WOW! Quilt Ribbons!

But first, another Art Prize photo ---- Charlie sitting next to Jesus. You too can have your picture taken with Jesus in the lobby of the Waters Building. Don't miss this opportunity!

[Better art further into the building, in my humble opinion.]

West Michigan Quilt Show this weekend, 250 quilts on display. I went over to do two working stints, and found a ribbon on one of my quilts! This ribbon was placed by an "Honorary Judge", not one of the Real judges, but nonetheless an art professor at the local state university. He picked my "Falling Shoo-flies" as his favorite, for the use of various sizes of blocks and for the border treatment. [Made for SpoolSpinners mystery]

Hmm, I think I like him.

And right around the corner, another judge's choice ribbon; this time from one of the "Real" judges of the show. My "Summer Sun" was his pick after all the judging was done.

I was so sure that this would not be judged as high quality that I sewed the sleeve on the back by machine, showing the stitches straight through onto the front. I mean, it's just a Rail Fence with one snowball block!

Hmm... I think I'll take this one too.

As you can probably tell, I am mostly interested in the design of a quilt, and getting the pieces together. I am not "into" the details of perfect piecing and perfect binding. So I am never going to get a ribbon in the regular judging. Therefore it is certainly nice to get some recognition from judges for my design sense.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Other quilters congratulating me

Enjoying the other quilts, quite a variety

Seeing more Art Prize entries before the symphony concert tonight

Blogger's Quilt Festival - my showcase

Park City Girl is having her second Showcase during Quilt Festival in Houston. It's for those of us who don't get to go to Houston. We're having our own Festival on our Blogs. Each participant is writing about and showing her choice of ONE quilt.

So here is my favorite from this year (so far):

It started with a challenge on the internet to make a Rail Fence quilt. I decided to make mine monocromatic, and use up a lot of my YELLOW fabrics.

When I was putting the blocks together I decided to put the lighter ones in the middle and the darker ones around the edges. Since this was in late June, all this yellow made me think of "Summer Sun", and it was going to be done to use THIS JULY!



The idea then was "Sun".

Therefore I made one block that was a Snowball for the center, and slashed some of the other blocks to insert "rays". It wasn't great, needed a better center. . . .

so I put WonderUnder on the back of a piece of white, cut a spiral, and then fused the spiral down to the Snowball block.

Catherine Martin does my quilting on large quilts. I asked her to use a "summer" weight bat and to quilt in radial lines from the center out to all the edges. She did an even better job by making those "flames" in the middle and on some of the quilted rays.

I used up lots of scraps and more of my yellow fabrics on the back. I wrote various song lines about SUMMER there with an orange marker. "Summertime, and the livin' is easy!"

"In the good ol' summer time, in the good ol' summertime!"

One of the sections also became my LABEL.





When the quilt was ready for the bed, I realized that it needed special pillowcases. There were enough scraps left to make cuffs for the two pillows and also my little knee pillow.

This quilt has been just a joy to me. Right now I hate to think that it has to go into storage as we need a heavier quilt for the fall, and our duvet for the winter.

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Sara

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Gratitudes:

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Enjoyed the quilt on our bed for three months.

Just home from a fun trip to Mackinc Island.

Reading Barbara Brown Taylor's Altars in the World in the car with Charlie.

Mowing the labyrinth

Turning around a bend in the path. . .

Every week I intend to mow the labyrinth I put in our meadow several years ago. I don't really have a choice if I want the labyrinth to be useable! This year I have done very well on getting to it each Friday.


In the center, emtry/exit path and six "standing" places. . . .

This week it rained all day on Friday, so I was a day and a half late. The grass along the side of the path is now so long that if I get a little bit off kilter, these grasses wrap around the axel of the wheels and really slow me down. Usually I can do the job in 30 minutes. This time I sepnt 20 minutes and was only 1/3 of the way finished. I was sweating and huffing sao hard, that I put the machine away until the next day!

Very foggy this morning, so I kept to the sewing machine, where I made pillow cases to go along with the Summer Sun quilt.
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I had purchased enough of one yellow fabric to be the bodies of the pillowcases, and I used the leftovers from the quilt to make bands for the cuffs of the cases.


I have a little pillow to put between my knees, so I made a yellow case for that pillow as well.

GrammiLou commented that this quilt seems to have progressed very quickly. Well, yes! I looked back and see that I started it on June 1--part of an internet Quilt-along. I really focused on it for two weeks, AND when I gave it to Catherine, my LA quilter, she loaded it on her Gammill that very night! She heard me that I wanted this quilt for the SUMMER. So June 1 I started, and June 21 I finished the pillowcases. Yes, that's quick.


Sara

Gratitudes:

Enjoyed the new quilt on my bed last night
Newly found Mendelsohn music on radio
Charlie safely home from his trip to Ontario [baseball Hall of Fame]

Summer Sun bound and finished

I ironed the binding in half.

I trimmed the quilt edges.

I sewed the binding on the back, and then over to the front.

And I put the quilt on our bed.

It really should have been washed first, but Charlie is going away tomorrow overnight--and I wanted us both to experience this new summer quilt.

The hand quilting project that I started yesterday is my "Kona Stars" top. I had put this mostly together while we were on our trip to Florida. Now Catherine has machine basted the layers together so that I can try the "Big Stitch" method of hand quilting. I am using perle cotton (heavy embroidery thread) in black, and will outline the patches that are NOT stars. Then see what more, if anything, I want to do.

It's looking rather primitive, only 3 stitches to the inch! And the lines aren't really straight. Guess I'll have to find a way to mark those diagonals. But I think it is going to be okay. However, I'm wondering how long this is going to take me. I spent about two hours on it yesterday and only got this far.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Rain in the night

Ladies wearing hats for a birthday party

Two new-to-me quilting books from the library

Summer Sun quilted

Catherine Martin brought my Summer Sun quilt back to me at our Bee "stitch-in" today. There she is on the right, while we try to hold up this queen sized quilt.

It's just like I wanted it, only even better because she added some flames in the rays coming from the sun. All the quilting lines come out from the sun, which required her to do some hard thinking to plan how to do that on her Gammill.

She tried yellow thread, but thought that the orange/red showed up better. I'm happy with that.

And she used tight flames in the sun itself to fasten down the edges.

I am so happy with the whole thing!

Thank you Catherine! I hope to get it bound tomorrow, and then we can sleep under it for the rest of the summer.

Sara

Gratitudes:
Made it through exercise class again
Began "Big Stitch" hand quilting at Stitch-In
Summer Sun delivered back to me!
Celebration dinner for Peter's MA in Public Administration

Yellow on BOTH sides

Tuesday I made a white spiral to fuse into the middle of my Sun. When I cut it out, it produced another spiral almost as big. Decided to fuse that one onto an extra block that is going into the backing for the quilt.

Spent the rest of yesterday and today putting strips together for the back of Summer Sun, trying to use up most/all of the leftovers from the front of the quilt. Tonight one half is together, and the other strips are sewn. One side's strips will be perpendicular to the other side's strips.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Got a comment that "gratitudes" are contagious!

Found some basil plants to put in the herb garden.

Green, green lovely day; dinner on the deck

Summer Sun mostly together

I going to call this quilt "Summer Sun" because if is all yellow. Last night I finished sewing my blocks into two long rectangles--and I'm not sewing those two together until I have done some quilting.

Since this is going to be a summer quilt, I am making an indication of the sun in the middle . I made one Snowball block for the sun itself, using a lighter, mottled yellow fabric. Then I slashed some railfence blocks and inserted a 1.5" strip from side to side. One the first four, I carefully alternated the way the rail went before I cut the pile of four. Then when I decided to add some more, cutting on the Real diagonal, from corner to corner, I didn't think that was necessary. Wrong! I couldn't get them to point in the direction I wanted and still keep the rails going in the right direction for the design. O, well, use them a little further out. Certainly USE them.

Now I am studying it, trying to decide if they are TOO wonky.
Hmm, now there's a concept.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Got through exercise class

Smell of bread baking this afternoon

Plumber started work on downstairs bathroom

Some Lighter Yellow

I took my extra darker yellow strips and sewed them end to end, as preparation for the binding of the Sunshine Yellow quilt. Maybe it will be long enough.


Then I sewed the little "waste" triangles together and made little patches. And I sewed Them together and end to end to make a strip of leftovers that can be pieced into the backing of this quilt.

But I was really thinking all day that 70 blocks was not going to be enough. You see, somehow I have begun thinking of this as MY quilt for the summer. And my bed is queen sized.

So last night I made 10 more blocks of lighter yellow fabrics that I still had (and had earlier rejected as "too light"). Here's a photo of the new blocks on the left and a bit on the others on the right.

80 blocks is supposed to be enough to make a top that is 80" x 100". But is THAT going to be big enough? Do I need another 10?

So now I only have to wait until Monday for the next set of instructions.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Guided walk through the Wege Natural Area
Yummy lunch [and conversation] at Sue's house after the walk
Also great to see Kim and the Sikes at the walk

Sue's begun QUILTING!

"Split" Rails

In order to have enough "rails" for the golden yellow fences I have been sewing together the leftovers. This gives me some extra strips for my blocks, and I hope will add a little "zip" to the final look.

So today I have 70 "regular" blocks, some of which include the scrappy strips. These will be set Rail Fence style, though mostdo not have a dark rail on one side. My plan in making so many is that I will have NO borders! Yes! Borders are always a problem. Recently I have seen several quilts with no borders, and they look great. What a solution! However, it does mean more blocks to get the quilt up to size.

This is enough for a 7 x 10 set, which should be almost 70" x 100". However, they are not all pressed yet.

Looks like it's going to be a summery, sunshine quilt. I'm feeling energized by this project right now, and they isn't going to be any more instruction until Monday. Should I go ahead and start compiling rows? What else could the next instruction be after all?

Hmm. Out of energy for tonight, so I'm going to knit or read.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Visit by Carol Ingells

Dinner out: plate of 3 different salads

Five "Living On The Edge" ten minute plays tonight

Trail Volunteer and Rail Fence blocks

Charlie has signed up to be a Trail Volunteer for our Kent County trail system. He has been to the class, had his "record" checked, and received this splendid costume which he is to wear on the trail.

His assignment is to walk at least two hours a week and report the condition of the TRAIL. If there are any problem with PEOPLE, he is to use his own cell phone to call the sheriff.





I'm working on the Rail Fence blocks, which seem pretty big. But then, that will make the quilt top quicker! Here are some of the blocks to show how the colorway is looking. Looks like Summer or July Sunshine!



And here is the wastebasket with the slivers of trimmings from cutting them all to my PPM, 10.25" square.



Sara

Gratitudes:

Easy picking out new tiles for basement shower floor
Progress on the Rail Fence blocks
Robin chicks have flown away (or disapeared anyway)

Double Delight done, done DONE

Yesterday afternoon I finished the extra quilting that I thought my Double Delight needed to balance what Catherine Martin had done. Then I washed it, and put it in the dryer. When I get to that point with any quilt, I think it is DONE. I can mark it down as finished in May, on the very last day! [Counts for One-Project-A-Month plan.]

I have shown this before, but here it is washed and dried, with all the bumpiness of the quilting really showing up.

And today I started the "Quilt-along" offered by Dana at http://oldredbarnco.blogspot.com/ .

Step 1 was choosing your fabric--and after thinking hard about GREEN, I decided on yellow. When I looked into my Yellow Box, I saw a lot of orangey/goldish fabrics I would be glad to use up--so THAT's the kind of yellow I am using. My idea is a summer quilt--maybe with all the yellows: "Summer Sun."

I cut some 2.5" strips as directed in Step 2, and sewed some together. I could see by the Sample that this was going to be a Rail Fence quilt. But I don't have the new fabric she is planning for, so I wasn't able to cut Width-of-Fabric strips. I wasn't going to cut my strips from my scraps until I knew how long they had to be.

Today Step 3 gave me that information, and her particular plan is not going to work for me. I have changed the plan to a FIVE rail block instead of six rails, therefore I am making my blocks 10.5" instead of 12.5". I think this will still work out to a twin sized quilt. I can make something over 50 blocks, so that will make a 60" x 90" center section.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Quiet, rainiy day, good for sewing

Leftovers made dinner easy

More iris in bloom