Another Quilt Show

Aspen

Last Saturday I went to the Block Party Quilters show in Issaquah. It was a great venue, large and bright. And a beautiful show. I took lots and lots of pictures, but I'm only going to show a few here.

Busted

The guild had a challenge of making and embellishing a bra, based on the challenge that the South Carolina quilters had. You can see those here. All of them were great, but this one was my fave, because I love a good pun.

Enchanted

Leaves

My Daughter's Challenge

Summer Garden

Two by Two

Up In the Air

This is the same as the one above (Up In the Air), but I took the photo at an angle and without flash, so the wonderful quilting would show.

Water

Water (a closeup shot)

We're off to Oregon this weekend to sell pottery. I hope it all goes well. The Potter has been working so hard at making lots of pottery, and I hope we sell quite a bit of it. He managed to get everything in one car, including the pottery wheel, and I'm very happy with that. I wasn't looking forward to driving two cars down there.

On our way home on Sunday, we'll be stopping by my sister's. She's also selling her art work at a show, and we'll be helping her pack up her stuff at the end of the show. Both of her "helpers" (her kids) won't be home to help her. It'll be fun to see her again - and unusual to see her so soon since the last time.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Here and There

I have been neglecting my poor blog, due to being super-busy for the last 10 days. I'm so behind on reading all my favorites - I'm trying to catch up a little here and there, but we're still busy with no let-up for at least a week. I've been so busy, I haven't even had a chance to get in the quilt studio!

Last Saturday we took a little trip with our friend K. We've not done this for awhile, so it was a lot of fun. We had a great day. We decided to visit Whidbey Island, which is in Puget Sound. Whidbey Island is BIG and the trip took us all day. We took a ferry over to the island from Mukilteo - my first ferry ride! We drove the whole length of the island, with various stops along the way. We stopped at a wonderful Farmer's Market, then went to Langely. We were in Coupeville for lunch and ice cream. Coupeville is the oldest town in Washington, and is very picturesque. We stopped at a lavender farm and I bought some wonderful lavender products. (I love lavender!) We also stopped at a state park on the western shore, where we could see all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

We went to Oak Harbor and saw a little bit of the Navy base there. Then we kept driving north and ended up at Deception Pass. This is the bridge that leads off Whidbey Island and onto Fidalgo Island. From there, we drove back to the mainland. We stopped in Kirkland for dinner at Wilde Rover Irish Pub and got to listen to live music. That was a great ending to a fun day.

On Monday we drove down to Vancouver (WA) for my nephew's high school graduation. We had a blast! My sister was a very gracious hostess. My niece was home from college for the weekend as well, so we got to visit with her too.

While I was there, I spied a familiar item on her quilt rack. Lo and behold, it was a wallhanging that I had made for her. . . in her favorite colors. . .many years ago - so many years ago, I'd forgotten all about it!


Here is the wallhanging out on her back deck, which is beautiful. (Love her flowers!) As I faintly remember, this is an original design, using traditional blocks. (I used a book by Pepper Cory about combining blocks, called "Crosspatch". Dover has re-published it as "Multiblock Quilt Designs".) And shame on me - this wallhanging doesn't have a label on it, and I don't remember when I made this.

As you can see, I put quite a bit of quilting on this one. I'm really quite pleased with this!

My wonderful sister has let this quilt come home with me on loan. While I've got my hands on it, I really need to put a label on it. Which means I have to come up with a name for it too. I haven't thought of anything yet. Any ideas??

Here is my obsessive take on stipple quilting. I can't believe how small I got this. What was I thinking??

I went to a quilt show on Friday, but I'll save all that for my next post. Hopefully I can get that done sometime this week!

Today The Potter (DH) is off to see the Mariner's ballgame with DS for Father's Day. So that means I have the rest of the day to sew! Yay! See ya later!

Workin' On The Chain Gang

I've been slaving away on my color challenge the last few days. I found my grey felt so I could put up my psuedo-design wall, and the floor was even clear enough that I could get to it. (The "design floor" just wasn't working so well - mostly because Shade wants to get under the blocks and Dunkel practices his "snow plow" technique on them!) I finished the last 5 stars this morning, and this is what they looked like at that point.

After lunch, I worked on the chain blocks. They go faster than the stars! This was where I was at at "quitting time" this afternoon.

I'm happy with the way this is looking at this point. This color doesn't photograph well, so I don't think the photo looks as good as "real life". Hopefully, this won't take as long to complete as I've been thinking. . .but on the other hand, I'm afraid I might jinx myself by saying that!

It's been tough to make myself focus on this. That Quilter's ADD keeps trying to kick in. I've found something like 4 patterns on various blogs that I want to try. And I had to go play on the Moda Fabricmatcher site, just because. I even vaccumed the quilt studio as an avoidance technique! But, I'm trying to be tough with myself. We'll see how it goes! I'm also having some problems with being accurate again, after all that "liberation"! I somehow don't have the patience for the fussiness of these little blocks after being/getting liberated. *sigh*

This is my progress on my "leaders & enders" (a la Bonnie) for just today! Pretty soon I'll either need to start putting these together (I think they'll be 9-patches) or I'll need to cut more 2 1/2" squares. Either way, that is A Good Thing.

Here is Shade, "helping" yet again. Don't you love this crazy face?! Both cats are always with me in the studio. Lately the weather has been so nice that I've had the window wide open. Both cats are usually trying to sit in the window at the same time, which makes for some grumpiness. I keep telling them they need to work it out themselves, but they don't seem to be listening. . . .just like kids!

Here's what Shade is laying on top of in the previous photo. These are some of the border ideas I've been playing with. I photocopied the magazine photo of the quilt in black & white, then cut it out of that page and copied it in the middle of the blank page so I could play with border options without having to draft the whole thing on grid paper. I'm leaning toward the option on the top of the page OR the applique. I know the applique would look good, but I don't know that I want to do it because it would be so small. I have a few other ideas that I haven't drafted yet.

If you have any other ideas, I'd love to hear them. I seem to be stuck on the "same old - same old". My ideal would be a pieced border that I could just put together with the rest of the blocks, both for simplicity and ease of construction. Anywho, your suggestions are welcome!

Can I help??

Challenging Progress

Here is my challenge this year. We had to pick an unmarked envelope to determine which crayon we would get, and I ended up with "Purple Mountain's Majesty". (I don't know if you'll be able to actually tell from this photo what this color looks like, unless you have box of 48 crayons!) I'm one of the few that isn't complaining about her color! We have to match the color that the crayon colors, not the wrapper. This has been a challenge as this is a blue-ish purple, and hard to match. But I did finally find something. The other challenge was deciding on a pattern. I started with 11 choices! I finally narrowed it down to just one - whew!

Another challenge has been actually getting started on it, what with my hand "issues" and all. But I am finally making some progress.

This photo shows where I was last week. I was happily sewing away, even though it was 90 degrees. Both cats felt that I needed supervision - either that, or they were just bored and I was the most interesting thing they could find to watch right then. Dunkel was sitting in the window, until he found a spider. It crawled down onto the sewing desk, and he followed, trying to catch it. No luck with that, so then he decided that it was more comfy laying on my fabric pieces than laying on the window sill. Or maybe the fan was blowing on him.

I imagine most quilters that have cats have also had the challenge of sewing with kitty behind on their fabric! Dunkel can be quite stubborn, like most cats. But we finally worked it out.

This is what I had yesterday. So far I have 14 stars done, but one of those won't work. (It doesn't have enough contrast, so it will go into the Parts Department or on the back.) So, I need another 5 stars. Then I get to do the alternate squares, and I haven't even decided what to do with a border yet.

Now, you can't tell from this picture, but these stars are 4 inches! Yikes, I knew they'd be small, but I didn't quite understand just how small those pieces would be. The corner squares finish at 1 inch. I'm beginning to wonder what possessed me to do this pattern! Oh well, it's supposed to be a challenge, right? Right?? This is due mid-July, so I have a little time. I just don't want to be rushing at the last minute. You never know what's going to come up in the meantime. And I'm trying very hard to not distract myself with all the other ideas I can come up with without even trying.

Here is one of the finished quilts for the Australian bushfires victims. I found two of my donated blocks in this. They are 2nd from the right on the top row, and the middle star in the 2nd row down. Yay! Thanks to Comic Book Lady who had this on her blog, because her blocks are in here too. Otherwise I might not have seen it.

I went to Camp Follower Bags' blog to see what was up with the Bushfire Quilt Project. Tia has 97 quilts ready to ship! Wow, that is impressive. What a ton of work she has done.

My DH found this great video on You Tube of the Sony Rolly. This is a blast to watch! I'd love to have one, just to play with, but I understand that it's only available in Japan and costs around $350 USD. Here is another link so you can see the Synchronized Rollys. Silliness, but fun to watch!

And, in closing, here is Shade in "supervisor mode". He's holding down my challenge project fabric for me.