Greetings! The calendar says it’s spring, but I’m still waiting for it to warm up here in New Hampshire. My eagerness for warmth, leaves, flowers, more time outside, color(!) is giving me “spring fever.” I also find myself more and more, with my quilting, driven to choose seasonal colors to work with. If you’ve been reading my blog for a year or more, you may remember this from last spring/early summer (click to enlarge):
and these:
Exactly a year ago I started working on these blocks because, after a winter pretty much confined to the house with two fractures, I was in the mood for spring and lovely pastel colors and this project was just what I needed! By mid summer, however, my attention turned to other projects and I put these away. This week I was moved to bring them back out, once again, being in the mood to work with these pretty colors.
Last year I had no real idea how I wanted to arrange the blocks. When I got them out this time, I put them up on the design wall and really like the alternating of the appliquéd and star blocks:
I made 4 new star blocks this week (so far):
I’m looking forward to making many more of both the appliqué and the star blocks over the next several weeks – during spring!!! I may just call the quilt “Spring Fever”!
The applique blocks are coming from this book:
Here’s a picture of Faye’s full quilt:
I like her border and may do a swag border for my quilt (though I’m a long way away from getting to the border on this one!):
I have only 24 more berries to appliqué down to finish this block!:
I am pretty sure I’ll need some sort of border for this central medallion in order for it to fit the quilt so will next have to figure that out before I can sew the blocks together and put the borders on:
Today I’m sharing with you the last pictures I took of the Japanese quilts at NEQM. The last day of the exhibit is April 21 and I encourage you to go if you can!
I LOVED the trapunto effect the quilter achieved on this one with her very close background quilting. Also the color green is very soothing and peaceful and the embroidery adds a lot too. Be sure to enlarge for details:
Gorgeous quilting, embroidery, and trapunto on this one too:
Ditto here!:
Loved the blue colors in this one and the overall design achieved with use of bias strips in the center. Beautiful use of ombre color/fabric and the border is nice too. As usual for many of the Japanese quilts, wonderful hand quilting!!:
And finally, an interesting “white” quilt with the theme of “snow” (machine quilted):
Wonderful exhibit! I hope the museum continues to show these quilts in the future.
Disaster averted! Look what happened last Wednesday night during the wind storm we had:
A huge pine tree right in front of our house – right outside our bedroom window – came crashing down onto our stone wall, the power line, and into the road, completely blocking it! If the tree had fallen the other way it would have landed on our house. And I was in bed at the time! (11 PM). We had only minor damage to our stone wall and electricity was restored about 10 hours later. Now we just have to have the tree chopped up and hauled away and get the remaining tree down. We were lucky!!!
Be kind, be grateful, and cherish each day! Gladi
gladiquilts 