String Class

On Saturday I gave a String Pieced Blocks workshop for my home quilt guild, the Cotton Patch Quilt Guild in Athens, GA. The ladies seemed to enjoy it, and they made some lovely blocks...

Busy Day

Here's my poor dining room, again looking like an art explosion, in preparation for my String Pieced Blocks class tomorrow morning. When I ask Bill if the mess bothers him, he says "No, we just make good use of the house we're paying for", ha-ha.

The couch is holding the batiste fabric, and the dining table and chairs are the staging area for making kits. There's more going on in other rooms, plus the computer is involved too.

Bill and Bryan are happy because today is the start of the music at AthFest, an annual music and art event in downtown Athens, GA. The bands start playing early this evening in the downtown streets and they'll be there all weekend. Arts and crafts will be on the streets too. This is the first year since we moved to Athens that we are in town for the event.

Our favorite Athens bluegrass band, The Packway Handle Band, is playing at 9:20 tonight on Lumpkin St.!

AJ's Quilt is Quilted

This week I picked up the AJ quilt at Regina Carter's longarm quilting business, Grannymaws Knows Quilts. She did a fine job! Check it out...

He's Home...for a litle while

Well, we were happy to pick our soldier up at the Atlanta airport this morning as his military chartered flight came in from Afghanistan (via Kuwait and Germany). Bryan is our 24-year-old son who has been in the Army for 5 years and is currently deployed to Afghanistan for the second time. We haven't heard much from him this trip except through Facebook (and not much from there), so it's especially good to see him.

For months I was filling Bryan's requests for, of all things, embroidery floss and white fabric. He was bored in his off hours and had some ideas for making "patches"...


Bry designed this patch and did all the embroidery work himself. Isn't it fabulous?

This next patch was designed on paper by his buddy Pete and Bry enhanced it with some of his ideas. Their Cavalry Troop, The Sons of Anvil, has a copyright on this one...

The workmanship is outstanding, especially for someone who has never embroidered before.

Fun with Fabric

This weekend I cut fabric for a String Pieced Blocks workshop coming up on Saturday. If you like to sew, is there anything better than handling beautiful fabric?


This is a partial set of string pieces (tapered strips) for a student kit. She asked for "browns", but to make string pieced blocks you need to have an array of colors and textures to make the blocks interesting. When the blocks are sewn together, the overall color will be brown.

You've seen this quilt before...



The base colors I wanted in this quilt were orange and brown (my nephew's school colors), but the fabric colors went from tan to black, light burnt orange to dark rust, and some of the fabrics barely had a hint of orange or brown in them. A deep, dark purple will enhance any quilt with rust in it and give it more depth. The idea is to play with the fabric and to be make sure that no fabric screams "look at me".

Full House Show

In our fair city of Athens, GA, there's a wonderful arts center attached to an antebellum home on the north side of downtown. It's called the Lyndon House Arts Center, and it houses, among other things, a beautiful multi-roomed gallery, art classrooms including visual arts, fiber arts, fine arts, photography, and assorted meeting rooms and gift shop

From now until September the Full House show will hang; pieces are from members of all of the groups that meet at the Lyndon House regularly.

Here's a tour from our visit...

Looking from the new section into the antebellum home.


At the end of this line of pieces were two of mine...




Bill was admiring Terri Jarrett's Tessellations quilt...


It was a fine show!

We're Back

It has been weeks since the last post, but I'm back in town and ready to rumble.

During the last few weeks, my sister-in-law hosted us at her house for a little fabric show for her friends...

Her clothesline was perfect for a fabric display...

...and her sun room was perfect for other fabrics.



We also visited with other family. I saw my sister and nephew, my favorite aunt and uncle (below)...

...and my older son Darrell. I don't get to see Darrell often, so it's always a happy reunion. People say we have the same smiling eyes.

Our visits are too few and far between. Maybe one of these days we'll live near each other again. I hope so.