~ Autumn ~

Autumn has set in all the way here in northern Italy. We had a lot of rain last weekend and the leaves are covering like a soft and somber colored carpet the roads and people's yards. I miss the fiery fall colors of Pennsylvania, since in my country, fall is brown and pale yellow.

~ Summer was very busy, but I did get to sew some.

I made a piece for a national contest entiled "Are you ready to sin?" (the new banner is part of that piece) I chose "Greed" as the capital sin to be represented, all in yellow and gold, the requirement was to make a banner (cm 150x15) and a specific color was assigned to each capital sin. I printed two verses and worked the banner in seven sections joined together by small golden gromets and metallic gold cord . It is quite difficult to photograph a banner, so this is a small part of it. I did a lot of couching with different cords and threads on the surface, mostly in gold.

Sewed a baby quilt for a friend who became grandmother to baby girl Aurora.

Sewed a wallhanging for the twinship between Valbruna Patchwork Club and Fuerteventura (the panel was in the exposition "Mari e Monti" in Gran Tarajal, Canary Islands ~ Spain, in September) to honour and remember my friend Germana.

Made a quilted tote bag for my mom Lia....I wished I could have sewn more....

~ Now I am back teaching some classes, preparing a new class with a Christmas project and waiting for Vincent to come back from a few weeks in the Usa visiting and sharing our work in Italy to old and new churches. ~

~I thought I share with you a quilt I made two years ago that I like a lot. It's called "Autumn in Vermont". It is quite large, I used hand dyed fabrics, the dark brown is commercial, crazy pattern for the block (Karla Alexander).

The peculiarity of this quilt is that I machine quilted free motion many leaves, one by one (not in a continuous line) each has starting stitches and finishing ones. When a friend asked how many leaves where on the quilt, I answered: " Maybe 200...". I decided to count them. Took out straight pins and counted 100 at the time and placed them on the leaves.....I was astonished when got to the last leaf....they were 550!

I had so much fun quilting them, I wanted to fill all the gaps on the surface of the quilt, so I quilted more and more and more.....Many decorative threads were used, rayons, aurilux, metallics........

The piece received quite a lot of attention in the april show featuring my contemporary work in the Venetian Villa Widmann and it is one of my favourites.

Which one of your quilts is your current favourite and why?

Have a nice evening, always stitching

~ Roberta ~