The Final Result

Well, after months and months of piecing, ripping out, fusing, appliqueing and quilting, my latest quilt is finally finished.  It was quite a challenge in many ways but part of the enjoyment I get from projects I begin is the "figuring out" of how to make things work (which often means even more ripping).  I always come away with some lesson learned--even if it's "I never want to do that again."
So . . .Here is Summer Soiree (double click on the image for a little better view).  And now it's on to the next one.

I've Been Waiting For Five Years

Since we moved back to Charleston several years ago, I have been spectacularly unsuccessful at growing decent tomatoes.  My last garden in the mountains was huge and organic (lots of manure, compost, etc). There I had tomatoes coming out of my ears.  I canned them, dried them, cooked with them and--most especially--had tomato sandwiches--day after day and never got tired of them.
My yard in Charleston has sandy soil and there aren't many cows grazing in neighboring fields (what neighboring fields?) to provide that very necessary boost to fertility that will produce big honker tomatoes.  Well, AT LAST, this was the year.  These tomatoes are sitting on a dinner plate--not a salad plate--and I can tell you right now what I'm going to have for lunch today--with soft bread and mayonaise.
Whew, there's not many things I like better.  I think I've reached nirvana.

Hope

 The Challenge for our Art Group this last quarter was to write a Haiku poem and then create a quilt based on the poem.  A haiku poem is vert short--3 lines--the first line is 5 syllables, the 2nd is seven syllables and the 3rd is five.  Here is my poem:
Life's many circles,
Reaching to include us all--
Containing Love's Hope.
And so I named my quilt Hope.
I had made the the petal-type shapes in a workshop with Phillipa Naylor earlier this year and felt that they could be my starting point.  I then added circles--and more circles--that were connected to each other.

This is the quilt after it was quilted.  If you look closely, you can see the pins where it is being blocked in order to square it up before I add the binding.  Before I block it, I add a little synthrapol to coolish water and then immerse the quilt into it.  I swish it around to get it good and wet and then rinse it out.  I wrap the wet quilt in towels to remove the excess moisture.  Then I spread it out on the CLEAN carpet and start smoothing and stretching to bring it into square as much as possible.  I always need to block my quilts because of my tight quilting stitches.

 And this is the finished quilt.  You can't really see it in this picture, but there is a very tiny piping next to the binding, ala the Susan Cleveland method.
One thing I decided to do with this small quilt was to play with various elements as I went--and to just have as much fun with it as possible--using threads, stitches and techniques that I don't ordinarily incorporate into my work.

 This is some of the beading I did.  I sewed on the beads before I quilted.

And the background quilting is composed of jutting lines from variegated thread.  You can also see the gold thread I used on the red "leaves."

And the quilting with gold thread went well.  As a final touch before I quilted, I used my braiding foot and sewed down mettalic embroidery floss with red rayon thread.  This technique joined the four corner circles and, thus, encircled the other circles in the center.
All in all, I really enjoyed myself.  For me, one of the freeing and fun things to do is to participate in a Challenge and just enjoy the journey of discovery along the way.

NC Quilt Symposium and A Few of My Favorite Quilts

This past weekend, the NC Quilt Symposium was held at Peace College in Raleigh, NC.  It was the first time that I had attended the Symposium and it was a wonderful experience. 
Part of the Symposium is a Quilt Show by the participants and these are a few of my favorites.  The first one is Neutral Mini Braid by Judy Lilly.  She said that it was a real challenge to work with a gradation of neutral fabrics.  Evidently, the judges felt that she was successful!

 This pineapple quilt, Provence Pineapples, is made by Jane Hall.  She said that it was made from her collection of French fabrics that she had collected on her various trips to France.  Jane was also the co-chairman for the Symposium and always had a smile when people came up to ask her questions about changing classes, how to get somewhere, etc.  And she still had a smile on Sunday after all of that problem solving.

 This is It's About Time by Kim Frisk.  It's one of those quilts that you really have to look at closely to take in everything.  She said that the brownish fabric was rust-dyed and that was the first time that I had seen rust-dyed fabric used in a manner that I really liked.

 I loved the optical illusion of this quilt, Secrets of the Dark Matter by Renate Soltman and quilted by Bethany Pease.  Another one that you need to study for a while to take in all of the elements.

 And Amy Stewart Winssor always makes whimsical quilts and this one is no exception.  Five Thirty A.M.  tells the story of her early morning trip to the school where she teaches.  It's dark when she starts out but the church is full of light when she arrives there.

 I was drawn to this quilt, Puzzle Garden by Katie Greenwood, by the use of color and applique.  Katie took what is a fairly coventional pieced pattern and really jazzed it up with the appliqued flowers and wild colors.  What a happy composition.

 This is All Eyes Are On you by Jane Hamrock.  It is hand appliqued AND hand quilted--something I would not necessarily have expected with such a modern looking piece.  It is quite an eye-catcher.

 On Your Stars and Flowers by Naomi Durkee just caught my eye with its pleasing color palette and the addition of applique to the pieced star.

 And another quilt by Kim Frisk, Shadow E.  She said she started this as a class with David Taylor.  Didn't she do a great job of capturing the curiosity factor inherent in all cats?  And she really did a great job of creating a 3-D effect.

Finally, this is my quilt, Swamp Hibiscus.  Was I in for a surprise!  I won Best of Show---which was more than a little exciting--BUT I also won Viewers Choice.  Now, that was humbling.  A HUGE thank you to each person that voted for my quilt.
It was an amazing weekend.

A Thing Of Beauty Is a Joy Forever

 By John Keats.  If you want to read the entire poem:  http://www.online-literature.com/keats/463/
These are two of my favorite daylillies and they truly are a "thing of beauty" which lift my spirit each time I see them.  I don't remember their varietal names as I got them at a daylily farm in Georgetown, SC several years ago and have transplanted several times since.  The second lily has HUGE blossoms.  In this heat we've been having, it's been wonderful to see a plant growing that thrives with the sun beating down.

On a more serious note--I have a friend whose email was compromised this week.  She had to

open a new account but couldn't access her email contacts so was left with no way to let everyone know her new address.  In the course of the attack on her account, a letter was sent out to her friends asking for money to get her out of a bad situation--using a similar format that probably most of you have received that was obviously a scam.  It's not quite so obvious when it comes from a friend but, thankfully, obvious enough.  The point of this is to suggest that you print out your email contacts or save them to a cd or memory stick just in case you find yourself in a similar situation.  With all of the bad people lurking around the internet these days, you just don't know if you might be the next victim.

It's Gettin' To Be A Pretty Long Journey

It seems as if I've been working on this quilt for years!  Well, at least months--and months (which I have).  And now I'm getting down to the final stretch.  My last hurdle has been how to transfer my feather drawing to the black border.  The usual way I would do this would be to use a light box and trace it with a pencil (light or dark depending on the fabric).  However, that wouldn't work in this case as the drawing wouldn't show up through the black fabric.  The other issue was that I couldn't mark the border ahead of time because the markings would have been rubbed off by the time I got to them.

 So, what to do?  I had used this Saral transfer paper in a class I took and thought it might work well in this case.

 This is the pattern I drew (which no longer has the little circles).

 More of a close up.  In order to transfer the pattern to the cloth, I could do only one fourth of the border, quilt it and then move on to the next section, repeating the process.  The process was this:  I carefully folded the batting and backing back under the body of the quilt and smoothed out the black border fabric. (I'm very fortunate to have a large table where I could do this fairly easily.)  I then started with the transfer paper under the pattern--but on top of the black fabric.  Using a ball point pen, I traced.

This is what that looked like.  I only traced the bare essentials.

 And this is the design quilted.  It was a somewhat messy process and the pattern was hard to hold in place--but it worked and was the only solution I could come up with at the time.

And this is the border after I've added the stippling stitching in the background.

So . . .I'm getting close.  The journey's been fun but I'm sort of ready to get into the station.

And Now--For Some Fun!

 You know, some teachers are talented but can be Oh So Serious about their work and other teachers can be a lot of fun but somewhat lacking in talent. In Peggy Barkle, you are fortunate to have both things in one package. She came to our Guild last week for a lecture and a class. In her lecture, she showed many beautiful quilts and talked about the method of quilting she developed that is featured in her book, Blendable Curves, which is published by C&T Publishing Company.  She has a wonderful style of talking about herself and her work that had us all laughing.  And isn't it great to find something to laugh about these days?  Laughter is literally good for the soul.
Although she talked mainly about her quilts that are featured in Blendable Curves and shared her vision for another book in her future, she actually taught "Twisted Bargello", a pattern by

 Australian quilt designer, Chris Timmins.  I saw this pattern years ago when it was published in an Autralian quilt magazine and had saved it for a long time with the idea of making it.  Well, time passed and I didn't do it.  I still haven't done it, but I did have the pleasure of being at Peggy's class (I'm the Program Chairman this year) and watching the fun that all of her students had with her.

 She was very smart in that she had each student sew lots of strips together BEFORE class.  This guaranteed that everyone would go home with a good start on the bargello--and would, hopefully, finish it. 

 You can see here that everyone is working away and there was such a pleasant atmosphere in the room.  Peggy gave lots of tips on easy construction methods and helped find the "boo-boo's" that sent the design off course.

 Here are a couple of quilts in progress.

And here are another two.  By the end of the day, everyone had a really good idea of how their quilts were going to look and, as an observor, it was fun to see how each quilt turned out so differently.  As Program Chairman for a Guild, you can spend many, many hours lining up speakers and teachers, setting up lecture spaces and classroom spaces, taking them out to dinner and escorting them around BUT it all is more than worth it when you have someone come to town who is as nice and as much fun as Peggy Barkle.  Thanks, Peggy.