Memory quilts, flowers and photos

I think I'll start with the photos.  I am a pretty bad photographer, I'll readily admit, but this is ridiculous!  I have no idea what I'm doing to create the lines in these pics, so I really don't have much chance of figuring out how to fix it.  Again, I'll take any suggestions.

 So, how about flowers to begin?  I walked around the yard and snapped away.  These are the best of the pics I got.   Sorry.


The one on top is an agapanthus, which is a type of amaryllis.  I have white, lavender and deep purple bulbs in the same bed.


The smaller white flower in the middle is a gardenia.  The shrub is in a bed in the back of the studio.  The plan was that I'd open a window so the wonderful smell could come in.  That was a bad plan, it's way too hot to open a window!  However, the scent is strong enough to smell the flowers from the swing under the arbor, so it's not a total oops.

 These reds are in the bed in the front of the house but they aren't doing so well.  They are beginning to fill out but it will be a few more weeks before they are touching each other and completely fill in the bed.


And on to the memory quilt I've been working on.  This is for a senior who will graduate on Monday.  She brought the tee shirts last week, but I had to really push myself to finish this week since we were away all weekend.  




I managed to cut the squares easily enough, then zipped on the sashing and loaded the quilt, in only about three days of working after school.  Today I finished up the quilting.  




I originally planned to keep it simple, but that quickly changed.  I stippled most of the blocks but in some I repeated motifs within the block.  For example in the red block with the rips from the panther claws, I quilted in additional rips.  In the blue block, I first quilted around the cross then around the blotches, and repeated a few blotches.

And for fun, I cut out some funky letters and ironed them on then stitched them down.  They just happen to be her initials.  I'm thinking if the tee shirts were just school shirts that any student could have, this makes the quilt hers alone.  Of course, a label with her name will support that theory.