Headed to Houston

Tomorrow I'll be headed to Houston for the International Quilt Festival. If you're there, stop by and see me in the Meander Publishing Booth, #1832 - I would love to see you!

Some of the fall color we had in this neck of the woods

We were very fortunate and weathered Sandy with only 16 hours without power. (This was quite a relief after the massive tree damage we had from the derecho.) My heart goes out to all those folks who were not so lucky, and suffered tremendous losses of all kinds. All my best wishes go to those facing cleanup and rebuilding.

Melanie's Breast Pockets

As many of you know, well known fiber artist Melanie Testa is raising awareness about women who choose to remain flat after breast cancer surgery. She's hoping to collect 1,000 breast pockets to symbolically represent women who have chosen to forgo reconstruction.

I made 5 pockets to represent women I've known who've chosen to remain flat.

 

The top two are for Melanie.

This one is for Gerrie.

The two blue ones are for a relative who's story I don't fully know, but they could just as well represent two other Ladies (the capital L is deliberate) I've known. All three of them hark from a different era - the one who is still with us just turned 103. No nonsense women who took great pride in their appearance, I did not know them before their surgeries. From what I could tell, though, they were all confident in the decision they'd made.

I put a little note in the pockets, and a blue bird to wish them each happiness.

 If you'd like to participate go to Melanie's blog post for more information, and be sure to watch her Pinterest page to see more pockets.

Fun With Reston Quilters Unlimited

Last week I had the great pleasure of visiting with the lovely ladies of Reston Quilters Unlimited twice! On Tuesday night I gave a lecture, then I went back on Saturday for my workshop "Feathers, Fronds, and Ferns". I forgot to take pictures until half of the class had already left, but here are six of them with some samples of their work.

You can see that everyone made good progress during the day - I was so proud of them for working so hard!

Here are two samples of the work done in class by Susan (shown 3rd from the right in the picture above).

Susan did beautiful work that shows up wonderfully due to the contrast of the white thread on the green background.

Many thanks to the whole guild, and especially Jamie Sculley and Susanne Jones, for two fun visits!