Bringing home the Blue

Blue ribbon from the fair for best appliqué quilt

 

Blue ribbon for best machine quilting

 

I won a whopping $6.00 for each ribbon (can't even buy a yard of fabric these days with that)

But then it's all about the glory, right?

FMQ design inspirations

Sew Cal Gal has a Free motion quilting challenge every month with a new quilting master giving a tutorial. This month is the best one yet since she has one of my favorite quilt artists - Susan Brubacker Knapp. 

Go here to see the tutorial you will be glad you did.

I spent the last two days looking at everything differently - through the eyes of quilting designs.

I took lots of photos - here are just a few.

I have finished one of the bough above - it's not exactly like the photo but then again it shouldn't be.

I love how this came out!
thank you susan for inspiring me :-)

Ausable point campground

Ok, one last "what I did on my vacation" post, then back to quilting.

I've been living right across the lake from this jewel for 30 years and never knew it existed!

 

No, this is not Florida. - its Lake Champlain on the New York side at dawn.

This is the campground beach

 

Same spot looking the other direction. Best part about this beach - you can bring your dog!

Although mine is a water wimp

 

The sunrise on the beach

 

There are campsites on the beach and on the calm kayak, canoe friendly river that flows into the lake. My mom and I took the canoe down the river but I didn't bring my camera. It was really nice and peaceful with lots of ducks and interesting mirror images from the calm water.

 

The river is on the right of this photo - I then went to the beach to watch the kite boarders. It's hard to see in the photo above but they surf being carried by big kites - crazy but looks like a blast.

 

Here you can sort of see the kite

 

Somebody built a "driftwood village"

 

I was supposed to stay two nights but since I don't sleep well in a tent, I bailed the second night. This was a Hathaway family reunion week end, so was able to see a lot of my relatives I only see once a year and am so glad they picked this spot. Hopefully will be a tradition.

Since I only live an hour and a half away, I drove home after dinner and caught this sunset on the ferry back to Vermont.

 

Perfect end to a perfect day

staycation day

I don't know if it's my age or the fact that I live in a really nice area in the summer but I relax and enjoy more going on an outing right here than driving somewhere after packing and planning for days, doing and seeing, then driving back only to have to unpack just in time to go back to work.  If Vermont had an ocean it would probablly be the best place in the U.S. to live but then you can't have everything. 

Yesterday we went to a little known State Park called Niquette Bay, only 15 minutes from home and it was fabulous! Of course 77 degrees, low humidity and sunshine didn't hurt either.

After walking a half a mile thru the woods we came out at this little beach, one of the few beaches that you can bring your dog and of course I had bring my girl Abbey, even though she's afraid of the water.

After a picnic lunch, I wanted to explore some more, so took these scary looking stairs to the sky

Well actually a well marked trail thru a wonderful birch forest 

this is also an off leash area for dogs so they love it

this looked like the birch tree graveyard

then after going up a ridge and down again I came upon this cove - perfect for jumping in to cool off

for the more adventurous - on the other side of the cove there are cliffs to jump off

Way more than I can handle, but I enjoyed the view.

all and all a great day and I highly recommend Niquette Bay if you are in the Burlington area - especially if you have dogs that like the water (or wimps like Abbey who just like to walk and sniff)

Sun print experiment

Quilt rat, one of my favorite blogs has a really good tutorial on how to sun print. Go here to check it out.

She mentioned that she had heard you can only use seta color fabric paints and I had heard that as well, so since I had a couple jars of jacquard and lumiere fabric paints and the sun was out - I did a test.

First the jacquard paint, notice the sea salt thrown on there, I really like the effect of that

 

An then some Lumiere which is a metallic iridescent fabric paint

 

After an hour or so, the jacquard seems to work just fine

 

The lumiere worked as far as doing the sun printing but being that it's metallic and shiny, and all I had was violet and white (I should not have used white since my base fabric was white) I didn't like the results. I am going to go in at some point and do some painting of these leaves later so maybe the look will improve when I do that.

 

But anyway the moral of this story is that the rumor that you can only use seta color paints to sun print was no doubt started by the makers of seta color ;-)))

Don't get me wrong, I love their paints and by all means if you have a choice get them, but if your local art supply store only carries jacquard - their paint is just as good. Both are good quality.

I don't want to be a "paint snob" and say the stuff you buy at joannes won't work because I haven't tried it, but maybe that should be the next experiment. If you have some of that joannes fabric paint, slap some on a piece of fabric the next sunny day , lay on some leaves and see what comes about.

Let me know :-)

Posted with Blogsy

Lucy the llama

I finally finished the llama I started in David Taylor's class 6 weeks ago! In all that time we have grown very close and I realize what a flirt Lucy is.

 

She loves to bat those big ole' eyes of hers at all the boys and they all come running :-)

 

Just don't make fun of her fancy purple barn or she will hear you. A diva like Lucy can have whatever color wood she wants.

 

I'm entering her in the online pets on quilts show at Lilypad quilts in the art quilt category. Check it out here to see some pets on and in quilts.

 

And vote for me by writing in the comment form that you are voting for #145 for best art quilt. Thanks!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Adirondacks and Spain united in Love

My mother was commissioned to do this collage quilt for a friend of hers who's daughter has moved to the Basque region of Spain and getting married. She wanted to show the Adirondack mountain area where she is from and the Basque region both in one quilt. 

The photos are not that great but hopefully you can see the two people (photos of the real people on fabric)

walking thru the fields with sheep and goats in the foreground. She has put a tree with foliage that she fussy cut in the foreground giving shade to the wedding table at the bottom.

The wedding couple is walking hand in hand down to the sea (Basque region) with the mountains in the background (Adirondacks). She used real shells tacked down on the beach.

I think she did a great job, coming up with this idea just from her imagination and pulled it off beautifully.

Well done Mom!