Featured Artist at the Northwest Quilt Expo and my new quilt, etc.

I am delighted to tell you that I will be one of the featured artists at the upcoming Northwest Quilt Expo in Portland, Oregon on September 22, 23rd, and 24th. I will have a display of twenty quilts and will be in attendance with my quilts on the 23rd and 24th. I hope to see you there

Mt. Rainier Reflecting in Tipsoo Lake

After much trial and error, ripping, struggling, burning holes in tulle, etc., I have finally finished this quilt! Let me tell you, I am ready to be done with it. I can't tell you how many darn things went wrong this quilt but the one that took the most time involved the machine quilting! Originally, I hand-painted the sky and the water. After machine quilting the half of the water I wanted to barf. I hated hated hated how it looked. So, even though I knew it was a thankless task, I begin ripping out the stitching. NEVER NEVER NEVER do this on hand-painted fabric. Yikes, what was I thinking? When I picked out the quilting, the original white fabric showed.
Here is a photo of what it looked like during the removal of the quilting stitches:

Here was my solution: I cut away the fabric, the backing and the batting and it ended up looking like this:

Next, I Placed the quilt on top of a piece of backing fabric with a nice folded edge (to stitch down by hand later), a piece of batting, and a piece of hand-painted fabric by Mickey Lawler that just happened to be a good substitute for the one I hand-painted. Then, I had to stitch the trees and mountain down to the new sandwich. To make sure the value was correct, I added a couple layers of colored tulle but then went on to burn a couple holes in it with my iron, necessitating the adding of foliage on the right side of the shoreline of the quilt! DUH. I guess I can blame everything on my stupid thyroid as my levels were low during most of the process. Or, I can just blame it on old age. OR WHATEVER!
I decided to face my quilt instead of doing a regular binding, but again, was foiled! After applying the facing I could not get the 1/4" seam allowance to fold to the back because the machine embroidery on the trees was to bloody thick! So, on to plan B, a regular binding!

So, what have I been doing since I finished this piece? Sewing like a mad woman. My son is getting married next weekend so his fiance and I made her Celtic themed peasant wedding dress. The overdress is made of a lovely forest green batik and we are both delighted how it turned out. I can't show it yet as it will make its' debut at the wedding.
I can, however, show you the dress I made for my granddaughter to wear. I do have to share with you, pattern sizing is the Pitts! I had to alter this dress big time to get it to fit my granddaughter. The top was too big, the waist too tight, so I let in and I let out but the darn thing turned out so cute on her. Here's a photo of the dress:

I will post photos of the wedding so you can see the wedding dress modeled and my granddaughter in her dress.

Until then.......Happy quilting