Another finished project

Last August I took a hand applique class from Cheryl Kerestes at Endless Mountains Quiltworks in Tunkannock, Pa.  Her patterns, mainly hand applique, have been featured in many national quilt magazines in the past few years.  Her work is impeccable and what I like about her work is that she uses fabrics that I love, like Kaffe Fassett, Martha Negley, Philip Jacobs, etc.  She brought along several of her quilts to show us and they are all very large ones.  This pattern for this one consisted of 14 blocks, but I stopped at four.  She has a hand applique butterfly quilt in the July/August issue of Love of Quilting I believe that is very near the top of my to do list.  (Unfortunately I have way too many on that list, but anyway...)  The applique is done by hand, needle turn but I machine quilted the background myself.  I wish I had more of that background fabric but I could not find the name of it anywhere on the piece that I had and I've been unable to find it anywhere. 

Hope you enjoy looking at it.  Again the photos are from my older camera.  Still have not had time to buy new batteries for the newer one.  Sally

Some recent work

I don't know what took me so long to try free form cutting of fabric to do an applique piece.  But this is my first attempt, the result of another class I took recently.  The instructor is a very talented quilt artist, Teresa Fusco,  who moved to Pa recently.  I only recently discovered her classes and unfortunately, the shop where she had been teaching is closing so she's going to have to find a new shop/location for her classes. All of her work is so unique and she had a wonderful manner of fostering creativity.  She's working on creating a website and I can't wait for that to be completed.  Hopefully she'll put up some of her work for us to enjoy.  I LOVED the class, as well, as another one I took from her but that is unfinished.

Anyway, for this piece the shapes are cut freely, temporarily pinned in place, then secured with a dot of glue and finally free motion quilted around each shape.  After all the leaves, flowers, etc., are appliqued down then the background is quilted.  Right now I'm in the process of free motion quilting the piece down.  I used  Patsy Thompson's tutorial on basting your quilt using an upright surface and spray basting.  Worked beautifully.  Sorry for the out of focus photo, but my "good" camera's battery died just when I started taking photos.  Hope you enjoy.

Flower Power class results

Last week I had one of the best quilting classes I've ever taken.  Just plain fun!  I took a five day class with Sue Benner at Quilting by the Lake, now held annually at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, NY.  I found Sue to be one of the best teachers I have ever had.  She's very organized, but relaxed, and makes the experience a joy.  The first photo is of my first project in colors that I normally work with--brights, particularly red and orange. This was done in the first two days of class.

The next photos are of project 2, which took three days.  I love things that are assymetrical and my plan was to groups the colors of the flowers in sections on the piece.  The first photo shows my original design which I didn't find particularly pleasing.  So Sue came along and helped me group them by predominate color and the second photo is the final product.  I ended up cutting all flowers into quarters.  Most of the rest of the class kept most of theirs whole or cut into halves.

It was a wonderful week, with wonderful room-mates, and I hope to go back next year.