashing of lots of smaller scraps, so it is very multi-colored and lovely.

Next is a Nearly Insane quilt. I had never seen one up close, so I captured it to study a little more.

Another beautiful applique with birds and tree of life.

The quilt that looks like fireworks is by Claudia Clark Meyers and Marilyn Badger and the final quilt is by Marilyn Badger alone. She is one of my very favorite quilters. I took a picture of the quilting up close, but I don't think it showed up really well. She is so creative when it comes to long arm quilting.

More photos coming.

Wonderful Quilts

The Quilt Expo held in Madison, WI was really a treat. This was my first time to attend and I had a great time. I always have a great time with my friends and we laughed throughout the day. We managed to make it to Madison in good time although we did take a few wrong turns even with 3 GPS units on the job. The facility was a good size and not too crowded. The quilts were very nice with a good balance of WOW factor and " I could make that!" quilts. I sometimes get intimidated when the skill level is so high above me, but it is always nice to see examples of something that I could truly accomplish without a tremendous amount of sewing skill or creative genius.

I have no idea how to imbed photos so you can just enjoy looking thru them. I did not write down the names of the quilters, but did manage to capture some of them in the photos. Aren't they beautiful? Most of them are ribbon winners. I love applique so I took lots of photos of those. The quilt with the eagles has something to do with a Fire Academy and the eagles appear to be landing on or touching fire with their outstretched talons. I took a close up of the border of the quilt with stars so you can see the hand embroidered flowers and vines - just lovely. The last quilt was very funny and features a play on words for various uses of the word tie. Hope you can zoom in and see them.

More photos next time.

Only 2 More Days

This Friday we load up the wagon and head to Quilt Expo in Madison, WI. I am going with 2 friends from my stitching group, Fiber Friends. We are meeting a couple more friends at the show. This is my first time to attend this show which is put on by Nancy Zieman of Sewing With Nancy fame. I have gone to the Chicago Quilt Show since it opened 10 years ago and was devastated when I heard it was moving to Cincinnati. Seriously?? Cincinnati??

New Books!

I have the greatest in-laws in the world. They sent these two beautiful quilt books for my birthday. I have had such a great time looking through them and enjoying the photos.

Today I am organizing all my genealogy info that I collected on my vacation plus some that I had stashed away. It always feels good to get stuff organized.

A Whirlwind Trip

We just returned from a weeklong trip in Illinois and Missouri. We picked up our son in Illinois and went to a wedding in St. Louis. The bride and groom are both ministers and their wedding ceremony was part wedding and part church service and very lovely. The bride's parents belong to a country club where the reception was held and it was elegant and a delight to behold. We felt very honored to be invited and are very fond of the groom and happy to meet his new bride. The photo is a picture of our son's room. He moved into a fraternity this year. His room is a bit small, but he has scrounged around and furnished it pretty well.

We toured Springfield, Ill and visited the Lincoln Museum which was fantastic. They must have had help from Disney in creating it. The mannequins seemed lifelike and the whole thing was laid out so well that it never seemed crowded or was difficult to see the exhibits. They had several films that were excellent. I definitely recommend this if you get to that area. We also toured Lincoln's home and neighborhood and his tomb. Did you know someone tried to steal his body??

Our next stops were towns near Joplin in Missouri and Kansas where my father's family lived. We visited the museums, libraries, cemeteries and historical societies to glean info and take as many photos as possible. It was so neat to try to connect the dots in my family genealogy.

Then we spent a couple of days in Branson, MO. I didn't realize it was so big. Wow are there a lot of theaters and so much to do. We saw a couple of shows and visited the Titanic museum and even managed to visit a quilt shop. It was the biggest shop I have ever seen other than Hancock's of Paducah. I thought I would just pop in and out, but that didn't happen. There was just too much to see. Branson is a beautiful area and very clean and friendly. There were not very many people there and some of the shows had to be cancelled. At breakfast, some of the entertainers stopped by our table to hand out pamphlets advertising their shows. One man told us that their overall visitor level has been down since about 2000 even before the economy went down. It is clearly a tourist dependent area and I would hate to see it disappear. For the time being that doesn't seem likely. The area looked very prosperous. My only surprise was that because the town is built in the Ozark Mountains all the streets and roads are windy and up and down hills. All the buildings are built up and down hills as well. The first time I got out of the car in the parking lot of the theater I almost fell over backwards as the lot was sloped downward in two directions. I thought I was having a spell of vertigo! I felt very clumsy. My husband thinks I am a bit of a klutz anyway, so this just proved him right, I guess.

On our way home we stayed at Hannibal, Mo to look for Mark Twain and ice cream. All the downtown buildings were so quaint. They had a beautiful quilt store that was featured in AP&Q Quilt Sampler last year. The store was lit up, but closed, so I could only look in the windows. What a gorgeous store. We did find ice cream, though.

Time to get busy taking care of all the produce we came home to.