This past week was crazy busy, with something to do, someplace to be or an appointment to keep every single day. Most of it was fun, though, with a wonderful drive with a car club on Wednesday through the lush green of summer in the mountains. The weather was nice, with wispy clouds, and our drive took us past fields and farms, mostly in the valleys and then to Saluda for lunch.

I love seeing fog on the mountain top like this, as we drove by.

Then, on Thursday, I went to the Asheville Quilt Guild show and it was amazing. This medallion quilt was pieced by Kathryn Zimmerman from a commercial pattern called Wild Goose Island and quilted by Julia Quiltoff. It won an Outstanding Machine Workmanship award.

The custom quilting was extraordinary. Note that each section has a different pattern in the quilting. An idea I’ve not seen before is in the black background section on the bottom. There are five lines of matchstick quilting, then a bit of a space between the next set of five lines. There were echo lines, cross hatching, feathers and lots more.

This one was Best of Show. It was pieced and appliqued by Jane Zillmer and custom quilted by Lisa Arndt.

Another astounding quilt with beautifully done needle-turn applique and gorgeous custom quilting.

The award for Outstanding Hand Quilting went to Sue Marra for her stunning applique quilt all hand quilted. Note the different motifs in the quilting, from feathers around the medallion, to cross hatching and small medallions around the frame. Truly amazing, it hung absolutely flat. I cannot imagine how long this took to complete.

I forgot to take my camera to the show, so I didn’t take a lot of photos with my phone, only a few that really caught my eye. I loved this Christmas Quilt with its individual applique Santas, tiny pieces in the pieced blocks, and generous sparkle from crystals. The blocks are individually custom quilted, and it won not only a first place in its category, but also an award from the Longarm Association for Hand Guided Longarm Quilting.

Here’s a close up of a few of the blocks. Some of the sparkly crystals are more visible here.

The category that really caught me by surprise was the member challenge to create a wall hanging depicting the recovery from Hurricane Helene. There were over a dozen to see, each one with a thought provoking image and story. Two of them really stood out. First, this one called Beacon in the Darkness created by Jennifer Haines. Some of the hexagons were just hinged on the quilt, and when lifted up revealed not only a photo of a radio broadcaster, but an audio clip of an announcement after the storm. As both our county radio stations were off the air in the days after the hurricane, this station was one of the few ways to get information about streets closed and other vital information.

The other one that really made me stop was this one, an original design called Step by Step by Stephanie Wilds. The detail in this piece was incredible. Each step had an embroidered phrase detailing a step to recovery – beginning with the bottom step of First responders clear debris, Neighbors help clear driveways. Next step says Cell, internet and electricity restored, Soup kitchens and volunteers arrive. Each step details some part of our pulling together as neighbors and towns, and aid from other areas of our state with the help of the nation. In the foreground, a destroyed house and broken railroad, with downed power lines. Farther up, electric and utility workers from multiple states come to help restore power. In the background, our beautiful mountains. It was such a powerful collage of images and words.

These quilts made me remember those days, when it was up to neighbors to help each other. Our home had power from our generator, and water from our well. My husband helped two other neighbors get generators going, while our freezer held precious cargo for another neighbor. We filled water jugs for neighbors, and helped move debris. We each gave what we could, and helped each other. Two neighbors with chain saws worked for two days to get a path out from our street to the main road from multiple downed trees. I wrote about much of it on this post – Dealing with the Aftermath. We are approaching the one year anniversary of the disaster next month, and I admit a certain amount of apprehension with hurricane Erin in the Atlantic headed this way, even though the forecasters say it will turn out to sea.

For the first week or so, we couldn’t watch the news as there was no internet. So I didn’t see the flooding coverage and was not aware of the mudslides coming down mountains in other parts of the area. I am grateful for that, as it would have been additional stress for us with our own mountainside. Luckily, nothing like that happened here, but the video of another person’s horror was truly frightening. If you have Discovery Channel, the show “In the Eye of the Storm – Hurricane Helene’s Appalachian Hellscape” will run again tonight, Sunday, at 10 pm Eastern Daylight Time. You can also watch it on demand if you have YouTube TV or a similar streaming service. You can see some of the footage taken by residents as the flood waters rose and destruction raged. Watching flood waters wrap a tractor trailer around a pole, seeing houses split apart, witnessing the destructive power of wind and massive flooding is almost unbelievable. But it happened. We are grateful that we didn’t suffer more damage, that our home came through without any real damage beyond a bent gutter. Some trees were lost, and clean up took a while. But things are back to normal for us.

This week, I will finish my final preparations of my Mountain State Fair entries. I have all the labels made for the quilts and sewn on. I’ve got almost all of the craft items ready. I have a recipe plan for every cooking contest I am entering. I still need to finish stamping the cards and mounting the photographs. Amazingly, I will be finished more than a week in advance this year. Sweet.

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