Quilt for The Gathering

Teri Quinn, friend and fellow member of The Cottonwood Quilters took on the HUGE task of providing quilts for The Gathering, a fundraiser for a local private school. I agreed to quilt one of ten quilts which will be auctioned. Janice Lippincott and June Jensen combined blocks from a Houston class and made a beautiful top using colorful batiks and black and white prints.

I quilted it using a free-form spiral feather design. The thread is Superior Rainbows #821 - a multi-colored thread that was PERFECT with the batiks and showed up just as I wanted on the B&W prints!





Janice pieced a batik back that is as wonderful as the front! You can see more detail of my quilting in this photo of the back. I can't believe I didn't take a picture of the entire quilt! The quilt is in the hands of yet another volunteer, who is doing the binding. I will add a picture of the finished quilt when I see it again! You can SEE MORE detail pics of this quilt on flickr.

Jack Frost Stopped By

I woke up this morning to a beautiful white world. A hard frost produced white frosty needles on branches, sticks, even my scarecrow! The needles were on fruits, grass, even the fence around a rose bush.




Although it was harder to see, even the edges of the snow has sharp frosty needles!

A low-hanging fog shrouded the world in white, shrinking my world to a just a few nearby houses. See more Frost Pictures on Flickr. As I write this, the sun is shining, and Omaha is expecting temperatures above freezing for the 2nd day since early December! Our 24+ inches of snow is going to turn into a mushy mess!

A Black Belt Quilt For Alyssa

To celebrate her First Degree, Level 1 and Level 2 Black Belts in TaeKwonDo, I made Alyssa a quilt. Each fabric in the braided sections represents one of the belts she earned as she worked her way to the black belts. The separator bands (sashing) between the braids represents the First Degree, Level 1 belt. The outer border represents her First Degree, Level 2 Belt. This belt has their name and rank embroidered with gold thread, so I quilted it on my HQ16 using yellow thread. In the braids, I did a free-form spiral-y feather.


In the outer border, I wrote the ten tenets of Ho Am TaeKwonDo - Honor, Courtesy, Integrity, Perseverance, Self-Control, Courage, Community, Strength, Humility, Knowledge. In the sashing, I wrote the dates she earned each of her color belts. The center of the quilt back is a straightforward look at the color belts, white, yellow, green, senior green, blue, senior blue, brown, senior brown, red and senior red.

You can see more pictures of the quilt, including closeups of the quilting on flickr.

Close Encounters with a Hawk!

We have snow. A LOT of snow. Around two feet fell in December, more already in 2010, and another storm is expected to dump 3-5" on Omaha tomorrow. When the snow started on December 8th, we made sure the bird feeder was full. The birds who come to our feeder include birds we like - cardinals, blue jays, juncos, finches and wrens, birds we don't have strong feelings about - doves and sparrows, and birds we could do without - starlings and grackles. One unexpected visitor was this sharp-shinned hawk.

He (she?) saw the birds around the feeder as a full menu buffet! We're happy he is catching just starlings (so far!). So revolves the circle of life!



He has been back a couple of times - see more of the pictures I took of our hawk on flickr.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday. Happy Birthday to Me!!

Happy birthday to several friends who share this date with me: Mary R, Sandy R, Bob W, Brian B. Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Celebrities who also share my birthday? Mary Martin of Peter Pan fame, Woody Allen, Bette Midler, Walter Alston (Dodger's manager) and Reggie Sanders (former Reds player), Lee Trevino and Treat Williams. Many more of course, unknowns like me, whose day will be acknowledged by friends & family instead of the media. Happy Birthday to us all!

Now I wake to see the light.......

I visited a wonderful thrift store in Evanston, Illinois a couple weeks ago - Thriftgeeks. I loved the tidy disarray - you had to poke in the corners, look under things, open boxes and make sure you didn't miss anything. Just the exploration required made it a worthwhile visit! (FYI: I hate modern "thrift shops" where they display brand new socks and cleaning supplies next to a shelf of two dozen florist vases overpriced @ $1 each.)

The treasure I found at Thriftgeeks was a vintage embroidery piece. It is a morning continuation of the child's prayer "Now I lay me down to sleep". It had to come home with me, where it was carefully hand washed. EEWWW - the yellow water! It has been carefully re-framed and will hang in my studio.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Now I wake to see the light,
Tis God has kept me through the night.
And now I lift my voice to pray
That He will keep me through the day.

Queen For A Day!

More precisely, queen for TWO days plus! Last weekend, I flew to Salt Lake City and attended a retreat with an eclectic group of 14 other quilters. What we had in common is that we all own (and love!) a Handi Quilter. We were chosen to be featured in Handi Quilters print ads during the coming year. (As the first quilter to be in the ads, I know what a thrill it is to open a quilting magazine and see myself!)

At Handi Quilter headquarters, we were greeted with an impressive display of cheers and silly string from all the HQ employees. What a fun start to our retreat! Our pictures are on a huge banner in the main entry.


Our retreat was crammed full of activities. A class on Thread, Needles & Tension. An impromptu session about Groovy Boards. A session with Suzanne Hyland on quilting choices. Great food! Drawing continuous line designs on paper, then moving to the HQ Studio and drawing them with thread. A limo ride to Elaine's Quilt Block, where I found some great fabrics. Dinner @ HandiQuilter CEO Mark Hyland's house. What an impressive view they have! Taping our "My HQ Story" video's (They are posted on YouTube - See Mine Here! ) David Taylor's amazing Show & Tell of his quilts. Suzanne Hyland's great quilts during our "How Do I Quilt This Quilt" session.

Being famous requires photographers, so Luke followed us around like paparazzi, taking pictures and videos of everything we did. Check out Part One and Part Two on Picassa. And most of the pictures I took can be seen in my Handi Quilter set on flickr.

It was a wonderful time. Thank you Handi Quilter, for this experience! And now, back to my normal, everyday life. Quilting, of course, on my HQ 16!