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!