Another Beauty From Betty

Is this not just one of the prettiest quilts that you have ever seen? And isn't that little pup holding it in place just the sweetest? This is Baylea inspecting Betty's progress on the star quilt that she's working on, as Baylea always does. When there's a quilt on display she needs to be on top of it, or helping rearrange the pieces. She must be a quilter at heart...

The centre panel of small stars is surrounded by a border of larger stars within a star, each of them a work of art. Then there's a sawtooth border of grey and soft green. And yes, it's all hand sewn.

Here's a close-up of one of the corner blocks. You can see that she has inserted a row of cream entre deux trim, usually used for lingerie, to soften it even more and add great texture.

She brought it out to show us a couple of months ago as she was trying to determine what the design of the next border would be and whether or not the large green floral would suit.

Laid out on the deck you really get to see its full beauty.

On the weekend I snagged a few pics of the next border that she is making with the larger green floral and they are just beautiful - surprise, surprise. I'll share those next time (how's that for a cliff hanger?)....M

Slow Mo

As my cold clears up I'm slowly getting to the point where I am even the slightest bit interested in putting something together, and that's a nice change. Nothing huge, but a start. I joined my three scrappy basket blocks with mismatched pieces of sashing and laid them out with the picot border.

Because I just sewed my border HSTs to a size that I liked and not necessarily one based on the basket block size I'm going to need to insert a sashing along the edges to make everything fit. That's been too much math for me to get my head around lately so I think what I'll do is just sew a long 2.5" strip of neutrals together to keep things scrappy and then trim what I need to so that everything fits.

I need to lay it all out on a larger table to work on it so that I have at least half a chance of getting the dimensions right. And as I look at the photos I'm starting to wonder if I need to add the brown floral outer border. More decisions to be made.....M

Great Expectations

I totally underestimated how long it would take this cold of mine to move out. It's still hanging around and I'm still hacking away, but it finally feels as though it won't be a permanent house guest. That's great, except for the fact that until Sunday I haven't picked up a needle and thread or sat down to the machine in weeks. I've had the centre flowers for a few Minnie blocks all set to go so I managed to add an outer border to one and half a border to another. No cutting or planning required

Nothing overly stellar in the productivity column but at least I feel somewhat like sewing again, and it was nice to reacquaint myself with Minnie for a little bit....M

Party of One

Woe is me. For the last week I've been fighting with the cold of the century (a.k.a. The Plague) and, for the most part, it has won, totally levelling me. All fine and good except for the fact that I was to be headed to the cottage last weekend for a girls getaway. I was anxious to get caught up on everyone's projects and share them with you but that was not to be. Rumour has it that great things were accomplished so I will need to do some catch up.

As a bit of a get well card Jane sent a book that she was moving along home with Anne for me to enjoy. I crawled into bed the other night to take a good look at it.

It's an oldie from Traditional Needle Arts - 21 years old to be exact - and that is reflected in the projects and fabrics that are shown, but it has a great selection of antique quilts with an interesting variety of quilting patterns, which is really what caught my eye.

Love the cover quilt, which they refer to as 'Strippy Blue & White'. I think Denyse Schmidt did one of  these in green. Now that I have the pattern I'm thinking that it might have to go on the list...

And then there is the beautiful yellow whole cloth quilt. The scalloped edge is just so sweet...

I don't think that I will ever quilt a whole cloth quilt but I love seeing the detailed quilting patterns that I can incorporate into my projects. I have such a hard time deciding how to quilt my quilts but there's lots of good ideas in here.

I'm still barking like a seal and I think I'm about to send the Official Cookie Tester over the edge, but it feels good to know that I'll soon be back in the land of the living. I suspect that this book may have had some medicinal qualities :)....M