Color Wheel Cats...

I started this a couple years ago and finally finished it....or at least I think I finished it!  I didn't start out with a plan, I was just making the color wheel center because I like making "hexie" flowers and I like color.  Then I decided to add silhouettes of cats from a black fabric I had that had color swirling through it.

After picking out a background and adding the border it seemed like it needed more color, so I made the corner flowers.

I like the orange flower with the cat face on one petal :-)

I'm still thinking about adding some 3-D butterflies....just out of the cat's reach and maybe flying up to the corner flowers.  2-3 at most.   We will see.  Haven't totally figured that out yet.

My friend Linda B did the background quilting.  I didn't want the flowers and cats quilted but she thought they were too loose without quilting, so I hand quilted around the center of the color wheel flowers and did some embroidery on the corner flowers.  Good thing nobody ever sees the back of my wallhangings, although I used a "busy" fabric that doesn't show my large stitches particularly.

It was a fun project and something accomplished finally!

The Wild Blingdom...

 I finally finished a quilt that I call "The Wild Blingdom".  It's made of batik circles on batik squares and I embellished them with embroidery and other stuff and put a fancy animal brooch on each one.  Just a crazy idea I got one day.  I had a lot of fun with it but am glad that it is finally done!

Taking photos was difficult.

Tried hanging it on the fence outside....better light.

Here are groupings of blocks that show all of them, I think and some individual photos, also

The elephant and penguins were appliqued from other fabric as was the chickadees on the block below.

The little spider web is an earring that used to belong to my daughter.

I almost missed this section.  Not crazy about the flamingo pin, but it was all I had for that block.

The fish pin was one I got as a teenager.

Didn't use a pin on this block, but made hexie owls and added some owl buttons.

There had to be a spider web, of course and a very big spider!

One of my favorites with turtle buttons and a turtle pin.

A neighbor game me the bird pin and I always wanted to use it on a crazy quilt somewhere.  I had fun making the next.

The beaded frog I bought on Amazon....I love it!

Making the tree was a lot of fun.  Embroidery yarn twisted and sewn down as the roots.

Just a lot of sunflower buttons with bees and a squirrel pin that I couldn't find anywhere else to use.

I really need to do some quilting in the backgrounds to take them flatter, but I just don't want to bother with it.  I would have to do it by hand quilting and I'm not very good at that.

Following the Quilt Barn trails again in Kentucky....

This last week Mike and I spent a few days in Kentucky and I had the opportunity to follow one Quilt Barn trail in one country and then stumbled on a few more from another county on the way home.  Here they are in no particular order.

Flower Power challenge quilt....Dresden Dahlias....with the border added and finished....

My "Dresden Dahlias" quilt with the border on and the binding done.

 Trying to find a spot with a little color blooming outside to take these photos.

Had fun making this....now time to move on to something new!

New project for the Flower Power challenge in our guild....

Our guild challenge this year is "Flower Power".....any quilted item with a flower theme.

I had been working on Dresden plate blocks for awhile, when I decided they looked like flowers if you added an extra row of "petals", so I call this "Dresden Dahlias".  I have decided it needs a border, so I am currently looking for something that would look right for a border.

  I wanted to pose it with some flowers, so I went ahead and took some photos even though it isn't finished yet.  Will post again when I finish it :-)  You can't see in this photo but I have done a lot of embroidery on the petals.  I seem to turn everything into a crazy quilt any more.

 You can see a bit of the stitching in this close shot of the orange flower.  I'm still working on the corner green fans.

I really like making these and have a lot of left-over pieces that will probably end up as Christmas presents.....runners, pillows, small table toppers?

Raintree Quilter's Guild Christmas gift exchange photos....

Last night was our annual guild Christmas party and we always have a gift exchange as part of the fun.  Several months ago we were all given a fat quarter of Christmas fabric to use in making a gift.  I am always amazed at the beauty and creative and variety that the ladies (and one male) come up with each year.  Here are some photos of the gifts. 

 I'm sure that looking at the photos you can guess which fabric they gave us to work with.

 Anyone who made a gift gets a number and they randomly give away the gifts in that method.  Nobody  gets to choose what they win, but that makes it that much more fun and fair to everyone.

 You can use as much or as little of the fabric in your gift and whatever other fabrics you choose.  I saw one gift that put the fabric on the back.  Not everyone likes the same fabrics, of course, and that is highly permissible to use the fabric that way....I did the same thing one year.  I happen to really like this fabric because I like black in quilts and the red and green were very "Christmas-y".

 I won that round table topper at the top with the poinsettias on it.  Very nice!  I have a little table that it is perfect for.

 Our husband and wife team made the two Christmas tree hangings.

 A nice Indiana Cardinal in the middle of that star!

 I made the big fat runner on the right.  I was using the Lover's Knot pattern, but turned the middle knot into a square motif instead.  I thought it looked better that way for some reason.

 It's a great place to get some new idea for making something, as well as the fun of receiving a gift that is hand made by someone else.  We quilters tend to make so many things for others, that we don't get a lot of quilt gifts ourselves......since people assume we know how to make our own stuff.

 Cute snowmen runner!

 I love anything Log Cabin.  I'm getting ready to make a small log cabin lap quilt with a really cute Chickadee fabric that came out this year.

 Nice redwork

 There were some gifts in bags and baskets that I didn't get good photos of, but I think I got most of the larger hanging items.

 Towels and potholders, I think.....several nice kitchen gifts

 Aren't those little pine cone ornaments cute?  They look like a lot of work!

A basket with a puzzle and some other things.