Night and Day

This Project Linus quilt, put together by my friend Diane whose co-workers colored the blocks...
...turns into this at night...
...because it was quilted by Joe with glow-in-the-dark thread! Wow! The kids will love his snazzy touch.

I didn't think the photo had come out, but I "enhanced" it on iPhoto and you can actually see the quilting.

And speaking of day and night, I heard on the radio that (at least here in North America) Jupiter will be shining brightly by the gibbous moon tonight. Take a look!

Sticks and Stones

I was a little under the weather last week, nothing bad, just enough to keep me from getting things done. But by yesterday I was much better and did some easy stitching.
I participated in a swap for blacks, whites and brights at my guild and stitched up a few more blocks for that. (This is Bonnie Hunter's Sticks and Stones quilt.) I think the real fun of this quilt will be designing a border. I'm thinking piano keys with brights, or maybe offset bricks in brights, or maybe even some triangles or a zig zag. Suggestions? Ohhhh....and maybe I could interrupt the center with something more interesting, too, that gets picked up in the borders! A block or two with a design of some sort, or a zig zag that borders an inner section, or ... ??? The design part is just so much fun.
I like wonky, but only when it adds to the overall design. When I have cornerstones and small strips I press them on a grid so I discover problems before I stitch. Look at the strip on the left!

Wonky Houses?

Edit -- Sorry, the text didn't come through when I posted this. I had forgotten about this photo and just ran across it on my phone. I took it in NYC last summer, I think near the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. I love the wonky houses! It's not a mat, it's metal and built right into the sidewalk. Such a fun discovery on the pavement.

Color!

I'm headed out of town (California, to see my mother, daughter, brother & sister-in-law), but didn't want to lose my posting momentum. So here's some fun stuff about color. This is a close-up from a Roy G. Biv heartstrings quilt we made for Project Linus -- a rainbow scrappy quilt. And here's the whole quilt.
My Word A Day chose color words a week ago, and I thought it would be pretty ho-hum. After all, I know my colors, don't I? (Well, now that I've learned vermilion ...) And indeed, Monday and Tuesday were easy color words:

• ecru
• russet

But Wednesday?

• sorrel

I thought it must be green, like the plant, but it's a light reddish-brown color. Thursday was:

• umber

Also a an earthy reddish-brown, which I knew, but how is it different from sorrel? That I don't know. But the really fun shocker of the week for me came on Friday, with:

• subfusc

Subfusc? A color??? I know the word only from Dorothy Sayers mysteries (Gaudy Night in particular), where from context I divined* that it was student garb. And indeed it is, but so named because the color is "dark, drab, and gloomy". I wonder what they'll say at the quilt shop if I ask for some subfusc fabric. :-)

*If you've read Gaudy Night, do you get the "divine" pun?

Unexcused absence

Oh my, the summer got away from me. I didn't intend to back off from blogging, but I got b(l)ogged down and couldn't give it the attention I wanted to. I think things are on a more even keel once again.

Since I last posted, most of my quilting has been for Project Linus. I do enjoy it, but it seems to have taken over my quilting and I am trying to contain it. And on the personal front, we had some big family celebrations this summer (two major birthdays) and both our daughters moved -- one to Berkeley, California, and one to New York City! Wow! I foresee a lot of travel in my future...but I couldn't ask for more fun places to visit.

In a renewed effort to do my own quilting, I am heading downstairs to clean up my space and get going. Here are just a few photos until I have some real stuff stuff to show.
My guild's biennial quilt show was a couple weeks ago. Very cool -- the quilts were hung among the historic aircraft in the Rantoul Air and Space museum! Here's the Project Linus booth -- you can see our string quilts and strippie quilts (thank you, Mary, for the instructions!), as well as others that we made. Almost all our Project Linus info was picked up on the first day of the show!
And this is Carol Doak, Queen of Paper Piecing, wrapped up in her special Tribute to Carol Doak quilt. She taught a class here in town, and she's a fantastic instructor. Paper piecing has never been my thing, but I feel now like I can do it when I decide I want to. She was terrific.
And the skills we work so hard to develop, Mother Nature simply gives to spiders. Look at this amazing web I saw on my walk the other morning -- and look at that HUGE green spider in the middle! There was a section of the park I have dubbed Spider Alley because it was one web after another.
Isn't this one just gorgeous?

For those of you who emailed me or just checked to see if I was posting, thank you. I'm baaaaack!