How can it already be Tuesday

wasnt it just Sunday yesterday? It does seem that way but my how time does fly....I finally finished quilting this on my Janome yesterday...its quilted within an inch of its life...as close as 1/4" and i love the quilting on it....i do like to quilt things to death...BUT the colors seem off in the pictures...its much brighter and more intense....like the first detail...second detail is too light too....

blogger must be burping today...

this quilt was made by using the orange in the second detail and matching all the colors in it to that piece of fabric...yes it has all those colors in it ...not that u can tell...

now to bind it...well i made add another piece of striped fabric in the gap on the right side....and yes i will quilt it...i have several bright stripes to chose from that look like they are pieced....so i can pick...

Binding these quilts is such a pain because you have to do inside 90ish degrees corners and figure out what to do with all the extra fabric when you flip the binding to the back...but i shall persevere and get it done...only have two more big quilts to sew the binding down on ....thats 3 bindings down and three more to go...until i long arm th or friday.......oppps
I also got a STRAIGHT picture of this one but there again its much lighter here than it actually is either in real life or in Iphoto...go figure...it helped that i straightened the quilt on the wall....lol..it was hanging crooked when i took the last pic...no chance it would ever be straight unless i used picasa...another set of aggravations...right?! that green in the bottom is actually a gold with a touch of green...not pea soup color... and since bella got added by accident i thought i would add her here too...shes being noble and obliging while her mom drapes her with scraps...thats the back...and a piece of binding...

The Making of River Bend Lady

This is how our neighborhood must have looked before the tree cutting began..this is the island across from our neighborhood..unbuildable because it floods...lovely trees everywhere

This is a shot of our neighborhood denuded of its trees...

well finally i can blog her and show her off.....shes part of an invitational exhibit at the Latimer Quilt and Textile Center in Tillamook Oregon curated by Larkin Van Horn. The show is called "Its Good to be Green" and the only requirements where that we could NOT send a frog quilt in and it had to be 18x45" long...

I stewed over this one a long time mostly because of the size of the quilt. I wanted to do something about the fabulous trees in our neighborhood...they are soo awesome and people buy lots here just to live among them and then they CHOP them down when they are in thier way...which just kills me...NO one is allowed to prune ours let alone chop them down...all 58 in the front yard and the sycamores along the river...WHY would you buy a heavily wooded lot covered with old growth trees to chop them down so you can have a lawn? I just dont understand...

ANYWAY this is my interpretation of one of the gorgeous sycamores that line the river bank here....a lovely red headed lady with green velvet skirts....and beads and vines curling around her hair and her waist and nestled in her scarf....she is of course bare footed! and tossing her skirts in the wind...

i dyed the silk velvet the cheese cloth and the trees across the river...and the water...and her hair...i guess it would be easier to say that the only thing i didnt dye was the sky and the fore ground...her face is drawn with gel pens, pigma pens, prismacolor pencils...my usual stuff...the hair is hand dyed bias cut silk ruched and couched down ..same thing with the skirt...

So she loved her quilt...

Betsy and her quilt

A big picture so hopefully you can click on it and see the quilting...Judy quilted it with silver superior thread METALLIC...GREAT job Judy....



So she loved her quilt ....and of course you knew she would...
This is Betsy our birthday girl...well one of the three(three of us have birthdays back to back starting with mine on Nov.21, Rachel on the 22 and Betsy on the 23rd and we use it as an excuse to have a party every year... but the Betsy is having a milestone birthday.

We couldnt wait to give her the quilt. Ille and Connie hanging it...right under Betsys nose...she was too busy talking to Kay  to notice.
SOOO SHE finally noticed...

and she started to   cry ...and then she cried some more!
Kay had to lend emotional support to the very shocked Betsy!! She has reacted just like we knew she would....Ille and Betsy admiring the quilt
Just in case you didnt see it...heres another picture of it..The crowd gathers round to stare at the quilt...the some of the seamstresses just stood and stared at it...probably in disbelief that we had finished it in less than a month from beginning to end
Ille showing off the back of the quilt...amazing what you can get off the Hancocks Paducah closeouts...$4 a yard...and it matches the skater to a T..

Ille was in charge of rushing it to Atlanta for our friend Judy to quilt it...and then Judy quilted it and squared it up and then priority mailed it back to Marie and her mom Shelvy so they could put the binding on it..REMEMBER this was Thanksgiving weekend!

Betsy admiring the quilt yet again with help from Rachel...

Hurry up Rachel YOU ARE LATE:>
Betsy could NOT take her eyes off her quilt.....at dinner she sat facing the quilt so she could see it.....bytw she does not have a bed sized quilt...all the ones she has ever made she has given away.
So are we admiring the quilt ladies  or are we chatting??? I can hear Linda(in the grey) saying bad words about me and my blue metallic Superior thread that gave her fits...worked fine in my 180 LINDA:>
Definitely chatting...and its time to eat..HEY have you all served dinner yet???..great dinner ille...two kinds of lasagna, a jillion deserts, fabulous salad...now off to the Y to exercise one of those cream puffs that Nancy brought OFF:>

A class with Lura Schwarz Smith

Our quilt guild hosted Lura Schwarz Smith today and everyone had a great time...Lura is well known as an TOP award national award winning quilter who makes intricate quilts with faces drawn with tsunieko inks....We had people from as faraway as Raleigh, Atlanta and Charleston driving to take her class...she did a great job and everyone drew some great looking faces with the inks she specializes in. She always found something positive to say about everyones work.

This is what I drew in class today . Fabric drawn with tsunieko inks which can be bought at www.jukeboxquilts.comThis is the original photograph...she is a cutie...Kim's niece...guess i will have to give this to Kylies mom or to Kim to give to Kylies mom! I think it would look good framed under the Christmas tree for her mom...right now I cant think of another thing to do with it...

Practicing shading with the tsunieko inks...
Lura teaching...she was a great teacher...working hard all day long using every teachable moment she could find...

Ann Stalnaker and Ille Waters working hard on inking thier grandchildren.
Marlene Seabrook-O'Bryant drove from Charleston to take the class...Marlene is a very interesting person...the first woman hired by the Citadel...and she is also a hoot...I run into her all over the place at all the best quilt spots like International Quilt Festival...a few hundred thousand quilters but I found Marlene!! or did Marlene find me? We do that alot at quilt shows!
Marsha Boasso having too much fun...knowing Marsha she was picking on Connie....and MARSHA WHY didnt you take all your l eftovers home with you...I didnt need them:>
Connie...I hear her now...I can do this I will learn how to draw...
Diana...another of our travelers...from Raleigh NC drove down 5 hours to take Lura's class...

Apparently this artist has become a

quilter too....this was made up quickly from the block heap that i had sewed up earlier this month...wild wonky log cabins...Jeff is racing it off to somewhere to see if it can get sold...evidently it wowed everybody that saw it...and i do have to say its pretty cool for an innovative quilt with handprints...not your average handprint quilt....

yes i know crass commercialism but lets face it....do we really like to be starving artists living in hovels???Not I nor Jeff....

These last i zapped together from a couple of prints that I took pics of and then I inserted them using paintshop pro into the quilts that we got ready for the show in Aiken...and it was MUCH faster:>

This was sooo quick that i am looking around to see what else I can zap together...my quilts, jeffs artwork....ez pz....

I also discovered how to turn out a dvd on this Mac and that was well just so time consuming NOT....amazing how quickly we turned these three quilts into a dvd that actually worked!