First Quilt, Last Quilt

First Quilt - 1979

While looking for pictures to update my website, I ran across a picture of my first quilt that I finished in 1979. You know, the one that you make all of the mistakes on. It was definitely a learning experience. We were in upstate (Plattsburgh) New York. 

I had never heard of a quilt shop, no Cloth World or Joann's. I had a McCalls quilting magazine, found a pattern called Aunt Sukeys quilt. The picture at the left shows it shortly after it was finished. It has been washed a gazillion times, and 'does' look the worse for wear. BUT, it was hand-quilted, in spite of having the thickest poly batting that I could find and a 200 thread count sheet on the back.

Last Quilt  - 2014

This next quilt is the last 'big' quilt that I've finished recently. Had it in the Tri-county Quilt show in Feb. 2014. Proud to say it won a ribbon. This one is called Chasing Chevrons, and is done totally in Flannels. If you look through my quilts you will see that I love working with flannel. These quilts end up being the softest, warmest quilts ever.

Just did the math - 35 years! Maybe I know what I am doing by now...

Thanks to my buddy Carla for taking the photo.

Longarm Meeting in Bacliff Texas

Our gracious leader Karen O hosted the quarterly meeting of the Bayshore Longarm Quilters. OK, her home is in Bacliff, but most of the members live somewhere else other than Baycliff. There were ladies from as far away as Montgomery and Conroe, and a couple of us from Cypress. Oh, if you have been to Karen's studio (which is wonderful to just sit and drool over the quilts hanging on the wall) Pixxie was there. She was in full entertainment mode! It was rather impressive that whenever someone would hold up a quilt, she would pose in front of it, and then of course, want a treat. Very cute.

The first picture is Karen holding a quilt she just finished quilting. The 2nd one is Karen introducing some required reading to the new quilters that were there. Just look at all the neat stuff on the walls!

When it came time for Christyn to do show and tell, she showed us her Intelliquilter (IQ). I think everyone was impressed with the IQ. Even Barb and I were (and we've had ours for over a year), because she was showing the new features that were in the latest update from Zoltan. Can't wait to get the download and start playing with the new features.

My friend Linda and I went to The Woodlands guild quilt show on Friday. This show was quite different from previous years, as they had always held their show in a fancy hotel/large convention room. This time it was in a church and the quilts were all over the place. Found out we totally missed the Boutique which was probably just as well as I DID find the Vendors! The quilts we did see were nicely done, but I'm not sure if we saw them all or not. The Last Supper quilt was there in the Sanctuary of the church. It was nice to sit in the pews, and just reflect on the amazing detail.




The featured artist was awesome. I don't have her name available (the program is out in the car, and I'm in my jammies and ready for bed) but she had miniatures that were amazing. This is just one of the many she had there, note the finger on the right to give you some idea of the scale of this piece. These are Mariners Compass for crying out loud. We were standing there oohing and aahing, not realizing that the artist was standing there. She was very gracious and allowed us to take lots of pictures.