A Finish and An Award

At long last, my Liberated Amish Challenge quilt is totally done!

You can read more about this challenge by scrolling waaaay down to the list of labels on the left-side of my blog and clicking on the tag "Liberated Amish Challenge".  There's a few posts - apparently I've been pretty wordy about this project!

"Snuggle"
53 inches by 65 inches

It took me some months to get around to getting the binding done.  I couldn't find any of the fabrics I used on the front, so ended up using the batik backing fabric I trimmed off the quilt.

Here is the back, with the pieced label I did.  I will be adding another label with more information on it.

A close up of the piecing, with the free-pieced Unruly letters from Lazy Gal Tonya.

Here's a photo of my free-pieced word on the front, all quilted.

And here's a shot of the quilting on one of the blocks.  This photo has the truest colors.

And a photo of the quilting that Shari did in the alternate blocks.  She knows I love Celtic knotwork.  I left this picture high contrast so the quilting would show up well.

I'm so happy that this quilt is finished and ready for use!  

The talented Kelly over at Pinkadot Quilts has nominated me for the Liebster Blog Award.  Thank you so much, Kelly!  I'm honored.  Go check out her blog.  She is making a small quilt every week for her personal journal quilt, and she's making some beauties!

The Liebster Blog Award rules:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award.

2. Link back to their blog.

3. Copy and paste the Liebster award to your profile.

4. Pick 5 blogs that you feel deserve to be in the spotlight (they must have @200 followers or under).

5. Blog about it and leave a comment for your nominations to let them know that you have chosen their blog.

Here are my blog nominations for Liebster Awards:

1.  Joe Tulips at Joe Tulips Quilts blog.  She has made the BEST zombie quilt ever, she makes funny, fabulous cards (both paper and fabric), she geocaches, and she makes great quilts too!  She always has something fun to see on her blog.  Oh, and she's pretty obsessed with the Scrappy Trips pattern, and it's my fault.

2.  Michelle at Nostalgic Cafe.  Michelle is a funny lady - she'll make you smile.  Right now she's having some snake-y issues.  She also has some intriguing recipes on her blog.  Oh yeah, she makes bright, happy, fun quilts too!

3.  Kate at Kate Kwiltz blog.  Kate is another ADD quilter like I am, but you wouldn't know it.  She's in the process of making 5 baby quilts and 2 wedding quilts that are due this spring.  She's making great progress.  She makes great modern quilts with a real grounding in tradition.  

4.  Maureen at Pursuit of Quilts.  Maureen does more traditional quilts with great style.  Right now she has two posts up that are full of eye candy from two big quilt shows that she has visited.

5. Sharon at Grass Roots Quilting.  Sharon is making the Beyond The Cherry Tree quilt and is making great progress as well as other quilting projects.  She does long-arm quilting with the most wonderful feathers.  She is a funny, generous quilter.  I took the Gwen Marston class last year with her, and it was great fun.  I'm happy to call her "friend".

Go take a look at their blogs.  I think you'll enjoy them as much as I do.

One last thing:  Michelle at Nostalgic Cafe blogged today about the new Dark Shadows movie starring Johnny Depp and directed by Tim Burton.  I deeply loved D.S. when it was on TV.  I think my sister and I watched every episode!  I went to IMDb (Internet Movie Database) here and watched the trailer for this movie.  It looks like it will be hilarious and great fun.  I mean, how could you go wrong with Johnny Depp??  I can't wait until May 11th when the movie is released!

Happy quilting!

Shine On

"Shine" is quilted, bound and DONE!  This was my first quilt for the Liberated Amish Get Together hosted by Lazy-Gal Tonya.  If you haven't yet seen this blog and the wonderful quilts that were made, be sure to go take a look.

The "rules" for the Get Together were to take an Amish quilt from this website as your inspiration and make it Liberated.  And you had to include some Unruly Letters.  This one was kind of my "warm-up" because this little crib quilt just called to me. 
 

I can't belive it's taken me a year to get this done.  I just couldn't decide how I wanted to quilt this.  I finally took my inspiration from antique Amish quilts (should be a no-brainer, right?) and machine-quilted triple diagonal lines.  Free-hand, of course.  I was liberated enough to use my sewing machine, or it would be a realllllly loooong time before this got finished . . . hee hee!

I didn't measure anything, and I didn't stress about it.  It only took me a few hours to get this done, once I got going. 

I really like this quilt.  I think it finally came together just right.

The Bad Blogger . . .

. . . is hanging her head here.  I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted!  I've been lurking and reading all your blogs, but that's all I've managed to do. 

I've been busy and also fighting a couple of nasty infections.  I've got a sinus infection that won't let go and also an abscessed tooth that has to come out on Tuesday.  Ugh . . . I'm really not looking forward to that!  I'm hoping for general anethesia.  I'm such a wimpy chicken at the dentist's.  It seems that the third antibiotic might finally be working on the sinus infection. *fingers crossed*

Before all that started, I managed to get some sewing done.  And I can show you all my "secret" sewing, as it's all been received now.



Fragments - 21 x 19 inches

 Here is my little quilt that I made with the scraps from my Liberated Amish 9-Patch.  I first showed the top back in June.  I finally decided how to quilt it AND got it done.  An upcoming guild meeting with nothing for Show & Tell got me moving on this.

Do you have trouble deciding how to quilt your project?  I'm usually afraid that I'm going to screw it up and that paralyzes me.  I thought about how this piece was kind of an afterthought, and totally free and wonky, and then decided I didn't have to do heirloom quilting here.  So I liked the idea of wonky squares around the squares.  It's not a lot of quilting, but enough for a small wallhanging.

And while I was working on the center, I thought some kind of squares in the border would work nicely.  DH suggested that same idea!  So, it was decided.  I fiddled with a test sample for a little bit, and then did this border pretty quickly.  I was afraid I might sew myself into a corner, but it worked out fine.  I had to stop and think a few times though!

I couldn't find the rest of my fabrics that matched.  I must have put them in a safe location!  So I perused my Great Wall of Fabric, and found this batik.  It is exactly the right colors, and I liked the contrast of the circles with the squares in the quilt.  So, I got one thing finished this month!

Belinda of Brown Dirt Cottage

Julie of Quilter Behind the Barn Door blog

Marj of Eclectic Quilter blog

Here are my Pay It Forward gifts, all completed and now all delivered!  I had fun picking out the fabrics to personalize these for each recipient. Please visit their blogs to see the goodies I put in the bags. 

DH and I went to the Western Washington Fair in Puyallup the other day.  We didn't stay too long, as we only visited the pots and potters at the Artists in Action section, and of course saw the quilts.  There were some beautiful quilts there, but as I forgot to bring the camera, I can't show them to you!  (That bad blogger again!)  There were quite a few I recognized from some of the quilt shows I've been to this year.  I never thought to enter any of mine!  (I've been a bear of very little brain lately, it seems.)  Maybe next year I can get it together enough to do that.

Now, I'm off to the quilt studio to work on my exchange blocks.  I'm making an effort to get some stuff done and out of the way.  I've got too many projects "in process". 

A Finish!

Snuggle

54 " x 68"

Ta Dah! It's all done. . . well, to flimsy stage anyway. You can see Dunkel is critiquing while DH holds the top up for me. This is an un-retouched photo, and hopefully pretty close to the real color. We're having rain again today, so it wasn't very bright today, but we were having a moment of "lightness" (DH's term), so we quickly took the picture.

The background color is a Cherrywood fabric and I think it's either Indigo or Cobalt. (I lost the label a long time ago!) To me, it's similar to Crayola's Midnight Blue crayon. Anyway, my point is that it's one of my favorite shades of blue. I'm so happy I had a big enough piece in my stash, and it was exactly the color I wanted. (The inspiration quilt is really kind of a navy blue but it's close to this color.) The 9-patches were made with some of the fabrics from two Cherrywood grab bags.

The 9-patches were free-pieced using a number of different methods to achieve that. As I got more of the blocks made, and starting running out of fabric, the 9-patches got wonkier. I think I like the wonkiest ones the best. You can see some close-ups of some of the 9-patches here.

This came out a bigger size than I thought it would, and I'm happy with that. DH is 6 foot tall, and he can hide behind it pretty well, don't you think? It's big enough to really snuggle in!


Here is a close-up shot of my free-pieced letters. The E is actually a lower-case E, but it's hard to see that dark-colored piece that makes it so. It was supposed to be an upper-case E, but I got confused in the middle of making the letter! I suppose I probably shouldn't admit that in public. . . .

And here's a closeup of the border. This was my solution to meld the two fabrics in the borders together. I don't know if you can see it very well in the top photo, but there's the Cherrywood fabric in the right-hand border and the dotted fabric in the left-hand border. The two fabrics go around the corners and then meet in the top and bottom borders. Even though this is subtle, this was what I came up with to avoid just butting them up next to each other. This kind of looks "interlocked" to me.

Due to the size of this quilt top, I won't be quilting this, but sending it to my favorite long-arm quilting artist, Shari. I know she'll do a fabulous job for me.


I really love this quilt, and I'm so happy I took this challenge. A huge "Thanks!" to Tonya for hosting this challenge. And, in spite of my whining and stalling, it was a lot of fun. It made me stretch and learn. After all, that's the point of a challenge. And if you haven't yet visited the blog for the Liberated Amish Challenge, go right now and take a look. There are so many wonderful quilts that everyone has made, and wonderful stories about them.


One last thought. . . . if you have the opportunity to participate in a challenge, I urge you to take it! It's good to challenge yourself, learn what you're capable of, and learn new things.

I Think It's Working

We've had some sunny, warm-ish days and my mood has improved. Saturday was so nice both DH and I put on our shorts and did yard work. The poor yard has been so neglected due to being "under water", so to speak. I finally got my flower seeds planted, some weeds pulled and some fertilizing done. Since Saturday the weather hasn't been quite as nice (Sunday was rain all day), but it's finally starting to mostly stay on the warm-ish side. Maybe my seeds will grow!

I managed to force myself back into the quilt studio. . . . finally! And I've been making some progress. The border for my Liberated Amish Challenge quilt has certainly been challenging my creativity! (I guess that would be the point, huh?)

Here is my sketch of my original idea for the border. My inspiration quilt has a double inner-border thing going on (see it here), but I don't really have enough fabric for that, and I thought that might not be "liberated" enough. So, I had thought maybe a double-serpentine border, but thought that would be too much too. As in, too much work!

I got my free-pieced word all done, and here is where I was starting. I've since decided that, due to the size of the word, it would look better along the side than on either end of the quilt.

Well, then I got to thinking about the serpentine border. I was really stalling, and thought "maybe that's not what the quilt wants". So, I putzed around with some other ideas, like maybe a square-in-a-square border, or flying geese, or any number of other ideas. Then I was stuck. Big-time stuck. Just frozen in place, and I couldn't make up my mind what I wanted to do. I really hate that phase in quilt-making. I seem to run into that in almost every quilt I make.

So, I talked it over with my DH. He encouraged me to just do the serpentine border. And I didn't want to. So, I called my daughter and discussed the issue with her. She's been my sounding board/design consultant for years now. I respect her "eye" for design, and she's always encouraging. She was having touble visualizing what I was talking about, so I emailed her the above picture.

She took the photo into Paint and played with it, and this is what she emailed back. (By the way, did I mention that I LOVE this technology thing? I think it's so awesome that we can do this!!)

When I saw this, it stuck me how much this looks like the Fibonacci sequence (read about it here). Very exciting! However, after playing with it a bit, I've decided that , although this is a great idea, it's not right for this quilt. It seems to over-power the quilt. However, I'm definitely keeping this in mind for another quilt.

Shade, meanwhile, was offering great moral support! Yes, my sewing desk is really messy, so just ignore it, please. Shade helped by moving some of the mess onto the floor for me.

So, after flailing around for a whole day, I finally came to the conclusion that the serpentine border actually is the right border for this quilt. Aaarrrrgggghhhhh! I wasted so much time, just spinning my wheels. But I guess it was a necessary exercise in creativity for me.

So, I finally got going on the serpentine border yesterday. I worked until 10:30 last night and I've got both side borders on now.

The quilt has grown too big for my design wall, so now it's on the design floor. (I managed to keep it free of cats long enough to snap this picture!) If you enlarge the picture, you should be able to see that there's different but similar fabrics on either side border. Now I'll be working on the top and bottom borders, trying to artfully incorporate the two fabrics into both top and bottom borders before adding the serpentine border.

So, I'm off to the quilt studio. I hope your day is creative!

Mom's Day and Liberated Progress

Isn't this a beautiful table? This was our table for the Mother-Daughter Tea we went to on Saturday. I had a wonderful time with my DIL, 2 granddaughters and my friend/DIL's mom. (yes, I'm friends with my co-grandmother! I think it's great!) The girls looked so pretty in their pink dresses, and were so well-behaved and careful. They had fun too, I hope! We all thought the tea was a pretty special event.

While we were at the tea, DH and DS went to the Open House at the private airstrip near us. DS is currently working toward getting his private pilot's license, and loved seeing all the planes on display. Then they went to the U-Fish place and caught some trout for dinner.

After the fishing and the tea, everyone came to our house and we had a BBQ. Instead of "Surf and Turf", we had "Lake and Steak"! (DH's funny take on it!) Everyone had a chance to visit, but it went by all too quickly.

On Sunday, DH made a wonderful breakfast for us, after he let me sleep in. Then I spent the rest of the day in the Quilt Studio! And DH had all day to spend in the Pottery Studio. We had leftovers for dinner, so it was easy. A wonderful Mother's Day weekend.


So, here's the progress I've made on my Liberated Amish challenge. I have the center of the quilt all put together. I've started working on my wonky letters/word. I only have two more letters to make, and then I can start putting the border togther. I'll have another opportunity for creativity with the borders, as I don't have enough of any one fabric to do the entire border.

As I was looking at the Lib Amish quilt hanging on the design wall yesterday, I thought perhaps the quilt was billowing out in the breeze from the window. But then I realized that it's the wonky 9-patches themselves that are creating an "Op Art" effect . . . . they look like they're curving. That was a fun surprise!

Busy but Stalled

I've been missing in action around these parts lately. I accompanied DH on a business trip last week to Skamania Lodge in the Columbia River Gorge. (we were there last September too - see this post) I had a wonderful vacation. . . while DH worked! All the wives that were there did some sightseeing together, and had a good time. However, I hardly touched a computer the whole week. I was just too busy. On the way home we stopped for a short overnight visit with my sister. That was fun, but way too short.

Since getting home, I've been trying to catch up on things, including sleep. We both got over-tired last week. "Too much fun", as DH says. Ha! Is there such a thing? And the kitties are very needy right now. . .they're always traumatized after a week in the kennel, especially Shade. (The lady at the kennel said she never saw him outside of his carry-crate.) So I have to spend a lot of time with them right now. And the allergies this year are really getting to me.

But I do have some things to show. I managed to get some sewing done before I left.

First is a charity quilt that I made. My guild is making quilts for seniors in wheelchairs, so the quilts don't have to be real big. My friend in CA sent me some patterns that she had gotten as free handouts from a speaker at her guild (Pat Fryer of Villa Rosa Designs), and this one was just exactly the right size. I tried to use only stash for this one (it calls for fat quarters), and did pretty good. But, I forgot to make sure I had enough for the border and the binding. I managed to use one of the fat quarters (that was really a regular quarter yard) for the border (without piecing it!), and I found something at the LQS that works great for the binding. So, this one cost me $4 and change! Woo hoo! I'll be making the back and binding, and then passing this on to someone else to quilt, as lots of the ladies in the guild have long- or mid-arms.

I made some very-belated Christmas presents for my sister. I haven't seen her since last October, so this was our first chance to exchange our presents. (We're always running a little behind) Anyway, this is the Humbug Bag. This is the largest size. I decided to use batiks, inside and out, because she loves them. I left her ribbons long so that she can add some beads to the zipper pull. These are fun. I hope you can tell from the photo that these are a fun shape and really easy to do. They're flat in one direction on one end, and flat in the other direction on the other end. Nice and roomy inside for storing things too.

This is the smaller Humbug Bag (hand included for size comparison). It fits inside the larger Humbag bag. I used some Asian-style fabric for this one, 'cuz she loves anything Asian. This one has an "antique" zipper that I found in my stash of zips. It's an "Invisible" zipper . . . can you even find these anymore?? I had a few technical problems with this (don't have the correct foot anymore), but it finally worked. I wouldn't recommend using the Invisible zipper for this again.

I made some pillowcases for my granddaughters' birthday presents. I was thrilled to find the "Brown Bear" fabric, as it had been the oldest girl's favorite book for a while. I'm not sure they were as thrilled with it as I was. I didn't use the trim piece this time, but used some rickrack instead. I think it's fun!

These pillowcases were supposed to be Christmas presents, but I couldn't make them after my accident. So, they became birthday presents instead. I had to pay attention to the fact that the designs on these fabrics ran lengthwise, so had to cut lengthwise instead of widthwise. After almost 30 years of sewing, I'm finally learning to recognize this!

When I visited my daughter in January, I discovered that she was using some potholders that were probably older than her! And they weren't very effective either. So, I had to make her some new ones. I found these garlic and mushroom fabrics on a field trip, and they were perfect as they're her favorite ingredients!

I made three potholders for her. One is the garlic with the rusty dot fabric, one is the mushrooms with the brown square-dot fabric and the last one is garlic on one side with mushrooms on the other. So, I had to show all the permutations.

Hopefully she won't be burning her fingers now!

Finally, I am slowly making progress with my Liberated Amish Challenge quilt. I've gotten all the 9-patches made. I got wonkier as I went, which was really fun.

This was a photo to help me decide which fabric to use for the alternate squares. The 9-patches are just kind of thrown up on the fabric to test the color. The final configuration will be a little different. This is a Cherrywood fabric in midnight blue. I have 2 yards of it, which would be enough if I were doing a straight set, but I think I'm going to set my blocks on point. After much painful math (never my strong suit), I've determined that 2 yards isn't enough for the center and the border. So the border will be something different. But I'm liking how this is shaping up. Now I get to play with my 9-patches and figure out my layout for them.

Hopefully this will happen soon! I've only got about a month to get this one done. Then I have a challenge quilt for my guild that needs to be done by July. Because I took a week and more off, I'm feeling behind. I went into the quilt studio last night, and couldn't even decide what to do. So all I managed to do was to trim some crumb blocks down to size. That's not even an active project. It didn't help that Studio Cat wanted to be in my face the whole time. So, I've got to get focused. Sheesh.

A Virtual Retreat

Did you know that last Saturday, apart from being the first day of Spring, was International Quilt Day? What did you do to celebrate?


I had a very busy, quilt-y weekend for my celebration. On Friday I went to a Quilt Show with two friends. It was a beautiful show, and I'll be sharing some pictures in a future post.


Saturday the Liberated Quilters Yahoo Group had a Virtual Quilt Retreat. I retreated with them for the first time. I wasn't sure quite what to expect from a virtual retreat. I cleared my schedule, cleaned the quilt studio (that was a big deal!) and was ready to go. I warned DH that I wouldn't be available that day.


I decided that my Liberated Amish Challenge was the perfect project to work on for the retreat. On Saturday morning I had 8 9-Patches that I started with. By 2 pm, I had another 8 done! That's where I was in the picture up above.

I wasn't too thrilled with the 9-patches I had already done. They weren't wonky enough. So I got wonkier. I even tried an insert (bottom right block). Not too sure that the contrast is all that good on this one, but I'm not letting myself re-do any of these. None of these blocks have been trimmed to their final size yet. I needed to see what sizes they came out before I got too carried away with trimming.

I worked all day Saturday, with meal breaks, until about 10 pm that night. Sunday I got off to a slow start, but again, worked all day. By the time Sunday night rolled around, I had 34 9-patches done! DH was a real trooper....he made all the meals on Sunday so that I could get more sewing in. He's a great guy! I love that he's so supportive of my quilting.

I discovered an easy way to be wonky....just get confused and sew the rows back together wrong. That block still met the size requirements so I left it. One block didn't make the grade, and I ripped that one and re-sewed it. I started running out of fabric, and so started cutting the squares with scissors. The first two blocks I made that way worked great. The next 3....not so good. Two got put into the Parts Department and one got extra fabric sewn to it to be the right size. Can you find it in the above photo? I got pretty wonky by the end of the retreat, and I'm really happy with my blocks.


I finally couldn't stand waiting to see how they would look. I trimmed 4 blocks to their finished size and sewed a big block together. I like it! Just for reference, here's my Amish inspiration quilt.

I have 14 more 9-patches to make, and then I can start putting this quilt together. I'm hoping I won't lose too much momentum this week and that I can get them all done. That would be great!

I found two funny cat videos to share with you. This one shows a cat with a static cling problem, and this one shows a cat that's got a great dunk. I love a funny cat video....hope you do too.


One more thing to share.....


The Silly BooDilly is sharing some of her latest pincushions, that are related to her Work Quilts she's made lately. Go take a look....her stitching is beautiful and quite inspiring.

Quilt Show

Here's my first finish for the Liberated Amish Challenge. I'm calling this one my "warm-up" quilt. I'm supposed to be making 9-Patches (this is my inspiration quilt), but this just kept calling me . . . I love stars and just couldn't resist! So, it's a top now (21 inches x 23 inches). I think I have it out of my system and I can get going on those 9-Patches! No more stalling. . . .

If you haven't been to see the Liberated Amish Challenge blog, go take a look. Everyone is doing some really wonderful stuff! It's lots of fun.

I went to see a quilt show on Saturday. I went with some members of the local quilt guild. It was a big show, with lots of vendors. I barely resisted most of them.


But I fell in love with this pattern and had to get it! I rarely buy patterns now, but something about this one really called to me. This was the sample that the vendor had up in the booth. (photo taken with permission)

The name of the pattern is "Cobblestone Crows" and it's by Sheryl Mycroft of Random Threadz. It's all done with fusible and I think it would look fantastic on the wall by my front door! (Hmmm, I wonder how long this will actually take me??)

Anyway, on to the quilt show! (And any wonkiness in the photos is due to the poor abilities of the photographer, not the quilts. Really, they were straight!)

Creature Comforts by Karen Knowlton

Doctor Dan by Joy Evele

This was part of the guild challenge, which was 'Books Published in the 1950's'. This quilt is based on "Doctor Dan the Bandage Man" - a Little Golden Book that's in the Smithsonian's permanent collection of American culture.

Doctor Dan detail

I love that she's actually got Band-aids in the little pockets. And check out the Little Golden Books fabric!

Eucalyptus by Charlie Petersen

Fleur de Retro by Suzanne Martin

Fleur de Retro detail

Horse Chestnut Leaves by Mary Pickens

This quilt was made with oil sticks rubbing over real leaves and then she added variegated and sparkle thread sketch stitching.

Horse Chestnut Leaves detail 1

Horse Chestnut Leaves detail 2

Merry-Go-Round by Jetty Morton

Merry-Go-Round detail

Olympic Impression series - Lake Quinalt by Cynthia Keim

Olympic Impressions series - Crescent Lake by Cynthia Keim

Olympic Impressions series - Stormy Seastacks by Cynthia Keim

Pine Branch by Mary Pickens

Done with thread sketching and ink painting, with fabric ink added for shading.

Second Life by Carol Olsen

untitled by Lynn D. Green

Hope you enjoyed the quilt show!