Quilts Beginning and Ending

These two quilts just came back from Dena the Longarmer.  An old Second Saturday Sampler quilt, finished at last with Baptist Fan quilting:

and this one, a study in colors and fabric print texture:

I have been gradually cataloging my books on quilting (and related subjects, like samplers and hooked rugs), using MediaDB:

This is probably an inevitable home activity for a trained librarian, right?  Plus I have reached the point where I am not sure if I have a book I'm thinking of getting, so this way I will consult my home catalog.


Most pictures that I take of Jack make me think of Disney's Night on Bald Mountain in Fantasia:

and as always Rembrandt is, well, Rembrandt:

I've been seeing quilt ideas almost every day that I want to start.  What an addictive madness this is!  And so begins the Oak Leaf and Reel project:

Neighborhood: What a Buy

What a wonderful time this is for home buyers, eh?  Not so good for us poor homeowners who might want to sell.  I admire this particular house

every time I pass it on my walking route in my neighborhood of mid-century modern homes.  This is the first time I have seen photos of the inside; I knew it would look just great!  I can't believe they are only asking $260K for it.  Besides being deliriously retro (just look at how tall those sliding glass doors are and that dandy broken staircase), it has five count 'em five bedrooms and a separate apartment.  Somebody is going to get a fabulouso buy.


Here is the listing description with lots of photos:

  

Schoolhouse Angels and other Quilty-ness

Here are the three angels who did my Bountiful Life Schoolhouse for me at Market.  From left, Muriel Pfaff, quilt teacher and re-enactor of historic quilters/quilt history; Donna di Natale, editor (my editor for Bountiful) and author (latest book: Anna's Quilt); and Mary Ellen von Holt, owner of Little Quilts and a legend in the world of quilting:

  Aren't they all the cutest ever?  I am a lucky girl to know these wonderful ladies.  


Did you see Julie's blog with her first two blocks finished for A Bountiful Life?  She is making it for her 50th year Jubilee quilt.  I nearly fell out of bed when I came across her post last April 29th.  It was the last thing I looked at before finally signing off on the laptop and what a treat to see her beautiful Bountiful blocks!


Meanwhile on the home front, I have been dementedly working on drafting blocks for the Mary Brown applique quilt:

The lovable and free-form inner border blocks are a piece of cake but those unique but distorted geometric outer blocks are the very devil since it seems best to push and pull them (by some unknown alchemy) into some sort of symmetry.  As the drafting process slowly drives me mad (and why am I doing this anyway?), I am reminded of the complex (to be polite) mind of Jane Stickle :-).  

A Bountiful Life Does Quilt Market 2012

Here is A Bountiful Life in the Kansas City Star booth, kissin' cousins with Dawn Heese's quilts from her book, Cozy Comforts.  

Oh, Bountiful looks beautiful on display.  I just wish I could be there.  I know I will hear soon how Bountiful's Schoolhouse went with Donna, Mary Ellen, and Muriel.  I hope you are inspired to get a copy of A Bountiful Life.  The individual motifs are unique to the original maker and so entrancing, the perfect applique designs.  An overflowingly optimistic expression of that expansionist and upbeat phase of our American history.  


My attention was caught by Dawn's progress on her applique Sassy quilt on her blog, the one that is now finished and folded-up right next to Bountiful and now I'm even more interested in getting Cozy Comforts and making that quilt.  It's the perfect design!


Do attend the free exhibit (open to the public) Kansas City Star Quilts Exhibit at the KC Star Press Pavilion showcasing its author quilts: quilts by and from the collections of the Blackbird Ladies, Edie McGinnis, Barbara Brackman, Maggie Bonanomi, my editor Donna di Natale...and five quilts by me!    I'm thinking of you, my little quilts, in such exalted company; behave yourselves and look stylish and artistic :-) so you will get asked back (well so I will get asked back lol)!

Surely Not Another Project

So there I was, unable to put down the picture of the 1851-1852 Mary Brown appliqué quilt.  How irresistibly complex, original, and antique.  Love the blocks in the outermost border.  Love the next border in.  Love the center.  

I drafted the 102" square proportions of the quilt in EQ, madly making notes.  On a paper plate.

  102" square is too big for a quilt for me.  I drafted the quilt proportions for 76" square.  Drafted the six motifs in the left inner border.  Traced onto fabric.  Absolutely loving it.

Nice overall size.  Too hard (for me) to appliqué.  Well, then, I will paint it. 

You have to wonder at the start of projects like this if you will ever actually finish it.  After all, there are those other 200 UFOs in the closet :-).


Does anybody know this quilt's current location?  It sold at Christie's in 1991 for $49,500.