Sunday Quilt Inspiration: BIRD HOUSE

Today we spent much of the afternoon at the Louisiana Nursery Festival in Forest Hill, a very small town that has probably 50 to 60 garden nurseries. It's the place to go if you want or need bedding plants, trees, seeds, or unusual, tropical plants. Everything in the way of green is in a small town with fewer than 1,000 residents. 

The population nearly doubled after people discovered the advantage of having many nurseries in the same town. Most of those new residents are hard-working immigrant workers, who are always pleasant and willing to go beyond expectations to please the customer. I've seen this time and again at the festival and when shopping in the nurseries. (But I don't have time to express my political opinions, so we'll move on.)


The festival is a typical Louisiana festival with high temps (85 today), carnival rides, festival food, craft booths and, in this case, plants. Many, many plants. 


While shopping we saw a booth with some very interesting bird houses. 


Richard flatly refused to buy a bird house, "made of scrap lumber and rusty metal." There's no reasoning with him, especially when I agree that the price was rather steep.


That helped me decide on tonight's inspiration post. Let's see what we can find.

Finding quilts with a bird house or two on them shouldn't be very difficult!

I don't know which I want more: to have Rich make a couple of bird houses for the yard, or to make bird houses myself out of fabric, maybe even on a quilt. Definitely I'll be adding some bird houses and bird house quilts to my Pinterest boards.  
Have a quilty week, everyone!

"That Big Chevron" and Bloggers' Quilt Festival

Early this month I finished the king size quilt that I had started for our youngest son and his wife. You can read about it here and here. They recently bought a house and, because they have the space, they replaced their bedroom suite. That meant the queen quilt that I gave them right after their wedding is not big enough.

Enter the biggest quilt I've made to date. I had just designed a new pattern which can be used to create a chevron design. Happily it's in vogue now and the kids must like it since they often wear clothing with a chevron pattern. I took my cues from that and pictures the couple sent of the colors they wanted to have in their bedroom. (Pictures of the paint chips are in the collage above.)

Rory sent pictures of the quilt after they had washed it. Thank goodness I recommended that they toss in some Color Catcher sheets. He told me later that they worked really well and apparently there was lots of bleeding from the burnt plum color.

It turns out that the original wall paint--a neutral light khaki--is perfect for the colors in the quilt, and they've decided not to repaint, at least for a while. 

I had promised myself that I would include one quilt in the Bloggers Quilt Festival this year. I almost missed it, but when I read about it on a couple of blogs last night, I decided that it's really time to keep some of my promises to myself. 

Since this is my absolutely largest quilt ever, it deserves a little recognition. There ya go! Problem solved, promises kept, person relieved. 

Soon I'll start the quilt I will make for the oldest son and his sweet wife. I've been delaying that in the hopes that some inspiration will strike and I'll be off and done in no time at all. It's another king, so expectations may be rather high.

Go by the Bloggers' Quilt Festival to see some amazing quilts. You can also vote for your favorite in each category. Have fun!

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: Red and Green

Saturday, December 5 - 
89th Annual Christmas Festival, Louisiana’s premiere holiday event.
Ranked 3rd "Best Holiday Light Show" behind the Rockefeller Center and Disney World in the nation by Yahoo.com. Celebrate the Christmas Season in Louisiana'a oldest city! Enjoy our daylong festival filled with live musical entertainment, arts, crafts and food vendors, a parade and a magnificent fireworks show choreographed to holiday music over the riverbank of Cane River Lake.

We had a wonderful time in Natchitoches this weekend.  The first weekend of December several members of my family gather at my sister's home to watch the parade, see the lights, and enjoy the fireworks.  

We're great people-watchers, too, so there's always that.  It seems that millions of people are around--walking to downtown, walking to or from the parade, walking to find a good place to see the fireworks, just walking.  We did a little walking of our own.  

Although, there's little reason to move from the sofas. In fact, watched the fireworks sitting on a sofa! 

Well, the parade was outside, but I could have watched it from my bed.  Yes, she is sitting pretty right on the parade route.  And within walking distance from downtown.  And sitting on the river bank.  

Those are all good things...unless you need milk or want to go home anytime before Sunday.  We arrive Friday, park the car, and walk till Sunday (said tongue-in-cheek, of course).  

These crazies are my people.  Some are trying to get people in the parade to toss something.  Anything!  Just throw something!  

Some of us are sitting in very comfy lawn chairs. (That was my thing.) Some are, well, who knows what some are doing--not watching the parade, not sitting, who knows? See Richard way over there on the left?  He's just hanging out. I don't even know why.  

I snapped this just to see what the crazies look like at any moment in time.  It's interesting, don't you think?

So here are a few quilts to inspire you.  A little red and green certainly can make a quilt festive and help to dress up a area for the holidays! 

As usual, these and many more can be found on my Pinterest board, "heart, quilts" which now has almost 5,000 quilts pinned to it.  

Festival Recovery and Little More Than Naps

Yesterday's trip to the Houston Quilt Festival was fabulous, of course.  The one downside: one day cannot possibly be enough.  I really wanted to see more.  I did see about two/thirds of the quilts. Having been before, I knew I'd have to make some choices, so I started my race with a strategy.  I looked at the floor plan and made my decisions--"In Full Bloom," "National Parks," "In the American Tradition," "Modern Quilt Guild" and so many, many more!

I just bought a double wedding ring die set from Accuquilt, so I was especially interested in how other quilters have played with the block.  Of course, I wanted to see all the really big winners (you'll be very impressed), and everything IQA sounded interesting.  Do you see the dilemma here?  

The only way to handle it, I've discovered from previous festivals, is to push myself through, eat a quick lunch and choose extra carefully in the afternoon.  We got a late start, had a later breakfast, and chose an even later lunch.  Apparently everyone planned to eat lunch at 1:00, because we stood in line for quite some time and had to wait for a small group to get up before we could get seats.  All in all it was truly enlightening and pleasant.  

We left late (why not since the whole day ran late?) and then decided to have gumbo at a niece's home, so our arrival was truly late.  Today I've been dragging around zombie-like but managed to visit the in-laws, do the Halloween shopping for the grandkids, and sew just a little.  It poured down rain the entire day, so there are still flowers sitting on the worktable waiting to go to the cemetery.  

Today has been rather long, even with the naps.  I say naps in plural because I tried to wake up and move several times, but it was really impossible.  I'm not sure how long I rested, but I am sure that it took most of the afternoon.  The sound of rain falling on the roof didn't hurt the situation nor did snuggling under my favorite quilt.  

As for the rest of the day: The in-laws are doing fine, the baskets and bags are all arranged for tomorrow's lunch when everyone should be here, and I'm close to finishing my customer's tie quilt. And that has been my weekend thus far. Not busy, but not boring and certainly the quilt festival was more than I had hoped for.  Enjoy the few pictures I've posted.  I am waiting till tomorrow to post more.  It feels wrong to post lots of pictures of a show that is still going on, so this is just a sneak peek.  

Happy Quilting,

Pin It Weekly #125

International Quilt Festival

Houston 2015

October 29-November 1, 2015

George R. Brown Convention Center

Houston, Texas

Houston is coming quick, y'all!  I hope you have an opportunity to go and to meet you would be fantastic.  I love meeting quilters during lunch (which I've learned to do early).

So, to celebrate the big event, starting tomorrow, here are a few photos, mostly detailed, of some winning quilts from shows around the world and gleaned from around Pinterest, but you can find them on my "heart, quilts" board.

See ya there in two days!

International Quilt Festival

Houston 2015

October 29-November 1, 2015

George R. Brown Convention Center

Houston, Texas