Hooray!

For those of you that have been following this collaboration quilt, you can all breathe a big sigh of relief with me.  If you are new to my blog, you can read about it here. After many, many hours of cutting, recutting, piecing, ripping out, repiecing, etc., it is finally finished!

I decided to piece the left hand side of the background in larger pieces to mimic the big pieces in the right side of the hemisphere. I was a little nervous abut piecing the semi-circle into the background, but I've done a lot of curved piecing in my day and this was a big gentle curve.  Even so, I did a ton of pinning and clipping and sewed very slowly and carefully.  I was hoping to enter it into Houston as a two person quilt, but I missed that deadline, so I will try for another show that will accept a two-person quilt and try for Houston next year.

Now for the quilting.  But first I am going to cut it (gasp!) into three unequal sections and quilt each one separately and make it a triptych. I want to do a lot of fancy quilting on it and since it now measures 91" x 43" there is no way that I can do it justice on my Bernina.  I don't know how other people shove a big quilt thru their small machines, but I know that I can't. I won't start the quilting right away.  I need to take a break from it and I have another quilt (much smaller, thankfully) that needs to be started and that has a deadline.

Now I can put away the extra table that I brought into my studio and put away all those brown and neutral fabrics.

Be sure to click on the picture for a bigger view.  Comments are always welcome and appreciated.

Simple Pleasures

An ice-cold strawberry/blueberry smoothie on a hot day

Recipe

 6 oz. can unsweetened pineapple juice

1 very ripe banana , the riper the better

About 1 c. fruit, fresh or frozen

About 1/2 small container of yogurt (I use plain Greek nonfat, but any kind will do.)

Puree in blender

Makes two glasses

In the Pink

I don't pass this house very often, since it's not on my regular route, but when I passed it today, I just had to take a picture.  I've been in this area for over 40 years and for as long as I can remember this house has had pink shutters.  I think the pink roses are a new addition.  Isn't it charming?  It has extensive grounds on the side and back with several outbuildings.  But it makes me wonder who would put pink shutters on a house. 

Then a few miles away on another road is this little shop with pink shutters and trim, although a much brighter pink.

And how abut these pink trees in pots on the side of the shop? 

That got me to thinking about this quilt that I made for an online Black and White and Pink Challenge.

I wrote all over it with free motion satin stitch with as many sayings that contained the word "pink" that I could think of.

I also sandwiched pink buttons, paper clips, sequins etc. under the tule before quilting it with pink (of course) thread.

Be sure to click on the pictures for a bigger view.  Comments are always welcome and appreciated.

'Shrooms

We had a spectacular weekend here with dry, sunny weather and then two days of warm drizzle with occasional dowpours.  These four inch tall mushrooms greeted me at the mailbox this morning.  They weren't there yesterday.   The green leaves are young Scaevola plants.  They will spread to cover the whole ground area and will sport beautiful blue fan shaped flowers.

I pulled out the mushrooms.

Beauty in Unexpected Places

You might think that these beautiful flowers are at a park or private garden, but surprise, surprise....

They are at the local ShopRite Plaza.  New landscapers did it all over a couple of years ago and it is such a treat to see. Right now the Meadow Sage in two shades of purple and bright red Knock Out roses are blooming in their full glory.  The brilliant Stella Doro daylilies are just starting to show some color and later in the summer the purple cone flowers will be the stars. These pictures only show a small portion of the gardens.

They do an excellent job of keeping flowers maintained with dead heading and cutting back in the fall. I hope that other shoppers get as much pleasure from it as I do. And, yes, I did tell the manager of ShopRite.

 Be sure to click on the pictures for a bigger view.

Simple Pleasures

Pretty pink supermarket tulips on my kitchen countertop.

Strips and Stripes

 Today I cut many strips

and sewed them into units of stripes 

 .

and had a pile of snips left over.

This is for the background of Brown Planet.  I have to do a lot more.

Auction Quilt

Today I put the finishing touches on my 12' x 12" SAQA auction quilt, "Fractured".  You can read all about the auction and see some of the quilts here.  The deadline for receiving them is June 1, so this will go in the mail tomorrow.

Please click for a bigger view.

Detail of the quilting and piecing.

Happy Mother's Day

Lovely bouquet sent by my son, who lives much too far away.

Moving right along....

If you've been waiting anxiously to see what's happening with my collaboration quilt with Kathy Loomis, Brown Planet, here's where I am now. If you are new to my blog, you can read about it here.  Somehow between quilt shows and openings and gardening and other stuff, I managed to finish the semi-sphere section of the quilt.  It may look easy to you, but believe me, it was quite challenging.  I did more ripping out, recutting, re-sewing, etc. than I care to think about.  Ignore the wobbly edges, it has to be trimmed, especially the left side.

 Now I have to work on the background, to make the quilt into a rectangle.  It will consist of many, many little units of pieced strips in pastel neutral colors. The strips are about 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch in width.  Kathy gave me some, but I have to make so many more.  I ordered a lot of solids online and was able to get some perfect matches, but not nearly enough.  She had sewn some of the units together, as you can see here, and I will have to take her units apart so that I can intersperse them with my units and have it look cohesive. Does that make sense?

I'll post again when I have more to show.  I have a lot of gardening to do, so this may take awhile. Yesterday was rainy all day so I had a lot of studio time.

Thank you for stopping by my blog.  Comments are always welcome.

Simple Pleasures

A small bouquet of lilacs on my bedside table perfume the whole room.

Totems

One of the special exhibits at the quilt show this weekend was  Totems put on by members of FANE, Fiber Artists of the North East.  The only requirement for the exhibit was that it had to be 18 inches wide, 8 feet long and be two sided. There was incredible diversity in the pieces and each member put her personality into her work.

Natalya usually uses her Russian heritage as inspiration for her work as she did in this Russian Windows.  She uses a lot of recycled things in her work, such as dryer sheets, candy wrappers, plastic, etc.  You can see the wonderful detail and painting and stitching involved in the detail

Barbara's piece in the foreground uses window screening in geometric shapes on a screening background.  

Cindy Green's underwater scene of sea-horses uses sheer fabric with sea critters between the sheers.

Andrea's "Still Circling " was made of fabrics on which she had done many different trypes of surface design.

Cecelia's in the foreground was made of various prints she had made on paper and then attached to fabric squares.

Claire's in the foreground uses squares of beautifully appliquéd art nouveau flowers and in the background you can see Bobbi's Penguins which reversed to Polar Bears.

 

 Linda's piece had so much going on.  There were animal faces and eyes all over and the more you looked the more you saw.

Here's my piece, Sea-Thru, made of two layers of organza with Dupioni fish and grasses on each side. One side shadowed through to the other and gave the illusion of fish swimming in the distance.

These two pictures show both sides of Nancy's work.  One side had real leaves and the other side had paper ones that mimic the real ones.  It was mounted on Dupioni silk, a very elegant piece.

Sony, Carole, and Fran collaborated on "If the Shoe Fits".  What a fun piece! 

Nike's wonderful piece combined paper and fabric.

Vivien's piece, "A Show of 'Hands" made a powerful statement about the importance of voting.

Be sure to click on the pictures for a bigger view.

Quilt Show

This weekend was the annual quilt show of my guild, Northern Star Quilter's Guild in Somers, NY.  As usual, it was a terrific show.  There is so much talent in our guild and the bar keeps getting higher. There are also several special quilt exhibits within the show and this year the Red and White Challenge was a favorite.  This was inspired by the incredible show in March  2011 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.  It was Joanna Rose's 80th birthday present from her husband and showcased 651 of her red and white quilts (not the whole collection). You can read more about it here.

Members were challenged to make a quilt in one of three categories, a miniature quilt in a traditional pattern, a Hawaiian or snowflake quilt, or a small art quilt.

I love the way they displayed the quilts, with them back to back on see-through racks.

Be sure to click on the pictures for a bigger view.

I had so many favorites and here are just a few.  The traditional quilts were spectacular, but I was drawn to some of the art quilts.

Carole Hoffman always makes the most wonderful portraits and this was true to form.

Maria Weinstein made this out of one piece of red fabric, using Sulky 12 weight thread to do the thread work and fill in the spaces between the leaves.

I really liked Meg Mooar's modern take on a basket quilt.

Barbara Sferra's beautiful beading and couching on this one caught my eye.

I'm sorry that I didn't get the names on the other two.  If you know them please let me know and I will add them on.

One of the biggest treats of this exhibit was the lecture and slide presentation by Tom Hennes, the founding principal of Thinc Design, who was responsible for putting together the exhibit at the Armory.  Mrs and Mrs Rose were also in the audience and graciously answered questions.