Gail Garber Designs
gail@gailgarber.com
https://gailgarber.com/

Logo: Gail Garber Designs

Gail's Quilting Blog

Quilts by Gail

The Comfort of Stitch

This creation by Lee-Ann Newton, won viewer’s choice as well as best non-traditional quilt at Symposium Taupo. She purchased an old quilt top and then painted over the surface and quilted it. It is truly an amazing original piece! One of the many wonderful quilts at Symposium!

20130725-182928.jpg

Add your comment!

Drafting Lambs by Alison Henson

Alison Henson brought this beautiful quilt to class yesterday. Called “Drafting Lambs”, it was done from a photo taken at weaning time. This original design features her husband Alan, Dean Lindsey and Jim Brooks. Iris dedicated to the memory of Jim Brooks who farm shared with them from 2003 to his untimely death in 2011. What an amazing quilt this is!

20130723-130218.jpg

Add your comment!

Tiny Trees, New Zealand Style

Today is day 2 of my three day design workshop, Flying Colors. Yesterday, Marilyn Foreman brought her completed project to class.

20130722-061821.jpg

She made the Tiny Trees pattern from my book, but then designed her own outer border using pointy Dudes! I just love it! Thanks for sharing Marilyn.

Add your comment!

Sensational Stars

Down under classes in Taupo!

20130721-061914.jpg

Yesterday, we finished the 2-day Sensational Star and Circular Borders class! Great class and amazing students! Everyone finished their center and had also designed the first border of their original designs! Way to go, girls!

Add your comment!

Tea with Hazel

20130718-204947.jpg

Thanks for bearing with me as I learn the idiosyncrasies of posting via the WordPress App on my IPad. I have learned that I can’t really post complex posts with multiple images, so I’ll save those posts until I return.

One of the highlights of my time in Auckland was tea at the lovely home of Hazel Foot. A well-known New Zealand quilter, Hazel showed us one of her new quilts, the one that is hanging in the tutor’s exhibit at the Taupo Symposium wher we are both teaching this week.

Add your comment!

Down Under – Another New Zealand Adventure

New Zealand Forest at Kawau Island

New Zealand Forest at Kawau Island

By the time you read this, I should have already landed in Auckland, where I will have a few days of fun with my friend Diane Anderson, before heading over to Taupo to teach for the 2013 New Zealand Quilt Symposium.

Jeanette Gillies Design

Jeanette Gillies Design

I am looking forward to meeting friends, new and old at Symposium.  This Round Robin Quilt was made by Jeanette Gillies, of Wanaka on South Island, yours truly, and others as a round robin many years ago.

New Zealand Quilting and Textile Tour

New Zealand Quilting and Textile Tour

If you’d like to join me for another New Zealand quilting adventure, check out my website.  I am leading a tour to North Island in April of 2014!

I may have a lag in posts while I am gone as I will have more limited access to the internet and will only have my iPad with me.  I look forward to regaling you with my adventures when I return at the end of the month.

 

 

 

 

Add your comment!

My Day Off: Fernbank Natural History Museum

Fernbank Natural History Muesum

Fernbank Natural History Museum

Many thanks to Jodi Buhay, the program chair for the Chattahoochie Evening Stars, took me to visit one of her favorite destinations in Atlanta – Fernbank Natural History Museum! The special exhibit was Extreme Mammals, and let me tell you, there were some very weird, but now extinct critters there.

Very big Dinosaur

The Big One

I can’t remember the name of this huge fellow, but can you imagine meeting him while out on a walk in the grasslands!

Pre-bird Dino

Pre-bird Dino

We also met this rather large fellow, but I am not quite sure if it was a Archeopteryx, the first bird.

Fly Like a Bat!

Fly Like a Bat!

From large to small, the exhibit was very interesting and informative.  Back in the gift shop, they even had bat wings, so I could make like a bat and fly away!  Home to New Mexico, but not for long!

 

 

Add your comment!

Inspiration

Black Spruce

Black Spruce

It was during a previous trip to Alaska and also Canada when I fell in love with these hopelessly tall, skinny trees.  It seemed, to my novice eye, that they were so fragile that any strong wind would simply blow them over.  At about the same time, I was searching for a Northern Hawk Owl, an elusive species that I had been told liked to sit in the very tops of these trees!  So, I drove around this very large state looking, and looking and looking.

Black Spruce Bog

Black Spruce Bog

Sometimes Black Spruce grow along the edges of bogs, like these little fellows.  However, this is a well adapted tree, perfectly suited to life in the northernmost portions of our continent where permafrost can and does alter the surface of the land on a regular basis through frost heaves and other dramatic climate shifts.  After looking for that blasted owl for what seemed like an eternity, I just gave up.  There simply must be billions of these trees in Alaska and not all of them are near a road either, not that there are many roads in Alaska.  Soon I began to enjoy them for what they were, a plant that thrives where others fail.  They became my inspiration!  Upon returning home (from that previous trip)

Tiny Trees (c) 2009

Tiny Trees (c) 2009

I could not resist turning them into a small wall quilt.  This is one of the patterns in my book, Flying Colors.  And,

Land of Midnight Sun

Land of Midnight Sun

they also feature prominently in Land of the Midnight Sun, also from 2009 and featured in my book.  However, this quilt was inspired more strongly by the discovery of a fabric called Aurora Borealis in an Alaskan Quilt Shop!  What fun!

I hope I get to return one day!  What inspires you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add your comment!