BIG THANK YOU'S & A QUILT

First I need to give a big thank you to several people who were so wonderful in responding to the loss of my camera. There are so many wonderful and giving people in my life...I am truly humbled by their generosity. First a quilting friend offered me a camera that she no longer needed and she was willing to bring it to me Monday at out quilt guild meeting. Thanks Ellen for your generous offer which I found a god send. If you read this before Monday night you will see that though the offer was gratefully received other events have recently occurred which mean that maybe someone else can benefit from your offer. Secondly, my dear daughter brought me her camera which had recently been replaced by a newer model. It cam in very handy to take pictures during a bridal shower for my new daughter-in-law and is very nice as it is a small pocket size unlike my previous camera which was more powerful, but also much larger. Finally my absolutely wonderful brother without asking simply sent me a replacement camera saying he missed my pictures. I didn't even know he knew what kind of a camera I had, but he did and he sent me the same model so I wouldn't need to spend time with a learning curve and a new camera. I am so blessed!

So as I said Ellen maybe someone else can benefit from your camera. Stephanie...I may just keep yours to carry in my purse for those unexpected photo ops. Rich, I don't have words enough to thank you and now on to my new quilt project photos.......

My first photo is a picture of the fabric I had to work with. This came from the quilt shop where I work, Capital Quilts, in Gaithersburg. The owner of the shop was a bit amazed that she not only had purchased one but two bolts of this fabric. I did have to agree that this was a rather unusual fabric for a MD quilt shop to have in stock. Maybe it would work in a quilt shop in one of our western states, but Montgomery County, MD.....not so much. She challenged me to try and do something with it and I decided to take her up on the challenge. This is the quilt I came up with. It is a quilt called Chop Suey Quilting. It is either a large wall quilt or lap quilt size at 38" x 55". I chose my fabrics with a feel for the southwest, especially with using the turquoise.

The quilt is called Chop Suey I think because the way you make it you really don't know what you are going to end up with until you are near the end of the process. Here is a close up of the center of the quilt where I think you can see the use of the Indian themed fabric better. Can you find the cut up fabric?

This was a fun quilt to make and I will hopefully be teaching a class on how to make it. I say hopefully because if no one signs up for the class obviously I won't be teaching it, but I'm not going to worry about that right now. Too many other more critical worries at this point in my life right now.

One thing I became painfully aware of while finishing this quilt is that I am not a very good machine quilter. I'd like to blame it on the fact that my sewing machine is 24 years old and not really a machine designed to be used for machine quilting like the newer ones are, but in truth I'm sure it is more operator problems. It does do a pretty good job of piecing the tops though and I really do much more enjoy the process of piecing over that of quilting.

Yes, I am a self confessed topper not a true quilter!