OMgosh, Lois!! Love both of your quilts! When my trade shows are over in August I will be doing my pineapple quilt. Although I must admit that you seriously tempted me to cancel a couple shows and get started now!

WOW Lois,

Thanks for sharing, they are beautiful.

So fun to see blueberries.

Lois your quilts are beautiful!!! I particularly like the border fabric you chose for your pineapple quilt--so unique and different from you normlly see on store shelves... and I love how it coordinates with the black and white miniature leaf border in the body of the quilt. Your hexagon quilt is very pretty; I look forward to seeing more of it as you get on with it. Should be another beautiful day in Pennsylvania for gardening. I woke up to a bright, shining sun and perfectly blue skies--most of the east coast should be that way today... enjoy your time out there. Thank you for the pictures!

Lois - Your quilts are simply beautiful! I live at too high an altitude to have much fruit, especially this early in the season. But a couple of years ago a wild raspberry bush decided to grow in my yard. Of course, it decided to take up shop right around the step to my front door so you now have to fight through the brambles to get in the house, but I'm so excited to have those few little raspberries that I just leave it. It has leaves now so I have high hopes for berries later in the season. Enjoy your garden!

Nancy

loise98 wrote:

Kathy, Right now we are having a little break in the humidity so its a good time to catch up in the garden. Everything is 3 weeks to an entire month earlier than usual due to the mild winter. I am behind and the garden is way ahead of me. Thanks goodness, yesterday I was able to hire a young man to do some major pruning to some trees that are becoming overgrown. He agreed to come and rototill my vegetable garden Saturday. I usually dig it myself. I have four 4'x8' patches that I do a day at a time. What a relief to be getting it all done in less than an hour. I may get my vegetables in on Saturday as well.

Lotti, When I was a kid all this berry picking was a family affair with cousins and aunts joining in and now it is just me. I would certainly welcome you to my garden anytime you can come. You can eat, cook and visit. When will you be here. Summer of 2013 would be fine. Its a straight line south from your family to central PA.

Rita, Gyleen's flower garden layout with 2 leaves attached to the flowers comes from her antique quilt collection she gathered for the book that was featured on the TQS episode when she was the guest. I don't think it is in the book but she posted it on facebook when I was searching for a layout. I am so interested in that quilt. I need a name appropriate for its history. The pattern is from the 1930's. I began collecting the fabrics for it in the 1970's -80's to present day. It's totally machine constructed and I plan to quilt it with machine techniques quilter's are developing now in the 21st Century. Hope you all feel free to help with that.

Lois your hexagon quilt is beautiful - and you did all that by machine? I will have to give it a try. The pineapple one is so beautiful too it's nice to see it again.

We had such a cold spell of weather for about two weeks - broken when the sun reappeared as soon as Lotti hit the country - that everything was plunged back into winter. So my strawberries are just flowering now. I am pleased to say that the elderflower is now flowering. But unfortunately today it is raining so that's no use. I hope it stops and dries up soon so that I can pick the heads before it is too late. Elderflower cordial is one of the great delights in this house. I know what you mean about quilting having to be put on hold. I am the same every year at this time as the fruits come in thick and fast. I noticed that my gooseberries are almost ready too. And then there are the raspberry canes that DH worked so hard to organize this past winter, followed by the blackcurrants. It all comes in a rush doesn't it. And I haven't even made the rhubarb and ginger jam yet! And that's usually the first to get done.

Kathy, these pineapple quilts turn out a lot better than you would imagine even the really scrappy ones. I believe that the two I have made so far are as good as anything else I have made (the quilting is not as good as my apprentice piece though ). When I made the first one and finished it, my daughter and I started to count all the different fabrics in it - there were 190 odd fabrics in the first row alone. There is a history all in itself, never mind the history of the person who made it. And when it was finished and folded neatly over the back of a chair waiting to be wrapped as a gift we were all amazed at how beautiful it looked and how much we wanted to open it up again to take another look.

Mmmh, Lois, do you need any help munching that lovely fruit? My mom and my aunt always found my visits quite relaxing, as I took a turn through the garden first thin in the morning, munching all the yummy stuff ready... And another tun late afternoon, to see what the day has ripened. I'm good for: strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, brambles, currants, generally berries of all types, small soft fruit off of most reachable trees, snow peas, regular peas, beans, a leaf of this herb, a sprig of that one, and I can easily pull a carrot or two...
Of course, if the objective is ot just to have the produce picked and munched, I can also gather ino dishes... The rule of every tenth item is the gatherer's pay applies !!!
hoping to spend next June at my parents' in Canada, so they better eat all the berries they can this summer, for next year the finding of ripe fruit could be critical...

OMG, Lois, those are both fantastic quilts. i love your black in the pineapple, and your green centers. Mine is red centers and totally scrappy! I remember the hexagons from Gyleen's show. Her website is great, she has a lot of good stuff. I can see why you are busy, with all that fruit coming in at one time. It may be a lot of work, but it must be really gorgeous outside for you right now.

Those quilts will wait!
Kathy

I have one heck of a crop of blueberries coming on. The strawberries are ripe and I have a very young sour cherry tree that is producing just a little bit of fruit this year. I think my quilts will do better at waiting their turn for my time than this other stuff.

This is what my pineapple quilt looks like now. The border fabric is as seen in the pict with the exception that I found a multi/mostly reds/some green tiny triangles by Kaffee Fasset for another narrow pop of color in the border.





I have another quilt top nearly pieced that's calling my name too. It's another one inspired by Gyleen Fitzgerald. I can hardly wait to quilt this one too. This picture was taken quite a while ago. All the background hexagon's are now sewn entirely by machine. The blocks are all sewn in rows except for 2 rows. I'd show what is keeping me from getting to these quilts but I am thinking you can only put 3 pictures into posts on the Forum. More later. Stay tuned. Same time. Same station.

{!-- ia0 -->IMG_3350.jpg{!-- ia0 -->

Lois, if you can figure out how to get more hours in a day, let me know . I've machine quilted with hobb's wool batting once, it was lovely to quilt with. I'm thinking that I might do a pieced backing, to make the entire quilt including thread from stash. I'm using up thread at a high rate with the piecing. Most of my old junky thread is going into this quilt. In her book, Gyleen gave us permission to use up thread, so that's what I'm doing! This quilt won't be an heirloom but will be used and loved to death, I hope.

when you get yours finished, I want to see a picture of it, please

Kathy

Kathy, congratulations on completing BOM 2011! I bet that must feel good... and now you can play with the pineapple quilt again--look forward to seeing it.

Lois, you are so close... backing and quilting and then you'll post your pineapple quilt, right? What color scheme did you do for your centers and border?

Kathy, Mine is ready for borders and the fabric selection for that has been made. I've got to buy backing, but I have already purchased wool batting. Never used it before. It feels light as a cloud. Might feel less like I am dragging it up the mountain when I get to the quilting process. I am so very eager to get to be quilting it but it seems like summer events are capturing me and holding me hostage from my quilting. I think I may need to do some serious revisions of my schedule, or figure out how to put more hours in a day. Lois