Early Christmas

Christmas came a little early this year for me. Noriko Endo, author of Confetti Naturescapes, made a quilt for above my livingroom fireplace and showed it to me in Houston. It is Spring in Japan with cherry blossoms at their peak reflected on water below and it is just breathtaking!  So I bought it!

She has made cherry blossom quilts before where she hand cut the 5-petal blossoms with a little notch in each petal. Then her husband helped her hand color the centers. Well this one was much easier. Accuquilt made her a special die for the Go Baby fabric cutting machine. She could place 6 layers of fabric under the die and get dozens of little blossoms perfectly cut in a few seconds!  Silk and cotton were used.  This Cherry Blossom die will be on the market soon so you can try this technique too!

Also while in Houston, there was a silent auction with small quilts donated by the teachers and others. I bid on a beautiful little Pat Holly masterpiece. The pieces are so small that I don’t know how she gets them sewn on!  Pat is also in the Bernina Master Artisans group and I met her on our trip to the Bernina factory in Switzerland. She was there with her sister Sue Nickels. Pat lives in Ann Arbor where my son just started at U Michigan!

The way the auction works is that you bid on a sheet of paper with your number and then after a certain time limit, the high bid wins. Most of us bid and then leave so we don’t know who won. Well half an hour before the end of this auction, I texted my Quilt Festival roomie, Susan Brubaker Knapp, who was still there and asked her to go by the table and tell me if I was winning.

She texted me that I had been outbid so I asked her to write in a higher bid for me. Then she decided to stand by the table to watch until the end and ‘protect’ my bid. Here’s the photo that she sent me! Can you recognize two who are picking up some of the quilts at the end?

Thanks to Susan, I won the quilt Magical Mehrangarh Memory by Pat Holly!!  I was thrilled!

 

It is 12 inches square so you can see how tiny some of these pieces are! What incredible workmanship! I feel so lucky!