SUE B'S QUILT

I took a little trip over the past 5 days to see family and friends and to get my hair done correctly.  Yes, hair.  I have not found a completely acceptable hair dresser these past four years since we moved to EBF, VA, so every three to six months, I bite the economic bullet and go to the big city where I used to live and get a decent job done with my longtime favorite hair dresser, Katie, who makes me look like ME again instead of some frumpish backwoods denizen.

Having gotten that off my chest, here are the promised Sue B quilt pictures that I didn't have time to post before leaving on my marathon trip.

This wallhanging is about 36 x 36 and consists of 32  4" churndash blocks alternating with solid 4" patches surrounding a central appliqued 11" block.

I chose to quilt the solid patches with a cathedral windows motif, which made the quilt look like it had been embossed.  Those corner patches that are only 3/4 of a block were a doozie!  I had to fashion the pattern myself to make it fit into the 3/4 block at the same size as the pattern for the full blocks.  This was done with the aid of my ingenious IQ system for my longarm using a continuous curve approach.

Here is a close up of one of the 4" squares and the quilting in it.  You can enlarge it by clicking on it.

The applique outlining took the longest to do and required the most precision.  It helped her lovely design "pop", didn't it?

And now off to the laundry and my lurkim.

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. 

60 and counting

Today is DH's 60th birthday.  He's in mourning.  Now, I am 6 years his senior, so to me  the 60's are no big deal anymore, and they carry with them RETIREMENT!  Well, I retired, technically, 10 years ago when my knee got busted up too much to continue working.  But that magic "65" or even "62" looms brightly just at the horizon.  He believes he is going to have to work until he falls over dead, given today's economy and the fools who are running the country at the moment, so turning 60 is a bummer for him.  Considering his lifestyle in his youth, it's a wonder he's made it this far, so I think it's tremendous cause for celebration.  In my humble opinion.

So, after putting in a full day of work, after dinner most evenings, he putters about in his man cave, rebuilding motors and replacing gaskets.  These high performance motors blow when conditions aren't perfect, and he has had his share of problems with his engines.  I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about timing wheels and top dead center (TDC)  and before top dead center (BTDC) and how many degrees it has to be for the spark plug to fire on time.  I feel like Marisa Tomei in "My Cousin Vinny", only I'm not as cute.  And my biological clock stopped ticking a long time ago.

He says he relaxes with his go cart racing.  Now for me, this is NOT the way to spend the hours -- going around in circles and getting nowhere, but it seems to hold tremendous appeal to those of the male persuasion.  And as I tell my friend, Mary, if he has to obsess about something, I'm just glad it's not a red sports car and a hot blonde.

So, you know how you wish an actor luck on opening night?  You say "Break a leg".  Of course, you don't really mean that you hope the poor guy actually breaks a leg, but supposedly it's bad luck to wish an actor good luck.  So you say break a leg.  I guess that's supposed to deflect the gods' malevolent attention to your looming success onstage.

Well, in racing, it's similar.  At least, in our household it is.  Because of all the rebuilding and parts replacements and redrilling of these motors, when DH goes bounding out of the house on Saturday mornings, heading for the racetrack, I say, "Blow a gasket!"  Now, wouldn't you know, this is the only time in his life that he actually pays attention to me and blows the gasket -- regularly -- every race!  If he can keep the darn thing running, he should win, place or show.  He's been bringing home trophies up until about 4 weeks ago when his newest engine just decided to stop in the middle of the track on several occasions.  I hope he's got it figured out now.  Meanwhile, I think I should keep my mouth shut....

And that's how he's spending his birthday night -- working on another engine in preparation for a big race this weekend.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I have finally finished Joyce T's quilt.  Poor dear.  Hers was the quilt I was working on when my Y axis motor to the IQ broke down.  Not only did it take several deliveries of parts, but it took me several days to know that other parts were needed as I fumbled my way through replacing my own motors!  Hmmmmm.  There's a theme in this family... 

I tried out the new motors with some practice quilts and then  determined that it was safe to finish Joyce's quilt.  Here's a closeup of the pantograph I did for her.  If you click on any of these pictures, they will come up in a much larger size so you can see details better.  I used one of my favorite variegated threads by King Tut:  Joseph's Coat. 

Tomorrow is another day, and another quilt on the frame, all ready for me.  Hurray!

Quilt Retreat

My birthday present this year is going to a new quilting retreat in Tryon, which is in western North Carolina, where the wild and wonderful Marilyn Doheny, quilt designer extraordinaire, is the new owner of the old Melrose Inn, freshly refurbished in her inimitable way.  Here she will teach her inspired techniques using the 9 degree ruler in a week long class called Instant Garden --  Just Add Fabric!  She promises that our flowers and critters will be completed by the end of the retreat and ready to applique onto our background quilt!  I hope so.  I am not known for getting my quilts finished in a timely manner....

Experimenting with colors in bright strata, Marilyn has brought a fresh and exciting perspective to the quilting industry, and has been instrumental in developing the tools, such as the 9 degree ruler, to do this.  That's Marilyn, there, on the right.   She's just a wisp of a thing, but she has the energy of the Eveready Bunny! 

So, she has given us a list of supplies, including about 17 different fabrics, more or less.  We are to start with a baseline quilt, already made up and consisting of a fabric of our choice as the center and three borders around it.  Here are my choices for the borders.  The central fabric for the body of the quilt hasn't arrived yet. (Don't forget, I live in Outer Slobovia or its equivalent down here in deepest darkest southern Virginia, and we don't have fabric shops within reach.  We have to travel hours in any direction to get to one, so I ordered mine online.)

The widest, outer border will be the black fabric with bright flowers on it.  Then there will be a narrow turquoise blue one and then a medium sized, checked one for the innermost border.  I'm thinking of using a muted peach for the center, but we'll see.

On this background quilt, we will place our "garden flowers and critters" that we create from our strata.  Some of my selections for the colors for my strata are below.

I guess you can see that I haven't really settled on any particular palette yet.  But the whole idea is to mix and match, choosing the colors for each strata not so much to match the others as to balance them -- light and dark, opposites on the color wheel, striking saturation vs pale.    And then we're also supposed to choose at least three "zingers" that are bold enough to "pop" the design in small quantities.  Here are mine:

Lastly, we're supposed to experiment a little with plaids or stripes.  Here are a few that I'm auditioning for my strata:

What to choose...what to choose!  Maybe all of them.  Won't that be a wild garden!  Tomorrow I need to bite the bullet and start creating some strata to take with me to the class.

Creation

It's finished!!!  My guild friend, Lois' beautiful Creation quilt is finished!  I must say that this quilt took me an extraordinarily long time to do.  I had to create six of the designs from scratch:  Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, central star bursts, Alpha and Omega.  These were then outlined in gold metallic thread and placed between the pieced stars, all except the Alpha, Omega and Earth.  Those were three of the four corners surrounding the central red and yellow fireball.  The fourth corner there was a Celtic symbol for the Trinity. 

One of my favorite additions was this moon figure, which I cut from a larger moon and stars block.  Other cut designs from that block included comets and shooting stars.

So now I'm taking the rest of the day off, having already cleaned the house this morning while waiting for my customer to come to pick up her quilt.  But first, I'll show you what darling hubby did for me this past weekend.

I have to get the poles trimmed, but if they turn out to be the right distance from the wall for me to use the outer portions as hanging rods for my quilts-in-waiting, I may just keep the tallest one that long.  I have more batting to hang after the poles are trimmed, and the lowest bracket is repositioned.  As it is, it interferes with my ironing board.

Now, you might ask why we put the racks in that location, across the five foot door.  Well, that door goes into the part of the basement that holds the heat pumps, and we have access to them through a different door.  This one was created just so I could actually move my Nolting frame out of this room if I ever had to, so it's ok to cover it up for now.

This little darling has been waiting three years to get her own home, and we finally found a spot in my studio that is just right!

And now Miss Lissa (my Nolting 24 Pro) and her IQ (tablet on her head) are just waiting for me to load the next quilt on the frame.  But first, some iced tea and a few moments to read a real book.  I have been enjoying my Nook, but really, nothing is like a real book.  The texture, the smell, the luscious decadence of curling up on the sofa for a few hours.  Nope.  Nothing beats a real book.

Quilt Odyssey

This past week was spent with my quilting buddy, Mary, and it has been a blast!  We travelled to Intercourse, PA on our way to Quilt Odyssey, an annual quilt show and classes at the Hershey Lodge in Hershey, PA.  I'm particularly fond of this show since my baby sister, Missy Molino, is the founder and energy behind it.  Its web site is http://www.quiltodyssey.com/.  Here Mary is posing beside the sign for the People's Museum in Intercourse, where one of her quilts is hanging for the next year.

Mary's quilt derives from a class she took with Elsie Campbell in 2008 at Quilt Odyssey and is her own special twist on Elsie's string "hazmat" blocks.

While we were outside the museum, we ran into one of the new teachers for this year, Bonnie Hunter.  Bonnie is famous for making every inch of scrap material count!  Her wonderful free patterns and pictures can be seen on her web site,  http://www.quiltville.com/.  So we all decided to have lunch together and get to know one another.

  

Once in Hershey and all checked into the Lodge, we prepared our fabrics and tools for our classes the next day.  My first one was with Linda Ballard, who is known for her mystery quilt classes.  She is a very careful and methodical teacher and gives clear written instructions as well as demonstrating each step in the process.  I won't show you my quilt from this class yet, because it isn't finished.  Almost!

                  

The second day I took a class for the first time from Pepper Cory.  Pepper is a southern gal who has gone back to her roots and recently found an antique and gorgeous string quilt done in cheddars and purples.  I call it the Sweet Potato Pie quilt.  She taught us how to make it using paper piecing, and the end result was a large, 18" block, which we finished in class.  When you put enough of these together, you get the quilt. 

I'm not going to show you my quilt yet because I still have alot to do on it, but I'll show you Pepper's antique quilt find.  Isn't it wonderful?!

Energized!

Yesterday Myrt from my guild came by with bags of donated cotton fabric from an elderly lady who was going into a nursing home.  Among the various treaures were five pastel 15"  Dresden Plate blocks, which I combined with some of my fabric stash to create this small throw for the chemo patients at our local hospital.  Now to quilt it -- I have selected an off white flannel for the backing because I heard that chemo patients often feel chilled as if they can't regulate their temperature at times.  I hope this quilt is a comfort to someone.

This is Sue Bennett's quilt that she was gracious enough to give to me to quilt for her.  Isn't it beautiful?

In the middle of the quilt is a flag.  I quilted the Pledge of Allegiance in the red stripes. 

The tan borders have individual blue stars in them, which I quilted with echoes and then copied and stitched the outlines into the free spaces as my quilting pattern.  Inside that border was a smaller blue one that has tumbling leaves. Part of the setting of the flag is alternating red and cream squares, which lent themselves nicely to this continuous curve quilting.

In the next picture you can see a side view of the quilt showing one of the outer borders with feathered half circles in them.  These feathered triangles alternate with busy print triangles in which I placed an orange skin (continuous curve) pattern.

Hopefully you can see the pattern in this picture.

Lastly, Sue used piano keys for her final border.  I did a diagonal cross hatching over the keys to further stabilize them, and voila!  C'est fini!

Gloria!

Russell Samson sits by Gloria's quilt

I had an interesting occurrence last year.  I got a call from a lady named Gloria Samson, asking me if I would do the quilting for her on a quilt top that she had finished but did not have enough time to quilt.  She was referring to the fact that she had terminal lung cancer and despite chemo and radiation, she now had less than 6 months to live.  The quilt was for a Christmas present for her daughter.

I accepted the job, which was a double wedding ring quilt.  When I brought it back to her, she wanted it bound as well -- not my favorite thing to do, so I asked my quilt guild if they would like to participate in the binding as a charity for Gloria.  They would, and they did, and when she saw it, she cried. 

She tried to press upon me the quilt you see above as a thank you.  She had already paid me for the quilting on the DWR, and when I saw how unusual this one was, I knew I could not accept it as a gift.  I have never seen one like this before or since!  The baskets are scrappy, and the handles are pointed at the tops.  I told her that it needed to stay in her family.  She had hand quilted 3/4 of it herself, but her failing health made this a project destined to remain unfinished, since I prefer not to do hand quilting.  However, I told her that I would ask the women in my guild if anyone was interested in completing the quilting for her.

Til Tremper, a diminutive, energetic lady in the guild, had a special interest in hand quilting, and she organized a group of women who took turns doing this labor intensive work.  Till did not want remuneration for her effort.  She regarded it as a labor of love and a chance to hone her skills and those of the other budding hand quilters. 

Over several months (October to May), these ladies gave of their time and efforts when they could, and finally the quilt was finished, including the binding.  Yesterday I took it to Gloria's husband, Russell, who was overwhelmed by the workmanship.  He smoothed the quilt lovingly as he took in the beautiful stitching and then was lost in reverie for a moment. 

He says he is going to use it on his bed.  They had been married over 40 years. I know he must miss her. I think he likes the idea that through the quilt, Gloria is with him, enfolding him and continuing to give him comfort in this way. 

Around here it seems to be feast or famine when it comes to quilting work to be done.  This adorable octagonal quilt is Pat's crib quilt.  It was the first time I had put an octagonal quilt on the frame, and let me tell you, those angled sides are stretchy!  There was alot of smushing and pinning and easing that had to be done as a result of the fullness that is created when bias is in a quilt, but the hearts and flowers pantograph was widely spaced and made  the border look good after the fullness was quilted over.

The first little quilt went so quickly that I had time to do a charity tube quilt for guild friend, Myrt.  Our guild is donating over a hundred quilts to a local orphanage.  At first we thought that we would not be able to make enough  to give one to every child, and so we planned to give a quilt to each child that was leaving the orphanage because of reaching 18.  However, our guild responded so voluminously to this project that we are able to give every single child his/her own special quilt.

Today I'm going to finish Myrt's log cabin quilt.  And I have a few projects in the works that need cutting out.  And then, of course, tonight The Tudors is playing.  I'm hooked on these English history serials!

GRANDMA'S HERE

This is the first violet found on our property.  Its significance is emotional.  You see, my grandmother, who died in 1965, loved violets.  She and I would walk the grassy path between her house and her sister's, and she would swoop down and pick up all the violets along the way, gathering a tiny, delicately fragrant bouquet by the time we arrived at my (great) Aunt Mary's house. 
Invariably, no matter where I lived once I grew up and moved away from my family's home, if there weren't violets there at my arrival, they appeared as if by magic within a year or two.  I would always celebrate these blossoms as evidence that my own special guardian angel  had found me again and was once more watching over me.  I cannot tell you the peace that that gives me to think that I am so destined to be forever spiritually linked with my grandmother, who grew up poor and hard working but always found joy in the simplest things and whose heart held us all in its embrace.
No one else in the neighborhood has violets growing on his/her property....

This is my best bud, quilter extraordinaire, and psychological twin, Mary Nielsen.  We do lots of quilting together, and talking, and eating of Good N Plenty and M&M's.  Recently she came to visit in order to teach my guild how to use the Square in a Square ruler.  And then she stayed to "play" with fabric with me for the next three days. 

So, we dug out our Jodi Barrows books and rulers and about 22 of us stared at Mary like deer in the headlights, but eventually her patient explanations and demonstrations took hold, and we got down to work.  Below is my little Constellation Star quilt -- a table topper.  If I had it to do over again, I would make the red and white striped squares with the blue star points be at the four corners to define the quilt a little better.

Once our visit was over, I quickly got back to work on a customer's quilt that had been waiting in the wings for the last week.  Below is Gussie's Quilt.  The white areas are for future applique.  Gussie wanted to have the background done first.  This is a novel approach for me, but I happily pitched in and gave her some geometric lines for the top and bottom borders and then used four echoed sunflowers with MacTavishing behind them to fill the 26" square in the middle.  What do you think?

                                    

Here's a closeup of the sunflowers.

So that's it for today -- grandma's watching over me, Mary is safely back home creating new quilts to marvel over, and I'm back in the saddle with my work.  It's a wonderful life.