National quilt day

I haven't been doing a lot of quilting lately, our snow is gone and I've begun spring cleaning and sprucing up our house. When it finally warms up here I want to be outside and in the dye studio, it's been a long winter. This hutch had a maple finish, my husband sanded it and I painted it black and put on new knobs to update the look. We painted the kitchen terra-cotta with cream color trim around the window. I still want to finish the wall paint job with some glazing, so it's not such a solid color and have a little more depth. When I was putting the dishes back in the hutch I had on a old Clint Eastwood movie playing, "A few dollars more", I love his "spaghetti" westerns and with the movie and music my hutch turned out with a little bit of a Mexican theme. Then, my grandmothers rose pattern dishes just didn't seem like they would look right in the black cabinet.(I have another glass cabinet in my dinning room for them). The clay pot on the upper left my mom bought in Mexico in the early 70's from an elderly women along the street. The piece of fabric in the right upper shelf was some of the silk tie scraps I bought. There is also a clay women I bought when I was in Mexico. The casserole dish is part of my grandmothers dishes and a few other family heirloom dishes are tucked in.

Saturday, our guild celebrated National quilt day with an all day quilting and eating. Quilters really know how to cook. I worked on this table runner for my hutch. It brightens up all the black and looks good with my wall color.

The following are some of the pieces from the quilt day. This orange quilt, draped over the railing is a class Lori Simpson will be teaching at our quilt guild this summer. She designs fabric for Moda and has a pattern line out with her sister.

This star is also a class she will be teaching. It was very striking.

One of the guild members brought this to show, she made this for her nephew who is becoming an Eagle Scout. The scarves, shirt and green pants fabric are parts of a scout uniform. The blank scout shirt is going to be filled with his patches. The scout patch fabric she bought from Hancocks in Paducah.

Some of the guild members were working on crazy quilt blocks that will be put in a quilt and raffled off, the money donated for breast cancer research.

Another piece.

This is another piece Sue had stitched. Her work is beautiful.

Happy St. Patricks Day!

My "daughter" Vicky loves frogs and celebrates her Irish heritage, when I saw this fabric I had to make her a quilted table piece. I love this one day of the year when I'm "Irish", I'll be making the traditional corned beef, cabbage, carrot and potatoe dinner for my husband and I, hopefully with lots of left overs. Enjoy your day!

Show & tell, silk fabric scraps

Last night was my quilt bee, Mary brought some of her quilts to share (she's the overachiever of the group, there's always one in every group!), this first one was a block of the month pattern from our local quilt shop (Quilted Memories). The blocks are called Felicity's Garden which Mary put together with beautiful boarder fabrics.

This sunflower wall hanging was a paper piecing pattern.

This little wall hanging was a kit from the quilt shop Little Quilts in Marietta, Ga. Mary purchased it last fall and made it on a stormy day this winter, the name of the quilt is Memories of Spring. I think everyone around here is ready for spring.

This is a bag of silk tie scraps I just received in the mail. They are great quality, large pieces, lots of variety and the bag is packed full. I read about ordering this bag from a great crazy quilting blog called alliesinstitches.blogspot.com She does beautiful handwork, check out her blog. Any way about ordering the silk fabric, I called Talberts in California 831-659-4540 and ordered it, it cost $25.00 and around $15.00 shipping. I'm not really a crazy quilter but I love to have a wide variety of fabrics and could not pass this up. They really are beautiful.