Blossoms everywhere

My pink dogwood has its first bloom.  Seems a little shy around the other, older plants, but it'll find its way.   The sprinkler system keeps it watered every morning.  I walked around the house and watered the other plants and was rewarded by this effusive burst of color from the phlox in the terraced garden.  What you see with the phlox is a rambling rose that creeps over everything like ground cover and blooms prolifically all summer long.                                                                                            

                                     

And down at the dock, a large pot holds a very happy hibiscus and pansy combination, which gives wonderful color to the weathered wood.

                                      

To round out the day nicely, I have finished and trimmed my Sloanie Stashbuster Quilt, and will bind it this afternoon.

                                    

If you really stretch your imagination, you can envision the angular equivalent of crop circles, only these would be flower quadrangles, interspersed with tilled fields (the black and white rows) as seen from an airplane high up in the sky.  Don't scoff.  Try it.  (OK....... maybe that's stretching it a bit TOO much.)

I used a vineyard-themed pattern for the full blocks, both colored and black and white, and then put a curved and gridded triangle in the setting blocks.  This was a wonderful way to use up my Kaffe Fassett scraps;  the black and white ones came from the leftovers from the black and white guild challenge, during which I made the Caribbean jacket that I showed you in a previous post.  Maybe you would like to see a close up of the patterns.

                                   

But how is it that no sooner do I use up a whole bunch of scraps than more appear, as if by magic?  Do they hide in my shelves and sneak out at night into my scrap basket?  Do quilt fairies bring them while I'm asleep?  Well, whatever it is, I am LOADED with scraps these days and looking for a great project to use them up.  Any suggestions?

Sunshine on my shoulder...

You know how you wait through the bleakness and the cold and the insane snowfalls of winter, dreaming of spring? Well, it's here, and every muscle in my body hurts to prove it. Why do we have to go out and buy forty seven plants and fertilizer and topsoil and bend over to plant all these and to walk around and pick up fallen branches and twigs on the lawn and then decide that it needs a little trim here and there so it looks well groomed and then as if that's not enough, one MUST put posies in large pots at the front door and in front of the garage or else heavens! It will look like we're not in the spirit of things! Well, I mean to tell you -- I haven't bent and stretched and lifted and climbed and lugged the whole winter, and my body is on strike! I can barely walk today. What ever possessed me?!

But you know how cute pansies can be. They're like puppies, or kittens if you're of that persuasion, and you just can't pass them by without envisioning how adorable they will be in their tub, greeting all who come to your door. No matter that it's mostly the UPS lady, and that she drops and runs because the dogs are always barking just inches away behind the front door.

But I fell sway to my fantasies and planted some yesterday anyway. The sun is shining today on them, making each dear little scrunched up face look like it's blinking to keep from getting blinded. Like every proud mama, I had to take a picture: here they are, my kinder flora (interpret that as flower children).


I am also happy to say that I finally put some holes in one of the walls in this new house and hung a sunflower and chickadee quilt that I made some time ago.

Hmmm. You can't see how cute the little birdhouses are around the periphery with their wooden buttons for doors. Here's another, closer shot. There, that's better.

The sunflower and birds are appliqued, and the birdhouses are rectangles and prairie points sewn into one of the borders. The pattern is called Sunflower Cafe by Sue Harvey and Sandy Boobar. It can be found in the August 2008 Quilter's World magazine. My friend, Mary, made one of these and put it in her powder room. After I saw it, I just had to go out and buy that magazine (about a year later!) and make one for myself!

Hot already!

What happened to spring?! It hit 90 degrees down here in Ebony today. I went out to buy pansies, dogwoods (one pink and one white), three purple lilacs and three blue phlox, but no way was I going to dig in the ground during this heat! I watered them after placing them in the shade and then dashed into the house to blissful airconditioning -- ahhhhhhh.
While straightening up my studio on the main floor of the house, I was putting away some quilts that I had entered in my guild's quilt show at the local library. We don't know yet who won anything as far as viewer's choice goes, but I thought I'd share with you one of my entries. I used oodles of feathers on this stack-n-whack, and the librarians told me that it got lots of comments.

DH promises to stay home tomorrow to help plant all those flowers and trees. He has taken up go cart racing these days, so I have to entertain myself. Left to my own devices, I tend to buy plants and fabric, so he should count himself lucky that I didn't bring home more than I did, ha ha.

Little by little

It's catch up day today. I finished my Easter Egg jacket while visiting my sister last week.

Then I didn't like the neck of my Caribbean Summer jacket that I had made as part of a black and white challenge for the guild, so I fixed that one today.

And I quilted a charity quilt for the local orphanage today as well. It's a twin size and very bright! I hope the young lady that gets it likes it.

And here are some of the pictures of the final product for the Golden Retriever quilt. I made the laurel wreaths with my IntelliQuilter, and they really enhance the embroidered blocks.

Here's a close up of the center block. I used metallic gold thread on that wreath.

Now I have a lamb roast in the oven and sleepy dogs at my feet. I think I'll fix a tall glass of ice water and put my feet up till hubby comes home. Ahhhhhh.....

Time for a break!

So here I am, sitting in front of my computer, taking a break from doing the Golden Retriever quilt (pictures below of work in progress), and I'm thinking to myself that I need a break. Not just today. I can only allow an hour before I have to go back into my lurkim and finish this quilt. No, I mean, a real break. Between the scrambling to get two huge quilts done for the quilt show, giving and taking quilting lessons, guild meetings, a new project (which I will share with you in a minute), trying to get everything together to do income taxes, packing for a visit with one son, then friends, then my sister, then the other son, and then last night Jett, our 6 year old male Chow/shepherd mix had his third seizure in the last 9 months -- well! I just need to go somewhere and "think about all that tomorrow!"



Here's a picture of the quilt on the frame this morning. Gorgeous fabrics from Benartex, and wonderful custom embroidery done by June Gibbs, a guild member who is helping to make this quilt and then donate it to the Golden Retriever benefit somewhere out in Washington state. Myrt Smith, another guild member, pieced the blocks. She's very precise and presses most of her seams open! Now THAT'S a quilter! I'm not nearly so precise in my ironing. Iron is still a four letter word to me, so it surprises me that I do so much of it without grumbling in order to make a quilt. Hmmmm. I guess it's just wanting it badly enough. But back in the 60's and 70's as a new wife, I was never so elated about anything as the advent of polyester -- wash and wear!



Here's a picture of the center block. There are also four other embroidered blocks depicting the various skills that the Golden Retrievers have to master in order to be champions for this organization. June had those four blocks custom made with the appropriate designations of the "classes" the dogs were being tested in.



This is a closeup of one of the pieced blocks. The hard thing about quilting when there are strongly contrasting fabrics is that no one thread color is perfect. I chose a parchment color, found in the backgrounds of the blocks, but I'm wondering if a light teal would have done as well? Unfortunately, although I searched my color cards and stores, no teal matched this fabric -- either too green or too blue, and that to me is worse than having a light thread. So we're stuck with parchment.

I'm making myself a brand new, fresh and spring-y sweatshirt jacket. Its a work-in-progress (WIP) and has just been sent to the washer to be wetted down thoroughly and then line dried. Then it gets pressed again, the bindings are put on the neck and down the front and bottom (cuffs are already done), and the zipper is put in. I love these jackets and can't wait to finish mine.



So, back to needing a break -- I am SOOOOOO looking forward to visiting my sister, Missy Molino. Some of you may know that she is the founding mother of Quilt Odyssey, a wonderful quilt symposium and show held in Hershey, PA every July ( www.quiltodyssey.com). Anyway, we are going to visit the AQS show in Lancaster, PA next Thursday - Saturday. AQS usually has its shows in Paducah. My friend, Mary Nielsen, also a dedicated quilter and longarmer, and I attended one when it was held in Nashville, TN, and it's a great show! So this will be my break. Although the cell phone will be on, I won't be cooking, cleaning, washing dishes or clothes, running errands, or cleaning up after seizing dogs or weary hubbies all dirty and dusty from REAL work (autobody repair). And any sewing I do won't have a deadline! Now if I can just find a frozen Margarita one evening, it'll be close to heaven....

Putting on a new face

You may have noticed that the layout of my blog has changed. Why? you ask. Well, I wanted to be able to add little signs or sayings to the side bar of my blog, but with the old template, there wasn't enough room. Part of the picture or saying was cut off. So now you can see, for instance, a sunflower with some bon mots around it. And oops! I accidentally added a cute, old fashioned St. Paddy's Day card, but I think I'll leave it there for a few days.
Let me know what you think. If you love it -- great! If you hate it -- well, you'd better tell me that, too. I liked the background of the old layout better, but this will have to do for a bit until I come up with another "must have."

Where did the time go?

I can't believe it's been over two weeks since my last post. During that time I finished another quilt for the guild. This time it's for sale, straight out. A group of ladies from the Lake Gaston Piecemakers Quilt Guild put together this wonderful arrangement of scraps called the Rick Rack Road Quilt. This pattern was designed by Deborah Hagy Hansen and was found in the Fall/Winter 2007 issue of Quilt Sampler magazine.







When we first moved to Virginia three years ago, my husband said to me, "Well, you keep making all these quilts. When are you going to make one for me?" So this was the quilt I made for him, and we use it in our nicest guest room. Why there? Because our guest rooms are in the basement -- or what I would have called the basement in our Maryland home. But down here on the lake, there are no basements. There are just lower living areas, and everything looks out on the lake and its peacefulness and beauty. So our second great room is downstairs with the guest rooms and my quilting room, etc. The "theme" downstairs is "The Lodge". My hubby's Rick Rack Road quilt has hunting and fishing and lodge-y things in the fabrics, so that's why its home is downstairs in The Lodge.



Anyway, when I saw the blues and purples in this quilt, I immediately thought of fine wines. One of our guild members donated a wonderful fabric with wines and vineyard scenes on it for the backing. You can see that I put echoed feathers in the light areas of the zig zags, but for the deep purple strips that course down the length of the quilt, I used a wonderful vine pattern and stitched it in copper metallic thread. Stunning, if I do say so myself!

Once that quilt was finished, I needed to get a Quilt of Valor quilted for one of QOV's prolific quilters, Sue Bennett. QOV is an organization that makes quilts for wounded soldiers. You can access their site at www.qovf.org. If anyone out there would like to participate in this worthy endeavor, please contact them and start quilting! Here's a picture of Sue's quilt, all done but not trimmed or bound yet. She'll be doing that part.



So enought of these freebies! Right now I'm working on a customer quilt for a Golden Retriever benefit raffle. But I'll post that after I get the work done on it.