It's about time I get back to blogging!  Especially since this year has been a fun quilting year.  I have three significant quilts out there.  The first one is part of the Cherrywood Van Gogh exhibit.  When I heard about this challenge I really wanted to do sunflowers, but the fabric was three shades of blue.  Instead, I combined night time sunflowers with the swirls of starry, starry night and made a Starry, Starry Garden.  You can see it whenever the Cherrywood Van Gogh French exhibit is shown.

Next came the National Quilt Museum's New Quilts from an old Favorite.  I've entered this before and been generally successful.  The last two years, however, I have not been juried in, so I was not really planning to enter.  Then I got an idea.  It came and I liked it so much that I needed to do it.  Black Tie and Tails was born.  It is made out of curtain fabric completely quilted prior to adding anything to the surface.  I followed the fabric floral design when I quilted it, and at times, all I could think of was upholstery for a wing back chair. Once that was done, I created the cats using the bow tie pattern.  They are out of Radiance fabric.  Finally, I embroidered their faces and added those little shelves for them to stand on.  I won 4th place and from what I have heard, it has been a very much enjoyed quilt.  I love it and it makes me happy.  It, too, will travel for the next two years to various AQS shows.  I will be anxious to get it back.

Last, but not least is my Back to Bali quilt.  This quilt pretty much designed itself.  I had fabric that contained the birds which are broderie perse.  The leaves, tear drop pieces, and flowers are also from that fabric.  The vines were such a great extension of the tails, and the central medallion  was taken from the Milifieori quilt.  I loved how it was turning out!  Then I started on the border of stars and gold.  What a challenge that was.  I think I had to 'fix' it several times before I was pleased with it. It also has some thread work on the vines, beads, and a few crystals for bling. The quilting went well and I especially love the basket weave around the border.  All of this is hand done and my trials and tribulations were rewarded with a 1st place at Paducah this year.  How exciting!

Now that I am back, I hope to be more regular, but it might be hard to top this last month!

I Love a Quiet January

January is such a nice, quiet month.  For the first time in a long while I have been able to spend time quilting, and I have been enjoying it immensely!  

After the holidays, I took time to catch up on the mail.  One of the magazines was Keepsake Quilting and inside a found the most wonderful page of Star Wars fabric.  I had heard from my DD that the boys were having their own wars over the quilt each morning, so-o-o-o, I ordered enough fabric to make two small lap quilts.  Each quilt is just a bit different and has their name on it.  I sent them to the house via UPS and each boy got a box.  They looked pleased and excited that they now have their own quilt.  I love being able to do things like that.

One for each of the boys...























Next, I finished my Cheap Trick quilt.  It is OK, but I had hoped to be a bit more thrilled with it.  I think it's the background quilting, it should have been a bit less rigid.

The one quilt I have been working on for awhile is made from fabric my DD got me when she was in Bali.  It is a combination of the Millefliore pattern in the center, broderie purse from the Bali fabric, and various applique elements.  I just finished appliqueing the last quadrant and am working on embellishing the applique.  I saw a segment by Ricky Tims on using pearl cotton woven with thread.  I had thought about doing French Knots to repeat the small dots in the Bali Fabric, but this is so much better and very much easier. I laid it on the floor to get some idea of how it will look.

Detail of embellishment

In the mean time...I got an idea for a couple of other quilts.  Will their ever be enough time???

The Holidays are Over - Whew!

The holidays are one of my favorite times of the year, however, they are tiring.  We enjoyed the whole family for four days.  Gifts were exchanged, laughs were had, a 1,000 piece puzzle done, and we enjoyed my DD and SIL's cooking.

Now I get to stay home and quilt.  And quilt I will.  In mid December I finished another Christmas Quilt.  All of my Christmas Quilts are red and green.  I don't do snowmen, Santas, or other Christmas icons, just red and green.  This quilt started in the early 2000's and was put in my cupboard only to be found when I cleaned up my sewing room last fall.  I decided it was time to get it done.  

In October I went to Ricky Tims Super Seminar and saw a couple of techniques that I hadn't used recently.  I did the applique using the double blanket stitch on my Bernina and backed the blocks with Ricky's StableStuff.  The double blanket stitch is quite different from the regular one.  It is much more noticeable and will require a lot of practice, but putting the StableStuff behind it really works well and it will soften considerably once I wash it.

In May our guild will be having our quilt show (Sinnissippi Quilters, Sports Core on Riverside, May 6 and 7) and there are a couple of challenges that have been issued for the show.  The first one is the theme challenge.  Our theme is Bits and Pieces.  We have set the criteria to be that a log cabin needs to be used and it should be in the 20" to 50" size range.  I am in love with this quilt.  It doesn't have a name yet, but it is approx. 36" square.

The second challenge is celebrating Rockford's own Cheap Trick's entry into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame last year.  It is to be an original interpretation relating to Cheap Trick and be 20" square.  I realized that I missed most of their music while I was raising my kids.  I needed to listen to some, but the iconic checkerboard and multi-necked guitars caught my imagination.

There is a quick project I am working on, but more about that later.

I am still working on an original applique that seems to be going on forever! More about that later also.

Lastly, I am going to submit a quilt to Cherrywood's challenge this year:  Van Gogh.  I have my packet of fabric and a design, I think.  Last year was Lion King.  I can let you see that one.

Have a calm January and spend all those free minutes quilting.

Merry Christmas and Happy Quilting

Here it is, almost Christmas and I have not been making quilty gifts. I realized a few years back that my family has just about everything they want, so I stopped.  It is kind of nice.  I now have quilting time for me in December.  I've been working on a couple of things.

The first thing is a red and green Christmas quilt.  I don't do Santas and Snowmen, but I do make red and green quilts, as you can see from the photo above.  This one is one that I started in 2008. It's the one on the bottom.  I am still quilting it, so the picture will follow when it is done, which I hope is next week.

The second thing is a red and green quilt.  Sometime this spring, I was on Pinterest and my DH saw a quilt that he really liked.  It was a Judy Neimeyer pattern, lots of paper pieced spikes and a lone star in the center.  I thought it was a good thing that he pointed this out to me, so I bought the pattern.  I also bought some fabric I thought he might like.  Unfortunately, after starting the center piece, I realized that I didn't like the fabric...so it sat for awhile.  Recently, I was telling someone how much I liked red and green quilts and it became obvious that I might actually finish this if I made it red and green.  I am just about to finish the center star and all of the paper pieced sections are pieced, so as soon as I get the center pieced, I will post a picture.

Last month I mentioned that I was waiting for a juried decision on my Goose Lake quilt.  Well, bummer, it didn't get in.  I will enter it somewhere else and see how it does.

Lastly, we revealed the completed raffle quilt for Sinnissippi Guild.  If you would like tickets, let me know.  It is an original design and was made with the help of 30+ guild members.

Here it is:

Whimsical Garden

So much for now.  Hopefully I will get a few things done before the end of the year.

One Amazing Week

Last week was an amazing week.  It started with a trip to Chicago to see Hamilton.  I was lucky to get reasonably priced tickets to a bus trip with other from the Starlight Theater crew.  It was a truely unique and wonderful production.  The music, the lighting, the stage setting, and the costumes were exceptional.  I think I could see it several times, just couldn't afford that.

The very next day we headed out to Houston.  Tuesday was the awards ceremony for the IQA show.  They certainly do it right.  They have a winners circle where all of the ribbon winners sit together.  That means that I was in an area with people I had only admired from afar.  Sitting next to me was Cynthia England, she not only congratulated me on my award, but won best of show.  I was in awe of where I was and who I was with.  Unfortunately, I didn't get many pictures, but my DH got this one of me with my quilt.

They want you to stand near your quilt as much as you can.  I spent several hours at different times of the day and met a lot of great quilters.  It was fun to answer questions and, in general, just talk about quilting.  It was a whirlwind three days and something not to be missed.  If you would like to see all of the winners go to quilts.org.

Now that I am home, the holidays loom, but I hope to post another quilt soon.

...goin' to Houston

Welcome to my new blog space.  I am a quilter and hope to share with you some of my quilting experiences.  First of all, I am going to Houston for the IQA show.  My quilt won an honorable mention and, because of that, I get to be a small part of the bigger winner's circle!  How could I miss that.  It will be a quick trip since I already had some plans for that same week, but my husband and I will be driving like mad to get there.

Here is my quilt:  A Time for Lime.  It is a combination of applique and piecing, using Sue Garman's patterns for the applique and a feathered star as the counterpoint.  I used Kaffe fabrics for the applique and offset those brilliant colors with a great red civil war repro as the background and some lime greens to make it sparkle.

I have several other projects in the works and will follow up soon with those pictures.  One of the things I will need to keep you updated on is our mini group projects.  When we meet, we set up a challenge to be completed by the next time we meet.  More on that later...