AQS 2013 Grand Rapids Highlights

Here are a few quilts in the AQS show that caught my fancy. More to follow.....

Great use of color.

Reminds me of an M.C. Escher metamorphosis drawing.

Shown at the Karen K. Stone lecture. Love her color sense.

Color inspiration everywhere

A few shots of color from the Holland farmer's market yesterday morning, before the place was mobbed!  Not much stitching lately, because my spare time has been spent outside enjoying the great weather.

Love the blue pails. Looks like everything goes with blue.

Sunflowers mean summer.

I'm thinking fajitas sound good with all the  pepper colors included.

Radishes, anyone? 

Sunset a couple nights ago. After this shot, the sky kept getting pinker and pinker, but I was in my car and couldn't stop for another shot.

Why I Quilt

My quilting started in a roundabout way. My biggest sewing and quilting influence was my grandma, Hazel Millard. She sewed everything. She had a fancy brown Singer with all of the cams (I'm not sure where that sewing machine ended up).

My grandpa Ace and grandma Hazel, about mid-1960's.

Here's a few fun things about grandma:

• She LOVED turquoise. See the trim on the house? See the dress fabric? She also had a turquoise couch and walls of light turquoise.
• Those retro cotton prints (fancy coffee pots, cups and saucers in turquoise and brown) you see nowadays?  Those were grandma's kitchen curtains.
• She sewed her own clothes. There were few plus-sized stores to shop in. And, she didn't drive.
• Her house was small, but that didn't stop anyone from stopping over and filling up the house. There were times the grandkids had to crawl over each other in the living room to get to an unoccupied piece of carpet to sit on.
• One year grandma made all the men and boys in the family corduroy long-sleeved shirts for Christmas. All different colors. And with the scraps, she made a couple of baby-sized throws to use when babies visited her.

Corduroy throw; each square about 2.5 inches, randomly pieced.

• Grandma wanted to sell this throw in a yard sale one year. I told her I would buy it from her, but she said "why would you want that old thing?" "Because you made it grandma!" She gave it to me.   It needs a few repairs, but I love it.

Well-loved (and many time washed) little throw.

• Grandma gave me my first folding cardboard cutting board. I used it for years.

So grandma, thank you for the inspiration and encouragement for the life-long hobbies of sewing and quilting!

A Shot of Color

Pretty window box in Douglas, Mich.

Part of a street planting in Douglas. I don't know the name of these, but they look like mini hollyhocks. They stand about 18 inches tall.

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Retro applique and embroidered dish towels

At quilt bee this week, Cherie showed some dish towels that she "saved" from her mother-in-law's estate (no one else in the family wanted them).  These were too cool not to share with you. I had never seen these designs before in antique shops or elsewhere; I wonder if they weren't as common as the all-embroidered dish towels.

Don't these look straight out of the 50's and 60's? Doing housework in heels is a myth, or at least my mom and relatives did not fit this image!

I neglected to take a photo of the back, but all of these were very neatly hand appliquéd with teeny, tiny stitches.

Aren't these great colors and designs? Has anyone seen these before?

Yellow & Grey baby quilt delivered

Here it is! Colors a bit washed out with the overhead lights at work.

Well, baby Rosa decided to arrive nearly a month early, even before the planned work shower and potluck.  Fortunately we had a zippy quilter (thanks, Margo) and a zippy binder (thanks, Nancy) so we could have our special quilt ready for the cutie pie.

Here's the back, with colors a little closer to real. Mom liked the colors and said it would go with the baby room. Success!

My rock garden is shaping up. I had a treat a couple of days ago while hand watering this garden. A male ruby-throated hummingbird started sipping from the above columbine, and I tried to stay still and watch. Then Mr. Hummer came over to me to inspect my dripping sprayer. What fun!