Pickleball and Sewing Day at Palm Creek

What a combination--pickleball and sewing...played another round robin set of 6 games this morning at one of the 12 pickleball courts they have here at Palm Creek. Since so many of the serious, ranked pickleball players have left for northern destinations, the remaining serious players don't mind taking a beginning player like me under their wings for some pointers and game experience. As a matter of fact, some 4.0+ players (5 is the highest level in the pickleball association) invited me into a match for some skills practice and pointers. I got some great game experience this morning with them and thoroughly enjoyed it. But it was the fastest game they had played in a long time......

But it's time crunch time on a quilt I've been procrastinating on, mainly because of lack of space to sew on a big quilt in the RV....There's a terrific sewing room here at Palm Creek and tons of room to spread out quilts and projects. Pickleball has kept me busy, but now it's time to get rollin' on this tee shirt quilt for a friend of my daughter, Kelly. I volunteered to make it, not exactly sure how I was going to make it, but I had a general idea... Since the tee shirts had all different sizes of logos, it was too difficult to try and make them all the same size and put borders on each square, which is kind of the traditional way to assemble a quilt.  So I cut off the sleeves and split the shirts up the sides, and then cut the logos into squares. Some of the tees had smaller logos on the back or on a sleeve, so I cut some of those to save and use on the quilt. Then I am appliqueing them onto the surface of the fabric using a buttonhole stitch.

in rough form up on the quilt wall

My little Brother Runway sewing machine (about 165.00 from WalMart) cannot handle the size of this quilt, and I was getting really frustrated. Palm Creek not only offers quilting rulers, tables and other supplies for you to use for free, but they also have excellent Janome sewing machines to rent for 1.00 a day! So I rented one and sewed all afternoon. What a difference it makes to be able to use a fine machine (i.e. expensive one) instead of a little one.....It looks like I will be able to at least get the quilt far enough a long by the end of the week that I can finish it while on the road again doing the hand quilting....I'm going to hand quilt circles randomly all over to finish out the top. The backing is a reverse of the black--white background with black circles. I think it's going to turn out ok for free lancing a first time tee shirt quilt!

Sparky, the serious sewer

There's a lady in the sewing room who has been working on a landscape quilt for weeks...Her name is Cheryl Pratt....she's been working on a grist mill original quilt--not from a pattern, but from a PHOTO. Here is her quilt--she's putting on the finishing touches and getting ready to put on the back:

Look at the way she uses her colors to show perspective and dimension and individual details such as the leaves:

The grout in the bricks:

Wow! Even if you are a guy reading this, you have to admire the craftsmanship!  She has a website and here it is......Cheryl Pratt's Fiber Art.....amazing stuff and a very talented fiber artist!  It looks like we are going to do one  last road trip tomorrow to one of the famous missions here in Arizona....see you then.....