While you're waiting

for the posting showing this week's civil war block I thought you might like to see some photos from our quilt show which has kept me occupied from Thursday thru today. What I will post will be photos of quilts I had some connection with that were displayed at the show.


Here is a distant shot of "Welcome to Chestnut Ridge". This quilt is not mine; I made the top as a house warming gift for my friends Cheryl and Norris when they moved into their new home built for their retirement. Since Cheryl likes to quilt I made the top and gave it to them for Cheryl to finish. I named the top "Welcome to Chestnut Ridge". The quilt features bears paw blocks with a central block depicting a bear among the trees, because I thought they would see lots of bears in their new location. The flying geese border was made with a variety of grey fabrics to represent all the rock that was found on the site of their new home; a lot of rock was made into retaining walls for their property so this was an important part.


Cheryl did her magic with the quilting of this. The title I gave it was because they found evidence of chestnut trees having grown on their property but that had become victims of disease. In the upper left corner I placed a twig of chestnut leaves.


Next is my quilt "Don't it Make your Brown Eyes Blue". This quilt was made for our quilt group President's Challenge called "Color my Quilt with Song". All participants chose a bag with the name of the quilt written on it; inside the bag were two fat quarters of fabric. We had to make a quilted item for the show with the song as the inspiration. The focal color of the quilt was to be the color in the song title and there was to be something musical depicted on the face of the quilt along with use of the two fat quarters and other inspiration from the song title or singer.


I researched the meanings for "eye"; on the online dictionary there were at least 28 definitions of the word and I chose to use the one that was "the small colored portion at the center of a flower". Flowers that I grow in my garden were to be the focus of my quilt. The brown eyed susan's were a central feature and I changed the "eye" on a couple of them from brown to blue. Those two blue eyed flowers had crystals sewn dropping from the eye to pay homage to the singer Crysal Gayle. The central yellow flowers are from a pattern by Bobbie Jarrett and portions of the quilt were inspired by or adaptations of portions of patterns by Edyta Sitar, Kate Laucomer and Lisa Bongean. The truly amazing quilting was done by my friend Cheryl.

And finally the raffle quilt. Each year at our show we have a raffle quilt and for this year's show it was the responsibility of our chapter to provide the quilt. A couple of years back I put up my hand and volunteered to be in charge of making a quilt to raffle. It has been a long two years but this afternoon at the show the winning ticket was drawn.


Here are members shown selling tickets. Our quilt is in the background - the one on the right. I am proud to say that it was an effort solely of our quilt chapter beginning with the design by a member (Ann) then the cutting, piecing and applique, by selected members, and the quilting by another member (Cheryl). We called our quilt "Autumn in Reston - A Hometown Celebration". In addition to all the labor being done on a volunteer basis by members we also purchased all the fabrics locally to give support to local quilt shops.

Our show is over for this year and I must now get busy if I am to have more than one quilt to enter in the show next year.

And now I better get busy with week 23, Illinois Roads, for the BB civil war block of the week project.