September Already?!

Hey!  What happened to August??  Where'd it go?  I was just getting used to summer, and now it's leaving!  I want more August, please.

Seriously, August seems to have just evaporated!  I guess it was a busy month.  Pottery camp went very well, and both boys seemed to have had a good time.  Lots of pottery was made, lots of fish were caught (and released), and plenty of canoe time was had.  No one got homesick and no one got hurt so I'd call that pretty successful.  The only glitch was the last few days of Boy #2, when we had some major septic issues.  But he was a trooper and never complained.  At least I didn't hear him complaining over my complaining.  We finally got things all sorted out and squared away, after 3 days and many $$$.  Did you ever notice that plumbers are hard to find over the weekend?  And how come the septic only has issues on the weekend?  Sure made me miss city sewer systems!  Oh well, I guess it's the price we pay to enjoy the country life.

After that, the rest of the month is kind of a blur.  I really don't remember anything much.  I was having some allergy issues, and just trying to get caught up after pottery camp and the septic issues (lots of laundry).  And, to add insult, yesterday, Aug 31st, our high temperature was 58* F and it rained all day.  A little foretaste of what's to come.  I swear, some of the trees are starting to turn, the flowers are all on their last legs, and it's starting to feel a little "autumn-y".  I'm not ready!

Not a lot of sewing has been occuring here, what with all the other stuff going on.  Plus, I was kind of "sewn out" after the two challenge quilts.  And, I've been working on some secret projects, so I can't show you much of what has been happening in the studio.  So, the last two days, my brain has seemed to kick in (finally) and I had some ideas.  So, I made up some sample blocks to test my ideas.

Here is my first block for an I Spy quilt for my DGD #2.  I'm way over-due on making her one of these.  Big Sister got hers when she was two, and DGD #2 is 5 now and starting kindergarten.  So, I finally got started on it.  It's a Disappearing 9-Patch, and this is the configuration I'm thinking of using.  The white fabric and the purple dots fabric will be consistent throughout the quilt - the purple matches her bedroom.  I've now cut way more I Spy blocks than I need for the quilt, so I'll have to thin the herd a bit as I sew.  I learned on my first I Spy quilt to not have all the squares going in the same direction (Thanks, Katie!).  It makes the quilt more interesting, and easier to put together, which is the big factor for me.  Especially with this block!

I'm going to be participating in a block exchange with my friends from California, including Purple Pam and Roberta.  We'll be using brights.  Here's just a sample of what I've picked out.  Think they're bright enough??  This one is gonna be fun!  (And why won't this picture go in the center like the other ones??)

And lastly, this increasingly fall-like weather is making me think of Halloween.  I love Halloween, and seeing a pile of cute Halloween fabrics over at Tonya's blog got my brain engaged.  I love Bonnie's free patterns at Quiltville and Scrappy Trips is one of my favorites.  I've made two of them already.  So, I got to thinking. what if I used 3 inch cut strips instead of 2 1/2 inch?  That would make a bigger block, which would make it even faster to make a quilt.  And it would show off some of the bigger Halloween prints better too.  So, I had to test it out. 

Yep, it works!  Of course, my brain wasn't totally with me on the first block.  I cut everything at 3 1/2 inches instead of 3 inches.  Rats! --- Do over!  The 2nd time was much better.  I used up some really crummy fabrics to test, so no biggie that it didn't work the first time.  This makes a 15 inch finished block, so I only need 20 blocks instead of 35 or so.  This would also work for the Scrappy Bargello, which is calling to me lately.  Who knows. . . I might get so excited that I'll cut for both quilts!  That would make a pretty good dent in my Halloween fabrics.

So, I guess I'm getting excited about sewing again.  Now I just need to get in the studio and start cutting and sewing.  Let the fabric fly!

A Blue Ribbon Day

Well, what happened around here??  I can't believe it's been so long since I posted last.  Really, I didn't fall off the earth or anything.  It's just been busy around here, plus we've been battling a host of nasty computer viruses.  (I really hate computer viruses.  Don't get me started.)  Wow, here it's the middle of August already - summer is just flying by.

We've been so busy with pottery-related activities.  There's a once-a-month sale activity that's been happening, and a big Street Fair where DH spent two days sitting in the sun, demonstrating throwing pottery.  He was a big hit, and made a lot of pottery that weekend.

Last weekend we had our big pottery sale of the summer at the local Art in the Garden.  That was very successful, in spite of a lot of rain on Saturday.  Everyone closed up shop early that day, and it was still the biggest sales day in their history.  It was for us too!  We had showers off and on most of the day, but by about 3 o'clock the rain settled in and didn't let up.  It's a good thing pottery is water-proof!  Sunday was still overcast, but not too cold or hot.  The gardens were so beautiful.  Here's just a sample, which was "part" of our booth.  (You can see how overcast and threatening the sky was.)

If you look closely, maybe you can see our friendly dairy cows across the road from us.  They were pretty curious about what we were doing!

This week DH is doing "pottery camp" for some children of friends.  Right now we have the 9 year old here for 3 days, and then later in the week his 7 year old brother will be here.  Today was spent practicing in the pottery studio, plus fishing and canoeing in the pond.  Tomorrow starts the real deal!

I have hardly been back in the quilt studio after finishing my color challenge quilt.  What with being so busy, plus now it's so danged hot, I just haven't made it there yet. The studio is on the southeast side of the house, and it heats up real early and then never cools off.  So I have no desire to get in there.  Maybe by the end of the week, when it's supposed to cool off.

It's also been too hot to be upstairs in the office, so I haven't been on the computer much since DH got it working right again.

Last week I was brave and did something I've not done in over 20 years.  I entered some quilts in the county fair.  We had such a poor showing last year (maybe 10 quilted items total), that we were soundly "encouraged" (think arm-twisting!) to enter more this year.  So I put three quilts in.  We were told that they wouldn't be judged this year, but then they were!  Ack!!  Not ready for that!  Thank goodness I took the sticker roller to them to remove most of the cat hair!

So, I know you're dying to know which quilts I entered, aren't you? 

First, I entered "Carrie's Quilt", made with the vintage 30's fabrics.

I entered "Touch of Black".

And, I took a deep breath and entered "Button Button".  I only did this because I thought we wouldn't be judged.  I thought it was too "different" to do well in a judged competition.

Well, guess what?  The quilts were judged after all.  *gulp*

And "Carrie's Quilt" got a blue ribbon!  The judge said "good choice of design for the fabrics". 

And "Touch of Black" got a blue ribbon! The judge said "Interesting idea, intriguing to study"  and she liked the wavy quilting lines but didn't quite seem to "get" that the lines were supposed to be unevenly spaced.  

 And "Button Button" not only got a blue ribbon but a pink "Best in Class" as well!!   The judge said "Clever idea, well presented - do enter again next year!"  She like it!  She really liked it!  (with apologies to Sally Field) 

I found out about the ribbons when we went to the fair with our granddaughters and our friend K~, the "other' grandma.  Man, was I in shock!  Pleased as punch too, of course.  I still have a big grin on my face. 

Congratulations to Sue over at "From The Magpie's Nest" blog, who also entered quilts in her county fair, and also did very well.  Go see.  I'll wait.

We liberated quilters did pretty well for ourselves, didn't we?  *huge grin*

Remember the ceramic pendants I showed in this post? (scoll down a bit) Well, Lis over at Online Quilting blog bought two of them from me.  She has completed one necklace and you can see the necklace here (you need to scroll down a bit, again).  Wow, she did an awesome job.  She made it look so good! 

Do you like silly cat videos?  This one involves 2 curious kitties and a treadmill.  Watch that black & white cat's reaction when his sibling touches him

I hope it won't be so long before I post again.  Maybe next time I'll have something new to show.  Maybe not.  But I hope we all have some fun being creative between now and then!

Oh Deer! Another Quilt Show

Here are some photos of the visitors to our yard one day this last week.  DH managed to get some good shots of them through the kitchen window.

We have quite a bit of deer coming through our yard.  They like the ivy, and they also use our yard to get to the park next door.   I really enjoy watching them.

OK, I'm really pretty behind here, but I wanted to show you some of the pictures of a quilt show I went to a week ago.  It was in Covington, WA and was a pretty big show.  Great quilts and lots of good vendors too!  Yes, I did a little damage.  Sorry, I forgot to get pictures.

As usual, my photography isn't great.  I swear, all the quilts really were hanging straight!

  

Baltimore Sampler by Jana Columbi

Beaded Squares by Rosie Kennedy
8 inches by 12 inches

It Started With a Square by Carol Cowan

Green Sampler by Loretta Edinger

Judy DeCelle's Cat Quilt by Anita Webb

cat quilt detail

Manzinita by Carol Cowan

Lolli Poppies by Sandra Fountain

Sunshine by Judy Von Bokern

Sunshine detail

Sweet Baby Girl by Rita Haselman

The Tea Cup Quilt by Cynthia Bergeron

Tea Cup quilt detail - the red work was done by embroidery machine

Their guild challenge this year was using any 3 or all 4 of the selected fabrics and then making a small quilt that reflects the seasons. 

Seasonal Dance by Joyce DeLurma

Seasons of the Northwest by Patti Schmidt

Seasons of the Northwest by Rosie Kennedy

Seasons of the Northwest detail

All of the ribbons were made by Rosie Kennedy

I thought the ribbons were beautiful, and a lot of work, especially considering how many ribbons there were!

Did you notice the announcement of Lazy Gal Tonya's book release over on my side bar?  I'm so excited about this!  And I'm also jazzed that two of the blocks I sent her are in the quilt that's on the cover!  They're "HOME" which is 4 rows down, and 2nd from the right and "MAKE" which is in the bottom right-hand corner.  All of these blocks were made by students and friends of Tonya.  She requested happy 4-letter words, made with her free-pieced method.  I love that lots of people made these blocks.

I've hardly been in the quilt studio since I finished my challenge quilt.  I knew that would happen.  It was just time for a break.  But we've got the county fair coming up in less than 2 weeks, and I have to turn in quilts this week.  I'm thinking I need to quilt and bind one of my little Lib Amish challenge quilts before they need to be turned in.  Hmmm. . . . I wonder if I really have time to do that?

A New Look

I thought it was time to spruce up the ol' blog.  I love to re-decorate and move furniture to new spots.  I guess this falls in the same catagory.  I hope you like the new look.  There'll be more changes soon, when I've got time to get to them.

Back soon with quilt-y content!

The Challenge Reveal

I made it! I finally got my challenge quilt finished, with about a day to spare. I worked on nothing but the quilt for almost a week.

Why do I do this to myself? I know I'm not alone in this either. I had a whole year to get this done - well, not really, due to the broken arm and the Spring thumb injury. But still, I stalled. I'd like to say next year will be better, but we'll see how that works out. (We've already gotten our "assignment" for next year . . . more on that another time . . . )

If you haven't noticed on my side bar, I've taken the Process Pledge. So, I'll discuss my process some here. Here is the quilt top with the borders I showed on my last post. Guess what? I didn't like this! I love these borders, but I thought it was too busy for this piece. It kind of took over from the letters, which I wanted to feature. Plus, it really wasn't going to work with buttons all over it. It was just too much. Fortunately, I had only sewn on one border.

So, what to do next? I pondered that for a day or so. I decided an inner border would work well to seperate the words from the border, and I was hoping the lime green batik would work. I think it adds a nice little zip!

Then, what do to for the outer border? I was running out of my fabrics. I only bought a 1/2 yard of the light batik that I used for the letters (I have no idea what I was thinking!) and one yard of the background, that I thought would be more than sufficient (it was just barely enough!).

Then I remember Melody of Fibermania's Process Pledge tutorial on her Fused Piecing. Voila! That would do the trick! Thank you, Melody! You saved my bacon. To piece in these tiny strips that finish @ 1/4 inch, I would lose 1/2 inch in the seam allowance. So, by fusing these strips, I saved time and fabric. Yippeee!

Here is the first border. This was just what I was thinking of. In fact, it was Just Right. So, I kept going.

Here are all the borders on. Now I just had to quilt it, and then sew on a bunch of buttons. (technical term: 'bunch')

So, for the back I used something from the stash that I had a lot of, and proceeded to quilt. I kept the quilting simple. Just some squiggling around the words, and straight lines in the border that echo the fused strips. I knew the buttons would secure the border enough that only minimal quilting was required.

Then, to help stabilize the quilt, I added some interfacing on the border areas on the back of the quilt. So many of the quilts I've seen with buttons on them get saggy. I was hoping the interfacing would help with that. And I think it worked pretty well.

After I sewed on the 'bunch' of buttons, I added a second back to hide all the ugly knots from the buttons and the interfacing. I quilted around the inner border to secure it in place, then basted the edges and sewed on the binding. The binding fabric matches the fabric that I'll be making my studio curtains from. It just worked out that the colors go together, so this quilt will hang in my quilt studio. It went really well . . . I was terrified that I would run into difficulties, but it was slick. So, big Happy Dance! It was done and I even had time leftover to make my pot luck dish and get a good night's sleep!

Ta Dah! Here it is at the Challenge Quilt Reveal party. I didn't end up with as many buttons on the quilt as I thought I would. The big button in the lower right hand corner is my tongue-in-cheek poke at myself. It says "Quilters don't do buttons". *grin*

Many of the buttons on here are special to me, like the buttons from the very first piece of clothing I made for myself after I got my very first sewing machine back in 1975, buttons from projects for my children, buttons to represent my Mom, where I grew up, etc. I did some stacked buttons, and some fancy ways to put the buttons on, all kinds of stuff.

Oh, and I ended up with a 3rd Place ribbon in the Pieced catagory. That was better than I was expecting!

I thought you might like to see the other Challenge quilts. We didn't have a very big turn-out this year; there are only 13 quilts. And I missed getting a photo of the pieced pillow that won Viewer's Choice - rats! The quilts range from tablerunners and wall-hangings to bed-sized quilts. (the envelopes were for the voting ballots) Here they are, in no particular order:

Now that the challenge quilt is done, I've taken some time to recouperate. I'm catching up on some stuff around the house, and cleaning up the studio. Next up is some things I've gotten behind on.

Have a creative day!

We're having our first heat wave of the year right now. We've been very cool here this spring and early summer . . . cool for the Pacific Northwest, even. As few as 4 days ago, the heat in the house was still coming on early mornings and nights. I kid you not! We were in the 60's and drizzly rain for the 4th celebration. It's said that summer doesn't start around here until after the 4th of July, so we're right on schedule. Because now summer has finally arrived. Yesterday we hit 87* F, and today and tomorrow we're supposed to be 90* or more.

I've been out watering the yard the last few days, so my new little plants don't croak in the unusual heat. So, I thought I'd take some photos while I was out there.

Here's my 6 foot tall Foxglove. This was taken at eye level! I think it's the tallest one I've ever had. This was a wonderful volunteer plant. Foxgloves grow wild all over here, and almost all of them are this color.

Here is one of the last two rhody blooms for the season, both of which are on the same plant.

Here is our terrarium that we planted last year. I thought I had put a picture of the start of this on the blog last year, but I can't find it. So you'll have to trust me when I tell you that this is thriving! That fern is about 3 times the size it was last year. I wish all my ferns grew that fast! We have a wonderful woodland-type back yard, and all the plants we put here are from our yard.

I've been busy sewing on my challenge, and finally have the center all put together. I still think putting all those crazy pieces together is the hardest part. This is pretty close to the true color, which is a deep red-purple. The lighter batik is pale violet.

Now I'm starting on my borders. I had a hard time making up my mind what to do for the borders. I decided to go with this design because I think these kind of echo the shape of the O's in the words and also are kind of a button shape, which will echo the buttons I'm going to embellish this with. Three more to go.

I have one week to finish this, so I'm trying to sew like crazy and not panic. It's too hot to be in the quilt studio until late in the afternoon, as it's on the east side of the house, which has no shade. And we have no air conditioner, as we only need it a few days a year. So, my studio time is limited. There may be some late nights going on around here. Wish me luck!