More quilts!

First place Mixed Technique - Sue Wilson - What's interesting here is that the elephants came to her from Sri Lanka after having seen an ad in Quilter's Newsletter asking for assistance to aid the women of Sri Lanka. In return for a donation, she received the elephants, which she then appliqued and added more embroidery - and designed that wonderful border treatment!

Another Shadow Daisy - I really like the simple applique border

First Place Hand Applique Jan Lally's Animals on Parade

This was a block of the month, but she chose to make hers in 30's reproductions.

A simple snowball makes a smashing quilt!

Our President, Elly Grya's quilt She says: "It was my Granny's "petals", I designed the quilt and quilting...Mom and I put it all together and then I did the hand quilting (my first hand quilting project). It is a near and dear quilt to me because of the history and memories."

This is the first place winner in the quilt challenge. It was to be a quilt using a specific pattern (MO star), and to portray what you love about the state - Missouri.

Love the distorted star here

Some of the flowers in the state

Great use of the outline of the state of Missouri over all the things she loves.

Beautiful Christmas quilt

Baskets, but look at the quilting

Nice designs in the plain blocks

I love the village going around the outside edges

Another Topsy turvey - Joan didn't recognize that hers didn't look quite like the others until she had it to the quilters! LOL! I think I like her setting better, don't you?

I like this graphic design from simple shapes.

Great way to use that black and white and red scraps!

My Happy Jacks Pumpkin Patch (you can't see the liberated letters because it wasn't hung)

A group project (done in panels)

Double click on this picture for better detail of Klonda's thread painting - it's terrific!

Me and Amitie Fleurs (Friendship Flowers) second place Hand Applique

Close up of the hand quilting

Joy - Best Hand Quilting (mine!)

Phenomenal Woman - third place Art Quilt (mine)

And wasn't I the good girl? We had great vendors, and this is all I brought home. 5 packages of Presentia thread, and a couple of bags from our boutique. I LOVE the carry on bag - and what's better is that I didn't have to make it! I didn't show the 24 yards of jumbo rick rack that I found for only $1.00 per yard, but you will see it in the binding of the next quilt of mine that will be coming back from the quilter (sometime later this year).

Next post will be the beautiful quilts from our meeting's trunk show from Su and Dwayne Bunch, Piecemakers of Yukon, Oklahoma.

Quilt Show!!!

My local guild, the Lee's Summit Quilter's Guild, had their show this past weekend. I worked 14 hours of it, and I am one tired puppy. I can't imagine how many hours and how tired the committee people must be! They did a marvelous job!

It was a lovely show, but I just couldn't get pictures of all of them. The ones I am showing are no lovelier than any others; I could just get the best angle for the pictures. Most of them have something about them that I want to remember - either the quilting, or the color, or a certain shape....

I will post more tomorrow - just about as many. We had about 175 quilts total, as well as vendors. What made me smile was the two ladies who came both days because there was too much to see! We even had a male boy scout who had come to the church for a meeting, and wanted to see the quilts too, when he discovered the show was in the next room!

I will state up front that my notes are a mess, and it's difficult to read everyone's names, and what ribbons they won. Everyone deserves the recognition and I will work on that, but I definitely wanted to get the quilts out here for you to see!

I didn't win any first place ribbons - the competition was tough! I entered five quilts, and I won:

Here are some of the quilts!!!

Klonda Holt - First Place Art Quilt (the label was a cute machine embroidered zebra)

Her grandson Ethan had asked for a triangle quilt.

The pieces of this quilt was from her grandmother's and mother's scrap bags.

Hubby's story quilt called Garden Gremlins. It won second place in Mixed Techniques

Interesting use of pre-printed panels, and great quilting in the negative spaces.

Jane Kennedy's Moonlight and Maples won third in the pieced category

My Amitie Fleurs (Friendship Flowers) took second place in Hand Applique

First Place applique, Art Nouveau flowers, Jan Lally

Klonda Holt's Poco Loco -First place machine quilting (Beth Kurzava), Viewer's Choice Best of Show, I think it has another ribbon too. Will check on this.

This stained glass quilt was hanging just perfectly so the sun was hitting it. It looked so REAL!! First place in Machine applique

Topsy Turvey Nine Patch from a class taught by Judy Laquidara. There will be more variations on this later on.

Fun colors

Pink version of our Opportunity Quilt - Primitive Garden

Postage stamp squares and an interesting pillow roll.

I love these sharp angles.

More tomorrow........................

Come to the show!

We are all getting busy for the quilt show this Friday and Saturday. Please come see us if you are anywhere near! We are expecting close to 200 quilts! (Five of them are mine!)

For those of you are are long distance admirers, check back after Sunday for my personal pictures of the event. Check here if you want to learn more about our Lee's Summit Missouri guild, and I hope to see you there!

November Blessings

Remember my great friend Wendy who lives in California? Every year their church provides many charity quilts. Here is this year's bounty at the blessing of the quilts. Their church (Our Savior's Lutheran in Lafayette, CA) has 120 finished quilts to take to the gathering in Morgan Hill. Then they are tucked to Minnesota for packing to overseas. Doesn't this picture just make your heart sing?

Information about the quilt project is at http://www.lwr.org/beinvolved/quilts.asp

I know many of us are involved in making quilts for others: American Heroes, Project Linus, local relief missions and other good causes. Our guild makes simple snowball block quilts for several organizations who have the need in our area. This is a good month for us to all count our blessings!

A Howl-o-ween Story

Are you getting ready for all the ghosts and goblins at your house? We live in the country, so we'll not have any trick or treaters this year. So, instead we took Mayo to the local PetSmart Howl-o-Ween party last week. At first Mayo was going to be a Busy Bumble Bee and practiced her walk for the parade:

But then Clyde got jealous and took her costume instead and became the Mad Hornet:

So after that insult, we had to put our thinking caps on.....

It came to her quite suddenly (at the local Goodwill Store's kid's costume rack) that she could just go as herself: Little Stinker!

Here she is in all her Howl-o-Ween finery, and I am certain she is asking herself how she ever got connected to this crazy family!

But she had a lot of fun at the party!

The End.

Another Quilt Show

Today was a surprisingly beautiful day here after several days of wind and cold and rain. The autumn colors have come out in full force, and the sun was shining quite nicely. So why not go to the Blue Valley Quilt Guild show? They had it in the Alexander Majors house and barn this year which was am interesting venue. Quite a few great vendors, and a lot of beautiful quilts. What could be better in October? Enjoy!

Blue Valley Quilt Guild (Overland Park, KS) banner.

Beautiful use of Taupe fabric.

A small friendship stitch group all worked on their own version of this Christmas quilt. No quilt is the same, but not all of them were completed yet.

I love the string of lights!

Close view of the blocks and the presents in the cornerstones.

Another one from the group.

This was a round robin where the only requirements (I believe) was to use Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

I really like the simplicity of the rectangles and the color choices here.

What a great baby quilt!!

This was most marvelous. I wish I could have seen it hanging!

This one was called Nuts and Bolts!

My favorite of the show

Isn't this just a gorgeous border treatment?

Perfect for a fall day.

Pattern from Ami Simms - the fringe was added because the batik binding bled (GASP!!)

The picture doesn't really do this justice. It was heavily quilted in the "bodies, so the bra part stood out, and the sand border was quilted in small bubbles that looked like grains of sand.

Interesting choice of colors.

One of Bonnie Hunter's free patterns - I think it's Tobacco Road.

And another of Bonnie's mystery quilt patterns - Orange crush.

Busy, busy, busy-and a QUILT!! YAHOO!

It's been quite a couple of weeks again. We're still working at the yard cleanup, readying for the cold weather that seems to want to jump in and stay - much earlier than usual! We are just about done now with the garden, and now we have to wait for the next warm, dry spell to finish mulching it down. The patio furniture is just about all stored, and the tractor and the Gator are winterized and covered. By by, Indian Summer, hello entry to winter! Now, I expect rain, and drizzles until it starts to freeze and stay cold. A good time to stay inside and sew, doncha think?

This past Monday, I presented a trunk show of a few of my quilts for my local guild, Lee's Summit Quilt Guild. Now, they asked me to do a presentation of twenty minutes, and anyone who knows me, knows that I can't tell you my name in just twenty minutes. LOL!!! So, FIVE suitcases and 45 minutes later, my presentation was done. I had a lot of stress choosing which quilts had to stay home, but believe me, there were as many that stayed in the closet as the number that went. I've received some really nice emails from folks who told me how much they enjoyed it, and I've even been asked to present another trunk show at another guild in Harrisonville, MO in June. How nice is that?

Mayo has grown like a weed, and now weighs in at 15 pounds! She's still an absolute delight, and with a few minor mishaps, she's just been a joy to have. I hate it when I have to have her clipped! I love her with her shaggy look, but she gets so darned hot, and then there's the issue that she can't see anything unless it's on the ground. Here's Hubby holding Mayo in our kitchen hearth room. This will be her last all over clip until next spring, but we'll still keep her face clear for the winter.


This doesn't look like the same pooch, does it? Especially with the rhinestones and feathers in her ears! She was used as a "demo" dog for the Petsmart grooming Academy. I told them they could clip her anyway they wanted, but I DID NOT want her to look like a poodle. Oh well....I guess her tail gives it away that she is part Bichon, I hope?

We also had grandson Stephen spend the day and night with us Tuesday while his Mommy was on a girlfriend trip to New York. He likes to sleep in our room, so we have an airbed just for him. After he left, I was trying to put everything away, and I had lots of help getting the air out, didn't I?

And of course, Mayo had to try out the French Roses quilt on the bed. I have to tell you that I am in LOVE with the new 50% cotton, 50% bamboo batting from JoAnn's. It drapes nicely, quilts beautifully and is a dream to sleep under. Remember all the the trouble I had with the extra rows on, then off, then on, then off again? Turns out I really could have left 2 of the 3 of them on for the width - but I am not going to worry about it now! It's on the bed and it's DONE DONE DONE!!

Now, I am busy making circles for my applique strips on the outside edges of the quilt I started at Gwen's retreat. They are going fast, and I hopefully will have it all done by this time next week. Stay tuned!