Mother Nature's Art

Check these out:

The other day as we went out to feed, we noticed these beautiful ice patterns on the trunk and hood of the BMW. The other cars had them too, but the black background really showed off the pattern.

I think Mother Nature was trying to cheer us up because it was so darn cold out!

Dory

Empty Spools 2014

Today I start classes at Asilomar in Pacific Grove.

Class this year is with Vikki Pignatelli; she does beautiful artistic work. You can look HERE for some examples of her style.  (This was Cindy's year to choose; she always goes for the artsy teachers, I go for more structure). This will be outside my comfort level, but I'm hoping to come home with something fun! This is the picture that was on the Empty Spools Brochure:

One of the best parts is that every morning, I'm up and out by 6 and going for a walk here. It will just barely be getting light; but it will still be beautiful!

More pics when I'm back!

Dory

The Tevis T-Shirt Quilt

Many of you know that my first love is my horses (not sure how to make that sentence grammatically correct). Last year there was a big fire that ruined part of the Tevis Trail--the famous 100 mile trail from Lake Tahoe to Auburn, California. I completed that ride on my mare, Elly, in 2005. The fire damaged part of the trail and the Western States Trail Foundation is working to get it back in shape for this year's running of the Tevis.

I wanted to do something to help, but since I live so far away, volunteering to be on the work crew wasn't an option. Instead, I contacted the Foundation and told them if they could get me Tevis t-shirts, I'd make a quilt and donate it to be raffled to help raise money for trail restoration.

This is what I sent to them just last week...

As you can see, I don't do T-shirt quilts the "normal" way. I like each t-shirt design to fill the entire t-shirt square. My pet peeve is a huge expanse of t-shirt material with a tiny logo. I know its easier that way, but I just don't like it. This quilt was challenging since all the blocks were either 12x12, 12x16, 8x12 or 12x8; thus the fill in with Laurel Burch Mythical Horses fabric. 

This is a shot of the label that Dennis made for the back. I wanted to get everyone's name on there that contributed shirts--especially since they didn't get them back!

Thanks for stopping by...

Dory

Its a mystery...

I'm a member of Cabin Fever Quilters in Port Townsend. They're a fun group of ladies!

This year I'm participating in their mystery quilt. I've gotten much farther than last year already--I purchased AND cut out the fabric.

Four fabrics necessary: light, medium, medium dark and dark. I chose this fabric first:

We took a drive last Friday around part of the state, visiting some towns we'd never been to before. Luckily Dennis is cool with quilt shop hopping, so we hit a shop in every town we stopped in. I was on the hunt for gray when I found this one. I just love the pattern on it and the gold is shiny!

This is what I ended up with...

And now it looks like this--perfectly good fabric chopped to bits!!!

Can't wait to see the next step. Thank goodness I have a month in between!

Dory

A "Fishing" Tribute

I first saw this quilt in November, when I was at the QCQ retreat in California. Donna brought it to show and share. She lost her brother suddenly last year and after dealing with his estate (he was single and lived in Montana), she made this quilt as a tribute to him. He loved to fish and it helped her to deal with his death. She said she thought about him while working on it.

The pattern is the first of its kind that I've seen. You use color crayons to achieve the color you want, first coating the area with white and then using color and, I think, an iron to set the colors. Then you embroider and quilt. Although I'm not much of a fisher-person, I do love how this quilt looks and I think the pieced border just adds so much interest.

Have a look...

I tried to do some different designs in each of the blocks to add interest, without taking away from the fun "coloring."

Fishing lures:

I did some quilting inside the fish as well as the meandering around them. If you look closely, you can see air bubbles coming up from their mouths. I chose to quilt the fish as if they were in aquarium, rather than stuffed and hanging on a wall!  I really didn't think Donna would notice--she did though--and thought it was great.

Another scenery type of block:

This was the largest block on the quilt and the first one I quilted since I had to load the quilt horizontally. (When loading a quilt on a longarm, if it is at all possible, you want the backing seam to be parallel with backing bar).  My idea was to give distinctive areas: sky/water and beach/pebbles.

Another sign-type block:

A view of how the blocks went together:

A couple of close-ups of that first block. Trying to give the basket and the net texture was challenging.

Hope you enjoyed the show...

Dory