The following pictures are photos of the inspiration items I brought back from our recent vacation to Las Vegas. At every turn, there were colours, textures, and designs to inspire the creative spirit. Yes, there is more to Las Vegas than gambling!

The 2,000 hand-blown glass flowers on the ceiling of the Bellagio Hotel.

The floor tiles of the Venetian reminded me of a Tumbling Blocks quilt.

Art on the ceilings of the Venetian.

A larger than life vase of flowers in the lobby of the Golden Nugget.

An intricate design in the carpet of the MGM Grand.

One of the mascots from the Rainforest Cafe inside the MGM Grand.

A glass sculpture suspended from the parking area in front of the Mirage.

Orchids on the walkway at the Mirage.

We just got back from our trip to Las Vegas last night. We flew to Vegas on Sept. 8.

This was our first trip to Vegas. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We ate good food, met some wonderfully friendly local people, and walked, and walked, and walked.

We saw two shows–one of which was Mamma Mia. This show was the highlight of the trip!

I also loved the palm trees. I know that palm trees are not native to Vegas and all the palm trees I saw there had been imported. The palm trees made the location seem that much more tropical. The different varieties of palms seemed endless!

We met some wonderfully friendly and interesting locals while in Las Vegas. Just like the palm trees, many of them were “imported” to Vegas and added to the colour and liveliness of the city.

One of my favorite attractions was the fountains at the Bellagio. The choreography of these fountains to the music was magnificent.

My favorite of the themed hotels from the exterior was New York New York. My husband says I took more pictures of this hotel than any other. I still marvel at the size of the hotel and how small I felt walking past it.

One of the hotels that my husband and I fell in love with was the Luxor–the Egyptian themed hotel. I would have loved to stay in a room in the pyramid! Perhaps next time.

I managed to find a couple of friendly faces………………

…………….and so did my husband!

Wonderful memories of a wonderful vacation!

The following are some of the sand castles at a world class sand sculpture competition that is being held near here.

These pictures were sent to me by my aunt who lives two provinces away. I am always amazed at the magnificent pictures that people send me from far away of things that I have never seen that are literally located in my backyard!

Thank you to all who posted comments or e-mailed me with your suggestions for the border treatment on my challenge quilt. There were many great suggestions – many of which I will be saving for use in future quilts.

I will be including the inspiration photo on the label for the back of this quilt. Labels have to be covered for the voting of the quilts on guild night. I am going to ask if I can display my inspiration photo next to my quilt for the voting.

I love the suggestions for a piano key border or small rectangles “floating” in the border. (I am definitely going to use this idea on a future quilt!) However, I only had one fat quarter of the challenge fabric and I used all but one small piece to do the centre of the quilt. I felt I should be including the challenge fabric in the border if I were going to do a piano key or rectangle border so I passed on these ideas for now.

If I had more time, I would have done my zig-zag down the quilt in quarter circles or drunkard’s path blocks. Because I have such precious little time to finish this, the more complicated curved piecing was out. I also considered something like this for the border but a lack of time ruled it out.

I liked the suggestion of putting the theme of the challenge, “The Beauty of the Earth ” in words on the border. I tried using the embroidery alphabet feature on my sewing machine to put the words in the border. However, after some fiddling and experimenting, I felt I should spend more time familiarizing myself with this feature on my machine before attempting to include words on the front of my quilts. Because of the small size of the quilt, Tonya’s free form letters were ruled out on this one.

Linda J. thought that a narrow black border followed by a wider red border might work. I ended up with just that–a narrow black border and I found the perfect “tulip” tone on tone red fabric for the outer border. Linda also sent me a link to the words for the hymn, “For the Beauty of the Earth”. I had not made the connection to that hymn until that point. I will be using this hymn as part of my label.

I tried to take a picture of the border red tone on tone fabric – it looks more orange in this picture than it is in real life.

This is how the quilt looks with the borders added. The top has been quilted and is now ready for the binding, label, and hanging sleeve. Good progress for this weekend.

Remember this fabric? This was the fat quarter that was distributed to guild members for our fall quilt show challenge. The theme of this challenge is, “The Beauty of the Earth”.

I knew when I saw these pictures, that I had the inspiration for my challenge piece.

Because I am not gifted in art quilts or free form / original design, I needed a pattern that could be pieced simply. I chose the rail fence design. I can see ribbons of colour in the fields of tulips in the photo. I have tried to duplicate what I saw in the photo into the design of my quilt.

I am now at the stage where I must decide on a border treatment. The photo below is my quilt so far–it is the centre of the quilt. Please ignore the black surrounding the piece–this is not a border. I took the photo against a black piece of fabric. The dark zig zag next to the red zig zag looks black, but is actually deep purple. There is no black on this quilt so far.

Do you have any suggestions for borders?