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?!

Multitasking

My table runner is waiting to be quilted.  I have a customer quilt on the frame, so, although this runner was ready for the festivities and got used as is, it won't get its "big girl" finish until the other quilt gets done.

I am doing my lessons on my Designer Diamond.  This was one of them.  It's on the Husqvarna Viking web site under Education.  Lots of free projects and lessons there.  This one will end up as a little wall hanging somewhere after I embroider the Welcome To Our Home phrase on it.

Yesterday was such a peaceful day for us.  No visitors, even though I would have loved to see the family.  Just hubby and I, each doing our respective projects.  We call it Multitasking, our way.  Educators call this parallel play.  Apparently children of a certain age engage in alot of this before they become fully socialized.  They will each do their own thing, but in proximity to each other in a loose social group .  Great training for adulthood!  Team effort is one thing, but when the chips are down, it's what you can do by yourself that gets you where you want to go.  Not to say that being socially tuned in, empathetic, helpful, etc. is not an important part of our humanity.  Sharing our knowledge, imparting the "lore", supporting each other -- those make us members of the tribe.  But somewhere someone decided to strike that flint against a rock all by him/herself to bring new potential to the tribe.  If we had all sat around doing the same old thing as a group, we'd still be eating raw meat. 

And I'd never get to sew on my wonderful machines!

Embroidering again

A few days ago I started taking lessons on my Husqvarna Viking Designer Diamond, which I have had for over a year and understand the rudiments of, but realized that I owned a very expensive piece of machinery that was definitely not being used maximally.  Then one day, a glitch occurred that required me to travel hours to have repaired, and while I was waiting for the work to be done (can you believe it -- done while I waited?!) I talked to Sherry, a computer whiz who teaches the Diamond for the shop where I had my appointment for the repair.  One thing led to another, and I have become her student.

She lives in the same locale that I do!  So she came out to the house (a house call!!!  what a wonderful world!) for two hours the other day and began my education at the beginning, going over the embroidery part of the machine, starting with the design screen.  Each function was explained and then I had a series of exercises I had to do while she downloaded all the updates that I had not been able to figure out how to do.  Not surprising, since my security system on my laptop was keeping the download from occurring but not letting me know.  She, however, being a master at back doors and wrestling the wily computer to the ground, was able to get everything done, and voila!  My machine is now up to date.

Because I can only stand just so much of artificial practice exercises, I decided to make blocks from the Dakota Collectibles American Quilt disk that I've owned for about 10 years and have never opened.  I used her exercises to position, scale, combine threads, etc.  Everything fell into place.  It all downloaded perfectly onto my USB stick.  The stick then downloaded into the embroidery machine.  The stitch out was beautiful.  You can see three of the blocks above.  I stopped at five because I just want to make a table runner in time for the 4th of July.  

HAPPY FOURTH, everyone!

PS  We ate the tomato.  But never fear, another one is rapidly ripening even as we speak!

A Little Me Time

So this weekend, and for the past at least two weeks, every day has been 98 to 100 degrees or more.  Did I go outside?  Are you nuts!?  Of course not.  Not even with the lake beckoning me.  No, I stayed indoors and took a little "me" time to do some quilting of my own projects.  This little number above is for a not-yet-born baby girl, due September 1, daughter of some young friends in our tiny town.   If you click on the picture, you can see it in a much larger size.

This one is for Kelsey.  Kelsey is the youngest daughter of my former secretary, Maria, and she graduated from high school this month.  When her older sister, Jesyka, graduated, I made her a quilt, too, but it took me years to quilt it since I had to wait to be able to buy my professional quilting machine.  I had quilted Jesyka's quilt freehand, and soon realized that I do not have alot of creativity in me as far as coming up with interesting patterns for the quilting part.  Neither do I have the gross motor control that it takes to move that heavy longarm up and down and across the quilt and have it look like I know what I'm doing.  So now I use mainly robotics (Intelliquilter) to make the patterns look consistent.  Here's a closeup of the kind of thing I can do with the Intelliquilter that I could never do freehand:

Now I have a large customer quilt to work on this week.  It's called "Creation", and I'm waiting for some special thread and two special patterns before I get started on it.  The thread didn't come in today's mail, so maybe I can squeeze in one more of my own quilts before I can put the customer's on the frame.  Hmmmm..

Last, but not least, we have a rapidly ripening tomato! Another few days, and it will grace a master chef salad at our house.  I can almost taste the sun warmed flavor....

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. 

Green Thumb

Do you recall that some time ago I planted one tomato plant and one basil plant?  It was an act of faith.  I believed that they would live, despite my reputation for having the blackest thumb around.  Slowly and carefully, watered and semi-shaded, the plants have grown.  Here are some pictures of them:

The tomato plant actually has some tomatoes on it!   These are Better Boys. I couldn't find any Beefsteak tomatoes.  I pinched a few flowers off initially, hoping to get larger tomatoes. We'll see how that goes.

Below is a picture of the basil plant.  It is quite prolific, and I can see that I'm going to have to make some pesto from scratch to keep up with it.  Meanwhile, we enjoy bruschetta (pronounced broos ketta, for those of you who do not speak Italian -- not brooshetta) slathered with Balsamic glaze -- scrumptious!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Encouraged by the intense sunlight and occasional sprinkles we have been having recently, the avocado seed that I sprouted after three months of keeping it in a glass jar with water, has grown up big and strong.  I fed it with Miracle Grow when I put it outside, and it has gone from four inches to nearly two feet in the space of a month!

Last, but not least, here is the newest addition to our little garden.  Hubby and I went strawberry picking at the end of May, but the strawberries were gone.  Instead, there were a variety of plants, so we chose four watermelon plants and put them in the garden that will someday become a waterfall -- you remember -- the one that the dogs keep digging up.  Well, all four have lived, and one even has a flower on it, so it looks like we will have a watermelon of some kind sometime this summer.  Oh frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!                                      (Can any of you tell me where that expression comes from?)