August 13 was International Left-Handers Day. Yes, I know it's August 18 today. I'm only five days late acknowledging this date. To right-handers this day may not seem significant. But being left-handed has been a life-long adjustment to right-handers and their world. I have to teach cutting and quilting techniques with someone across from me, not next to me, and use mirror-imaging. Rather than continue to whine, I am celebrating with an entry in the
First Annual International LEFT-HANDED Quilters Anonymous Online Quilt Show with my best quilt. This is Jinny Beyer's
Around the World design and her fabrics. The center and corners involved paper-piecing, a technique that baffles some left-handers. What I love about this quilt is its luminescence. It hangs in my studio.
I do have to enter a second piece in the category of Best Quilt.
Out of Africa is an original design and it represents one of my first attempts to break out of the traditional quilting mold. The center is woven, there's some interesting surface quilting, and the borders are read ethnic. The piece hangs at the
Salt Creek Wine Bar in Brookfield, Illinois, where John and I had our 60th-70th birthday party almost two years ago.
For more of this left-handed quilt festival,
check it out here.
Mary P, the first and former president of the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild, let us know a few months ago about the 100 Days of Modern Quilting project. I submitted 3 of my quilts and got very nice thank-yous for two of them. The third one was "Out of Africa," pictured here. I asked Marc (see his quilts here) to take a photo of "Out of Africa," a quilt I gifted to the Salt Creek Wine Bar in Brookfield. It's where John and I had our birthday party two years ago. Here's the original blog post from two years ago. I love this quilt and think it would be pretty neat if it became a part of the 100 Quilts project! 
