Beads

I've been in a quandary over how to quilt the little piece I made from the centers of Purple Cone Flowers shown here. I experimented with different quilting designs by laying tracing paper over it and although I wanted to utilize those arcs, it didn't work. Then I tried doing some French knots and thought that it would give me Carpel Tunnel and a sore shoulder for sure because it was so hard to pull through the fabric.

So I decided to go with beads, lots of beads. I went to the quilt shop in Ridgefield, CT, Sugar Beads, and found the colors I wanted. Well, close enough. It's a great bead store, but they mostly concentrate on jewelry and didn't have a huge selection of seed beads. I've been spoiled by one of the booths at the Houston show that has every size and color you can think of, but that's not here.

I'm going to quilt it minimally first and then bead away. I will put on a false back when finished to hide all the mess on the back. I'll post it when I'm finished, but that might be quite awhile. Beading is slow going, but I do like the results.

Field of Flags

When I went to church Saturday evening in my neighboring town of Brookfield, CT, where I lived for 30 years before moving to my current house 9 years ago, I was greeted by this on the lawns of the Congregational Church across the street from my church. It literally took by breath away. I went back yesterday with my camera and took a lot of pictures, but it was impossible to capture the scope of the event. Every inch of the front and side lawns of this small church in the center of town was covered with these little flags waving in the breeze.

The pictures speak for themselves, but it certainly gives you food for thought.

Wordless Wednesday

New Work

Were you getting tired of looking at my cabbage quilt? I thought I'd better put up something new. I did make another small quilt over the weekend, but it's for a challenge and I can't show it yet. But this one, I can. I wanted to make another quilt for the "Common Object, Uncommon View " challenge. Last year I took a lot of Macro shots (very close up) in my garden. This is the center of a Purple Coneflower printed out four times on fabric. You can see a picture of a whole, but different, Purple Coneflower here. I did not change the color, but did take it into Photoshop Elements to posterize it. I must say that I like the sunny, happy hues in this. It's rather small, only about 20 x 20, since I have to work with my printer that only prints 8 1/2 x 11. Maybe I'll get a bigger printer some day. I'm not sure how I'll quilt it, but would like to take advantage of those wonderful curving lines that Nature provided. I'm also searching for a name. Any suggestions?

What I really want to do is make a big quilt out of just one flower center and do it in applique. Stay tuned to see if I really accomplish it.