Mary Lou Hallenbeck of HD Designs was the guest speaker at our guild Monday night. Mary Lou is a very innovative designer and teacher. She has some of the cleverest ideas and techniques. She taught a workshop during the day and gave a beautiful presentation in the evening. I’ll share some pictures of her trunk show tomorrow. The workshop Mary Lou taught was her Alpine Wonder Quilt. For me, it was love at first sight from the time I saw Alpine Wonder on the Holiday 2008 cover of Keepsake Quilting.
I didn’t order the kit at the time because I felt I wasn’t confident enough as a quilter. I thought that this project was way beyond my skill level. So I saved the catalog and always knew that some day I would make Alpine Wonder. Well, I was fortunate enough to take the Alpine Workshop in October 2009 with Mary Lou!
I am sorry that you cannot see the Swarovski Crystals very well in the pictures. I love my Alpine Wonder! I leave it up for about 6 months out of the year! I had a blast doing all the free-motion quilting! I just love how the quilting gave a lot of dimension to this quilt!
Now my love story with Alpine Wonder wasn’t all roses. I had one huge hurdle mistake to overcome! After I appliqued the tree to the blue sky background, I needed to cut out that backing before I could quilt it. As I was cutting out the backing, I snipped into one of the branches!!! Oooohhhhh I was soooooo sick! I was speechless. I couldn’t even get a bad word out! Well, maybe just a few. It was a small snip, like a “V” shape, but it was all I could see when I looked at it! I had to put a 9-1-1 email into Mary Lou herself to get her opinion on what I should do. She was wonderful and prompt! She suggested I use some light weight fusible on the back to patch the cut. It was a few weeks before I could attempt the resuscitation of Alpine Wonder. I just couldn’t bring myself to look at what I had done. It worked! The fusible was a life saver! After I did the quilting, the snip was gone. You could no longer see it! Alpine Wonder was back in all it’s glory! AND we lived happily ever after…
