Farewell, September

I survived my oral surgery on Tuesday (tooth extraction), and all I can say is, Yay! for general anesthesia!  I didn't feel so great afterwards, but actually better than when I had a raging infection in the tooth.  So, I'm getting back to normal now.  I'm just suffering with a miserable headache, but it's getting better.

Faultlines 18"w x 14.5"h

Since I haven't been in the quilt studio all week, I'm going to show one of my older quilts.  It's a little quilt that I made as part of my guild's color challenge, I think from about 10 years ago.  However, I'm not sure, as I didn't label the quilt.  (Another reason it's good to label quilts - getting forgetful!)  This was my first paint chip challenge.  We drew two colors of paint chips.  My two colors were very close - kind of  teal and turquoise.  But I really liked them.  I liked them so much, I made two quilts for this challenge, and my DD made one too!  (she wasn't even in the guild)  I'll be showing you the second quilt from this challenge in a few days.

This color was tough to find in fabric.  I did find a 4 color gradation packet, which was a life-saver.  I carried those paint chips around with me to all the quilt shops and quilt shows I went to that year, and eventually found enough fabrics.

Faultlines was my first idea, and I had fun with this.  It's all every-which-way, and it's tough to hang it on the wall straight!  I'm not so sure this photo is straight either.  Sometimes I hang it going in the other direction - it's kind of all-purpose that way.  *grin*

I embellished this with beads; it was my first time using beads.  I used teal beads on the black fabric and black beads on the turquiose fabric.  I don't think you can see this in the photo, but the black is densely quilting in a meandering pattern.

And I decided that using a decorative stitch was fun.  I was going for an "earthquake" idea, and  I thought this looked like the read-out on the earthquake detector machine.  We got used to seeing those on the news in California!

I really enjoyed everyone's answer to my question about quilting.  It seems like we all agonize over how to quilt our quilts.  It seems that some quilts will tell us what they want/need, and other quilts are not helpful! 

Whenever I get stuck on how to quilt, I usually fall back on the old patterns from the antique quilts, like the Baptist Fan, the hanging diamond and also cross-hatching.  You know, the patterns that ignore the peiced pattern and just go all over the quilt.  I still like those, and I think they look good on most quilts.  And I think they're more interesting than just meandering or stippling.  I guess some of it depends on whether you're hand or machine quilting, too.  I do all of my quilts by machine now, due to arthritis in my hands.  And, I'm lazy and want the quilt finished faster!   Do you have a favorite pattern you use?

I met my neighbor yesterday.  We've lived here for 3 years now, and we've waved to each other, but not really met.  She lives down at the other end of the street.  She was set up in her driveway, pin basting a quilt on a frame!  DH saw her when he went to get the mail, and made me come see her (even tho' I was not feeling well and was slopping around in my sweats, with goofy hair).  She's around 80, from what she said, and was getting ready to handquilt the quilt she'd made for her grandson.  It was a non-scrappy log cabin in black and white checkerboard with blues and greens - very modern looking.  Then she took me in her house to show me the queen-size quilt she made for another grandson.  She made this quilt, using black and white graphic prints instead of the indigos.  I loved it!  She's looking for a machine quilter to quilt this one for her, so I'll see what I can find out at quilt guild meeting tomorrow.  I'm really glad I went down the street to meet her! 

See you in October!