Happy Independence Day

Whee, look at my display for the 4th of July - I'm really happy with it - much better than last year's (see the post and learn more about the four quilts on the right side).


Several of these quilts are hung on mini 3M Command Hooks which work great. I also tried something new to cure the wobbles - I used hookless stickies on the bottom quilt corners. The little tabs are barely noticeable.

I have a bit of Christmas in July going on here. These gorgeous patriotic Santas were a gift from my sweet Dad. These are cypress knee carvings by Bill Evans, whom I adore and highly recommend. I now have three knees he carved and I love them all.

This is America with Flag. I hate naming quilts, just try to come up with something descriptive... I wrote about quilting the next two quilts in this post from last July.

Blue with Stars. Check out Kathie's quilt - we were both inspired by the same piece in Small Endearments but came out with different results.

Even though I finished the quilting on these two small quilts last year, I didn't get them bound and finished until this month. I'm lazy and I just hate that part.

I washed these two quilts and Liberty Blooms together. (I'd added more hand quilting to Blooms even though it was already bound and sleeved - just looked too barren and I hate underquilted quilts.) After a delicate cold bath in the washing machine and a short visit to the dryer, red had bled all over the stems in Blooms and some blue had bleed on America. That was even with Color Catchers tossed in.

So I put those two quilts in a big pot with several more Color Catchers and added hot tap water. I kept stirring so the quilts never just sat there. After quite a bit of dye released into the water I drained it out and added more hot water. I did that five times before the water was mostly clear. And that did the trick, the bleeding was out.

My sweetie and I celebrated with antipasti at our favorite Italian restaurant. Not quite hotdogs and potato chips, but it sure was yummy.