Happy Holidays!

I know--- I have not had time to write in my Blog lately. Too few hours and too much to do getting ready for Christmas.

HOWEVER, I just couldn't let the season go by without wishing all my Artful Quilter Friends the Very Best for the Season.

Last but not least, is one of my babies. He doesn't like this cold weather and would only stick his nose out to see what was going on. I also looks like I got my finger in the picture. 

This is the other half of the table. Couldn't get everybody in one picture.  

The next 2 pictures are of a small group of 6 that meet twice a month at Helen Griffith's house, which is the lady in red. However, every year the lady is white (Donna Nesenmier) always has us all over for Christmas lunch and we do our Christmas exchange at that time. Sorry, I am not in any of the pictures. Somebody had to take the pictures! 

This was my week for Quilting Christmas parties. This is a drop in group that meets at Quilters Square twice a month. The lady standing is Cindy Ford, and she hosts the group every year in her home. It is a historical home, (used to be a tavern) and she has the whole house decorated for Christmas. We each bring a dish and we really out did ourselves this year.  

Good way to use up scraps. I just finished making this purse. You are not able to see but it has black braided shoulder straps. 

This is the back of the jacket. Sorry for the picture being sideways. I haven't figured out how to flip it.! 

This is a close-up of the last picture.  

This is a jacket I just finished. I used hand dyed fabrics and sliver thread as well as tiny rick-rack 

We have one of the most beautiful Libraries. This is the center of the floor. Look closely as there is a gold pendalum that is suspended from the ceiling. Looking up, you can see the time with horses running around the clock in one second incriments. 

This is a picture of my Free at Last Quilt hanging in the Library show. I know, you have seen it before! 

QUANDRY!!

Every time I see someone demo a new technique I always have to try it in a small version. So, I saw Esterita Austin demonstrating her techniques on Simply Quilts, and she even offered a pattern on the HGTV site. Well, what fun. Her techniques simply enhance the way I do my quilts. So, I will encorporate some of the things she does and that will simplify my technique.

Ever since I finished my last big quilt I have been playing and searching. Flooded with ideas, but ones that I haven't been able to single out and persue. So, I decided to take my own advice, and scheduled a planning session for our Art Quilt group that meets once a month. We brought lots of magazines and used a paper frame to go thru the magazines and make lots of tracings to record all the ideas that we came up with.
It was so much fun as many of the ladies had never heard of using this technique, and just didn't know how to get those abstract ideas out of their head and on to paper. Next month I will take my overhead projector so that if needed we can enlarge whatever idea we settle on. At least it is a start and we will all end up with a very small quilt to show, in three months. There really isn't anything new in the quilting world. It just depends on how you interpret an idea!

COLD! COLD! COLD!

It was 13 degrees night before last, and only in the 30ies during the day. So, I have just sequestered myself and got quite a bit of work done. One exception!!! my early morning trip to JoAnne to buy some batiks at 50% off. Well, that was a mistake. After waiting in the cutting line for about 15 to 20 minutes I decided the extra 20% was not worth an hour or so wait and left, and went back in the afternoon and got what I wanted without the long wait. I just used my 10% card from the American Quilt Society, and still felt like I got a real bargan.

Today, I am going to make a trip to Hancocks as they have all quilting fabric on sale also for 50% off. Am I a FABRICHOLIC or what? Like I really need fabric. I just need more room to put it!!!!!!!!! Fabric is the only thing I would brave the cold for, except maybe food if I was really starving.

I am going to make a Resolution for the upcoming year. That is to really work on the quality of my quilting. My guess is it just takes more practice. I do pretty well, but when I get a big quilt under the machine no matter how careful I am, the weight will shift from time to time and the quilting stitch gets off until I can stop and readjust. I also am going to make a RESOLUTION to be more patient. If I am working on a big piece, I get in a hurry to finish and think I am not as precise as I was when the excitement of starting a piece drives you. Anybody have the same problems?

I Hope to have some new pictures to post soon. I need to figure out another way to print my pictures other than going to Walmart. It is not a place to be from now until Xmas.

Our current president Catherine Monzango holding her newly pieced baby quilt. 

Community

Interesting Week

This week was interesting for me as I attended the Kentucky Heritage Quilt Society board meeting on Friday in Louisville. For those of you who are not familiar with Kentucky, it is a little more than an hours drive from Lexington. It was held at a darling quilt shop by the name of Just Friends. Wonderful selection of fabrics and bright and open!

I am just the Postmaster General for the group so I don't usually attend the meetings. However, we are in the midst of planning for Get-Away next June and also for Design Seminar for October of next year. So, I got to be in on the process of selecting Feature Teachers for 07. This year for Get-away is Pepper Cory, and best of all for Design Seminar it is going to be Phil Beaver. I took a class from him a couple of years ago in French Lick, Indiana, and had a wonderful time as well as learned a lot. Actually, I am going to be in charge of Design Seminar so it is going to be great fun to be able to take the class. Even though I have had the class I know I will learn other new things from him because he is a wonderful artist.

So, then yesterday our local guild held our community quilts get-together at the Corner Quilt shop in Lexington. This when we make baby quilts that get donated to various organizations. I was amazed when I walked in because there were about 20 ladies. It looked like a sweat shop with everybody sewing away. Of course the fact that there was chocolates on just about everybodys table dispelled that idea!! It was great fun with everybody exchanging ideas about how to best use the donated fabrics we had to work with. I took a picture of our President, Catherine Monzingo with one of the tops she had just finished piecing. Some ladies worked from 10:oo am untill 4:00 pm. I however just spent about three hours and had to go. It was really fun and I actually learned a new technique. I learned to add boarders after the quilt has been quilted. These ladies have become masters of making due.

I am working on a fused quilt at the moment and find this process fasinating. It does have some drawbacks however, if you want to do anything very big. That is unless you have a huge table where you can lay it out flat. However, if you are like me I usually work on a design wall and you can't fuse with it up on the wall. So, I have had to experiment with some different ways to accomplish what I had in mind when I started this quilt. I'll keep you posted on the progress!

Here is another of Cindy Vough's quilts. It is called Butterfly Garden. 

I don't know who made this quilt, but it is beautiful. I also just discovered you can enlarge the image on my blog, so that makes the details more visable. 

This is a quilt made by a fellow guild friend by the name of Cathy Johnson. She made it specifically for this show. I know she does a lot of painting on her fabric befor she constructs her quilts.  

This is my Sisters quilt. As you can see it is such a big space that it is hard to see any detail on any of the quilts. 

This small quilt is an image of a cabbage. I don't know the details of how it was made, but I do know she had dyes a lot of fabric and think she used those in this quilt.  

This small quilt was done with fabric paint and then set in the sun with butterfly images laid on top. The quilt was then quilted with trapunto and also embellished with threads and other fabrics as well as crystals. 

Storm!

We had a storm go thru about 4:00am which woke me up, so finally I got up and went to the computer. That was one thing I could do without disturbing everybody.

I stayed in all day yesterday and really concentrated on a quilt I started over the week-end. It is ready to assemble so perhaps that is why I was not able to go back to sleep this morning.

I took pictures of the quit show at the Library, but most of them were too far away to see any detail. However, there were a few in small cases that came out o.k. and I will try and post them this morning.

I was thinking yesterday about how little it takes to get an idea for a quilt. I heard a terrible chattering and looked in my front yard to see hundreds of black birds. Almost on que the group would start to take off making a swirling pattern much like a bargello, then they would land and chatter for a while and then all rise up a few feet and then come down and land again. Not that the feeling I got from the experience will ever turn into a quilt, but the tiny seed was planted and stored away for future use. This is when a sketchbook really is important, as that moment is fleeting and easily put aside. You don't have to be able to draw, just sketch enough to be able to trigger the memory again.

The first small quilt shown is one I made, the second was made by a friend by the name of Cindy Vough.

#4 of series 

#3 of series 

#2 of small series 

#1 of a series of small quilts I have been working on. They are the size of a piece of typing paper. 

This is a class sample that I will be teaching next June at State Get-away in Georgetown Kentucky.  

Back from the Sewing Machine doctor!!!

Well, I got my machine back and just when it was promised. So, I was able to get my class sample quilted and photographed in time for the deadline.

The little quilts are an ongoing project, as well as the playing cards. I will photograph some of those as soon as I finish several of them. I usually use hand dyed fabrics, but occasionally use commercial if I want to make a bold statement.

I just got my Free At Last quilt back from Houston last night, and I am going to take it to the Local Library to add to the show we have hanging there. I will try and take pictures when I go.

Tonight is our local Guild meeting and we will be having our yearly fund raiser. We all donate items and food and auction it off. It is great fun, as well as it helps to bring in a good teacher at least once a year. Guess I better get cracking and decide what I am going to take!

FEELING BAD!!!

I had to take my sewing machine to the doctor yesterday. Feel so lost without it, but it really was giving me a lot of headaches. Just kept pulling the bobbin thread to the top when I would try and do free motion. I tried everything but to no avail, so as bad as I hated to give it up for a few days, I just had to do it. It also was having a problem with the foot not staying up. I think I may have just worn it out. Anybody have any comments about the new Janome 6500 I think that is the number. Anyway, the new one that has a longer bed. I looked at it at the Nashville show, but mine was still working o.k. so did not think seriously about buying a new one.

In the meantime I have started a new quilt-- no piecing so I don't need my machine for a short period of time, and then I spent the afternoon hanging a show at the main library for the local Bluegrass guild. It really looks nice and I meant to take some pictures, but it took us so long to get them hung that I forgot. I will go back in the next few days and get some pictures to share.

Sorry, but I don't know how to turn this the right way. Anyway, a friend showed me how to make this purse from one 18" square. In the end you have a center pocket and two matching pockets on each side under the flaps.  

This small purse was made to go with a jacket I made last year.  

Quilt Exhibition>>>>>>>>>>

I finally went to Walmart to get some prints made of my digital camera and will post some of them this morning.

On Wednesday, my friend Cindy and I went to Frankfort to view the Many Cultures quilt exhibition. It was a cold drizzily day, but we had a good time anyway. The show is held every year at the Kentucky State University. Probably not more than 35-40 quilts featuring quilts from the Chicago Needles and threads guild, and the Renegade Quilters of Main. There were also some local people in the show. The main attractions for me were the Diane Hire quilts. She uses such lovely colors and her style is so haphazard one can not pass by one of her quilts without stopping to examine it more closely. In any event we had a nice outing and of course stopped at Jo Anns on the way home to see if they had anything we haven't seen before. It is a bigger store than the one we frequent in Lexington.

Our local guild is going to present a show at the local library next month featuring a Garden Theme, and I am in charge of hanging it next Tuesday. I will be showing my "Sisters" quilt that can be seen on an earlier blog. Also several other small quilts.

Ok, I am going to try and transfer some of the pictures onto this blog. I can never remember exactally how I do it, so when it works I am always surprised.

Explanation*************

In June of 04 at a Quilting conference I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my right pelvis and three bones in my left foot. As a consequence I was off my feet completely for 6 weeks, and then there was a lot of physical therapy, and it was some time before I was able to start doing any new quilting projects. It took me at least a year to get back to some kind of normal state, and this quilt signifies my freedom to be able to do the things I could do before I fell. I am so lucky!!!
because I didn't have to have any surgeries, and a fall like that could have been soooooo much worse. The other thing that was so wonderful is that you find out how wonderful your friends really are and for all that outpouring of kind acts I will be eternally grateful.

On a happier note, this quilt means a lot to me and I am happy to have the chance to share it with those of you who see it in Houston and on my blog.

This is the "Free at Last " Quilt that will be shown at the International Quilt Festival next week.