Ahoy matey...

Picked up this quilt yesterday I made for my step-son. He's 40+ years old going on 20 when it comes to his pirates|skulls and crossbones. Had lots of fun collecting fat quarters that would go with the pirate and flame prints. I had it long-armed quilted in a flame pattern with red thread. Yesterday, the hubby and I discovered while holding the quilt up, with the sun shinning behind it, the red stitching caused the flame pattern to glow.... cool! All that is left to do is the binding.

The inset shows detail of the overall quilting pattern.

"Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

Red sky at morning, sailor take warning"

A few current projects...

Spoonflower (http://www.spoonflower.com/welcome), is having a 2 for 1 sale on printing tea towel calendars this week only. I have been thinking about creating some calendar towels as gifts and this offer from Spoonflower cinched the decision for me to get busy and put my thoughts to paper or I should say, pixels. Here is the towel I have designed to have printed to give for Christmas.

This will be my first order from Spoonflower and I am thrilled to see what magic they can do printing on fabric.

I have been continuing to work on the flag quilt for the hubby. Am hoping to get all the paper removed from the back soon, fix any loose seams and get it quilted early in 2012. Meanwhile, I started piecing the back for the quilt. Here's what I have pieced|embroidered for the backing.

I have added a 16" border around 3 sides of the top to make it larger for our queen size mattress. This is a photo of the original size of the top.

The top is foundation pieced and I know now I should have shortened the stitch length and used thinner paper for piecing this top. Once I figured out how to piece via this method, putting the top together wasn't so bad. But it's been a bugger to get the paper off the back. 

We took a quick trip to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. Here a few photos from visiting a dairy|tobacco|chicken farm(s) that belong to the folks we visited. Kentucky is somewhere over beyond the first row of trees.

Wanted to bring this little one home....but there was no room in the car.

Do brown cows give chocolate milk?

And white cows white milk?

Tobacco baled and waiting for auction.

Ready to be baled.

Trying to get chickens to stand still for the camera is like herding cats...

Catching the last rays to a perfect day.

"If you have a good mind be prepared to use it well."

Hope your holiday is full of blessings...

Hello everyone...

It's been a while since my last post. Not sure which excuse to use, so I won't. :)

Wanted to share a couple of small art quilts my friend, Vicki and I pieced while we were in Michigan at Gwen Marston's Beaver Island Quilt Retreat back in early September. It was our first time to attend the retreat which focused on "small studies" this year. We started by piecing small units of solid fabrics with the occasional print added. Sometimes the units were "auditioned" before sewing together into a larger study. Vicki and I decided to engage each other with a "color challenge". It was fun choosing colors we knew were not favorites of the other, adding a print and then presenting the packets of fabric we were to use in this challege. 

Here's the small art quilt (14" x 13") Vicki pieced, quilted and gave to me using the lime green and oranges I love but she doesn't ... I love the curves pieced into the bordered and enhanced with her stitches!

 And, who doesn't like a beautiful Kaffe Fasset print.... I love the back almost as much as the front!

I finally finished my part of our challenge last night with the binding and embellishing of my small quilt  (12" x 8") made using the fabric Vicki picked. If you look closely, you can see the pink-haired maiden I stitched into the quilt.

 Here's the back. Now, I need to pop this into the mail to my BFF.

November is turning out to be a busy month for us which is good. Last week we had a couple of friends, Diane and Joyce, visit us here in northeastern Oklahoma. They had never been here before, so it was fun trying to think of places to visit that was uniquely Oklahoma. One day we took them to Woolaroc Museum and Wildlife Preserve, https://woolaroc.org/home. Woolaroc (which stands for WOOds, LAkes, and ROCks) was the country home of Frank Phillips, oilman and founder of Phillips Petroleum (Phillips 66 gasoline). It's an awesome place to soak up some "Oklahoma" flavor ... there's an impressive collection of western art and the surrounding 3700 acres of rolling hills. lakes and rock outcroppings are lovely any time of the year. Here's some photos from our visit to Woolaroc.

Buffalo....one of my favorite animals...

A herd of American elk roam the park...

Such a sweet young deer...

Thanks for coming to visit us, Diane and Joyce....we loved having you and hope you come back soon! ☺

I appreciate you visiting my blog and want to say thank you for  your comments....hope each of you are having a lovely fall. 

PS: Thanks, Karen for your kind e-mail concerning my absence from the blog world.