Round Robin Quilt

I haven't blogging lately due to computer problems, I could not up load my photos, but I'm up and going now. A couple of years ago I did a round-robin quilt exchange with one of my quilt bees. We all began by making our own mariner compass block then sending the block with extra fabrics around to each other in January. At our Christmas party the next Dec. we got our quilt top back. They were all wonderful. This was mine, I've finally begun machine quilting it, hopefully I will finished it this week.

I went to a lecture on color by Kaffee Fassett last week. He lives in England and is very well known for his knitting, needlepoint, quilt patterns and books. He is also well known for the fabrics he designs. A lot of designers now use the computer to color in their fabric design, Kaffee still hand paints all of his.

I love this picture (it was a slide on the screen). This is a picture of his dinning room, a little busy, but wonderful! It reminds me of his fabrics he designs.

His books are a feast for the eyes. I love how he photographs his quilts with nature. This is one of his first books and I think they keep getting better.

This is one of the pictures in the book, it reminds me of his dinning room. (of course this wouldn't be one of the outdoor pictures).

A lot of the women at the lecture were knitters, this women is working on a afghan pattern that is popular around here now. Knitters are exchanging their left over sock yarn and knitting little bias squares with tiny needles.

She has great color sense.

Well, my vacation is over and it's back to the real world. When we came home I began spring cleaning the house, went back to work and then late Sunday night my husband was diagnosed with pneumonia, its been a long week. He's starting to feel a little bit better today but it worries me with the swine flu going around. I haven't done much quilting but I did make this card with my natural dyed wool for my girlfriend. She is cooking this weekend for a Christian women's retreat. For the women on the retreat she took tea bags and changed the paper tag to one with a Bible verse on it, hence the tea cup card.

On out way to Florida we stopped at the Canton Museum of Art, on exhibit was a collection of 40, 8 ft. landscape art silk kimomo from Japan. The collection was breathtaking! It featured Mount Fuji in autumn and winter. The kimono hung along side eachother making a panaramic view of the mountain. Itchiku Kubota, the Japanese artist created them with layering dyes, inks, and embroidery. It took him 26 years to figure out the lost art of tsujiganhana dying. When he was 60 he started the Mt. Fuji series. He died before it was finished. One interesting fact he is the only artist to have his collection shown at the Smithonian museum while he was still alive.

Of course you could not photograph any of the collection. This vintage kimono hung in the entrance.

This life size fabric and paper cherry tree also graced the entrance.

And on to Florida where we brought the boys new fishing poles, here their trying them out in the small lake behind their home. They got pretty good at casting. Mom usually dresses the triplets alike.

I thought this was a cute picture, big brother walking the littlest one home. The oldest one is so good to his little brothers.

Here we are dying Easter Eggs, big brother went to play football with the neighbors. He's growing up.

One day we went to a children's Science museum, this is the opening of the "body works".

My last picture is my grandsons (not the blonde) at their friends house for Passover, wearing their yamikas (sp?). My daughters good friends are Jewish and invited them over for the Passover celebration.

Quilt guild & Happy Easter

One of the quilt guild members made these cute Easter cookies for the meeting last night. Our gust speaker was Kay England, she said one thing she loves is cookies.

This is Kay giving her very funny lecture and great trunk show. We laughed from the moment she got on stage until she finished. I highly recommend her for your guild programs. This is her tribute to Betsy Ross quilt. Some of the information she gave on Betsy was she "supposedly" taught George Washington how to make a 5 pointed star. We don't know if she made the first American flag but she did design and make many. She out lived 3 husbands.

This is Kay's favorite antique quilt, a nine patch from the civil war era.

This Burgoyne surrounded quilt is also from the civil war era. Kay hand quilted this one.

We also had our annual Earth Day quilt show, I took a few pictures of some of my favorites. This first bug is from a pattern.

This clown fish I believe is also from a pattern. Her colors were beautiful.

This was my favorite, I love the bug jars and wonderful little sayings and poems were sewed on.

One of our guild members doesn't quilt, she's a rug hooker. I love this rug, the style is Pennsylvania Dutch done in the fraktur method. Ok, what that means I can't remember. She design the rug and washed some of the wool together so the colors would run into each other and tone them down.

My husband and I are leaving for Florida to spend Easter with our kids and grandchildren. Part of their Easter basket goodies are these pillow cases I made them. My friend Mary has a wonderful sewing machine that does embroidery, she put their names on them.
I hope you have a Blessed Easter and I'll see you April 20.

Signs of Spring

Being very tired of winter and painting, last weekend I packed a picnic lunch and my husband and I took a drive in the woods looking for signs of spring. We came across this big flock of turkeys, and as they say in the Bambi movie, I think the Toms are "twitter painted".

A lot of the farms were collecting the maple syrup as it begins to run.

And my friend Lillian made a new summer purse, it's beautifully lined with zipper pockets and of course she made a matching check book cover.

Being in Michigan just because the calender says it's spring the weather doesn't always cooperate, we're suppose to be getting between 3 to 6 " of snow in the next few days. My girlfriends came over the other night for bee and wore their finished wool scarves (although no one would model for me). It was fun to see from one pile of wool we all shared, how different they all looked. You could tell whose scarf belonged to who just by the color. The first one is Laura's.

Mine.

Joni, who left the Abercrombe (sp?) label on the patch.

And Cathy O's. A couple others didn't get theirs finished yet.

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.