What's blooming?

Yes, I know it's the day before Halloween and all my northern friends and family are or were, looking at beautiful Autumn foliage, Indian corn and pumpkins.
Well, we have our share of pumpkin patches here in South Florida but I had to share these with you before they are spent. These are the blossoms blooming in my backyard right now. The soft yellow blossoms some of you may recognize as the frangipani a.k.a. Plumeria. We started planting these a couple of years ago and now have several in our yard to enjoy. Soon though, they will drop all their leaves and just look like big bare sticks poking up out of the flower beds. In a few days the pink one should be blooming and I'll get a picture of that for you too. The other picture is one of our orchids hanging on the side of a cypress tree. I just love looking at the showy little blooms on this orchid, they are so ethereal and I think their color is fabulous.
I guess that's why it inspired me to design a block and include it in my Florida Album Quilt pattern which consists of 9 applique blocks. After living in Florida all of my adult life I decided it was time to design a quilt of some of my favorite Florida flora and fauna. There was no shortage of inspiration surrounding me. I have always enjoyed the outdoors, I love bird watching, discovering new plants, new butterflies, even some new bugs. Yes, we have bugs in Florida but we won't get into that. Anyway, I got out my sketch pad and started scribbling and then had to decide which critters and such were going to be in the quilt. Some people ask me why I didn't put a pink flamingo in the quilt. Well, one of my favorite birding spots is the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island (FL) and many times we have seen large flocks of Roseate Spoonbills gathered there and to me they are just as amazing and more "real" Florida, not "postcard" Florida, so I added them instead. And they're still pink !
Today I am working on a little surprise for everyone, so I better go get busy.
Til then, enjoy what's out your window.

Houston Blues

Today I have the "Houston Blues" This is the first time in five years that my friend Karen and I will not be at Quilt Market. I had too many conflicts this year and so we won't be there to see all the glorious new fabrics and notions and all my friends and customers that I usually only get to see at Houston. We'll also miss going to Josephine's restaurant for fabulous Italian dinners.
This image is from my booth last year. The pink and brown quilt behind me is "Chocolate Chips" and the pattern gives directions for 3 different size quilts.
The quilt behind Karen is "Spin Cylcle" and is perfect for large scale florals and prints ~ super quick and easy too!

As always it was a great Market and we had a chance to visit with Mark Lipinski a bit even though he was overwhelmed with visits due to his debut of his "Katmandu" fabric line.
We always love seeing all the other booth displays, especially the fabric vendors. They always seem to out do themselves each year. I'm sure it was unbelievably stressful for Quilts Inc. this year to get things in place after being hit by hurricane Ike recently. But in true form, they always come through for us quilters.
The year before last, we were watching our own scary scenario unfold as hurricane Wilma was bearing down on our hometown while we were at Market. Karey of Quilts Inc. was kind enough to have a TV brought into the exhibit hall turned to the weather channel for those of us from Florida so we could keep tabs on the storm. Well, as it turns out hurricane Wilma it hit Naples and our brave and fearless husbands battled out the storm on their own. Of course we came home to no electricity for about a week, which meant cooking meals on a camp stove and showering in a motor home, but our husbands and homes were intact and we considered ourselves very blessed.
So I guess this year I will have to make due with viewing Quilt Market online and hearing all about it from my friends and associates and then make plans to be there next year so I don't suffer from the "Houston Blues" again. I think right now a healthy dose of quilting will help to chase the blues away. Where's my thimble, where's the chocolate?

Don't look now- I'm blogging

Welcome to my blog,

I must give credit where credit is due. I have been pondering on starting a blog but it took some gentle pestering by my friend Karen to finally spur me into action. I told you I was a recovering procrastinator. Anyway, she follows several blogs and so now she will have one more to add to her reading list. Thank you Karen I hope you'll stop nagging me now - just kidding, I'm glad I'm finally blogging.

My husband just shakes his head when I tell him of my latest venture into the Internet world.
I've had my website for quite a while but when I told him I had an Etsy site and that I was starting a blog his eyes started to glaze over. But he's a sweetie and very supportive.

I hope to post quite regularly but when I am in a design fog it is sometimes hard to walk away from a new quilt and spend time at the keyboard. I am also a challenged typist. I am challenged because I never learned the "proper" way to type.

I am currently finishing up two new quilt designs for patterns and they are complete opposites.
I will be sure to share them with you when I get the photos. The patterns should be available by December.
If I had to name my "style" of quilts I would have to pick several. One would be "playful" another would be "contemporary" and then of course there's always the "what was I thinking" style! Oh well, we all have our days.
If you get a chance pop over to my website. www.thistledownquilts.com

Hope you have a creative day,
Linda