The Secret's Out!

I've been biting my tongue for almost a year and a half about a new project my friend (and fellow Sew-Ho), Susi has been involved in. About a year ago, she mentioned
that she had some individual quilt blocks she wanted me to quilt for her, but that it was very hush-hush.
These are what she brought to me:

And here's what I came up with. One has a great big shadow which was my hand on the zoom. Again. (Quiet, Carla!)




She'd had a brilliant idea to produce life-sized, detailed puzzles from images of 16" quilted blocks that could be used to educate the next generation of quilters. And she chose me to quilt them for her. After what seemed like forever, she found a manufacturer that could guarantee the product quality she required, and had custom packaging designed. Susi's marketing team worked with her to select which quilts would reproduce best and production began. And now, they're finally ready! Here's the first two puzzles:


Is that cool or what?!
Even before she had the first ones done, Susi came to me again with another batch of potential puzzles:





There's no telling which ones will make the cut.
Susi's marketing them to independent quilt shops, boutiques, and quilt guilds (wth whom she makes special arrangements so they can use them as a guild fundraiser.) Check out her website UnCommon Quilts, which, by the way, has several of my quilts alternating on the homepage like this:


Congratulations, Susi, on pursuing your dream and making it happen!

Crazy Chicken

Although I've owned many a crazy chicken in my life (especially the Polish Crested's) I've never owned one as crazy as this!


It was made for me by a very dear quilting friend as a Thank You gift. She gave it to me at our guild meeting last month, and I must say I was (and am still) floored! It's almost 12" tall and weighs almost 10 pounds, and is incredibly beautiful. I'd mentioned about 18 months ago that I'd seen one at a Crazy Quilting gathering at my retreat facility and she filed that info away and worked on it secretly for a year. I'm thoroughly humbled that Shirley would go through so much effort for me. She's also a very talented longarm quilter and you can see her work at Shirley's Machine Quilting