The Great Shirley Greenhoe

And I do mean great.


Shirley is an extraordinary machine quilter.  On page 36 of Tile Quilt Revival there is a photo of Shirley's quilting of a tile quilt of mine that features printed hydrangeas and stitched circles.  As always, Shirley's design for the quilting brings it all together perfectly--beautifully stitched hydrangea blossoms combined with spirals upon spirals.  But that's another story.


Today's actual topic is Shirley's brilliant taking tile technique to another level!  She is using tile construction method to create a terrific border on a Tree of Life medallion quilt:

I apologize for the poor quality of the photo.  My excuse--too excited about the tile border to pay attention to camera settings....  


The graceful lines of the tile border work so beautifully with the crisp geometry of the tree leaves and the pieced inner borders.  Here are a couple of details:

I love it that Shirley used light grout (background fabric) in the border strips and dark grout for the fans/shells.  The combination makes for a nice positive/negative play.  


Shirley's quilt is obviously a work in progress, and I can hardly wait to see how it develops.  I understand there may be more tile technique in the works.
Thanks, Shirley, for sharing.  I hope you'll let all of us see the completed quilt.

Dog Day

We recently celebrated the 10th birthday of our mutt, Sumo.  We've pretty much ignored the previous 9, but 10 means 70 in dog years, and this one just seemed too important to pass over.  Here's the cake (divided in two to be shared with her friend, Grace):

Name notwithstanding, Sumo is of the female persuasion--she got the name by being pushy.  Here she and Grace are waiting to be told they can taste the cake:

And here's the Sumo dog hopelessly smitten with her present, a little stuffed beaver:

 I learned from reading the dog DNA story in the current issue of National Geographic that her Andy Rooney eyebrows are called "furnishings."  Nice.