Mooresville Centerpiece Quilters Guild 2006 Show

I've had a few request for pictures of some of the other quilts that were in the show where my quilts hung. It was a small show as far as the quilt world goes, but for the size of the guild, it was very nicely done with several quilts. I thought a very nice extra touch was that every quilt that was entered in the show had a flower ribbon attached. That was a very nice way to acknowledge everyone's efforts.

This quilt by Jean Funderburk won first place in the small wall hanging applique category and also the judges choice award for the whole show.

This Second Place in the applique small wall hanging category was done by Jean Sherrill

Then my quilt, "Metal Fruit" was third in the appliqued Small Wall Hanging Category.

(The face at the bottom right corner was not part of my quilt, it was a wooden stand holding a piece of quilted clothing.)

The other category was Pieced Small wall hanging. This size is the same as the applique small wall hanging category, but the method of construction is differend.

First place in this category is called "Let It Snow" and was done by Christine Schotz. You may want to click on the picture to enlarge it so you can see the quilting (stitching) design.

Then finally my quilt, "Shattered Darkness" ended up coming in second in the Pieced Small Wall Hanging category even though it has a yellow ribbon in this picture, that turned out to be a mistake.

Don's New BBQ Cookers/Smokers

This Blog is mostly about my quilting, dyeing and assorted attempts at art. But every now and again there will be a post about our other hobby, barbeque. Barbecue needs a little explanation even for all the American readers. If you live up north, barbecue is a verb and it's a means of cooking something on an outdoor grill with a fire directly beneath the meat. The cooking is fast and they call that barbecueing. But down here in the south, barbecue, barbeque, or bbq (all various ways to spell it and we usually use the last two ways) is a noun. It's what we eat. We eat bbq. It's cooked on a smoker (or grill) with indirect heat. That means the heat is usually very low and it takes many hours, so it's slow. That's slow and low and that's how you get great bbq to eat. The verb we'd use is smoking barbeque or cooking barbeque, but we'd never say that we're barbecueing barbeque. (Are you thoroughly confused yet?) When we cook a steak or hamburger, we grill it on a grill. Don, my husband, is the one who is into barbeque and here is one of his newest pieces of barbeque equipment, the smoker or cooker.

The front view of the cooker.

It has a mechanism in it that rotates the food around similar to a ferris wheel with the meat on racks. It's designed to move the meat around so that it cooks more evenly.

This is the inside view of the cooker with the meat cooking. It takes about 10 or 12 hours to cook a beef brisket or pork butt (which is actually the shoulder section of the hog.)

The fire box is located in the back and the best part is the smoke that moves across the meat and gives the BBQ its great smoked flavor depending on what type of wood or fuel is used.


Don checking the fire to make sure there are plenty of hot coals to keep everything at just the right temperature to get great BBQ

So for most readers, if you've read this far, than you've probably already learned much more about BBQ than you'd ever really wanted to know.

Art Quilt Inspiration

Every artist, especially those who work in the abstract, is asked, "where do you come up with the ideas?" Well here is what I do. I carry my digital camera, which is very compact, everywhere with me. I also have a very small sketch pad that I always carry with me. When I see something artsy, I photograph it or sketch it out or both. Here are two photos of carpet that is in a place of business. Fay, you remember me telling you about being afraid of getting caught with a camera and taking pictures. Well no one ever said a thing to me about not being allowed to take pictures. So this is actually two different sections of the carpet. One part is in the long hallway leading to the lobby.

Then you walk through fancy doors and this second picture is of the carpet in that area.


It's all monochromatic greys, but the composition was great. I love the way the values (lights and darks) work together. So I took a photo and some day you might see one of my pieces that resembles something similar to this carpet. The pictures will serve as a trigger to get me going, at least that's what I hope!

Nice Surprise!

I entered the local quilt guild show and to my surprise, I won with both of my two entries! It's not the big time, but it's a nice reward.

Metal Fruit was designed by my son, Jason Harwell and I interpreted it into fabric. It hangs in a frame in his office at work. It won third place in the Small Wall Quilts - Applique.

The face at the bottom left corner is actually a wooden stand holding a quilted vest that was in the show. I could have cropped that out of the picture, but I wanted to show the quilt as it was actually hanging in the show with the ribbon.

Shattered Darkness was my first originally designed quilt. It was in the Small Wall Hanging - Pieced Category and was listed as winning second place, but had a third place ribbon. The show coordinators are checking in to that and this post will be corrected to reflect the correct information. (Update: Shattered Darkness won a second place ribbon after all.)

I thought is was very nice that each quilt that was in the show had a flower ribbon attached to the description card as a way of honoring everyone who participated. Great show for a community of our size.

Symmetry Finally Ta Dah!

I've tried several attempts to do the dyeing project by Carol Soderlund as outlined in the April 2006 Quilter's World Magazine. I tried three times and it was on this third try that I finally got results that I liked. The problem? Not paying attention to the details in the instructions. The instructions mention several times about pressing down with your gloved hands to encourage the dye to spread if you like. That sounded optional, but for me, it was a very important overlooked detail. I used 12 ml and 6 ml syringes (minus the needles) that I got from a farm supply store. I used the syringes to apply the dye in a controlled manner and as I applied the dye I pressed down firmly with the syringe as I pressed the dye out. I worked slowly to give time for the dye to spread. I used the same colors outlined in the article and next time I think I'll begin to customize the colors a bit. Yes, next time. I think I will try this again in the near future so watch for more in the future.

The Piece hanging up on the back of my front door to give perspective as to how big it is.

The Piece close up and turned on its side for a different perspective.

(The door knob is at the top, left of center.)

The edges are a bit brown from where the colors mixed, but that's ok. The fabric will be cut up and that can be cut out.

My Picture - Temporary

Here's my picture to use at the top of my sidebar whenever I figure out how to work this blog behind the scenes stuff!

Our Guest from Australia

Yeah, you read that correctly!

Don and I were excited to have ur first house guest in our official guest room (aka Elise's old room.) Her name is Fay Dunstan from Western Australia. I met her in the Fabric Dyeing class back in August. After our class was over she traveled across the USA to Seattle, for another dyeing class, then to Salt Lake City, Utah to visit a nephew and attend a wool dyeing class. Then she headed down to Las Vegas to take a tour out to the canyons of Arizona. Her trip was not tightly structured so she was able to take me up on my offer to come see me if she was ever in North Carolina. Well she came and we felt so honored to have her! We spent the week dyeing fabric and have a beautiful array of fabrics to show from our efforts. Then we also spent one day doing errands among which was a stop at the beauty salon where Fay was able to get an American haircut to take back with her to Australia. We also went over to one of the largest fabric stores on the East Coast, "Mary Jo's" in Gastonia and Fay was able to get last minute pieces to take back to her quilting sister and friends. The rest of the week was back to dyeing.

Here we are after our Hair Salon stop.

Fay was the perfect guest. She was able to fit right in with the Harwell, "help yourself" mode of operation around here. In fact since my dyeing area had just been set up she knew where things were better than I did!

Dye Studio (aka Laudry Room)

I only wish Fay could have stayed longer! One of these days I'm going to try to make the trip over to see her. That's after I get up my nerve to fly that far! Yikes! Thanks Fay for stopping by! Come again anytime!