Happy Birthday Joanna Semel Rose

and heartfelt thanks for your generous gift to the quilting community.  Everyone described 'Infinite Variety' as the 'exhibit of a lifetime'.  Jan and I viewed the exhibit three times and found new favorites each visit.  The impact of the display as you walked thru the doors was amazing - never to be topped!  I'm posting pics of my fav 5 - those that 'spoke to me'. 

The Park Avenue Armory was a wonderful venue for the exhibit.  This last photo is the pattern projected on the worn drill hall floor from the ceiling lighting rigging.

Preview of Gathering

The "Gathering of Quilters", a tri-state annual quilt show for Indiana, Illinois and Michigan was held this past weekend in Schererville, Indiana. Vicki and I attended as it is only about 20 minutes away from my house. The show is a juried one, and this year, was combined with the Heritage Quilter's Guild show. This pineapple caught my eye, and is actually pink and brown, even though it looks a bit green in these photos. Here is a close-up of the fabrics. Vicki will be sharing lots more photos of the Gathering in upcoming posts.

On another note, my parents have moved to assisted living, and are breaking up housekeeping. My mom wanted to give back quilts that I had made them. Since my dad is a Halloween baby, I made this doll quilt for him in 1993. You may notice that it has a bit of a curve to the upper edge. It was safety pinned at the upper corners, and hung from nails to a wall in his office since that time! It will have a bath, and maybe a blocking, and hopefully, will return to square.

We will be traveling to New York on Thursday to see the Red and White Exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum. I can hardly wait!

Crazy Quilt

The first stop at the Punta Gorda Quilt Show was a lecture on the care of antique quilts.  I only caught the last couple minutes (so missed the bed turning), but after wrap-up an attendee brought out an antique crazy quilt to share.  The quilt, dated 1881, was found among family possessions, but wasn't made by a family member.  This was one of the nicest crazy quilts I've seen - mostly embroidered silks.  I'm the caretaker of a family heirloom crazy quilt, but mine is the more typical velvet with fancy edge stitching.  Each square of this quilt was special and included some cigar silks.  

The year is stitched at left.

This is my favorite quilt from the show.  Notice that two of the blocks are pieced a little differently than their neighbors.

Lastly, here's a picture postcard sunset.  Glad I have this to remind me of sunshine and palm trees, because I'm not finding any at home in Indiana!

Fragments

Today has been quite an odd one for me. I spent a good part of the afternoon making progress on the Texas Braid - sewing rows 11 and 12 out of 14 to be made. No pic for that because it just doesn't look much different than the last one I shared. This afternoon I received good news from a friend, and this morning some disturbing news - nothing truly awful. My dad has Alzheimer's, and my parents live together in assisted living. The facility called to tell me that my dad had a dispute with another resident - he asked for a cigarette, and the man said no, then my dad called him a name. I didn't ask what, but assumed that he swore at him. This is a new, bad behavior for him, so I kept thinking about it throughout the day, and how best to handle it.
The only reason that I mention it is because I think that is why I made this little top. The red pieces are slivers from the trimmed ends of the "match" part of the Texas Braid. The exhibit in New York of red and white quilts has been on my mind (Vicki and I bought our tickets and are ready to go!), and I just wanted to make a little, liberated piece with them. When I finished, I realized that it may need to be my donation for the Alzheimer's Art Initiative. It just seems to represent to me the disconnected brain signals that occur with the disease. I think that I will not even attempt to square this up, just quilt and bind it with the unevenness left as is.

Since Last We Met....

I started a new quilt and am planning another!  Temecula used the 9 Patch gray 5's fabric (Judie Rothermel Sturbridge Village IV) as a background in one of their quilts and I loved it.  I was re-acquainted with a quilt from Kim Diehl's Simple Comforts book and pulled the gray from stash to use as background.  I have lots of 4 Patch blocks to make, but I think this one will come together quickly.  The 9 Patch blocks are complete.

The quilt I'm planning is from my bucket list.  It's the cover quilt from Quilts:  An American Heritage by Terri Zegart.  This book can be found 'used' online at ridiculously low prices - the book price is cheaper than the shipping.  The book is only 128 pages, but the picture quality is wonderful.  I found this book almost three years ago and instantly added the cover quilt to my list.  This picture has been rotating thru my screensaver.  This is the second time my screensaver has pushed me to start something new.  It's great incentive - my favorites keep flashing by.

I'm recharging my winter battery in FL this week.  My first stop was a quilt show in Punta Gorda.  I'll post show pictures next time.

This is another Christmas gift that I made this year, but forgot to take pictures of. It was made for my friend Missy. She has lots of colors in her house, and the only thing that I could think to make for her was a Christmas quilt. The pattern is in Simply Scrappy Quilts by Nancy Martin, and is called Star and Chain. It uses 2.5 in strips, and goes together lickety-split. Here is a detail of the quilting, and, in my defense, I had to take pictures really fast. This swirl on the side triangle is my favorite part. Hopefully you can make it out. Susan Atwell, from Fat Quarter Quilt Farm, did the machine quilting. I've had a fair amount of sewing time recently, and am making progress on the Texas Braid. I set some tight parameters for myself on this. The darks have a broad range, but the lights are more narrow. I didn't want anything with a white background, and did want an old, mellow feel to them. It seems to be working, but it is getting kind of boring piecing. Every once in a while I have to audition more, and cut into something fresh.

Finished my Midnight Stars top. I am happy with it, and it goes upon the stack of "to be quilted" tops.

Midnight Stars - Thanks, Lori!

I started Midnight Stars Part 1 (pieced block outer triangles) during late night retreat sewing.  I had little yardage with me, so I pulled the fabrics from scrap strip sets.  The pea-green fabric set the tone for the entire top - it's a hard color to base a quilt around!  There was alot of fabric auditioning going on at my house before moving on to Part 2!  I didn't have enough background fabric (darker of the two) to complete the setting triangles, so I alternated with a second fabric.  The darker background (2004-2005 Thimbleberries) really played nicely with the pea-green triangles and was my first choice.  I probably should have used the darker for the outer border and the lighter for the four inner blocks - hindsight!  Haven't decided if I'll add an outer border - the top needs to rest for awhile.

Close-up of the two star blocks -