Oops! I forgot the pictures

I was going to post pics of some of our favorite quilts from the quilt show that didn't win ribbons. I forgot to load them to the blog before I left this morning. Oh, well. I'll try to do that tomorrow.

I'm still feverishly quilting apples. The motif that I drew to fill the large outer triangles of the quilt didn't quite fill the space, so now I'm adding leaves around the outer edge to fill it in. The other day when I was loading bobbins, I looked at all my spools of thread. It's kinda scary, but it's possible that I've used almost 2000 yards of thread, or the equivalent of one huge spool on this quilt so far. The quilt is very densely quilted and that yardage estimate includes all the quilting I pulled out early in the project. I'm almost certain I've used 1k yards off the bobbin spool. Yikes!

I'm glad I started this project plenty early. Every so often, I have to take a break from it and I'm sure that after this weekend, I'm going to want a long break so I can work on the Indian Orange Peel quilt after my mentor and I talk about how to lay it out. I always enjoy getting with my mentor to sew. Of course, the better my skills get, the more we diverge and the more I strike out on my own in design and execution, but it's still nice to get with her and be reminded of the basics. We also need to talk about binding, so I'm going to be taking a small sample for us to use in discussion. For some reason, there's always something wrong with my binding and I hope this is the last lesson I'll need on it. She's shown me about 4 times.

I don't know if I'm the only person that thinks this, but the principles of color, the skill set of matched points, and beautiful design all seem to be going through a change now. I've had some time to surf the net looking at quilts and I wonder if some of the changes are for the better. I'm seeing some quilts where folks seem to have given up on matching seams and instead are creating patterns that don't match by intent. And I'm seeing them use garish color combinations with nothing peaceful to calm and blend them. I wonder if this is what the previous generation of quilters thinks when they see my quilts. It's hard for me to open my mind up to what one person sees as art and I see as a mess of dangling threads and scrunched up corners. And, I'm not talking about the beginners learning curve. I'm talking about experienced quilters that I've been following for a while. And, I cringe. Are they redesigning the old classics to make them easier, or is it just artistic interpretation? Is this how every generation feels when they look over their shoulder and see the next generation barreling down on them with new ways of doing things?

Oh, what an old curmudgeon I've become. Y'all take care. I'll see ya' round the net. Maybe I can expand my mind to be more accepting of the new trends.

Or, maybe not. After all, I seem to be going backwards. I just bought a treadle! Lane