The Land of OZ

Frank Baum summered in our community, Macatawa. He had a cottage just down the beach next door to a little girl named Dorothy. It is said that this area was the inspiration for the land of Oz in his story "The Wizard of Oz". There were many, and are still a few, brick walks and roads that reflect gold when the sun hits them just right. The brick path to our deck overlooking the beach is gold only a few days in mid-September when the sun sets directly in front of us.
I don't have a digital photo taken in any of the woods of this area in which you really do feel you are in an Emerald Forest. The canopy is very high, the floor is quite open and the light is greenish. We have many huge old Beechnut trees as well as a lot of Maple and Oak trees. I think the undergrowth is limited because this sand dune country, meaning that the sands shift and the young growth has a difficult time getting established.
Our bedroom reflects the "Land of Oz". It's on the third floor and the peak of the roof is our ceiling. To lighten it up I had painted a sky on foam core and decoupaged hot air balloons to it. This gave my husband the idea to float paper balloons from the ceiling. Each one is themed. There's the ol' coot balloon (includes Santa and Ghandi), Garfield and his friends, blond-blue-eyed-bimbos (not saying who all is in that one), old bags (Queen Victoria and Mona Lisa are two passengers), Elvis has his own, and of course there's one for Dorothy and her friends, as well as a number of other balloons that have flown out into the hallway. The room is also decorated with Oz figurines and cows (our cottage is called MaCowCowa).
The quilt I made for our bed looks like it belongs on a bed in the Emerald City. Sorry I couldn't get a full view photo of it. I hung it on the curtain rod for the large window that overlooks the lake to get this one.It features many of the stack'n wack pieces that were made from the border fabric. I had purchased just one repeat (6 layers) and made about 150 various sized circles that have been used in quite a few projects and I still have some left. Note the curved corner. The quilt has a knife edge finish. I chose to make circles out of the hexagons because I love (and have collected) kalaidoscopes.
The hand quilted stitches in the circles and border are wrapped with metalic thread. I had written about the this technique in a previous posting, "The Whipped Quilting Stitch".This is as much of the back side of the quilt as I could get in a photo with it on the bed ... about a quarter of it. As you can see, I like to piece the backs. Quilts are sculptural to me and the the back is just as important as are the fronts. Also, I had thought maybe I'd display this side up once in awhile, but never have.

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