Blogger's Quilt Festival 2012

Thanks for looking at my blog, and welcome to the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  The quilt I am showing is called Sea Glass.  It is 63"x78" and is my original design.  It is currently at MQS in Kansas through this weekend.  It's made from all batiks and hand-dyes.  The watercolor background is made from the kaleidoscope block.  I then hand appliqued waves, and machine appliqued the 120 or so small pieces of sea glass.

I had this quilt already in progress prior to last summer.  But last summer my kids and I discovered a couple of beaches that had lots of pieces of sea glass to find.  It became our little obsession for the summer, wondering if the beach we were going to would have as much as the last.  Anyway, I had many pieces of batik for a while, and just thought they just looked like sea glass.  I knew making the quilt was my destiny.

The quilting was liberating.  It was my first quilt that I have longarm quilted that was mostly free-form quilting.  My machine is not computerized, but I wanted the motifs in the quilting to appear free and organic, as they do in nature.

The sea glass pieces are arranged in a symbolic wave, emanating from the wave, and being deposited on the beach. The only "structured" quilting was on the outer border.  It is axisymmetrical - opposing corners are the same, and it has a scalloped edges.  The feathers, though wavelike, are intended to juxtipose the unstructured and randomness of the churning wave of water.

 Here are some of the interesting organic fillers I used.

The opposing borders (ones with scallops) have this design.  The feathers again are somewhat wavelike, and the curved-crosshatching is just to give the design a change of structure.

 More cool fillers...

I should also note that this quilt is currently in the Quilting Gallery's quilt of the week contest.  I'd love it if you'd hop on over here and vote for it!!

Tasties in the Post

By way of a Handi Quilter Yahoo group that I belong to, I caught wind that we might be receiving chocolates in the mail. Allegedly they were supposed to go out before the holidays, but seriously, this is more fun now. In the middle of December I had more cookies and candies than I knew what to do with. On about Dec 28, I sent all remaining sugary goodness to work with my husband so I wouldn't eat it. Just yesterday, I was cursing how gosh awful trying to take off 5 pounds is because I LOVE chocolate. About 15 minutes ago, this arrived via UPS. It's a rather unassuming box, not rattling like chocolate truffles might. So I decided I needed a pre-dinner peek (aka "taste").
Upon opening, I find a 5"x9" slab of brown goodness. OMG, this is delightful. My kids were begging for a bite. But how could I bite into this?? OK, the only thing keeping me from sinking my teeth into this is the fact that it is frozen! Is that not just fantastic??

...and yes, Miss B, that is your quilt beneath it, and I was most careful to keep it spotless. In the next day or two, I will do a reveal on this Fig Tree sampler quiltmade by one of Maine's more prolific quilters. It is very pretty.

Remember this post??...where I showed ideas for some alleged quilt. I have decided I probably have enough sandy-toned batiks. I embarked on the first 9 blocks this week. The jury is still out on how much I like them!