First installment

Last week I wrote about featuring a different quilt each week, mostly older ones and in no particular order. This one just happened to be at the top of the heap. The title of this one is Winter Breakfast and was finished in 2006. For years I wanted to make a quilt with birds, but it had to be birds that I had seen at one of our bird feeders. One was missing, the cardinal. Than one Sunday morning there he was, sitting on a railing and watching what went on inside of the house. I quickly took some pictures and that was the start of this quilt. All these birds are from our area. The pine boughs and seeds are embroidered by hand. The applique is also done by hand. The feeder tube has 1 or 2 layers of netting over the applique to give it a more glass/plastic like look. The hand quilting was done by my mother-in-law Hilda Helmuth. When I started to make quilts I used to use the cheapest fabric I could find for the back. Now I have changed my mind and I try to find co-ordinating fabric for the back. For this quilt I was very lucky to find matching fabric with chickadees for the back just before it would be quilted. This quilt was at the National Juried show in Ottawa. With no chores and all the field work caught up we decided to take a break and go away for a few days. Laurence always wanted to take the ferry to Pellee Island so on Monday morning we drove to Leamington and took the ferry to the island. We stayed overnight and the next day took another, smaller ferry from the island to Sandusky in Ohio. From there we drove to Archbold. We wanted to visit the Sauder Village.We had been there before, but always to late in the day to make a visit worthwhile. The village has some excellent craft people and I came home with a beautfiful big hand woven basket. And there is even a quilt store.This time I did not find anything I needed or wanted. From there we drove to Shipshewana in Indiana where you have 2 very good quilt stores. And yes, I found some have to have fabrics there. We made it back last night and today was catch-up day. The lawn needed mowing and the flowers needed some care, but that's been looked after. Even my new fabric has been washed and ironed!