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!

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.

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.

Ride 'Em, Kitty!

I just have to share this video of a cat riding the Roomba (robot vaccum) that I found. I think this is just hilarious, and it makes me laugh every time I watch it. I hope you enjoy it too! Since I can't figure out how to embed the video into the blog post (me? computer literate?), I'm just gonna put in the link. So click here to go see this one. And I have to admit, I've spent waaayyyy too much time on the LOL Cats web site. They're just really tickling my funny bone right now.

I'm not getting much done. I have a killer headache - 3 days now - and I think I have to admit that it's gotten to be a sinus infection. So, I guess I'll go see the doctor in the morning. This is really putting a crimp in my productivity, quilting or otherwise.

I did get that whole stack of fabrics ironed on Tuesday. That took some time! I've been working on sewing down some bindings on two little Priority Alzheimer's quilts. Not quite done, but almost. Why do the bindings seem to be endless?? Last night I went to a local quilting "Stitch & *itch". It was nice to get out and mingle with other quilters!

Still working on my wonky jars. It's slow going with the headache. Ugh.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

An Engineer's Guide To Cats

I found this video on You Tube, and I just have to share it with everyone. I thought it was hilarious. It actually reminds me of some the videos my son and his friends made in High School. Sorry I don't know how to imbed the video, but here's the link. It takes about 7 minutes to watch. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

(I was going to put in a kitty picture, but Blogger seems to be having "technical difficulties" doing that. Oh well.)