Log Cabin Wedding Quilt

Here it is...the "Big One." This quilt is from a new customer, Diane. She and her daughter made this quilt for a wedding gift for another family member. Bad news: The wedding was five years ago; good news: They're still married and now they'll have a beautiful quilt for their bed.  It's a big quilt (103 x 103)--thus the less than stellar photo of the whole thing.

I quilted the dark areas with a "heatwave" fill and used a larger version of the fill for the sashing.

The outside corners in the light areas got feathers...

A close-up of the heatwave fill and the leaf meander done in the majority of the light areas.

This photo of the back shows the feathers and the fill.

Dory

It's a Big One!

Took up almost my whole table!

Machinations

Our guild had a "mini-class" several months ago on an easy way to make circles. Marei took it to heart; named her quilt "Machinations" and sent it to me for quilting. She likes to challenge me and make me think (she's such a brat!)

We met and talked about this quilt several times. I wanted to be sure to give her back something that she would  like. This quilt was so different, I really had to put on my thinking cap--there was actually smoke coming out my ears by the time we were done!

I used the Quiltazoid in the small and middle sized circles. In the smallest ones, I just repeated the shape and then did a spiky "leaf" treatment around them. In the larger circles, I used one of the many designs that come with the QZ.

The medium and large squares got a maze fill in white and the red parts of the quilt were quilted with a variation of a water meander in red...

And to tie it all together, I used white thread in the corner blocks and treated the border piecing as one unit, using a bamboo fill.

 

The pictures don't do it justice, but the fabric Marei used on the back was gorgeous!  I kept trying to figure out how to replace it with some random red from my stash and wondering if she'd notice. *grin*

Thanks for looking!

Dory

Ribbons!!!

This year, for the first time since I've been quilting, our County Fair had a real quilt judge. I entered two wall-hangings and was really curious to see how they'd fared. Look what I found when I arrived:

 
This quilt greeted me at the entrance. It's my retreat quilt from last year's Quincy Crazy Quilters retreat. I earned first place and first in division...very exciting.

More looking and I found my second wall hanging. This was from a class taught by Linda Ballard called "Fractured Crystals." Second place!!!  I was walking on air by that time.

Then, the finale: This quilt that I quilted for one of my customers, Carolyn, won First Place, Best in Division and Best in Show....

I'm still floating!!!! (Wow, do you think this means I can say I'm an "award winning" quilter??? <snicker>)

Dory

It's not all Quilting and Playing with Ponies around here!

Some days, we have to go get hay. This year has been especially painful; the price of hay has skyrocketed from last year. Dennis came home with the first load of four tons of grass/alfalfa for a whopping $1,000; then this load of four and a half tons of grass hay for $900. One more load and we'll have enough to feed the four hay burners for the year!





We picked up this load of hay on our way back from Reno. It was a quick trip over to get Dennis fitted for a tux for his daughter's wedding and then back to get the hay. Have you priced weddings?? Yikes!! I'm so glad his daughter is old enough to pay for her own. We're helping, but we're not responsible for the whole thing!





We get our hay from Sierra Valley, its about 90 minutes from home. We weighed our truck before it was loaded and again after so that we knew exactly how much hay we were getting. The scale is sensitive enough, that we each took turns walking on it to weigh ourselves (no, I'm not about to tell you how much I weigh!)

Dave got the squeeze and proceeded to load our truck. I always like watching the squeeze work; I have no idea why. It's just sort of fun...makes me wish it were that easy to unload!

Dash, of course, felt it was his job to supervise the entire operation! Little did he know that his life would be changing dramatically the next day. We took him to get "tutored."

Thanks for stopping by!!

Dory

A Great Sampler

This top came to me by way of the quilter's daughter. This was the quilter's first attempt at quilt-making and she did a most excellent job...and she's 80! She had started out quilting it herself with ditch quilting, but then her daughter saw some of my quilts at the show and asked whether I'd take it. Of course I said yes! I love samplers, especially when the blocks are not all the same size.

This quilt had these four house "blocks," which I fell in love with. It was such fun trying to come up with different ways to quilt them. This one had "blocks" on one side with wood on the other.

This one had really skinny wood and rounded "tiles."

This one had reverse tiles with wood and a rock roof.

This one had uneven rock, really skinny wood and curtains in the window...can you tell I was having fun??

Houses are such fun to quilt!!!

Dory

QFH Completed

Remember the post "Every Quilter has a Bad Day"? Well the quilt is done and was returned today.

The stars in this quilt were gorgeous...the fabrics were beautiful hand-dyes with such vibrant color.Although Marei may have considered it the Quilt from Hell while she was working on it, the final outcome has been raised a notch or two. I tried to focus the quilting and, therefore, your eye on the stars. 

Next up from Marei is this quilt. She's always challenging me...always!!!

Thanks for stopping by!!

Dory

From Beginning to End

Remember my post last year about our 2010 Guild Retreat? Fair starts on Wednesday, so I actually finished it and one other small wall hanging to enter. I have pics of this one, but then the camera battery died (it actually says "battery exhausted"--like I wore it out!!) before I could get pics of both.

So...the beginning:

Remember, this was a "double mystery." We called the shop with colors we liked and they sent us fabric. When the ladies putting on the retreat saw the fabrics their employee had sent me, they cringed. I thought it was just me, but it wasn't.  These fabrics really do not go together well, so some were left out...

This is what I had finished when I left the retreat. The next band of color didn't work, so I was sent some additional peach fabric.

When finished, this is what I had...not too bad.

A couple of close-ups. I quilted feathers in the center peach are with pebbles in the middle; then feathers in the triangular areas around the center as well.

Oh...did I mention??? Feathers in the border, too.

And finally, a picture of the back before I "exhausted" my camera battery.

Dory

Poor Me

Shortly after Emma's eye trauma, I had a "trauma" of my own. The yurt is only about 10 feet from our back door, but between the yurt and our house is our hot tub. We had drained it for the summer and in anticipation of someday using it again, I decided to lift the lid to see if it was all icky inside.  Bad idea...exceptionally bad since it was incredibly hot out.

I got a not-so-lovely surprise. These guys had taken up residence and were not impressed that I was messing with their home. Did you know that angry bees actually chase you the same way they do in the movies??  I got away, but not without three lovely stings on my arm in almost the same place. OUCH!!

Within a few hours, my arm was swollen from about three inches above my elbow almost to my wrist! I think I'm either allergic or it was too many bites at once.  Remind me never to move anything outside when it's hot!!!

Dory

Poor Emma

We went out to feed just the other night and discovered that some bully had punched Emma in the eye.  Well, okay, so it wasn't really a punch or a hit of any kind. She just all of a sudden had a really swollen eye. A call to the vet to determine whether we should just dose her with penicillin resulted in a trip to the vet and a lovely $125 bill! He thought she might have a fox tail in her eye, but we knew better: first, she's not in a pasture that even has fox tails (it's too wet), and second, her eye wasn't tearing, so it wasn't trying to get rid of any foreign object.

Unfortunately, this is our only trailer. Small, eh??? It's great for endurance rides, but really a pain when you're only transporting one horse. However, I was quite proud of my girl. she'd only been in a trailer once, last summer, for trailer loading practice. She'd never actually gone for a ride and she'd certainly never gone in by herself. She was such a trooper, she loaded right up and off we went. Of course, when the vet came out to see her, he asked how many horses we'd brought...such a smart aleck.

He gave Emma a cortisone shot and gave us drops to put in her eye three times a day. I was amazed at how good she was about the whole ordeal, but I think she knew we were helping her. Hardly any head tossing as I held one eye lid up and the other down so Dennis could put the drops in. This is how it looked after a few days.

Finally, she's back to normal and as beautiful as ever. The only cause we've come up with is some sort of bug bite. Consequently, her fly mask goes on early and comes off late. (Ignore her stupid brother in the picture below...he likes to toss his head)

Dory