Red Orange and Apple Green

Here is an update on one of the blocks I took to Connecticut to work on during the Adventure in Crazy Quilting and Sharon Boggon's workshop. The block needs a better name than "red orange and apple green" but I haven't yet been inspired. Marmalade and Green Apples? Citrus Grove? Ummm. I showed this picture in April when I reported  on the retreat.

Folks who looked at this saw spiders in the two major things I had done  on it. I sure hadn't thought spiders when I made them. Well, I don't want this to be a spider block, so one of them had to go. The covered bead is now a flower with heart petals.

The other one, the shisha stitched grow sticker, got legs added to make it into a spider. I hope it's abstract enough so it won't freak out the spider squeamish. I used gold blending filament for the web.

 I also added some flowers a la Allie Aller from her class at the Adventure. I fused fabrics together wrong sides together, cut our circles and then snipped petals around the edge.

I added shisha mirrors to the tips of the butterfly wings and worked a few seam treatments. So here is the status at the end of June.

June in Carolina Beach

Last week I visited my son Joe and his wife Danielle in Carolina Beach, NC. We had a very nice time.

There are a lot of feral cats in their neighborhood and they love them. They rescued two injured kittens which became house cats. They've captured and neutered several more including the main mother and feed them outside. Here is Joe with one of the outdoors cats. They are all named, but I don't know which one this is. Joe and Danielle do.

When they bought the house in Carolina Beach, it had this striking painted metal salmander sculpture on the outside.

I was surprised to see it in new colors this time.

We spent a pleasant afternnoon in historic Willmington on the river. Here are Joe and Danielle under a sculpture of the endangered Venus flycatcher, now confined to the Carolina coastal area.

We took a ghost tour led by actor John Scott.

Carolina Beach has a summer carnival with fireworks on Thursday nights.

It's a good community I enjoy visiting. Except for having to fly to visit, I'm glad Joe and Danielle moved there.

CQ Adventure Block Finished

I have finished the block I used for learning stitches and motifs at the 2011 Adventures in Crazy Quilting retreat for Sharon Boggon's class and workshop in Connecticut in April. Sharon does encrusted embellishment on her quilts, a different style from mine. I like the more traditional motif and seam treatment style. So, it was interesting to me to experiment with more encrusting. You'll note I still left a significant amount of lightly embellished space. I ran the encrusting in a swoosh across the block. This doesn't keep the eye inside the block as Sharon teaches for design, but I like it.

I used the French facing technique for finishing after tying the backing to the block. The technique was published by Allie Aller in CQMagOnline. I like the neat look of it.