Quilting On The Farm

We had fun this week, sewing, catching up, and generally just "visiting"! I miss my friend and always take the opportunity when presented to spend time with her. Gale has a gift of making one feel special when with her, even though I know she has a many good friends and a myriad of people who love her.
One of the reasons is that she has a heart as big as Texas, and is just a truly nice person as well as a ton of fun!
Just one example, she took a a couple of bags of western shirts that belonged to a friend's deceased husband to make a quilt for the widow for the first anniversary of her loss. Just after her own major surgery and with a stack of client quilts awaiting her expert handiwork on the longarm machine she made a great effort to do this loving service.

Here's the quilt ready for the longarm, the red stop border was also one of the man's shirts you can see the label top left side! I think it turned out terrific with the cowboy border and no doubt the widow will be very emotional, but she will love to snuggle with her DH's shirts. Gale backed it with a chocolate brown minkee blanket to make it extra cozy for those cold Colorado mountain nights.

  Gale hard at work quilting it on her Prodigy. She built herself a great studio from a small storage building, insulating against the cold and covering the floor with wood laminate herself! There isn't anything this pint -sized lady cannot do from hanging a ceiling fan, fixing the plumbing, roping a steer and driving a Big Rig, to heirloom award-winning quilting!

Her quilting expertise is well known in the area and beyond and won the top prizes for machine quilting at the recent Black Canyon Quilt Show.

Here are just two of the winning quilts from two different and very talented quilters both of whom love  hand applique and chose Gale to quilt their works of art.

The exquisite needle-turn applique in this quilt was done by a local CO. quilter, Peggy Maynes.

Gale's heirloom quilting enhances the design and lifts it into another realm.

 The beautiful needle-turn applique in the Fairy quilt was done by my friend Leslie in Texas, the design is her own creation and I know that it was a project she worked on for several years.

 I encouraged her to send it to Gale whose artistic gifts I knew would complement the design.

Quilting with several different colors helps bring the scene to life and the tree is created entirely by thread painting.

 Tiny fairies and little dragonflies and a lizard are nestled among the branches.

 Fireflies flit here and there. 

A work of art by both women.

All of these women work at a level of expertise I admire but to which I do not aspire as I have no desire to devote years to the creation of one piece or weeks to quilting one, but my hat is off to those who do!

If you are interested in Gale's quilting please contact me through my blog and I can put you in touch with her. There is a blog I set up for her but it needs updating which I had hoped to do this week, it is one thing my dear friend does not do!

 So here am I happily working on one of my projects in a corner of Gale's studio, all the blocks are pieced and I have begun to construct the top on one of my trusty Pfaff machines.

The batiks are from a Jelly Roll Gale gave me and the WOW is from a bolt of a Marcus Brother's gingko leaf by Faye Burgos. Recently I have become very much attracted to the more modern, simple style of quilting and this seems to fall into that category.