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...