Eating and Talking over the Worlds Cup

I enjoyed a very pleasant dinner Monday night with my friend Cathy, and her friend Lisa at an incredibly NOISY Mexican restaurant. We could hear the instructor talking and see the students working at their easels for a painting class going on in the adjoining large room. The big screen TV showed the US win over Ghana in the World Cup, followed by a baseball game. The US debuted in the World Cup and won their very first game! The frequent cheers had us repeating what we said so we could be heard.

Lisa designs quilts, takes commissions for quilts, gives talks, and judges quilts. You can see her designs and other things that occupy her time on her blog and her website. She is in Hampton Roads to judge the Tidewater Quilters Guild show coming up this weekend, Friday through Sunday, June 20th through 22nd.

She showed us her designs for the Row by Row Experience, a unique shop hop going on in several states.

I showed her the applique mermaid block I completed recently. Here's the picture again, in case you missed the post on it.

We talked about Lisa's dog Shelby, her experience with facebook's restructure of how people see, and now don't see, the small business pages they are interested in, print shops and anything else that popped into our heads. I really enjoyed meeting Lisa. The three of us had a good time.

Mermaids

I spent about forty hours from concept through execution of this 9" x 36" mermaid applique block ~ designing, choosing fabric, converting the design into individual pieces for applique, cutting out fabrics, arranging bits, tweaking, pressing and sewing.

I then decided that machine embroidery on the face didn't give the right look. So I took out the stitches and used fine tip markers. The fabric for the face on the right was slightly roughed up when I took out the stitches, so it did not turn out well. It has been pointed out to me that her face looks masculine.

I had fun selecting the fabrics and choosing which parts of the underwater scene to cut from the fabrics I used for the critters and plants.