At our last in person meeting of the Herring Run Quilt Guild in March of 2020, we had two lovely ladies wearing lab coats and with stethoscopes draped around their necks talk about how to “doctor” or improve problem quilts. The premise was entertaining and instructive, but what struck me the most was one of the pieces that was shown during their trunk show. One of the ladies had taught a class at a local quilt shop on how to embellish a panel. Wait!!! Had she said embellish??? I was all ears. (My middle initial is E for Elizabeth. When I taught, the E stood for enthusiasm as Lord knows I had to have a ton of enthusiasm to sell some of my lessons to my eighth graders. It won’t surprise you to learn that grammar and punctuation rules which were part of the curriculum were tough lessons to hold the interest of thirteen and fourteen year olds. :-) In recent years, the E has stood for embellishing. ) Anyway, once I saw one of the presenter’s pieces, I could not get home fast enough to try online to track down the panel. I did find one, and when I received it, I immediately starting stitching and making beaded spiders of various sizes around the web border.
Then . . . the world started shutting down and stitching spiders seemed a bit too frivolous. I didn’t pick this piece up again until last month. I started quilting the panel at that point which was easy as there were so many lines to follow. Of course, I outlined stitched each raven and its wings and the pumpkins. . . lots and lots of quilting but so so easy.
Then the fun began. What treasures would ravens collect? Well, the one in the cage would certainly need a key so he or she could come and go at will. Anything shiny or colorful was added. In fact, yesterday while walking Emma, I spotted a red pop top from a can, and that was added last night. There are all kinds of bits and bobs, colorful yarn, charms, and a broken dangling earring. It was great, great fun working on this piece, and hopefully, it may give you some inspiration for having fun with fabric panels.
I also finished two sweet little cross stitched pillows for my tiered tray. The patterns were from a set from Puntini Puntini.
On the top tier there are a couple more vintage Gurley Halloween candles that had belonged to my aunts.
These little candles were always displayed on their mantel for Halloween; I also have their Thanksgiving set.
One of the Thanksgiving candles still has the original price sticker of ten cents. Because there were duplicates, I had sold a few of the Halloween candles on eBay a few years back. I think that I sold four and the high bid was $28.00!!! I could have sold the rest, but I kept them for sentimental reasons.
One last thing . . . Lucy, one of my young cousins, recently asked me to be her sponsor at Confirmation. We attended a special Mass together Saturday afternoon followed by a dinner for sponsors and candidates at a local restaurant. The Confirmation ceremony will be in the spring. Of course, I was super honored that she had asked me to be her sponsor, and super doubly honored to learn that if I had declined, she would have tried asking her second choice . . . Beyonce!!! Imagine that! I beat out Beyonce. ;-()
Keep smiling and keep safe.
