The Reiman Gardens Garden Quilt Show….We called it the best quilt show we’ve ever been to…not because it had superior quilts or more quilts than any other, but because it combined quilts, gardens, and butterflies all in one lovely afternoon my mom and I spent together August 15.

I didn’t take notes, so I won’t be able to attribute these quilts to their rightful creators or designers, so I just want to show you a little quilters’ eye candy.  This show was amazing!

This photo show the breadth of the show…it was housed in the wide atrium hallway of the entrance building. It was a sunny and beautiful place to view the quilts.

I do remember that this beauty above was by Joann Belling. I love the way the large butterfly jumps out of the edge of the quilt. Click to see the colorful details.

The back room had a collection of wonderful sun leaf prints. Above is a gorgeous quilt made with many multi-colored prints, the blue fern below one was our favorite.

We also really liked the glass bottle sculptures. My mom confessed that she had already been saving blue bottles to make a sculpture for her garden. I think she got some great inspiration from this display!

Out in the gardens we glimpsed some butterflies roaming free, and some of the cute little gnomes that were scattered throughout.

Some were hidden amongst the flowers, but this one was hard to miss!

And last, but definitely not least, we went through the butterfly atrium. It was just amazing how many beautiful butterflies surrounded us there. They were flying all around, landing on flowers, shoes or heads and posing for some great photos!

If you’re not already a reader of the Pleasant Home blog, you should check it out.

Jodi writes a nice blog with lots of quilting inspiration, as well as projects, recipes and ideas for making your house a pleasant home.

Recently she featured Quilties in her “Needle Little Inspiration” section! It was so nice to be “found” by Jodi!! But then even better was that I found her blog by being featured. My friend Doris emailed me to say, “Congrats on your blog mention at Pleasant Home Creations”…so I had to do a quick search and find this blog. Well, I’m a follower now…and loving her latest “Needle Little Inspiration”s.

Here are some other gems from her site…

This tutorial for this super cute “Mini Double Hourglass Block”…

Her “In the Kitchen” Section featuring recipes for lots of yummy & pretty treats…

And she has a shop on Etsy…only a few fabric treats, but worth “hearting.”

Anyway, bookmark it or subscribe or whatever you do, but keep tabs on Pleasant Home Creations!

A quick Wikipedia search for “Kathmandu” turned up some beautiful imagery!! I was looking for a color scheme for my newest embroidery project using a fabric line called Kathmandu by Mark Lipinski. I found out the sky’s the limit for colors! Those hats are my new desktop wallpaper, aren’t they pretty?!

Stay tuned to see what I’m going to do with all these colors…

I just got some fun online toys from an online web-design course I’m taking…that I think would be great for quilters!! That’s right, web designers AND quilters. Color scheme generators!! Later we can talk about the more traditional ways, such as finding inspiration in nature, art, photos THE COLOR WHEEL, etc. but for now, just play with this free technology and maybe even challenge yourself to make a quilt out of it!

Click on the little square box in the lower right. Choose a color, any color in that rainbow, to be your FOCAL color, then click ok. Then you can move around the sliders to see what other colors you get to go with it.

I also like this one: Color Wheel Spinner…It just gives you three random colors!! You’d be surprised at how many random color sets look good together! Go click SPIN

Have a colorful day!

UPDATE: I just found another widget that actually does what I suggested (using a photo to create your color scheme!) Try this, it’s really cool!! (click the file radio button, then find a photo)

Look at this quilt cabinet!!

I’m so impressed by how much Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts gets quilted! She has a great sense of style too…I’m following this blog, I thought you might like to see it too.

We visited our families last weekend in one sweeping trip through Minnesota. I didn’t get to spend much time there, but I always love to see my mom’s garden. Here are some highlights:

Credit: This is the garden of Ginny Thomas, Sauk Centre, MN

My studio is back up and I’ve been creating!! Before I get out my camera and show you what I’ve been up to, I’d really like to start a new thread. I’d like to share my photography with you…not just photos of my other art. I’ve seen this done in another blog and really loved the inspiration!! (Thanks http://sugarloop.blogspot.com/)

My inspiration this week has been the Living History Farms in our town. The way people lived in the 1860’s – early 1900’s…life was hard. Some of it seems so romantic, elegant and simple…but then…life was hard!