Shifting focus

As much as I love making the CWD blocks I find the going slow.  Today I'm in need of accomplishing more than a few blocks, so I'm switching to binding.  I enjoy the binding process, and my quilts are usually bound right after they are quilted.  These, however, have sat around since coming home from the quilter, as I was too busy knitting and spinning.  Their time has come!  I've included close-ups of the quilting so you can see how beautiful it is.  These were all quilted by Val Pellens, a member of Clark County Quilts, who, I'm sorry to say, has retired from quilting.

These are some of my oldest tops.  You will know immediately by the fabrics used - certainly not what I use today.  The first two are class samples from when I taught quilting at Daisy Kingdom in Portland, Oregon a LONG time ago.  The Asian Feathered Star was made in 1994, the pink and green in 1995.  I used a pattern from a very old Quiltmaker magazine which is now long gone so I don't know the date.

This quilt from 30's reproductions is called "Gaggle of Geese".  I made it in a class with Linda Ballard in 2001.  I wanted feathers in all the white areas, and in spite of much practice my machine-sewn feathers are abysmal, which is why I sent this one out to be quilted.  She did an amazing job.

This quilt is made from authentic 30's and 40's fabrics I inherited from my paternal grandmother, who died before I was born.  She gave the pieced arcs and melons to my mother, who never quilted, and therefore passed them along to me.  She was very old when she made them, and they didn't lay flat.  Much of the muslin was stained from being stored.  Many of the fabrics were so thin and loosely woven that I could almost see through them.  I picked them completely apart, used new muslin and a new solid pink (keeping to her color scheme), tossed all the flimsy fabric, and recut each piece.  The stitched them all back together using my featherweight (hers had been hand pieced with almost no seam allowance).  I pieced this in 1993.

Val didn't quilt anything in the arcs, so I'm going to do that myself before I call it done.  They are way too poofy compared to the muslin areas.

I thought I'd posted about this quilt before, but apparently not.  I must be thinking of my old Yahoo Groups days when I participated in a bunch of different quilting groups.  It's one of my most favorite quilts.  "Friendship Garden", designed by Alma Allen and Cherie Ralston.  I completed this top in 2004, but many of the fabrics are MUCH older than that.  Wow, it sure doesn't seem that long ago!  Since this is my favorite, I'm going to bind this first.