Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving, we'll be spending ours with John's parents and brother's family. This picture is of my piano with my autumn arrangement on it. The turkey candle on the right is from when I was a child in the 60's , the turkey on the left is ceramic, I made in the 70's. The candle sticks I bought in Kenya, their hand carved soap stone.

Wizard of Oz party

This past Saturday our friend Theresa turned 50, her daughter gave her a Wizard of Oz birthday party. Her daughter and her friends are a very creative group and the party was wonderful. I remembered some Oz fabric I saw at our local quilt shop and new I had to make a little quilt for the birthday girl. The fabric that was from the Kansas farm scenes was wonderful with actual film images on it. The fabric when they arrived in Oz was awful, the images were fake and distorted, and the two groups were defiantly not made to be in the same quilt. But, I really wanted both fabrics together to tell the whole story. So, this is what I came up, which I was OK with. Theresa loved it.

This is Theresa as Dorothy (her daughter made her outfit, right down to her ruby slippers) and her boyfriend as the Wizard.

The two witches who each made their own costumes, the wicked witch also made her dogs costume, as one of the flying monkeys. The good witches crown was wonderfully done and the wicked witch is a make up artist and her nose and make up were great.

This is Theresa's daughter with her husband, she was the Wizard's assistant and he's the lion. She made both costumes.

The scarecrow, I think she also made his.

The tin man made his own with cardboard.

A close up of the flying monkey.

Group picture.

They could also sing and perform. Scott is quite well known around town for his music and singing.

And the wicked witch can also bake, she made the cake, notice the red shoes and legs under the house.

When we arrived at the cottage it was 70 degrees in the afternoons by the end of the week is was rainy/snowy and very windy, perfect weather for quilting. This was one of our sunsets when the weather turned cold.

They have a wonderful fireplace there, it was nice when it cooled off so I could light a fire in it. This little wallhanging I pieced was a pattern Kay was making and she had enough fabric for two so she cut me one at the same time as she cut hers (she's very fast).

The fireplace was a nice place to photograph Deb's Christmas quilt she pieced. The print fabric is a beautiful Christmas toile.

Close up of the toile.

Donna (from Atlanta, Ga.) hurt her back right before she came, hunching over a sewing machine did not work well, so she worked on knitting her father socks.

A few years ago our bee made 2 quilts for the cottage to hang up in the great room as Thank-you gifts. This is one of them.

This is the other one. They had commercial "tourist" blankets hanging in these spots.

Donna was like one big Santa Clause when she came, she brought wonderful gift bags for us full of fun things. One of the gifts was a pattern and fabric to make these tote bags. Their a nice size and use the 5" packet of charm squares and 1 yard of linning fabric.

Mary, in addition to many other things, made her sister this curtain valance.

This is another quilt top Kay pieced, those who know Kay know this does not look like her.

This is a wonderful purse Judy made, we all loved it.
This is only a small amount of the things that were made, when you have no "life" interruptions you get a lot done. Beside the two totes I made I spent all of my time machine quilting a quilt for my niece for Christmas and my seashell quilt for our R.V. As soon as their finished I'll post them.

Quilting retreat

Yes, Nancy did win her position in the election, our city will be so much better for it. We're all very happy.
For the past 8 years my quilt bee spends a week quilting up north, Lillian's nephew lets us use his families vacation home on Lake Michigan. It has a marvelous set up for quilting and a view that is wonderful.
The two windows to the left we quilt in front of them day and night.

This is our view out the windows.

We push the large dinning room table to one side and set up our machines, they are running day and night.

We all bring our own projects to work on but we started with this cute "group" project, making these little quilted bags. They were a fun project.

Every year our bee has a challenge for the year, last year we all bought a piece of the same fabric (my boarder fabric) and had a year to make it into a quilt. Then we bring them up to the cabin to show. This was mine, it represents the rain forests in Puerto Rico we hiked into last February (posted on my Feb. 08 blog). I put on some of the critters we saw, the big snails, Coque (frog), bright green butterflys, and lizards. Also the vines (white wool yarn I dyed with black walnut) that are hanging down from the canopy. It was a magical place.

This is Judy's quilt top. The challenge fabric was used as the zig/zag running through the quilt.

Donna's challenge piece.

Lillian made a jacket with her fabric, here she is modeling it.

Kay used some great Kaffe fabrics to make her piece. I don't think the photo showed it well.

Mary did a table runner (actually she did three but I only got this picture).
I have a lot more photo's of our projects we worked on I'll post some soon.

Don't forget to Vote!

My friend Nancy is running for County Clerk. I made this little quilt (14"x 14") for her as a congratulations card. That's being confident she'll win!