A Slow Return

I returned from a short-ish 4 day vacation to Acadia & Bar Harbor yesterday.  The weather was fantastic.  Hot, Hot, Hot and sunny -- just the way this Southern gal likes it.  We did a little bike riding, little trail hiking, went to the top of Cadillac Mountain, which by all accounts is not really a mountain, but it affords lovely views of the islands in the bay none the less.  Our cottages had a pool, so this satisfied the kids' need to swim a LOT.  We got home to a hot house, loads of laundry, and tired everybody.  Now, I will officially hit the half-way to the summer this week...5 weeks until the kids return to school, and I can return to actually quilting during the day.  I am in serious withdrawal.  When I was at the Vermont Quilt Festival 2 weeks ago, I overheard someone say (while seeing my quilt Zen Garden hanging) that they'd just seen it in a magazine.  And, here it is!  This is in The Quilter Magazine, August/September 2012.  It's a lovely 4 page spread of quilts from MQX East, held in April.  It's some of the winning quilts, and several of the lesser known quilts as well.  This magazine always chooses a great selection of lovely quilts to showcase.  

Last month, I finished a couple of quilts for Sandy.  Here's the first...She often makes Schnibble quilts.  This is a baby quilt, that I quilted with swirls to break up the very-linear nature of all the straight lines.  Wonder if the baby's name starts with T?

It's all in doggy and dog bone fabrics, great for a little boy.

Here's another I did for Sandy.  The Feather Meander pattern is one my favorites, and looks great here.

I used a tan thread so that it shows up on both the colored fabrics and on the lighter tones.  Though my pictures do not show the details of the fabrics, these are wonderful.  Some of them have antique street maps of Paris - so cool.  Here's my favorite; may need to get some for "someday".

I am busy finishing the hand details on this quilt, started so very long ago.  You see, I designed and started this quilt more than a year ago - long before EVERYONE in blogland was making a modern Dresden plate quilt.  In fact, I am so pissed that my design is being done by so many people (not "my" design per se, just the concept!) that I stuck the unfinished 102" quilt on the shelf, said several profanities, and left it there since about last December.  Now I have decided that it is the closest of anything I have started to being ready to quilt, so I am finishing the hand stitching, and will either have it on the frame when kids go back to school, or sooner if the client workload allows.  I'm busy getting the backing made, which takes an absolute TON of fabric, and designing all the quilting motifs.  Maybe I'll show some of them next time.

Have a good week-

Some of you may remember this quilt from last year...It's my 40.5" Intertwined quilt, started in Karen Kay Buckley's class nearly 2 years ago.  It is coming out in this month's edition of Machine Quilting Unlimited!  More pictures can be seen at the link.

It's going to a couple of shows in August and September.  It turned out to be 1/2" too large for the small quilt category at many quilt shows, so it hangs pretty in my dining room.

I have a full week of sewing being planned.  All three of my kids are off to day camp.  I have a binding to machine stitch on to a 117" quilt - thankfully the client is doing the hand stitching!  Then it's off to my fun stuff.  I have a ton of paper foundations prepared, and some of the pieces even cut.  I'm not even sure if I will touch the longarm this week.  Though my visions of what is really possible are often lofty, I plan to get my 40" silk quilt put together.  Just have one piece of silk awaiting the prewashing and then I'll be ready.  It's a little fidgetty how it will go together, so that may not be as simple as it sounds.  Fortunately, the mariner's star and all pieced blocks are done.  It's only got assembly left.  And another quilt I have started, the 2012 version of a mosaic floor, is underway too.  I showed the center a week or so ago.  Two of the 4 borders receiving the orange applique are done.  Each of these takes me nearly a week of hand sewing in the evening.  Maybe I'll even show an EQ7 plan for the entire quilt so you can see where I am...I hope to get all paper-pieced units made up, and then the corner sections.  It really needs to be assembled after the applique is done (or else I have a lapfull of fabric to hold and sweat under as I hand stitch!).  It seems realistic that I can assemble the next 4 corner sections, only after a significant amount of paper-piecing.  Other fun things for this week include having my car inspected, making a list of threads to hopefully buy next weekend at VQF, and maybe even go grocery shopping sans my kids!

In the Press

Have you received your Machine Quilting Unlimited?... I got an early edition mailed to me which arrived yesterday. There's a great article, more than 6 pages in fact, on water quilts. My Sea Glass quilt made it into the article! It has a lovely selection of widely diverse quilts for which water of some form has been the inspiration. Sea Glass is one of my more favorite and special quilts made to date. It is painfully simple in design, constructed of just 48 kaleidoscope blocks (albeit with a good bit of applique added). But it's my first quilt of axisymmetric borders, and non-traditional design. My 7 year old middle child, Bryce, loves it. It will forever remind me of his discovery last summer of sea glass. It may have really been a broken beer bottle, but the joy of hunting for it on the beach together made it sea glass.

Postcards to the Press

I grabbed a magazine at the grocery store yesterday...
I knew this edition had an article on the quilts of MQX West, but never figured to be featured since there were so many other ribbon winners. Much to my surprise, look what I found! The article is 4 pages, and shows about 15 of the lesser known quilts. These are truly some of my favorites from the show, and for the most part, they did not receive ribbons. It's nice to see all quilters rewarded, regardless of how their quilt places.

...and a closer look,

I just mailed this quilt off to the Quilting with Machines show in Ohio. If you are in the area, you can see it there in a few weeks.