Broken Star....Mended

The color play on this quilt is spectacular!  

This turned patching some of the diamonds into one of those good news / bad news situations.  Good news: the quilt is gorgeous.  Bad news: it really, really needs the perfect patching fabrics so as to not detract from the wonderful color play.

There were just a few diamonds damaged.  So it could have been a relatively quick job, but it wasn't....

Piece on Earth

Hello, everyone! 

I haven't posted here in well over a month....

All healthy, so no worries there, in case any of you noticed my absence and were worried.  The whole situation in which we find ourselves took over my attention and energy, and certainly my ability to express it all in words.  But I’ve been busy, and here’s what I’ve been doing.  It’s been a while, so this will be long!  Grab an iced tea (in my hemisphere anyway), and settle in.

Polka Dots!

I made a small polka dot themed quilt as part of the copyright study at Just Wanna Quilt.   The basic question is to find the line between what's unique enough to be copyrightable and what is considered too common (eg., basic polka dots).  (By the way, any and all are welcome to join the project and make all sorts of things.  Visit the facebook page to sign up.  It's a great group, lots of interesting and fun discussions on all sorts of quilt-y topics.)

That may sound all highfalutin (which I discovered is actually in the dictionary and I spelled it right!), but actually I'm just using it as a reason to play with my stash.  You know, always so fun!

So, the background is white satin from a wedding dress that was too badly damaged to be re-saleable, but good in places for fabric and trim salvage.  And the polka dots are reverse appliqué, with machine zig-zag and invisible thread.

A Special Guest in Chicago

I'm happy to say that I got to spend an afternoon (almost two weeks ago now) in Chicago with Elizabeth Townsend-Gard, her grad student Madison, and her daughter and friend.  Elizabeth is the creator of the Just Wanna Quilt podcast and community.  She's a gem! 

She is a law professor at Tulane University.  She's blended her love of quilting with her skills in copyright law and business entrepreneurship by creating programs that use the quilt world as a case study for her students.  The podcast is a series of interviews with quilters from all the myriad aspects of the quilting world.  It's simply the best thing to listen while quilting, and the info she is gathering is super useful!  Brilliant, and a boon to everyone involved!  It was so great to meet Elizabeth in person and talk face-to-face, the old fashioned way!

Chicago contributed super wonderful weather (a rarity here in this year of very wet and very cool weather with little blips of super hot and humid every now and then).  We talked quilts and quilt biz over lunch, and continued talking during a visit to the mosaics at the Chicago Cultural Center and a wander through the Art Institute, especially the Thorne Miniature Rooms - two of my favorite Michigan Avenue places since my childhood.  Beauty and quilt inspiration everywhere!