"Simply Strawberries" wins a 3rd Place Ribbon at PNQE

Yummy strawberries lured the judges into awarding this quilt a 3rd place ribbon at the Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza (aka PNQE). The best part about these strawberries is that they will never spoil when left unattended! Ha!

Unfortunately, I missed viewing the show this year as I was busy hand-dyeing fabric over the weekend. I'll be seling this fabric online and will provide a link in the coming days. First I need to wash, iron, photograph, and upload images to this site, or a link to this site. More on that soon.

Detail of Colossal Caladiums showing applique and stitching of veins.

Still Impressing the Judges

Colossal Caladiums was recently awarded a 1st place prize at the Lowell Quilt Festival in Lowell, Massachusetts. This quilt has earned a number of prizes and it remains one of my favs. Below is a detail of the stitching and machine quilting.

The veins are all appliqued onto the quilt using a satin stitch. Also the veins are outlined in many cases, using metallic thread.

The photo, however, does not do justice to the quilt. Try as I might I have been unable to get a really good shot of this quilt. I do believe a new camera is in my future.

Here's the detail of the quilt.

My Brand New Lecture

"Nature's Bounty: Where to find Inspiration"

Tuesday evening I presented my new lecture to my guild, Brandywine Valley Quilters. Everything went well, especially technologically speaking. I'm not a techno wiz so I decided to arrive at the school 2 hours early in order to get the quilts set up and to test out all the connections for the laptop and the new projector. I wasn't even a bit nervous about the lecture, but I was a bit apprehensive about having an equipment malfunction.

Anyway, I was pleased with the response and my only regret was that I didn't have a little more time to share techniques and tips with my friends. All in all, I felt it was well received.

New Quilt
Simply Strawberries

I started this quilt in the Fall. It was one of those ideas that had been bouncing around in my brain for some time. The vision for this quilt was extraordinarily clear from the start which made it easier for me to complete it in time for submission to two shows--Quilt Fest of NJ, and the new AQS show in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Fortunately it was juried into both shows, and I just learned that it received a Judge's Choice ribbon. Here's the quilt.

Detail of the quilt. The background was quilted with simple straight stitching using red, green, and purple threads to simulate a plaid design. I purposely didn't free-motion quilt it because I wanted to keep it "simple".

New Quilt

Simply Strawberries

I started this quilt in the Fall. It was one of those ideas that had been bouncing around in my brain for some time. The vision for this quilt was extraordinarily clear from the start which made it easier for me to complete it in time for submission to two shows--Quilt Fest of NJ, and the new AQS show in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Fortunately it was juried into both shows, and I just learned that it received a Judge's Choice ribbon. Here's the quilt.

This has certainly been a busy month. My quilt, "SUSAN" is on the cover of the Fall issue of Professional Quilter http://www.professionalquilter.com/ AND there are two pages just brimming with images of my studio. As you can imagine lots of cleaning up took place before I could shoot those pictures.

Colossal Caladiums, one of the two quilts entered in the AQS Des Moines show won a first place prize. Not to be outdone by SUSAN'S cover, Colossal Caladiums will appear in an upcoming issue of American Quilter Magazine.

Earlier this month I presented a lecture and workshop to the Bayside Quilters of the Eastern Shore (Maryland). What a talented group of quilters! Their show and tell was simply amazing. We had a fun group for the workshop and even celebrated Marlyne's birthday with a cake and workshop-themed hibiscus napkins!

Late September found Dan and me in Tucson for a conference. We were delighted to see so many of our friends and to spend time with them. Lots of fun. Following the conference we flew up to Reno and met up with our friends Mona and Francis from Portland. They drove us to Lake Tahoe where we had loads of fun sightseeing during the day and playing Hearts or Tri-Ominoes in the evening. We even crammed in a two-day trip to San Francisco where we went to Alcatraz and on the boat trip back to SF Mona snapped this picture of me. It was a bit breezy.

Here we are--BJ, Dan and Mona--on the dock on Lake Tahoe. Francis was taking the picture.

I had two quilts juried into AQS show in Des Moines, Iowa. I'll be sending them off Monday. More frequent flyer miles for my quilts! http://www.americanquilter.com/shows_contests/desmoines/2008/general_info/

Colossal Caladiums (above) and Susan (below).

I had an idea about making a quilt of squash blossoms. Naturally they would be yellow and to show imact, I selected a black background.

The squash blossoms started out large, I mean REALLY large. The first mockups were over 12 inches each. I asked my husband what he thought of the mockup, and he replied that the "yellow things" were a little on the large size. So I stepped away from the project for a day or two and decided to scale the blossoms back quite a bit. The final size of each section of the blossom is about 8 inches.

Next I needed fabric for the elongated leaves and remembered a few years before I purchased this fabulous print fabric from a local quilt shop. It had all the colors that usually speak to me: yellow, red, and green. What more could this girl want!

This is how I used the fabric...

There wasn't much room for experimentation or error as I only had one scant yard of the fabric. So as Project Runway's Tim Gunn would say, I made it work.

To be continued...

Welcome to my BLOG!

Question: Why the name, "Nocturnal Quilter" for the blog?

OK, I'll explain why I chose this name.

First and foremost...I am not a morning person. Try as I might, it just doesn't work for me. I come alive around 8:00 p.m. or so, and if left to my own devices, I would quilt well into the night / morning. Hence, the name, Nocturnal Quilter.

Another reason is my quilt, Nocturnal Spontaneity, which is the background for the blog banner. But more on that later. To be continued...