This is a photo of Kathleen who lives close to Orofino now and took a class from me TEN years ago at Asilomar. She is really creative and fun and looks as young as she did ten years ago! She said I was blond back then...I forgot it had been that long!

Kathleen (who I thought we called katie though I may be wrong) made this darling sampler below with the help of friends who swapped blocks....I always want to do what everyone else does...would love to do this with little blocks that are appliqued with fairies or fall things for garden things...too many ideas

The quilt below is the quilt that Katheen made in my class about her pending wedding...and she has been married ten years so he must be a keeper. It still needs quilting and she is going to put a vineyard on the right under the house. The fireworks on the left is all beads and it quite stunning. Now she is ready to start some new story quilts since she took my class.

I am going to look up her website to share with you.

It was a delightful three days in the most beautiful place or close to it in Idaho. This is the area that Lewis and Clark went through and there are wonderful and beautiful historic signs everywhere. I hope to take my older Grandchildren there to learn more about this amazing journey that people had to make way back when.

I am home for the summer and am overwhelmed with the ideas and projects I plan to do...including my drawing book completion.

Life is good and nice things make us happy and negative things don't. Stay away from things that bring you down and give thanks for your many blessings.

check out Kathleen's blog for great fun!

www.katiedo.com

Things that bring JOY

 My good friend Kathy Collins sent me this photo of a quilt she made for a relative. She made the hoochy hearts and then used my alphabet fabric I designed for the words...I think that fabric was so much fun and would love to have Timeless treasures let me do another alphabet for a line of fabric with them....we all want to tell our tales...or we should

I saw this Maxine and it made me laugh and I knew you would laugh too

Here I am explaining exactly how to do something important and why my lightgiver fabrics and other light givers are SO important!

Evelyn from TX just took a class with me this week for Quilting Adventures to make COWS. She made a cow called "Irish Coffee" (see my other blog for a photo. The photo above is of a quilt she made after she had to give back a fabulous opportunity quilt she was in charge of...you do get used to keeping those nice things you work on and then it is hard to let them go. Isn't this quilt cute???

 This quilt is finished and given. Carolyn from Washington DC took a class from me at Cedar Lakes in West Virginia and she worked on a quilt for her Granddaughter's 8th grade graduation. It includes all of the things her Granddaughter loves and is good at. I think it turned out wonderful and you know, who wouldn't want a special quilt like this to keep for a lifetime that tells about us and our Grandmother made with love and care? It will only grow more special as times goes on. I love this quilt!

I am showing some of my old quilts I did many years ago. This quilt was sold a long time ago but I always like a happy cat in a fun garden with lots of color...the border is all plaids.

One of my students named Carmen was getting ready to leave class and I happened upon her purse and I just loved it so got a quick photo of it. Isn't it cool?

I have been working on some new things and hoochy borders for them. As you can see by my piles I am getting alot done and I love those dots with all of the other fabrics...so much fun!

 Hope you are keeping a gratitude list...it keeps you aware and it makes you more thankful and therefore more creative-it's been proven and I believe it! Once you start making lists of things you are thankful for, it is easy to see new things....then you could make thousands of entires (I am not kidding) on all of your blessings...we all have blessings in our lives no matter who we are.

Freddy Moran and I made this quilt together. Freddy did the border and I did the woman and things inside..it is alot of fun and it is heavy because it is covered with dozens of heavy shell buttons...I usually do not take it on the road.... hope you enjoy it too. If you aren't using some fun colors, you might want to give them a try, they make you ever so happy!

Hope you have a wonderful and joy filled week! I love comments friends....

A Lovely Letter from Barbara In Virginia-plus the making of batiks!

I visit from time to time, always taking whatever time it takes to look at the wonders on your sidebar and today I found the cartoon with the man asking his wife if she's buying "all that fabric" and I knew I had to write you. My sweet mother said those exact words to me after I'd walked all thru a glorious quilt shop (sadly out of business) in the Richmond, VA area and had brought only 5 bolts of fabric to the cutting table. My reply was that those where the fabrics I was settling for but that I'd have liked to get yardage from each and every bolt in the shop. I forgot to mention that Mom stood by the shop door as I looked at everything in the wonderful store one or more times. Years later, my mother started showing signs of Alzheimers and I knew things were forever changed when I took her to another quilt shop. As I was at the cutting table, she twice drew my attention to multi-colored fabrics and asked if I didn't want some of this fabric, too. Of course I did! I still have those two fabrics but Mom has been gone since 2004.

I thought this was a wonderful letter and suggested it be a story quilt. It is so sentimental and so touching and any quilter can smile at this and daughters can too.

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Father's Day is Sunday and we love those days for our family. This photo is my husband, my son and my Grand daughter taken at a family get together at my son's in-laws. I love this nice photo.

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This made me laugh...so true

My other Granddaughter (I gave three) had a wonderful kindergarten year and her Mother did alot of volunteering with the teacher on the right who is lovely. Today was the last day and they went out to McDonald's for ice cream to top it off.
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And Finally, here is a great you-tube on how they make batiks! LOTS of work for us!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDsD5sQOF_A&feature=share

Story Quilt By MIMI DIETRICH

So I had the extreme pleasure of having Mimi Dietrich in my story quilt class in Baltimore. If you know Mimi you know that she is well known for applique and beautiful Baltimore album quilts.
I couldn't wait to see how she approached story quilts and this week she sent me the finished image of her wonderful Baltimore story quilt complete with rouched breasts- loved the crab cake, the flamingo the beautiful flowers and touches of Baltimore...isn't this a delightful quilt and think about passing this along and who wouldn't want to be known for this in a hundred years? It is beautiful, whimsical and lovely all at the same time. Mimi inspires me each time I look at her books I own and this piece will always be my favorite...hope you enjoy it too!

LOVE WHAT YOU DO AND DO WHAT YOU LOVE

 By the end of class people have their drawings done and their border blocks pretty much completed. Our goal is to make enough blocks to create a quilt canvas and to put our story on top and going into the borders to make a whole piece instead of a quilt and a border. We want to make our pieces unpredictable and to use concepts that artists who paint use. This way we end up with a quilt that has great color, scale and a memory that will last and tell people who and what we love! These pieces create lasting memorials of US and in 80 years when people look at the thousands of paintings made today they will know something about the story quilters as we leave a trace or traces of who we are. It is such fun and by the time our class is over, we know each other and become good friends. What was most delightful this year at Enpty Spools was the upbeat happy girls that we had in our class and NO downer people who influenced our cohesive and happy group. It was pure pleasure and fun! The food was very good this past session too which was lovely. We had 19 great students and many girls who came to hang out and share at night. great for me.
Remember "Mood is contagious-either way the mood goes" so I like it alot when the mood is happy and we don't have someone who twists the mood to the dark side.
Isn't it more fun to be happy and to use that happiness for invention and sharing? I think so!

I often do a cutting excercize to prove that many artists can cut better than they can draw...it is lots of fun and I make these ladies all believers on how talented they are and they didn't even know just how talented...I love this!

So I have been on the road a couple of weeks and I am tired but oh so happy with the wonderful women I have met, the stories I have heard and the invention, creativity and fun I have experienced with girls who now have new friends for life. One of the parts of our classes and certianly here at Asilomar is sharing stories and memories that pop into your head as we share each day and create. This year we spent a week in Scripops creating fun memory quilts and using colorful fabrics we learned how to make our stash better and the tips to getting color and scale to work better for you as you add light to your quilts like artists add light to the paintings they do. This is one of the secrets to making a better quilt.

I have taught at Empty Spools for Years and the majority of the years, I taught twice a year. I have so many fun things to share and I want to mix the art lessons I learned early on in art school and the quilting ideas and invention I came up with later on....it is fun sharing and watching things grow and progress and happiness fill the room....I think this is good for your health. It is certainly good for mine.
Stay tuned for more quilts and things from Asilomar and go to my other blog for photos and a little bit about my retreat that just ended in Idaho...it was awesome! Mary Lou and Cherry Too- if it isn't it yet, it is because I am writing it tonight when I have a little more energy! Thank you girls from my class-didn't we have fun? And now we are forever friends!