TEXAS STAR

When a friend asks a favor of you, saying yes is automatic.  When she selects you for a special favor, the doing of it becomes an honor.  BFF Mary asked me to quilt this quilt that had been made by Starlyn, one of her buddies and co-workers at the now defunct quilt shop where Mary worked part time.  It was to be a surprise for Starlyn, and I was overwhelmed by Mary's confidence in me, particularly since Mary is an excellent quilter herself!  So as soon as it arrived in the mail, I began working on it, having already decided on the patterns while I awaited its arrival.

In the setting blocks you can see a wreath that has the same star in it as the main pattern.

The star itself is done in continuous curve arcs.

 And for the setting triangles, I halved the original full circle wreath, tweaked the feathers a little and voila!  You can also see the loops in the green border.  The outer border is a damask design that is barely visible because the fabric is busy.

All the ladies who used to work at the quilt shop (except the owner -- very bad form for her to skip this get together!) met Tuesday for lunch, and Mary gave Starlyn the quilt then.  Word has it that it was well received, making me very happy!

BUSY DAYS

First and foremost, I want to say Happy Birthday to my brother.  He is such a delight, and I am very lucky to have him in my life, even though we seldom see each other.  You know how it is with good friends, though -- even if you don't get together often, when you do, you just pick up the thread of conversation and keep going.  My baby brother is like that.  He's the real deal.  What you see is what you get, and I like him that way.  Many more, bro'!

In my quilting world, I am working on a small project, a wool needle keeper, that I started in Sue Spargo's class at Quilt Odyssey.  Above is a sampler that she did for us with wool leaf shapes that were all the same but had different embroidery stitches and embellishments on them.

Here's a closeup of some of the stitching.  Isn't it luscious?  The shapes I have on my needle keeper are just circles, but it's surprising how unique they can be made with just a few cleverly placed stitches.  When I get it finished, I'll post it for you.

Meanwhile, here's a little preview of the larger wall hanging project that Mary started in another of Sue's classes.  This is just one section of the quilt, but Mary is a very fast quilter/stitcher, and she had this part almost finished by the time the show was over.  The background is a gorgeous turquoise raw silk, not shiney at all, and fairly loosely woven, but it has great texture. 

Yesterday a lady called me wanting me to put her granddaughter's name on a laundry bag that she was making for her to take to college this fall.  I don't do embroidery as a business, but the lady's friend, who usually did her embroidery, had injured her arm, so I did it for her.  What a great idea!  I immediately called my DIL to ask if my grandson, who is going to VA Tech this fall, needed a laundry bag.  Turns out he already has one, and it isn't made of any type of fabric that can be embroidered.  Oh well.  I'll save that idea for some other time.

TRADITIONAL BEAUTIES

Isn't this just the loveliest quilt?  It's all appliqued, and then finished with a scalloped border.  Click on this picture to see it better.  I love to see hand piecing and applique, but I find it tedious to do.  Maybe that's why I value quilts that have this kind of work on them so much more than straight pieced ones.  The quilting on this one is by hand, too.  Sorry I didn't get the name of the artist, but this quilt was among the others I have shown that were hanging in the show at Quilt Odyssey.

Talk about quilting!  Take a look at this one.  Again, hand appliqued and hand quilted.  These traditional style quilts are such beautiful presentations.  I think for all their novelty and inventiveness, art quilts can never have the grace and solidity of traditional quilts.

Karen Marchetti created this simple but dynamic example of a pieced quilt and won second prize in the wall quilt category!  She named her work "Clouds in my Latte", which reminds me of a Carly Simon song, "You're So Vain" in which she sings about "I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee...."

This miniature quilt is mind boggling!  The quilting is so very tiny and detailed.  I can't imagine how she accomplished that without going blind!  The name of this quilt is "Secret Garden" by Terri Doyle.

This large quilt was made by the Friendship Star Quilt Guild from Montgomery Village in Maryland and is called "Sunflower Square Dance."

This last one is the creme de la creme.  "Pine Burr" by Judy Elwood is machine pieced, hand appliqued and hand quilted.  For her superlative efforts, Judy won First Place as Best Traditional Quilt in the show!  Click on it to magnify it to see each tiny piece.  It is stunning!

I hope all this has stimulated you just as it has me to reach beyond my present grasp when designing or sewing or quilting your quilts.  The show was everything I've come to expect from it over the years and more.  Missy Molino deserves kudos yet again for another year of perfection.  Great classes, great show, and great vendors' mall!

As I complete the projects from my classes, I'll post them here.  Meanwhile, take a look at Mary's blog. She has information on the classes we took with wool queen, Sue Spargo.

QUILT ODYSSEY 2011

I love going to Quilt Odyssey in Hershey, PA each year with my BFF, Mary.  The quilt show itself is international, extremely eclectic, and totally awe inspiring!  This small wall hanging was created by BBD Designs this year especially for Quilt Odyssey.  They also allowed QO to use it on mugs, shirts, totes and to put out a pattern for people to make themselves.  This was in addition to the mugs, etc that had Quilt Odyssey's own design on them.  I bought one of the totes because Mary kept kidding me about dragging around a dilapidated but well-loved book with me in a Food Lion bag.  The book was falling apart, I know, but I really wanted to read it again during this trip.  Apparently we quilters have to dress de rigeur, i.e., if you don't make your own tote, you must have a quiltingly fashionable one -- no plastic bags!  After all, one must keep up appearances...!

The Hershey Lodge is stunning!  Clean, spacious, gracious, well appointed, with cheerful and helpful staff everywhere, it has to be the best hotel I have ever been in. I've been in bigger and more expensive marble filled wonders, but this one, with its two story fireplaces and massive hearths and warmth in their furnishings and color schemes is the best!  This is the upstairs lobby, where the public comes into the massive building for the show.  The downstairs lobby is where the people come in who are staying at the hotel and where one's bags are loaded onto lovely brass trolleys that can carry pretty much your whole travelling sewing room, all the clothes you need and some you don't, your iPad or laptop, extra bags of supplies, food, stuff you bought along the way to the Lodge (because we did just have to stop in Intercourse again this year), stacks of bins with more articles in them -- well, you name it, and we had probably packed it.

This was Viewer's Choice this year.  It's called Fire and Ice, and it was made by Claudia Pfeil from Krefeld, Germany.  Claudia used 55,000 Swarovski crystals.  The least expensive I found these on the internet was 10 gross for $55, which would add up to over $2100 just for the crystals!  What an investment.  The white glove lady tried to tell me that these were all hand sewn on, but they were the flat backs, and those don't have a place on their backs to sew them into anything, whereas the beads do.  So much for that fairy tale. 

 Nonetheless, the appearance was truly amazing, and the quilting was magnificent!  Here's a close up of the ice part, and

here's a close up of the fire part.  Magnify the picture by clicking on it, and you will see not only the swirls, but the tiny, tiny, tiny, less than 1 mm apart lines that have been quilted into this remarkable piece of work.

Just makes you want to run right out and buy some hot glue, doesn't it?  I never think of embellishing my quilts, but it really adds some pizazz!

SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION...

This is my set of 9 degree rulers, invented many years ago by Marilyn Doheny, who is one of the most creative, outside the box, innovative quilt artists that I have ever met.  You may remember that BFF Mary and I went to her week long retreat last year in September.  This year, Marilyn is coming east to stay at MY house and to teach my guild how to use her sensational invention in a day long class.

Marilyn uses fabric strata cut in interesting ways and reassembled in even more unusual ways to create many different fan shapes.  These shapes can then be twisted this way and that, elongated or shortened, or mixed with other fan shapes to bring forth wonderful surprises and a plethora of combinations that are sure to delight.

Only your imagination limits what you can do with these fans.  You can make flowers or critters or just winding paths or balloons or whatever comes to mind.  My focus this year for my guild is to bring new experiences to them that can be used many times after the teacher has returned home, so we're kicking off our year long program with Marilyn.  Won't she be fascinating?!

QOV DONE. ON TO LUCINDA BRODIE!

I received this beautiful QOV in the mail last Saturday and started quilting it Tuesday.  I finished it today!  There were some tension problems on the back.  I ripped out a few blocks and did them over.  Still problems.  Ripped out a few sections of each block and did over.  A little better, but not show quality, that's for sure.  Fortunately this quilt is not going in a show.  Even so, I wanted the soldier who was going to get it to like it.  At least the front is  wonderful.  Here are some close-ups:

This is the border treatment.  The swag with stars is one pattern (sorry about the errant thread in there), and I added the straight lines to it to fill in the empty space between the top of the swag and the inner border, which is an egg and dart pattern.

Each star block was quilted with this pattern, which is also seen in the intervening setting blocks.  In order to fill the setting triangles, I wanted to keep the basic pattern, so I cut and clipped and rejoined parts of the original block pattern to make this nifty triangle, below.

When my guild friend, Myrt, came today to pick up her first charity quilt (see the previous blog), she took a look at my Lucinda Brodie blocks and insisted that I put her other outreach quilts on the back burner until my new quilt was finished.  This comes as welcome news to me, because if I can finish it by March 1, I hope to enter it in my guild's annual quilt show all month long in March at the South Hill Library. 

So, off I go to my studio.  First to set the circles into the background and then to do all the flying geese.  BFF Mary has finished all these steps already!  She is so far ahead of me.  But then, she always is.  Check out her blog to see this gorgeous quilt!

Racing to the finish ... or should I say, Start?!

Here we go!  The countdown is on!  And Mary and I are racing towards the finish!  Or should I say the start?  We are going on an adventure to Marilyn Doheny's Melrose Inn and will be working with the 9 degree ruler to make a garden, complete with flowers and critters!  But first, we have work to do.  At least, I did.  Do.  This lovely quilt above is Dot F's granddaughter, Danielle's first quilt.  Pretty neat, isn't it?  The colors are lovely, and the log cabin design is very pleasing.

Here's a closer look at the junction of four of the log cabins.  I used feathers in the lighter half and bars in the darker one.

Danielle loves hearts, so I put them in wherever I could.  This is one of the small borders.

And here's the outer border.  The hearts here are upside down.

I also needed to finish Jane R's quilt before I left.  Don't forget that you can click directly on a picture, and it will enlarge for you so you can see the detail better.

But, just in case you want me to do it for you, here's a closeup of the pantograph.  It's called Sweetheart Garden and is one of my favorites.

Last, but not least (well, maybe least...) I finally quilted this one called Cubic Ribbons, made from one of Marilyn Doheny's classes on the 9 degree ruler.  I like the play on perspective, don't you?  And the Escher-like winding of the ribbons across and down each other.

And now, off to my lurkim.  (Who can tell me where I got that word?)  I still have all my strata to cut and sew.  Mary is way ahead of me on this one. 

Catch up time!

So let's see -- where was I when I was interrupted by surgery.  Yes, surgery.  I had the remaining (left) side of my thyroid removed on the 21st.  I certainly wasn't anticipating that this would happen so quickly when I saw the oncology surgeon on the 18th, and she told me it would be 4 - 6 weeks before I could get on the schedule.  I had been following a nodule on that left side for about 8 years, and over the last 6 months it started to grow and get calcifications and look a little suspicious.  I live in East Podunk, USA, where the shopping is nonexistent, not to mention the medical expertise for something like this, but I happen to have an internist who is also an endocrinologist, and she knew just whom to send me to, just in case it was malignant.
 

And then there was that unexpected phone call on the 20th from the surgeon saying that she had a cancellation for the 21st and our mad scramble to take care of the dogs and hubby's job and special foods for me when I got home and couldn't swallow very well (like last time) and all, but we made it up to Richmond that night and stayed in the hospital's hospitality house.  If you've never done this, consider taking advantage of these arrangements if you live far from definitive care, like we do.  It was clean and comfortable and very basic. 

I have to say that the suddenness of this "cancellation" in her schedule made me just a tiny bit paranoid:  did she really have a cancellation, or was she so worried about my thyroid's changes that she moved me up on the schedule?  Even though I didn't expect these nodules to be malignant -- after all, the last time they weren't, and I thought it would be the same this time -- what if she had seen something on my DVD (that's what they use now instead of films), and now she was worried enough to get me in quickly and was trying to do so without alarming me?

The next morning at 6 AM we were bright eyed and  bushy-tailed (well, not really) and off to the operating suite we went, with a tiny bit of trepidation.  I have to say that I have had many surgeries, but they were all at hospitals where I had actually practiced  in the past, so I knew the surgeons, nurses and anesthesiologists and was completely relaxed about having the right people work on me.  This time, although it was at MCV, a fine teaching hospital, I didn't know anyone.  I just had to trust that my surgeon would oversee my care and that the outcome would be equivalent to what I had had in the past.

I shouldn't have worried at all.  I stayed overnight afterwards because they had to follow my serum calcium levels to make sure that the parathyroids had not been compromised by the surgery.  Those four tiny glands are only the size of a grain of rice, so this was a very good move on the part of the docs to make sure I didn't have any problems during recuperation (tetany).

  You have almost no pain with thyroid surgery.  It feels sort of like you have a whiplash, but that's minimal compared to, for instance, abdominal surgery where you feel like a truck hit you and then rolled back over you to see what they had done the first time.  But I digress.

I didn't exactly get back to quilting very quickly, but I did manage to finish two projects by the end of May.  The first is a Nook book bag, created by my friend, Mary Nielsen, of whom I have spoken glowingly many times.  Mary and her mom both got Nooks for mother's day, and Mary fashioned this adorable carrying bag for it, going through two prototypes before she was satisfied with the design.  Then she let me try to make one, too, since I had gotten one a week later, and here's the front.

And here's the back.  It has a zippered pocket on it, which I use to carry the USB connection and the AC plug for the Nook, but you could also put your cell phone in there.

Here it is opened up.  Under the left flap are pockets for credit cards and the like.  This little Nook book bag was so useful this past Tuesday when I went for my post op check up.   It held everything I needed.  

And the best news was that the thyroid nodules were not malignant! 

One of my guild buddies, Myrt, asked me to quilt one of her personal quilts, so here's her wonderful log cabin with lovely diagonal stripes from the lighter fabrics.  I decided to use one of my favorite patterns for these log cabin blocks, which is placing feathers in the lighter areas and bars in the darker ones.

This closeup shows how lovely that pattern looks in the lighter areas.  I'm happy to say she was every bit as pleased as I had hoped she would be.

I'll have some nice pictures to show you when I get a little farther along on Sue's stunning quilt.  Sue does lots of QOV's (Quilts of Valor) for our wounded troops, but this time she sent me one of her own works of art.  But more about that next time.