Indigo Dye Party Quilt

I found another barn to photograph a quilt on.  I love taking photos of old barns and what better reason to get out and do so, than photographing a quilt completion.  This barn is SPECTACULAR!

Barns absolutely dwarf my quilts, but this is my favorite shot!  I always ask permission and sometimes I meet the nicest people.  This morning, I knew exactly which barn I wanted, and the farmer was very hospitable.  He said take all the pictures you want.  While I was doing so, he came out and chatted and opened a door for me, should I want to go inside.  I only took a half-step in, because it is very old, and no longer used except as a home by a flighty flock of pigeons.  His daughter-in-law also came and chatted, then the old guy came back and gave me some fresh picked tomatoes. 

 

Here is the close-up.  If you click on the photo, it will enlarge, so you can see more of the details.

Meanwhile, I took these photos on August 16, but I cannot "post" this until Elverta's birthday.  It is a gift for her 80th.  Her daughter arranged the "dye party' and she and Elverta's grandson each made a block for the quilt.  The rest of the blocks were made by the other five ladies in the Cloverdale Ladies Society.

String Quilt With Homey Fabrics

I took another brief drive, in whatever remains of what is rural around here, and took another quilt-on-a-barn photo.  It has the spirits of at least five quilters in it.  It has fabrics from Wanda, Donna, Betty, Teresa, and I.  Although my mother was not a quilter, she was a sewer and the chili pepper fabric was hers.  These days, it feels as if barns and quilters/sewers are vanishing.

The barn, on which I pinned up this quilt, is located on Ustick Road, strangely not far from where I spend my time.  Click on the photo and it will be enlarged, so you can see all the different fabrics.  String quilts are pieced on a foundation of fabric or paper.  The strings are narrow strips of fabric, that are typically scraps left over from the construction of other quilts.  This one was started by Betty, who had eleven blocks already pieced on squares of jungle print fabric.  There were more squares of jungle print already cut, so I thought "Why not just make some more?"  I made 41 more, then sewed them all to each other and added the border with little spikes of color coming out.  It was very nicely long-arm quilted by Virginia.