Pray for Paris

My heart is heavy today because of the terrorism attacks that happened in Paris yesterday. My heart, thoughts and prayers go out to the people who were involved in these atrocities. I pray that the people who died find peace in the afterlife, the people who got hurt have a swift and painless recovery. I pray for the families and loved ones of the people who were care for the people who got hurt. I pray for the firefighters, doctors, police officers, nurses, volunteers and all of the caretakers that serve to bring calm and order to the chaos.I even pray for the people who committed the atrocities, that they learn the errors in their ways, and for their families who now have to deal with the aftermath and potentially being terrorized themselves. 

It sickens me even more to know that they are the acts of ISIS, a terrorism group that uses the word Islamic in its title. Their acts do not represent the faith of Islam and their beliefs are not the beliefs of most of the people who practice the faith.

If you look at the picture of the Islamic tile quilt I am making, the red is a stylized representation of Arabic. It says Mohammed. In the center, in the cream, is a cross.  At first, it bothered me that there was a cross in my Islamic quilt, but I think that it is there to show that we are one.  We worship the same God. I hope that we don't turn this into a war of religion or country or culture, when really it is some fanatics who are to blame.

My Trunk Show

Soma who blogs over at Whims and Fancies is hosting an online quilt truck show called "Trunk Full of Quilts".   It's really a ploy just to see my quilts, and I am happy to indulge her.

Welcome to High Road Quilter, where I, Shasta Matova, make quilts at a slow, incremental pace.  I spend a few minutes almost every day in some sort of quilting activity, and those few minutes add up and then eventually, I have a finished quilt to show on my blog.  To keep the blog (and quilting) from being boring ("Look, I sewed a seam", "Look, I sewed another seam!"), I work on more than one quilt at a time, which slows down the pace to Finished! even more. This trunk show will show that quilts can happen, even a few minutes at a time.

These aren't necessarily my favorite. I just pulled out some pictures of quilts that I may not have shown on my blog for a while.  Here they are, in no particular order:

This is a little quilt I made for my sister.  The center is a panel I found at a quilt store, and I worked around it with ribbons, beads and tassels.  It was a fun quilt to make.  I have since purchased many more beads and ribbons so I can make more without-a-pattern quilts in the future.

This wreath quilt is one of my first applique quilts. It was fun to make.  The cross hatch quilting in the center was recommended by the pattern, but it was difficult to do since I did not want to quilt over the applique.  I've always wanted to make a similar quilt with the cross hatching done before the applique, but haven't done it yet. If you look closely, you will see that I even added embroidery on the leaves.

This quilt was made impulsively following a pattern I found on a blog. It was put together very quickly and was a lot of fun to make.

This is one of my few bed size quilts.  It is one of my favorites.  It is an I-spy quilt inspired by Weeks Ringle.  You are supposed to follow the lines to tell a story.  I changed it up by also making it a maze. You can follow the blank spaces and find your way out. There are two mazes in there - one is shorter than the other one.When I gave it to my niece, she took a toy car along the maze, so it is also a road!  This one was a lot of piecing and organizing, but it was worth it in the end.

This is a fun little quilt I made with my leftovers of my four patch posey quilt.  I used some beads and ribbon on it. This a great quilt concept to cut four identical pieces and switch them around to get mirror images.  I hope to make more of these in the future. I also hope to finish the original quilt that this was a leftover of.  I gave this quilt away.

I gave this denim quilt to my daughter. It is made out of blue jeans - lots and lots of them.  It took a long time to make, but I liked the casual look of the quilt.  It was also stress free because it didn't have to be made perfectly.  Any "mistakes" just went with the mood of the quilt.

This is a little quilt I made as part of the Small Quilts Yahoo group with Kathy Tracey. They have quilt challenges every month, and while I would like to make a quilt a month, my sewing schedule doesn't allow that.

I hope you have enjoyed my little trunk show.  I  hope it gives you a sampling of the kinds of quilts I make.  Most of the quilts pictured are pretty traditional, but I make modern quilts, art quilts, improv quilts, crazy quilts, and any other kind of quilt too.  Please you come back and visit me again. You are welcome anytime!


Here's more details about the Trunk Full of Quilts Show if you want to participate too.  The trunk show link party will start on November 10th and end on November 18th.

All you have to do is write a blog post including photos and a little description of each of your favorite quilted projects (they do not have to be from 2015, but they must be finished projects). Then visit Soma's page and link up.

Dog Gone Cute Winner!

Lorna Mahon of Sew Fresh Quilts had a quilt-along of her quilt pattern, Dog Gone Cute.

Many bloggers participated in the quilt-along by making one or more blocks, and blogging about their completed project using these blogs.  One of them was Carol from Just Let Me Quilt. Carol made a beautiful quilt with black, white and gray dogs on a red background, but she did more than just provide inspiration. She also offered a prize.  And I won a gift certificate from her favorite store, Quilt Taffy.   Thank you so much Carol!

For my gift certificate, I chose the book Farm Girl Vintage by Lori Holt of Bee in my Bonnet.  Lori also makes sweet blocks that are shown in quiltalongs around the blogosphere.

This is a spiral bound book that has 15 blocks in 6" and 12" inch sizes, and some setting blocks like a barns, silo and tractor, and some mix and match setting quilts.  I think I am going to make mine stand alone quilts.  I am going to see if I can find a way to put them on a scrapbook stand that I have. I figure that they will be quicker to make than bigger quilts, take up less space, and I can switch them out throughout the year.

So thank you to Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts, Carol of Just Let me Quilt, Corrie from Quilt Taffy, Lori of Bee in My Bonnet and the United States Postal Service for setting up the circumstances for me to have this book in my hot little hands!

Progress on my Tile Quilt

I've been working on my tile quilt for a few minutes (15 minutes to 2 hours) a day, and have been making progress in getting all the rows in place. It is a fun puzzle to put together.  Just a few more seams and I will have a top.

I know the Yellow Brick Road quilt on the wall is attracting the attention, but notice that there is nothing but tile quilt on the table. I had to clean my dining table for a family so I put away all the other WIPs and am working on the tile quilt only.

Since the Elephant Parade is still a WIP, I put this African quilt on the other quilt wall instead.  Zeus says Hi.

This isn't my tree, but I just love the shape and color of it.  I deliberately put my umbrella in the picture because I am late in taking this picture and the leaves on the top of the tree had fallen off. Plus it makes it a story.

Meanwhile back at my house, there is an annual lottery. As you can see in this picture, there are a lot of mature trees in the neighborhood.   Each year, the winds decide which house is going to get gifted with all the leaves.  I kid you not, it winds up being a different house each year.  Well, this year, it is my turn. I like raking leaves, but this year, I have to keep reminding myself that I like raking leaves.  

Christmas Quilts and More

Don't ask me how, because I don't remember, but I became a member of the Quilting Research Panel for American Patchwork and Quilting.  And I received a copy of Christmas Quilts and More in the mail as a gift. It's so nice to get fun mail, and I had forgotten it was coming so it was completely unexpected.

It is filled with delightful projects (47 of them according to the cover) for the holidays.  I took some photos of my favorites - it was hard to pick just a few.  And I am showing you the pictures that didn't turn out blurry.  Hey, that is one way to make the selection smaller!  And as luck would have it, these aren't on the cover, so you can get a peek at other projects in the magazine.

Drum roll.  I present to you the Top 5 projects in Christmas Quilts and More.

There are bigger projects in the magazine too, but my attention was drawn to the small fast ones.  A lot of these used felt, which I haven't seen around much.  I thought wool was the hip thing, and felt was for kids crafts, these are really cute. You could easily make these as gifts for your family and friends, and still have time to enjoy the holidays.

Home Improvement

I painted my ceramic tiles, and took them outside to seal them.  Here they are, outside, waiting for the seal to dry. Aren't they just so pretty?

My neighbor was curious what I was doing, so I told him, and he said, as several others have said, "YOU are going to do it? Alone?"  I was actually fairly confident about my abilities to put up the tile, but after so many have doubted them, I started doubting them too.  And over time, I figured out why.  The tile cutter I bought to cut these tiles doesn't work for them.  They are so small, that the cuts have to be exactly in the middle to get them to snap.  And of course, I need them to be at the 3/4ths line to work in my kitchen.

I hired my ex to do some electrical work around the house.  I just had to move my outside outlet higher up so that a porch could be installed.  But I figured that since he was here, I might as well make a list of all the electrical work I had been putting off.  The doorbell hasn't worked for years, but I have a dog and people can knock so it isn't a big deal to fix.  A light fixture I would like replaced, etc.  It turned out that my list was rather long, and he spent a couple of days to get everything done.
He's the one that explained to me that my tile cutter would not work and offered to help me cut the tiles.

I've put up the big tiles on the wall. That part is easy.  Some of the paint is wiping off, so I took the ones that weren't on the wall back outside for another couple coats of sealer.  Hope that works!  I will repaint the ones that didn't stay and seal again after the mortar has been put in.

I am just waiting for him to cut the ones to go around the outlets and the top row underneath the cabinets.  He was using a saw with a ceramic blade and it isn't working very well either.  But it means I have been living with my kitchen being in three rooms for a week while this work is being done. This makes it difficult to get the house ready for a birthday party I am hosting next weekend.

The tile quilt is getting put together quickly. Since the rows are mirrored, I can work two rows at a time.  But I haven't had much time to work on them.  Hopefully after the party, I will have a finished top to show you.

I've Been Making Tiles

The theme of the moment is Tiles, and I have been making lots of them.  I bought a bunch of ceramic tiles to use as a kitchen backsplash, and instead of putting them up as is, I got the bright idea to randomly paint stencil designs on them. I figured random would help if I ran out of a particular color of paint or had trouble with a particular stencil.  I've decided to limit the color palette to blues and greens. There are 25 octagon tiles for each sheet (about a square foot), and 33 sheets.  Please don't do the math. Let's just say it is a lot of stenciling, but it is easy to paint using a stencil. Right now, they are spread out all over the house to dry.

I've also been making the Islamic tile quilt I mentioned in my last post.  It is going well, but I am only working a few minutes a day on it. I caught up with all of the episodes of Orange is the new Black, so I should now have more time to work on cleaning and quilting.

In other news, I have been getting lots of free stuff in the mail.  I signed up to review products in exchange for a review. I knew it was easy to get books, but I didn't know how to get products.  But now, I know that there are lots of legit sites that do link you up with the people who want their products reviewed.  So far, I have received a selfie stick, Aloe Vera gel, a fancy shower head, and  a strap to prevent snoring.  It is interesting and fun to be able to try out new things you wouldn't think of trying.  And so far, they are high quality products that are worth getting.