Guild day, Tuesday

Today was quilt guild, and I am tired. We had a wonderful speaker, Elizabeth Barton formerly from York, UK, and now from Athens,GA. who makes wonderful art quilts featuring the houses, buildings and structures common to villages and cities she has lived in or visited. Elizabeth dyes all the fabric for her work and has a sharp eye for captivating design interest from ordinary scenes. Here are a couple of her pieces from the small show in Blue Ridge last month.

We were treated to an extensive slide presentation along with the inspiration photographs and hand drawn sketches. I'm inspired to look at things differently after seeing her quilts!

Meanwhile, here at Wazoo...Mr Wazoo has been cleaning the garage since moving his lawn stuff into the shed, and I am seeing a big space emerge that I could use for something quilty. Hmmm...maybe not Nifty Fifty, but Fab Four or five? It's a thought.
Yesterday was spent laboring over the black bits of the quilt I started quilting on Sunday. Black on black is so hard to see, and even harder when the customer requested thin batting. Nothing pops up, so it is difficult to see where I have already quilted. I can't wait to get all the black done so I can move on to the colorful part!

I used dark gray for the feathering around the colorful part, and did the background fill with black.
You can't see any background fill, can you? Nor can you see the spiky design in the starry fabric. AAArrrgh!!

I have the half circles scribed in, now for the pointy bits...

After working for hours and getting nowhere, I decided to take a break and mess around with some orphan blocks left over from a quilt I made years ago. The rejects, you could say..

The pitiful orphans

The original 2007 quilt, with my daughter-in-law's family crest appliqued on it.

I think I need to make a few blue and green blocks to spice the orphan up a little. Oh well, it will no doubt be a charity quilt when it is finished. I had fun playing.

Miss Molly had an adventure last night. When I took her out before bed, she spied something hiding under my car. I don't know what it was, but I m guessing a feral cat. Thank goodness it wasn't a skunk!! She kept trying to squeeze her sausage body under the car, but all she got for her toil were patches of  black down her white fur! Mr Wazoo bathed her today, so she is back to normal, but I worry that the intruder will be back and we'll have a worse confrontation. I may have to start parking by the garage...

Trying her best to look innocent.

I'll be back to work in earnest tomorrow. Until then...I need a nap!

This and that

For me, Sunday is my day to do what I want. Of course I wanted to sew! Remember these dragonfly blocks? I scoured the stash and found the perfect fabrics for the sashing, cornerstones and borders. Then I got to work!

upper left and lower right are the blocks I made the other day.
The other four were made by other guild quilters.

All finished and ready for quilting!
I made the back and hung both up for another day.

This top has been on the design wall too long! I took it down and added the small blue border before hanging it up for later, too. I think it needs a scrappy piano key border...

One more border and it will be queen sized!

I did a little work, too. This quilt is a custom job for a customer in Florida. I  finished all the stitch in the ditch, and will be ready for the quilting tomorrow morning.

Half done by lunch...SID done by 2:00!

Meanwhile, Mr Wazoo worked in his new shed, putting up shelves and hooks for his yard tools. He is thrilled to have all his yard stuff in one place and organized. at the end of the day, he triumphantly drove his tractor in and locked the door!

A great quilt makes a long workday fun!

It has been a nine hour day with a half hour lunch because I couldn't tear myself away from this magnificent quilt.

English paper pieced, all by hand!
Cotton & Steel and Kaffe Fasset fabrics

The customer worked on this for two years, fussy cutting most of the pieces to make the kaleidoscope elements. I just love it! I chose to quilt it with a mid-tone gray Omni thread after auditioning eight colors and deciding they overwhelmed the pattern. I used my Gammill workstation, with the concentric spiral disk. It is still all hand guided, but with a template and stylus. It was extremely time consuming to do it without overlapping the circles, but well worth the effort. Then, I filled in the empty spaces with freehand swirls, and the border with simple piano keys in a variegated thread. It looks wonderful. Too bad it isn't mine...

Thousands of little matching bits of fabric, all making pretty flower- like wheels

Little birds, flowers, trees, horses...all carefully selected to blend nicely together.

Every hexie group is surrounded with the five pointed stars with smaller hexies for their centers.

King Tut variegated thread in the borders

The back is also pieced with an array of fun fabrics

At 6:00, I started doing the deconstruction of the first of two horse blankets to be made into throws. I broke my favorite seam ripper doing it, so I had to quit until I can get a new one. Rats!

I need a new picker to take off the cord and nylon binding before I can cut and resew this into a usable shape and size.

I thought I would show you how funny Molly was last night at supper time. She tipped the pillow over and sat atop it to get a better view of Mr Wazoo eating his spaghetti. What a little beggar!!

A big finish!

Yesterday, on my way to the studio, I put my Wisconsin trip souvenir on my car...

Go Badgers!

Then it was time to get back to work on this quilt. I had finished all the stitch in the ditch the day before and began the quilting in earnest.

Late today, I finished it! If you remember, I made this same pattern last year and had it in the guild show here in Georgia. I took it to Florida for show and tell at my guild there, and my customer saw it and fell in love with the pattern. She re-interpreted the design and made it her own. Both are beautiful, and the quilting isn't bad, either!

Barbara's version of the quilt, Forest Galorest

My version is on point. I called it, Backyard HOA.

Mr Wazoo worked along with me on his Gammill, finishing these pretty quilts.

The customer said this was called Path to the Cabin. I love the secondary
chain made by the dotted fabric squares.

Panto: Alfresco

This tee shirt quilt is the first  quilt Mr W did without any batting!
The customer just wanted a light blanket for TV watching.

Panto: Square Spiral on the soft flannel back.

The same customer made this quilt from a layer cake pre-cut and a charm pack.

Panto: Flamingo Sunset

This customer made a guitar quilt for her son. Pretty fabric combination.

Panto: Vanilla Cream

When Molly and I broke for lunch, we passed the butterfly bush in the side garden. It was teeming with butterflies! I wish the photos with lots of them on the bush were better. It is hard to pick them out in all that foliage. Here are a couple of the closer ones I took while they were drinking up the nectar, oblivious of my presence. At the foot of the garden is a pot of begonia on a stump. A nice way to camouflage an eyesore in the yard!

At quitting time, I took a few minutes to fuse a couple of blocks for the guild charity quilt challenge.  There are six in a quilt, and I only had four from other quilters. I need to do the buttonhole stitching, but they are ready and waiting. Now, its time for spaghetti!!

My two blocks, ready to fly onto a quilt with the other dragonflies!