Ingrid Whitcher

Emilie requested a new room decor for her birthday, so I have been hard at work. I made her a new quilt which she designed. She even picked out the fabrics. She let me choose my own quilting designs. This is the first time that I have used the cotton/bamboo batting and I really liked it. It is lighter weight than the cotton and very soft. She wanted something a little bit lighter than the cotton and I think that it will be a very good weight for her.

I just read a wonderful book! Nature’s Studio by Joan Colvin is amazing. I really enjoyed her style of writing as well as her quilts. A friend let me borrow it for a few days – I am going to have a hard time giving it back to her. This is a book that I will probably get for my own library. It gives you ideas for getting started on fiber art quilts and has really good illustrations and photographs.

This is a small quilt I made after reading and getting some design instruction. The first image is a photograph Mark and Logan took on their recent camping trip. Aren’t the trees neat. The other images are my interpretation of the photo in a quilt.

Here is my latest project. It is only 18 inches. I used thread sketching for the toad and the lily pads. The background pieces were cut free-form and laid on a muslin backing and then secured with a zig-zag stitch. The thread sketch was then added with a satin stitch securing it. The machine quilting was done with a mono-filament thread. The edging was done with multiple strands of yarns.

I had my first thread sketching class yesterday at the Quilting Station. I was trilled to have 5 students for the first class. We all had a good time and they all did a great job. You can see their stuff on the class description page. I started a new piece in order to have a sample ready and I am really enjoying working on it. Of course, the 2 other projects I have been working on will just have to wait a few days.

Well we made it up to Nashville in 7 hours. My whole family went with me. I was not able to go with Jen and my Mom due to “life” getting in the way. I was able to go to the show for about 4 hours on Friday afternoon. I got through most of the quilts before my camera died and then hit the booths. It is amazing how much you can get through if you are under time constraints. I did make it to my favorite booth with their awesome hand-dyed fabrics. I will try to find their name and get it up soon. Mark and the kids came with me the second day. The kids really enjoyed seeing all the quilts plus the beautiful Opryland Hotel. We only had 2 hours there on Saturday due to the bad weather back home. We did not want to be driving into tropical storm “Fay” at night.

My best find were some beautiful hand-dyed fabrics that had been rusted. I spent a long time looking through all of their fabrics. I am really looking forward to using these special fabrics in an art quilt project.

My favorite quilts were, mine of course, and the art quilts. There was a special display of art quilts that all had to represent currency ($) in some form. Wow!! They were great.

My quilt did not win any awards this time – but there is always next year. I was really excited to have my quilt hanging. I was fun for me to have some of my friends “offended” that I had not won. I sure seem to need an ego boost every now and then.