Crooked Gulley Art Quilts

Talk about being the lazy blogger........ I win the prize!!! Where in the world have I been? I lost myself to company, travels, projects, gardening, cleaning (which is what I should be doing), reading... Company started in March and appeared every month through yesterday. Last night my husband and I sat at our little bar and toasted the quiet normalcy with a wonderful vino rosso. We almost giggled knowing that no one was going to appear until our daughter comes home for Thanksgiving. Don't get us wrong... We love to have visitors from California. We catch up on all the news of our old school district. I love finding out about my former first graders and what they're up to. And, we do live by the beach. CA people love our beach because it is warm. The Atlantic vs the Pacific is like No Wet Suit vs Wet Suit! The pacific is cold!! But, now we're alone. It's quiet. I need to pull weeds.   Forget that! I NEED to quilt. I'm going back to work on the Italian quilt an...

I just love the action around my neighborhood. Check out this gator at  Oyster Bay Golf Course

Welcome & Thank You to Mary Winegar and Madamme Samm for organizing and officiating this event!  I'm sharing a Blue Bird table runner today. The basic directions for making the table runner can be found several posts below. Also... Hope you notice that I have a "Bird Series" tab above.  Take a look...I love to do egrets and herons! I made this runner as a birthday present for a sweet lady who  loves beige and Blue Birds! The runner can also be hung as a wall art panel. The three blue bird sections are 8.5 X 11...  Yep, you guessed it! I used my regular ink jet printer. All you need to do is iron freezer paper on the back of the fabric, carefully cut it to printer paper size, and then just feed it through fabric side down. I chose pictures from a public domain site,  making sure they predominately had a beige background. Once I had the pictures printed on the fabric, I pulled the paper off the back. I s...

I just finished this table runner using the pattern/directions  in a previous post a week ago.  The backing and border is one long hunk of  fabric 1/2 yard wide. This pattern is so very easy. The basic design is to sew a long tube and then finish the ends. The picture below shows how I used one of the many machine decorative stitches  to outline the picture/border I backed the blue fabric with a fusible interfacing to stabilize the fabric  for the Free-Motion quilting process. I did not do any stitching on the blue - just the FMQing on the koi.  When I use a metallic thread I use a metallic thread needle. The eye is larger and the thread feeds smoothly. The soft pink blotches were created by using Ink Tense Colored Pencils and a water color brush. The pattern for the koi is from Java House Quilts  .  Remember... Keep Stitchin' For the Ones You Love! Hugs from Mary

Well, as you can see in the previous post, I have donated the oak tree quilt and now have a bare wall above my old treadle machine. Here is the replacement.  We have so many Great Blue Herons and Great White Egrets that inhabit our coastal salt marshes. We even have a large rookery where both types of birds nest high in the pine trees surrounding a pond. It is not unusual to see six to eight nests in a single tree. It is real apartment living! I tried some new skills on this hanging. I wanted the full moon to have texture so I did areas of small circles.  To the left of the moon I made a large nest in the dead tree by using a technique called needle lace.  It is not a heron nest, they prefer pines.  This is a typical Osprey nest which can be found everywhere in our neighborhood. Right now the females are sitting on eggs. The chicks usually hatch late May into June. The picture below shows marsh grass. Rather than stitching it dow...

Final Update... And the winner is... Betsy Slover, one of my many Sea Trail neighbors who bought raffle tickets. Congrats to sweet Betsy... a breast cancer survivor! I'm thrilled, Betsy is thrilled, American Cancer Society is thrilled! UPDATE... Thanks to the genrosity of many, I was able to sell nearly $500 in raffle tickets!! Thank you! I am donating one of my favorite art quilts to my Relay For Life Team ~ The Sea Trail Strollers.   We are selling raffle tickets for $5 each. The quilt measures 36"X50", is based on a pattern by Nina Stevens, and made of beautiful batiks and prints. All $$ for raffle tickets must be received by Friday, May 3rd. So, Hurry!!! And, GOOD LUCK

Welcome! So happy you could stop by to visit on this beautiful spring day. Erin Davis  and Madamme Samm  have done a fabulous job of scheduling and coordinating this event...  To them I send ~   A Grand Thank You! My mug rug is a bit on the large size and does not have a thing to do with rain, showers or April. In fact, I should have saved it for next month's bird blog hop. But it is the one and only mug rug I've ever made, and I just love it.  (Oddly enough, so does my DH) It all started with this litte table located in our cozy reading corner of the kitchen.    It's functional because it holds magazines and has a lamp.  However, the top is not real wood! Tacky!  And, our kitchen is pretty nice... We love its open style and views.  Enjoying coffee there in the morning is quite nice. I wanted a nicer looking table. That little table was just screaming... MUG RUG! We have a bird fee...