Happy New Year

A brand-new year... to live; to believe; to give; to receive; to fall in love; to share a smile; to walk an inch; to run a mile; to dive into sunsets; to forgive; to forget; to love where you’re going; to embrace where you’ve been; to take a deep breath, close your eyes... and begin. May the new year be filled with love, adventure, and dreams come true.





A friend of mine shared this today, I couldn't help but pass it along.

Happy Autumn!!!

Well, I wasn't here to wish you all a happy first day of autumn, but I thought about you! Autumn, with it's beautiful colors and crisp air is my favorite season.

If only we could have it all year! Is there even such a place?

My first day of autumn was spent in 90+ degree weather. As you can tell by the pic below, we spent the last few days in Orlando. The first couple days was business, and then we hit three of the four Disney parks, not to mention Downtown Disney, three times! Magic Kingdom was already decorated for the season. Absolutely beautiful! To look at it made it feel like fall. The pic above is one of the arrangements they had hanging from the light poles. I wanted to bring one home!This quilt was made by a few of the women from North Coast Needlers Quilt Guild. When I saw the pattern, I just knew how I wanted to quilt it. I thought the leaves might be a little tricky, but I just stitched in veins, and they almost look real. I did a small swirl pattern in the background to give it some movement, and a leaf pattern in the outside border. You can buy a ticket for a chance to win it at the Reflections of Nature Quilt Show at the Rocky River Nature Center in November.

.

Another one from Barbara

Barbara has been keeping me busy for quite a while now. This one was a fun quilt to work on. Still not sure how anyone is going to be able to sleep under it! It is bright and beautiful!

Here's a photo of the back, and it's just as great as the front. One lucky person is going to have an awesome quilt!!

Pike's Quilt

This quilt belongs to a little guy named Pike. He and his grandma made it. He did not want her to cut the center panel, so she had to put the frame around it to make it fit with the patchwork. He also requested that she "send it out to the quilter". Gotta love this kid!!

June's Little Village

June is a wonderful quiltmaker. She is at home working on traditional quilts as well as art quilts. When she gave me this one to quilt I was a little apprehensive. I thought to myself, oh my! What am I going to do here? (Even though I've been quilting professionally for 12 years, I still get a little nervous sometimes ;)!) After getting over the intimidation of June's amazing work, I got to it, and didn't stop until it was finished. Actually, it was rather simple, just time consuming. I did a lot of SID, a little bit of background work, and just let the quilt tell me what I should do. I took it off the machine, and hung it up to take a picture. When I looked at it from across the room it was hard to tell it wasn't a photograph. On delivery day, she received a lot of ohh's and ahh's at the shop.

Good work June!!

Graduation Day

This was a good day!

Maria Elkins Workshop

Maria Elkins came to our guild this week and gave a great lecture on the quilts she has done. Check out her website, I think you'll be inspired. She gave a workshop today called "Making Faces" We sent her a photo and she manipulated it in Photoshop Elements and gave us three copies. It was done in a grayscale with four layers. We were to pick four monochromatic fabrics with a high contrast. At first I thought I'd like to do some grays to blacks. Solid fabrics, you know, safe picks. I did bring them just in case.

I ended up going with blue. When the workshop started I thought to myself, what did I get myself into. I thought we were going to have to cut out tons of little pieces. It wasn't that way at all. We worked in layers. It went well. It isn't as hard as it looks.


We were all amazed at how our photos turned out. If you'd like to try this, visit Maria's site, and check out her DVD. She has also been published in "Quilting Arts" magazine.

One kid down, and four to go. Juice says she wants purple for hers!