We have bird feeders & I love seeing our flock of cardinals brighten up the yard on a snowy day. Once I saw the “solution” to this mystery quilt, I knew I had to make it.

My husband kept commenting on the one bird facing the opposite way, which prompted the name for this quilt.

The quilt top is made entirely from Heide Stoll-Weber's hand-dyed fabrics that I got from Carol. I tried to get the background greys to match well enough to look like one solid background, but I did not succeed. So, I ended up choosing to quilt the sashing and borders differently from the rest of the background grey.

I thought I was finished with this quilt and had even photographed for this site before I decided I just had to add more quilting to the bodies of the birds. Here's what they looked like before I did that:

Adding more quilting improved the look and also made the quilt lie a bit flatter.

​Pattern: A Flash of Red: Mystery Quilt by Wendy Sheppard, March-November 2025, American Quilter Magazine
Fabrics: 100% cotton (Heide Stoll-Weber's hand-dyed fabric for quilt top)
Batting: Hobbs Wool & Quilter's Dream 80/20
Top Threads: Glide Grotto Blue, Isacord 40 #1902, Glide Wine, Glide Oriole, Glide Tango, Glide Passion, Glide Teaberry, Glide Marmalade
Bobbin Thread: Aurifil 50 wt & Fil-Tec Magna-Glide Prewound Bobbins 40wt Light Grey

Last fall we purchased new furniture for our family room. I really wanted a new lap quilt to use with my new dark brown leather recliner. This quilt is the result.

I love the pattern and colors for the quilt. However, I'm not very happy with the quilting design I chose. It really doesn't enhance the quilt, which is very disappointing after the amount of work it took. I do love the way the border quilting came out, though.

This has piping in two places. The inside piping is flat and the outside piping is corded. The outside piping fabric was made by piecing together 2" strips of many of the fabrics used in the quilt and then cutting bias strips from the pieced fabric.

This was the first time I tried making Susan Cleveland's Piping Hot Binding using the cording she recommends and her tool. I have to say that the cording is an absolute pain to work with. It is very slippery which makes it really hard to get it nestled in tightly to the folded piping fabric. I think if I try this again I will look for a different kind of cording. The tool worked well, at least.

Pattern: Circle Symphony by Wendy Sheppard, AQ Magazine, March 2020
Batting: Hobbs Wool
Quilting Thread: Glide 20730 Light Copper & Madera 9490 AeroQuilt
Bobbin Thread: Madera 9490 AeroQuilt
Binding: 1/16" polyester piping cording from Pieces Be With You

I can't believe I never took photos of these placemats after I finished them - they turned out super fun. They were a gift for my friend, Ann's, 80th birthday. We have helped her and her husband host an annual dinner party/fundraiser for the Scouts at their summer home on Lake Ontario for the past few years. 

They have a passel of grandkids and I thought these placemats would be fun for their summer family gatherings.

They are based on the "Inside Out Mats" pattern by Poor House Quilt Designs. I used Pellon Flexible Foam as the middle layer and put a really sweet pastel pictorial garden and birds print on the backs, so they are reversible.

August 2024 update: When we joined Ann and Leon for the annual dinner this year, Ann had the table set with these placemats with the pastel side showing. They looked really elegant along side the beautiful cut flowers from them garden. After dinner, she had the guests turn them over to reveal the fun veggie and fruit sides.

When my niece, Megan, let me know she was expecting another boy, I decided to make the new arrival a a close copy of his older brother's I Spy... quilt. Tommy's was done in grey. Danny's is done in blue. Most of the image blocks are different between the two quilts with just a couple exceptions.

I particularly liked the backing fabric I found for this quilt with all the undersea creatures - one more place where I Spy can be played.

Fabrics: 100% cotton
Batting: 2 layers Dream Cotton
​Thread: TuttiFrutti & Aurifil 50

I was blown away to learn that "When Will It Bee Spring?" was awarded a First Place ribbon in the Wall Quilts - First Entry in an AQS Daytona Beach Contest category!

What an honor! I am so excited. I did not attend the show, but was so happy that my friend Carolyn was there and captured such a great photo of the quilt with its ribbon. I am so please with how they lit the quilt to really show off the quilting!

This quilt was started in Genesee Valley Quilt Club's Fall Migration workshop. The pattern is by Sue Donovan.

The squares in the outer border were inset using Sue Heinz' "elmer-ing" technique from her "You've Got a Friend Named Elmer" lecture at GVQC last fall. The binding was applied using Sharon Schamber's technique.

I used this as another opportunity to get comfortable quilting on my newly acquired Bernina Q20. It combines rulerwork and free-motion quilting. The metallic thread was a little problematic to work with, but once I switched to a metallic needle, it went pretty smoothly.

This quilt is being donated to Greater Rochester Habitat for Humanity to be auctioned at their Gala in April 2023. Follow-up: this quilt sold for $200 at the auction.

Fabrics: Cotton
Quilting Threads: Madeira Variegated Metallic, WonderFil DecoBob, Glide Trilobal Polyester
Bobbin Thread: WonderFil DecoBob
Batting: Hobbs Wool

It was our turn to host New Year's Day brunch this year. I had a collection of black & white fabrics with silver, gold and moire metallic patterns that I purchased many years ago with the idea of making a festive tablecloth. I think my original intention was to use the fabrics in large chunks so I didn't have a lot of seams to finish.

But, somehow I lost sight of that idea and decided to make two tablecloths out of pieced 11" blocks. Days before New Year's I cut up all the fabrics and pieced some of the blocks. When it became apparent that I would never get them all pieced and sewn into two tablecloths, I switched gears and sewed two sets of three blocks together to use on the center of each table. Raw edges showing I put them on white tablecloths with crystal candlesticks and white candles and my tables looked beautiful! I wish I taken a photo :-(

After the holiday, I regrouped and decided that assembling all my blocks into whole tablecloths was a bad idea. How would I ever wash them with all those raw seam allowances? Everyone who attended the brunch really liked my makeshift tablerunners, so I decided to go that route. I had enough blocks to make 18 tablerunners! Fourteen are 3-blocks in a rectangle and four are 4-blocks in a square.  It's too bad the photos don't show how these guys sparkle!

I wonder which of my friends and family will be receiving these as gifts next holiday season?

When my brother-in-law, John, turned 70 this October I asked if he would like a quilt for his birthday - perhaps a t-shirt quilt like I'd made for his brother, my husband. He jumped at the offer and delivered his selected t-shirts to David during their boys' weekend at Massawepie in November.

I could find nothing in my stash that coordinated well with the t-shirts, so I did a bit of shopping. I selected the neutral tan/grey for the sashing and purchased six or seven options for the outer borders. When John & Alice were here for Thanksgiving, they helped select the border I used.

The back is cotton flannel. I was hoping to emulate David's t-shirt quilt that has a grey sweatshirt material as batting and backing. I didn't think just the flannel would be enough, so I added a wool batting. It made for a VERY warm and cozy quilt. I hope John won't find it TOO warm! It also made for a much puffier quilt than David's, which made the quilting stand out more than I would have liked for this type of quilt. In certain lighting, like in the photo below, the quilting makes the text hard to read on some of the shirts.

Fabric: Cotton T-shirts, woven cotton (sashing & border), cotton flannel (backing)
Batting: Hobbs Wool
Thread: Aurifil 50wt cotton, Superior Threads Monopoly, miscellaneous 50wt cotton and cotton/poly threads

This is a comfort quilt. The blocks were made by a variety of quilters. My friend, Carolyn, assembled them into a quilt top. I did the quilting.

In September, I took a class online with Bethanne Nemesh called "Freehand Florals." This quilt was my chance to practice some of what I learned in the class. Look closely at the sashing and you will see the flowers, leaves and swirls that I freehand quilted there. The daisies on the block points were also freehand quilted, but these were not from Bethanne's class.

I really loved this cheerful quilt and had lots of fun working on it.

I made this tablerunner as a housewarming gift for our friends Kim & Richard after they had us for dinner at their newly renovated Canandaigua Lake house.

It is made using two hand-dyed fabrics from Heide Stoll-Weber that I acquired from Carol Taylor's stash before she moved. These cotton fabrics have a gorgeous sheen that makes this quilt just glow. But, it also made it very difficult to photograph.

The back of the quilt was so beautiful that I decided to stitch the labels in matching thread to make them disappear. That way, I hoped it could be used as a two-sided quilt.