Retreat time

log cabin blocks, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

This is one thing that I worked on at the quilt retreat this weekend. The centers are a Kona Bay panel, and they are directional, which you may or may not be able to tell since they are sort of turned every which way in this picture. (I was just trying to figure out how well this whole idea was going to work.) I bought the panel on eBay last year, because I thought it would make good centers for the indigo log cabin I have been planning to make since the dawn of time - or at least for several years. As tends to happen when you collect fabrics like this, though, I had way more dark indigoes than I did light ones. I think I have enough, though. Barely.

March winds

mom - March winds wallhanging, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Wallhanging by Billie Standley, from a pattern in the book "Easy Seasonal Wall Quilts" (see link below).

I put up a picture of the April Showers quilt, so I thought I'd put up March Winds, too, just for completeness. My mother did a number of wallhangings out of that book - here's the Thanksgiving one and there's also an Amazon link there to the book itself, although I don't know how hard it would be to get hold of these days. Anyway, I particularly like this one.

Added: more seasonal quilts from the same book: snow, spring wreath, summer sailing, and back-to-school.

Que Bee auction quilt

Que Bee auction quilt, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above shown at Lakeview Quilters Guild's Mayfest quilt show. Appliqued by the Lakeview Quilters Guild 'Que Bee, and quilted by Denise Green.

I love the brown background on this.

Combing Through Your Scraps

Mom - watercolor basket, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above by Billie Standley, begun in a Karen Combs class.

There are a bunch of new pictures of Mom quilts over on Flickr - if you click on the picture above it should get you over there. (It's late and I'm too tired to figure out the link right now.) Mostly they are not actually new pictures, just things that had never gotten added to flickr before. It turned out that there were a lot of those. It makes me sort of sad that my mother made so many quilts that I don't even have pictures of, because she turned things out so fast that even after I got methodical about taking pictures, she would make things and get rid of them before I could even have a chance to take a picture.

(So if anybody happens to have some of my mother's quilts, this is your hint to send me a picture. quiltsgalore(at)gmail(dot)com. I'd be forever grateful.)

So that's the secret

Stitches of Life, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Allison Aller on getting crazy quilts to hang straight:
http://www.cqmagonline.com/vol06iss02/articles/697/index.shtml

Quilt above made by Donna Meyers and the Quincy Crazy Quilters of California; entered in the category Group Quilts at the 2005 International Quilt Festival. (More pictures of this quilt in the 2005 set, including this one. I love the spiderwebs.)

Mother Earth and her Children

Mother Earth and her Children (detail), originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Sieglinde Schoen Smith of Carlisle, Pennsylvania; winner of Best of Show (and a $10,000 prize) at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival. (Entered in the category Art-Whimsical.)

I was looking at my "recent activity" page on flickr - it shows comments and what pictures people have favorited and so forth, it's always interesting to check - and one of the pictures of this quilt popped up. There are a bunch of pictures of this quilt starting here. At quilt festival last fall, I kept taking more pictures of it every time I went by. I can't say that I was all that impressed by it the first time I looked at it, but the more I looked the more impressed I got. The quilter was there, off & on, for one thing, and she showed the book the design came from - it was an old children's book, I believe she said she had it when she was a child. And she was very emphatic about the fact that every bit of the work in this was done by hand. Be sure and look at all the detail pictures if you have a chance, because the workmanship is really wonderful.

Carolyn started a Flickr pool for quilt festival pictures. Several people have already been adding stuff, so check it out!

April showers

Mom - April showers wallhanging, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

One-block Sunbonnet Sue made by Billie Standley. I don't know where the pattern came from, exactly.

Roseville

Center of Roseville quilt, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

This is a detail picture of Mom's Roseville quilt. This is just the center, which has (and I remember this from when she was making it, it impressed me so much) over 300 pieces in this block alone. I think that makes this quilt an heirloom.

Quilt by Billie Standley; design by Maggie Walker.

Tea Time

Tea Time, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Keiko Nagano of Kyoto, Japan; shown in the judged show (category: Innovative Applique, Large) at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

The Wavy Surface

The Wavy Surface, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Hideko Ryuki; from the exhibit "Hands All Around XXI" at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

Spring Ocean

Spring Ocean, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Harumi Asada; from the exhibit "Hands All Around XXI"at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

Think pink

Y'know, maybe I need to have one more stab at doing the all-pink quilt I've been threatening to do for years, because I am totally fascinated by this knitted pink tank cover. (And that's tank as in military, not the kind that's attached to your toilet!) I think maybe I am not done with the obsession with pink. And heck, the last one-color quilt I did came out pretty good, so it could be a series!


Later: I have been scrolling through my archives for nearly an hour, trying to find the link to a sort-of similar thing that I knew was there: the quilted missile cozy. Despite the name, it's a much less homey thing, though.

Love

Mom's "Love" quilt, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above by Billie Standley.

So the quilt I brought home last weekend was this one. The center applique block is one of Sue Garman's patterns - I think maybe it goes with the "Mama Said" series of patterns. But my mom changed the hair-color on the girls to represent my sister and me, because I always had dark hair growing up, and my sister was blonde. (I think the rest of the blocks were from a kit, although I'm not 100% sure about that. The fabrics are mostly by Robyn Pandolph and Sandy Gervais.) My mom also wrote the sweetest inscription on the label, something about memories of her little girls, which I don't remember having seen before at all. It almost made me cry.

Skywest

Skywest, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Susan Leslie Lumsden of Thayer, Missouri, 2005.

I really love this quilt - it's on the cover of the Missouri Arts Council's annual awards program (which I found out about because Pam Rubert's husband won an award - congratulations!). I need to look this woman up and see if she teaches or anything, because I'm really crazy about this technique.

Added: She has a website - here (and watch out for the sound!) - but I don't see anything about teaching.

We have a winner

Have y'all been following the $100,000 Quilting Challenge? It flew under my radar for a good while, I guess, but I picked up a couple of issues of the magazine at IQF last fall, and there was an exhibit of some of the quilts there, too, so I got more interested. Well, in case you haven't seen this already, the 2006 winner was announced, and it's a whole-cloth quilt, quilted on a Gammill. It's called "Bella" and it was made by Linda McCuean, and Gina of Quilter's Buzz has some pictures up. I guess we have to wait on the new magazine to get more!