Pieceful Hearts Quilt Show

Here are a few of the quilts I put in the Pieceful Hearts Quilt Show, held in North Augusta, South Carolina, the weekend of October 19-20, 2007. The lighthouse quilt above won first place in the Group Quilt category. These beautiful lighthouses were stitched and given to me when I moved away from Augusta, Georgia, 7 years ago. It took me a long time to decide exactly how to set them and get them quilted but now this quilt is complete! Thank you, my PHQ friends for the wonderful memories!
This is Wayne's Travel quilt and it won first place in the large Bed category. Many photos of our trips to Utah and other national parks out west.
This quilt is named Red Clamshells. Everyone kept asking where are the clamshells. It is in Kaffe Fassett's book, Museum Quilts, and I bought the kit of fabrics 2 years ago and made the quilt, doing a lot of fussy cutting to look like the one in the book. His cover quilt is a true clamshell quilt but also very difficult so he designed this one with a similar look, but no clamshells and his was called Square Clamshells.........thus the name.
This was a quilt using up some of my stash of thirties reproduction fabrics and several different whites are in the background. Still have more thirties left, though.
The above quilt was from a block/fabric exchange within the Pieceful Hearts Guild in the late nineties. I bordered it with teal fabrics and pieced the backing with many teals also from my stash and its name is "Teal We Meet Again", in memory of all those that shared in the exchange.

I'll have some more photos soon! See, I really do quilt, I just don't blog too often! Judith

Hooked Rugs and Hummingbirds

I took a rug hooking class recently at Little Quilts in Marietta, Georgia, and here is my first project. Isn't that cute? It's pretty small (7" x 8.5") but just a nice size to get you 'hooked' into rug hooking. I really enjoyed this new type of needlework. Little strips of cut wool where you just pull them through the backing which is monks cloth and line them up like little ears of corn. It is slow, methodical, easy and you don't need a magnifying glass to see the loops like with applique. Let's see, what will I hook next?? We put out hummingbird feeders in June and have the birds come all through the summer but when August arrives and they get ready to make their flight south across the Gulf, they begin calling all their friends and drinking the sugar water quite frequently. They also double in size during this period. They will leave about the middle of September. It's hard to see but there are five fighting over this feeder. Some days I have to fill this two cup feeder twice and we have two feeders.

Now here is one of my dainty friends just sitting on the feeder taking a "big gulp". Wayne and I love to watch them right outside our family room and eating area!
And yes, I'm still making quilts. This is just a partial picture but I named it "I've Got the Blues", as I used everything for the front of the quilt from my stash and used a new baptist fan template which makes a beautiful overall pattern. I'll show the full quilt after I get the binding sewn down by hand.

Here is the backing - isn't this a cool fabric? Targets is the name and it's a Kaffe Fassett fabric. I wanted a nice contrast to the front and mostly just saw this fabric and knew I needed to use it with something really fun!
Well, that's all for now! Maybe it won't be so long before I update again! Happy Quilting!

Time to Hike

It's time for the hike. Remember the photos when we were repairing the backpack for Doug? I just dropped Doug and Dora off at the airport and they are leaving for their hike in Washington........it's gonna be fun! Our prayers are with them!

Challenge Quilt

This is a quilt I made this April for our quilt guild challenge, Lots of Dots. I call this Dots of Daisies! You had to have at least 15 dot or circle fabrics and at least one black and white fabric. See if you can find the black and white one!! Anyway, it won second place for viewer's choice............it now brightens the eating area in our kitchen.

and you thought Bob could only quilt!

A few days ago, Doug, my son, emailed me this picture of one of his hiking packs, wondering if I could do some repairs on it. As you can see, it needed a little repair. He came over today and we 'reworked' the pack, giving it a brand new top, patching mesh that had ripped, reinforcing seams, etc. Ater all, this pack has hiked the PCT and the AT also........just check out his link on my page.

As you can see, "Bob", was able to help, I was able to do the darning much easier this way.














Now here is the repaired pack - looks almost like a brand new pack! Now it's ready for Doug and his wife, Dora, to go hiking in July.










Don't you just love this bright and cheerful quilt? This is a little baby quilt that Laurie made and I just got it quilted for her, using the splash pattern. She makes the most fun, happy quilts, always using such bright and cheerful colors! It's headed for New York to brighten someone's life!

Pastel Baby Quilt

Here is a pastel baby quilt I made last week. The way it started out was I made two baby quilts last summer for gifts and as usual, bought a few extra fat quarters for more variety and ended up having several extra blocks. In fact, enough for another quilt. I just set them aside and last week decided to go ahead and put them together. The pattern is the Yellow Brick Road by Atkinson Designs. I just made it work with what I had, including the back of the quilt.


Here is a close-up view of the quilting - I just meandered over the blocks and did a rose border. Of course you know that you can always just click on a picture and get a really good close-up also.

And, here is the back - pieced from several other baby quilts that I have made. I was not going out and buying any more fabric.
A few years ago there was a book out by Country Threads called "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without! I've been trying to use that philosophy with using up my fabric stash this year. . .well, as much as possible! It is a fun challenge and makes you more creative and put fabrics together that you might not have thought of if you were not improvising.

Hmm, how often do I blog?

Hmm, trying to decide how often I will blog . . . guess whenever I get more pics ready to upload and show! So, here are a few - some new, some not so new, but guess that doesn't really matter.

This may seem boring or a little strange, but it is the backing of the Chinese Coins quilt I showed the other day, all made from the bag of pink scraps. I only added one little strip from my stash - the rest came from our group of ladies in the guild all put together. Anyway, it was fun to just sew strips and come up with a delightful charity quilt.


Now this next quilt is the first one I finished with Bob, my longarm machine. It was also made from scraps, fabric samples I had ordered, which I believe were 3" squares. I just added some strips and borders and here we have another quick quilt. How easy is that?

This Kaleidoscope Shades quilt was made in the nineties from the pointillist fabrics which gradated in color from one selvage to the other and the colors were produced by tiny dots. I really enjoy shading fabrics so that is how this came about, just shading along, and each kalediscope has 8 different shades.


If you viewed Wayne's traveling quilt last week, you may recognize this. A photograph of Delicate Arch, Arches National Park Utah, is on his quilt and I took a photograph, blew it up to 11" x 13", and cut my pattern pieces from that. The fabrics are fused to my batting and then this is heavily thread painted. So, it's a tiny quilt.

This is a graduation quilt I quilted for a friend, Mary, whose son just graduated from college. It was so very graphic and straight lined so we decided circles would be a nice addition. What do you think? Love the colors she used!!

Close-up Photos

Here are a couple of close-up photos of Wayne's travel quilt. The first one is pretty self-explanatory - we are on the summit of Pike's Peak in Colorado, over 14,000' high. Quite the experience.














This next picture is at Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. It is north and south windows. You have to be standing just in the right place to get both of those enormous arches in the same picture. They are huge - you can climb up into them and be totally dwarfed by their size. A great place to visit and hike.














This is a quilt I just made a couple of weeks ago. It is a charity quilt using a bag of scraps I received from our guild which had been donated by many people. We sorted hundreds of strips and scraps into several stacks and since I've been doing a lot of pink quilts lately, I chose the pink one. I love a challenge and this was fun, just sewing pieces together trying to use all the fabrics. I had a few coping strips but ended up with a quilt about 55" x 55" when completed. I only added one little piece to the backing from my stash and had some leftover binding to use also.


















A close-up of the Pink Chinese Coins.

Wayne's Traveling Quilt

Three years ago Wayne and I visited many national parks out west. I made a quilt using about 47 of our photos, which I printed on my inkjet printer using Printed Treasures fabric, which is temporarily paper backed to go through your printer. Many of these pictures are from Arches National Park, Zion, and Capitol Reef, all in Utah, which are Wayne's favorite parks. We hiked and had a great time. On one of the trips our children, Sondra and Doug went with us and you'll see them in the photos also.

and then along came Bob. . .

I began quilting 26 years ago in Martinez, Georgia, just sitting around a quilt frame with several other ladies at our church as we hand quilted a raffle quilt for our yearly auction. I fell in love with quilting and have been passionate about it since that time.

I began machine quilting in 1991, as I realized how many more quilts I could get completed to share with others by using this quicker technique, plus, maybe keep up with the dozens of quilts in my head that I wanted to make.

I continued to quilt on my Bernina sewing machine, yet it was difficult getting those large quilts under the arm of the machine, and I felt I was limited to the designs that I could do. Finally, in the spring of 2006, I became interested in getting a longarm quilting machine. After checking them out, getting the okay with my dh, Wayne, I took the plunge and purchased a Gammill Classic+ last May. And that's where this story really begins ........and then along came Bob............oh yes, don't you know, all longarm machines have to have a name as they become your quilting partner, and dh named him Bob!

Now I quilt for others to help them get their tops turned into quilts - after all, it's not a quilt until it's quilted. So, if you need some quilting done, send me an email and let's make more quilts!