During my recent teaching trip to Clark County Quilters in Vancouver, WA, I was fortunate to stay in the home of Sandi Miller. Sandi is a prolific quilter who teaches and enjoys trying a wide range of techniques. She has a beautiful home, made me very welcome and gave me a quilt show of her gorgeous work. Here’s Sandi in her studio. I loved all the cubbies for storing her fabrics and the little shelf along the bottom which is the perfect size for spools of thread. 

Sandi had an ingenious way of storing and displaying her wall hangings with several rods bearing quilts supported by the quarter-wheel bracket. Here’s the bedroom in which I slept with a lovely Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt on the bed and a matching applique floral wall hanging.

This Flying Geese quilt with curved lines of geese and the black background caught my attention in Sandi’s stack. Sandi’s stunning floral quilt was begun in a Melinda Bula class. Thank you Sandi, for giving me permission to share.

Once again, my apologies for the time that has elapsed between blogs. Work preparing our house for sale has been intense and all time consuming. I wanted to show case some of my quilts in the staging. It’s a large house with several blank walls perfect for displaying quilts. Here are some photos of the rooms with quilts and closer shots of the quilts themselves.

This is the family room adjacent to the kitchen and breakfast room. Wonders of the Deep is one of my Kaleidoscopic Pinwheels quilts. I adapted Bethany Reynold’s Stack ‘n Whack technique so that the Pinwheels float on the background. This is a fail safe method. The blocks may be trimmed so that they are all exactly the same size and the Pinwheel points remain intact and 1/2″ from the edges of the blocks. The Pinwheels stand out better surrounded by the background and the blocks look sharp. I teach a one-day class on this method.

Here’s my whimsical applique quilt, Helios Searches for the Perfect stem, in the breakfast room. I hand appliqued the flowers, ruched the stems, and hand quilted the blue background. The substrate, leaves and flowers are machine quilted. The dragonfly is a finger puppet that I purchased from the Seattle Art Museum.

My other appliqued quilt, Toto’s Garden, hangs in the newly decorated powder room. This was made for a special exhibit at Houston about ten years ago, entitled “Quilts for the Young at Heart” and sponsored by David Textiles. The fabrics were provided by David Textiles and include their Wizard of Oz prints. Toto is enjoying the garden on his skate board and has acquired various Oz artifacts such as Dorothy’s slipper and Tin Man’s axe!

Tuscany Bears hangs in the entertainment room. This was one of my series of Bear’s Paw variation quilts and is featured in my book, Traditional Quilts with a Twist. The Bear’s Paw blocks contain a variety of mini-blocks instead of the traditional large squares.