Quilted Autumn Wallhanging

What a wonderful weekend it was!!! "Wrapped in Comfort," the Crosstown Quilters Guild Quilt Show this weekend was a great success judging by the smiles and comments of visitors to the show. Tomorrow, I will post photos of some of the quilts that were on display.

Saturday afternoon, there was a family birthday party for my thirteen year old triplet cousins.  My, how the time has flown.

For today, I thought that I would post about this recently completed autumn wallhanging. Last summer,  I attended a workshop sponsored by the Quilters Connection Quilt Guild in Watertown featuring renowned fiber artist Betty Busby from Albuquerque, New Mexico.  The two-day workshop took place in a non-air conditioned old brick school on two of the very hottest days of the season.

One of the activities was creating leaves. We gathered real leaves, painted the veins, and stamped then on a sheet of Evolon, a microfiber product. The stamped designs were colored in using Inktense pencils. We then applied aloe vera gel or plain water to blend and make the colors deeper. My tablemate had brought some Lumiere paint which she graciously allowed me to borrow, and I lightly brushed some on the leaves.  (I even bravely added a few more 'sun-kissed' mini streaks to the leaves after completing this piece.)

I had begun the project by pulling autumnal colored batiks, but soon realized I would need more to make the curved strip piece that I wanted for the background, so it was back to my stash to find more. Surprise, surprise, I had enough in my stash.

We had made various sized leaves, but I chose to work with a smaller size in this piece. (These leaves are truly much prettier in person.)

After completing the background, I arranged and stitched the leaves. This close up will give you an idea of how I quilted it.

All in all, I was very pleased with the piece and happy that I had finally used the leaves.  :-)

I finished reading another book this week, The House at the Edge of Night: A Novel by Catherine
Banner which I do recommend. The setting is a remote fictional island, Castellamare, off the coast of Sicily. The characters include: the doctor Amadeo, a collector of fables and stories; his wife Pina, a woman of grace and intelligence, his daughter Maria-Grazia who struggles to keep the family's bar and only source of income thriving, and her soldier husband Robert who washes up on the shoreline and falls in love with both Maria-Grazia and the island. This multi-generational story traces the lives of the island inhabitants through the course of the 19th century. At first somewhat isolated from the forces of the outside world, they gradually become more and more influenced by the world beyond their shore. It's a novel of beliefs, customs, rituals, superstitions, and traditions.

Will you like the people of Castellamare? Yes, some more than others, but you will come to know them all well.

I would warn you that it is definitely not an easy book to get in to. I had read about this novel on another blog. That blogger had spoken glowingly about it attributes. Frankly, for the good first fifty to one hundred pages, I was considering ditching it and couldn't imagine what the blogger had seen in it. But, I stayed with it and ultimately found it worthwhile.