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!