To Begin With

Some time ago my daughter suggested that a nice addition to my blog would be a tour of my sewing room. It is almost clean and orderly enough for that to happen. Ha! At first I was alittle reluctant but then I realized that I could milk this for some time to come! Happiness. I have not been very good at this blogging thing and have wanted to get better so this could do the trick. Journaling has never been my forte. I have had a lot of starts and stops sometimes letting months or even years pass in between entries. I have purchased journals, received them as gifts and nothing seems to keep me going for long. The girls in my family including me have always had a fascination with office supplies, especially the paper ones. I simply forget to write. I don't want that to happen here. I have to say though that I am looking forward to sharing my wonderful studio space with you. Shhhhhh, I have about 500 square feet!!! Can you believe it?
I do feel compelled to make you wait a little though. I will build up to the actual studio over the next few weeks with related stories and pictures.So, to begin, I want to share pictures taken for me by my son-in-law John. He is really pretty good at this and has a light box which makes it even better. I have to say that he took 304 pictures. I know because I counted them my self. Now calm yourself, I plan to share only a half dozen or so. get in touch with me and I will send the whole file! Just kidding.This started when I finished my latest quilt and realized that I quilted holes in the thimble. How cool is that?? I was pretty excited as this had not happened for me before. Of course this beautiful thimble gifted to me by my husband Dale more than twenty years ago had been around the block a number of times so it was bound to happen. When I make a quilt I always feel an almost magical connection with those quilters of long ago and they were certainly not strangers to such things. But this was my first time and I love the whole idea. This first picture is simply my tools. The scissors are also twenty years old and paired with the thimble it is a thing of beauty. I hope you will enjoy my journey. I know I will, Nadine

Baltimore on the Prairie

Last week I spent four days at the Mahoney State park in Nebraska teaching Baltimore Applique. On Wednesday I started the conference with a 412 mile road trip. We purchase a GPS a couple of weeks ago and this was the first real test and I made out just fine. I am pretty excited by that because my family was worried. However no one was available to travel with me so it was nice to have such an uneventful time. On Thursday a number of students and teachers drove to the International Quilt Study Center. This is an amazing place. The current quilt collection is now an exciting 3000 plus! We were fortunate to be able to spend time in a room where quilts prepared for exhibit, etc. The quilt laid out for us to see is called the Lucinda quilt. Check out the web sight for a look at this beautiful piece of art. It has a reverse applique feather border and lovely applique basket and more. In addition, we were able to go upstairs to the gallery for a really incredible look at beautiful crazy quilts as well as some wonderful pieced and appliqued quilts. What a day. Back to the Lodge in time to teach the first two hours of the workshop. In my class students marked the background fabric and began appliqueing leaves so the next day they could applique flowers. Essentially this was to be a three day workshop taught over four days. Students arrived early for class and inevitably stayed late. You can't get better that that. We all came together each evening for show and tell and door prizes. One memorable evening was spent with the incredibly funny lecture by Jan Carlson!! Of course we ate a lot of chocolate I am so looking forward to next year. I hope you are too.

In My Garden

You have seen this quilt before on the frame and coming off the frame. Now it has been been completed and professionally photographed and juried into the PIQF show in Santa Clara CA. I am excited about that as I have not had a quilt I thought would be good enough for competition for several years. This quilts journey has been long, beginning with a group of students pushing for a once a month workshop. We ended up with 12 blocks and for awhile I could not imagine what I would do with mine. Ultimately, I decided on a center medallion with the look of a tree of life and a narrow border. I patterned the center after a vintage quilt picture sent to me by my friend Karen. I found the set in a book by Deloris Hinson called American Graphic. It took awhile to find and decide on the sashing and binding fabric. I quilted off and on for a couple of years, more off than on. the first glitch came when I decided to help our daughter Kelly when her daughter was almost two to take care of our granddaughter while her mom went back to school. The quilt went with me but no actual quilting was done. It might have had something to do with playing with a two year old?? I was about one third done when we made the decision to move to MO. Moving settling in and just getting used to the new situation ate up a lot of time and next the thing I knew five more years had passed and the quilt was like a millstone around my neck. My friends were making up excuses for why I was still not finished. A few even told me I didn't have to finish! I think that was a wake up call. I finally rose to the challenge and it is done!!! Will I echo quilt twice around all motifs again? Not likely.