Thread Tales From A Scrappy Quilter

This is Sandra's lovely Garden Wall, a Judy Neimeyer paper pieced  and appliqué pattern that lends itself to all over quilting.     I had a hard time deciding whether to quilt all over or start and stop around the applique.   It probably would have been fine to stitch over, it's very "blendy" but in the end I didn't want to take the chance!  This is not stitched in the ditch, it is a tiny step up from an allover design.   I didn't want an awkward design falling directly on top of a flower,  etc. so I started and stopped around the applique and just placed somw curling fill inside the smaller areas.     Handquided panto "FLIGHT of Fancy".     Lovely back too!  

This cool quilt is a variation of a Hunter Star.  The star points were cut from charm squares  and top stitched onto the corners,  then the units were joined.  Fast piecing.  The downside is that the star points are not uniform, intersections do not meet in centers, and some edges are straight and some have the zigzag edges.    Rustic!  Well not really a downside its just that  I love to create straight line quilting between the star points, or a diamond grid with straight line quilting which does require precise piecing.   So I opted to try arcs and I think they worked perfectly!        The back takes on the appearance of wedding ring quilts or a TN Waltz quilt.  I like it!  

More family events.   It's been a whirlwind the past 30 days!   Our oldest was nominated just 3 months ago by the Leukemia and Lymphoma as one of 9 total  participants in the North Texas chapter for Man of the Year. You win the title by getting the most donations.  We aren't  well connected socialites and Larry did not have any experience with fund raising of this magnitude nor did his staff.   His office assistants became his campaign managers which he called The A Team (for Anderson).    We were able to attend the Black Tie event held in Dallas that would announce the winners but had no expectations of winning.   We were happy to be together and get dressed up!  Tuxes for the guys, dad got to wear his dress blues one more time.  Missing from the group was Larry's wife, Jenny and oldest daughter Julia that were off to a band competition.  I'm sorry they could not be there but J...