The Quilt Show & #5 & Rearranging

Here is a close up of the quilting on finish #5 for the year. It was made from the leftover triangles of another quilt that I blogged about here. 

I was happy to get it done to hang in the quilt show which was March 16. The show went well with about 50 quilts hanging. I only had one quilt of mine hanging that had been in the show before. There were 11 local quilters who shared their quilts in the show. 

Here is a shot of the Eiffel Tower quilt my niece made to raise money for her trip with the Vivace Chorale to Paris. It is an adaptation of the Stained Glass Denim Quilt Pattern I have used so much. It is amazing to me how many people are still asking for that pattern.

This quilt was done all by hand by a local quilter. The base of the tree is hidden by the sewing machine that was for sale. The creator of the quilt saw a 3" X 3" picture of this tree and enlarged it to a queen size quilt! This quilter shared 7 or 8 quilts with us at the show!

Here are three more quilts on display. 

Another quilter shared these two quilts on the quilt rack with us. They were both hand sewn. The Cathedral Window quilt used 30 yards of unbleached muslin and 3 yards of the blue calico.

If you would like to see more pictures from the show, they are up on flickr.

I have been working on getting things rearranged in the house to allow for the new pieces of furniture that arrived a few weeks ago. I emptied out a bookcase and took it to my niece's house. I rearranged things in the great room and then started to add items to the new curio cabinet. I kept adding and found more things and added them and was rather surprised to fill it! 

I have also been working hard at cleaning up the sewing room. It was just such a huge mess! I am pretty satisfied with it right now but there is still room for improvement. I bought some bins to store fabric and batting, etc. and started filling the little drawers in the sewing cabinet and I even got rid of quite a few things. I will try to post some pictures soon but the weather is improving and I have a lot of work to do outside!

Retreat, #4 and Show

Last weekend was Quilt Retreat for me and I got a lot accomplished. I got the star blocks from the last block exchange put together and got the borders on another top that has been waiting around for several months. I also did two sets of One Block Wonder blocks and two LWR quilt tops. As a final project I worked on some blocks that I started several years ago.

Had a great visit with my sister and other quilters at the retreat and the bonus visit from my daughter and grandkids. On my way home I stopped by my son's apartment and picked up the twin bed he has been using. He decided that a nearly 23 year old, 6 foot tall young man should have a big person's bed. This was followed by a quick stop at my daughter's house and I continued on the trip home. I was so glad to be home at about 5:30 pm after leaving camp at about 8:30 am!

I arrived home to two new pieces of furniture in my house. The most exciting was my new sewing cabinet that my husband made for me.

It has 24 treadle sewing machine cabinet drawers, a shelf for my serger and it fits around my Sew-E-Z table for my sewing machine. I have only done a little sewing since I got home but I already love the extended sewing surface. I haven't had a chance to fill all the drawers yet but I am looking forward to getting things organized.

The other piece of furniture is an antique curio cabinet that my husband purchased from a customer. 

I already have one curio cabinet and really no more space in my house so we are emptying a book case and giving it to our niece to make some more space. I am also considering giving away another piece if I can get things rearranged to I'm not using the space.

With the quilt show just one week away I am trying to get more quilts finished that are close. Here is finish #4 for the year. These are my Block Exchange Blocks from this past year. The rainbow stripe fabric is the backing for the quilts I made with my grandkids so I figure this will be a cuddle quilt for them to use at Grammy's house. I used a polyester batt that I had on hand and was able to make it two layers so it is nice and fluffy. 

I started quilting another quilt yesterday and after I had some feather borders done I realized the tension was off and I have to rip it all out! I stayed home from work today as I am not feeling well so I am hoping to get the ripping done today and then maybe I will feel better tomorrow so I can get the quilting redone so it is ready for the show.

This week I have received 20 quilts from other local quilters and hope to get at least another 20 for the show. I have 3-7 people who have offered some so I hope to get a bunch. I am hoping to only have newer quilts of mine in the show so it is mostly fresh and new. I was excited this week to find out that we will have a beautiful handmade oak quilt rack made by one of our church members to raffle off.

Well, I still feel pretty crummy but I am going to try to get something accomplished today even if it is just hand stitching a binding!

Second and Third

Finishes, that is. The first was the Relay Raffle Quilt. Glad to have that one done. I hope to get the tickets printed this week so we can start selling them.

I realized on Tuesday morning that I am invited to a baby shower for a young woman who works at the daycare at work tomorrow. I realized I had this top all ready to be quilted so I picked up some flannel for the back on the way home from work and quickly got it washed and dried. Got things laid out and basted, quilted and had the binding ready for hand-sewing at craft night that evening! So here is a picture of finish number 3

and here is a close-up of some of the quilting. I have so much fun making those little flowers!

It was a busy week at work especially with the need to get next week's work done early so I can head to my quilt retreat! I realized this morning that I really need to get busy on a plan for projects to work on at the retreat. I have thrown some things together but not totally satisfied with things so far. I will do some more planning tomorrow.

This morning I got one of my shop hop quilts basted and ready for quilting so that might get quilted over the weekend. Maybe it will be finish #4! It feels really good to be finishing up some UFOs!

Relay Raffle

I am well on my way to my second finished quilt of the year! I finished this top this evening.

This will be the raffle quilt for our Relay for Life team this year. I hope to get it basted tomorrow and quilted on Wednesday but there are no guarantees!

Once this one is done I will get borders on Katie's block and then I would like to get some UFOs quilted and finished. I think I have at least 4 tops I could quilt and get finished so that is my next big goal.

Spring is on its way along with lots of outdoor jobs! Over the weekend I got 2 of the five apple trees pruned so if I get some spare time when it isn't raining I need to get out and finish up the other three. Having those done is my next outside goal.

What a Fun Night!

But then, it is always fun at craft night. Tuesday was especially great though because it was Quilt Reveal Night! It is always so exciting to see what creations we came up with this year.

I drew the #1 so I went first to reveal the quilt I made for my friend, Nadine. She seemed to like it...I was so honored to make this for her. As I cut the pieces and sewed the blocks I was given the opportunity to pray for Nadine and the success of her treatment.

Next came Linnea's quilt for Cindy. In the center of the stars are pictures of all of Cindy's grandkids.

Sally our hostess was the next to hang her quilt. This time for Mary. We got to watch this quilt come together. You can't see it in the picture but the colors in this looked so soft - almost as if it was flannel.

Then Linnea left the room so Mary could hang up some of the blocks for Linnea's quilt. Evidently Mary made two other quilts but wasn't satisfied with them so she decided on this one. She had hoped to have at least half of it put together for the reveal but there was a good bit of unsewing that needed to be done so it just wasn't to be. It is going to be gorgeous when it gets finished.

Next up was Nadine's quilt for me! It is great! Now I don't have to make my own black and white quilt with a splash of color!

Our last quilt was Cindy's quilt for Sally. She struggled so with this quilt. She was very proud of herself for actually following the pattern but some of the strips were mighty thin.

All the quilts were so awesome! 


After we finished oohing and aahing we got down the business of figuring out who will be making a quilt for whom. We each just have two more people to make quilts for now, so we figure we will just work on them both, but only one is expected to be finished by May 2014. My first needs to be made for Mary. She is fine with any size and is interested in Black and White with a bit of Red and does like Log Cabin or any more traditional quilt. I will need to look at patterns and see what I come up with. I am hoping to get it done sooner rather than later and then I can get to work on one for Cindy.

First Finish of Firteen ('13)

Here it is!

I love how it turned out! These quilts are very fun to make and I will be making more once a few other projects are finished! This type of quilt really adds fuel to the question some husbands ask - "So you just cut up fabric so you can sew it back together?" - because that is really all I did. Cut up one piece of fabric into little triangles and then sew them back together! I now look at fabrics in a different way wondering how they would work for one of these quilts.

I finished the binding on this one on Tuesday morning and Tuesday afternoon I finally got the label on the quilt I made for one of my crafting ladies so I could bring it over for the big reveal. Nothing like leaving it until the last moment. I will hopefully get a post done with all the pictures later today.

Yesterday I did another last minute project. This one is for the the round robin group I am in with my sister and niece and other friends. I posted pictures of our last reveal in November and we were supposed to have our beginning block for the next one done by the end of January. Mine is appliqued so I had my work cut out for me (literally). Here is the finished block...

The idea came from a wall hanging I saw in a quilt shop on a long ago shop hop. I managed to get some of the fabrics and it was one of those 'someday' projects. I saw the pile of fabric when I was trying to decide on my block and thought this was a great opportunity to do something about it. This should be a fun whimsical quilt once all the other folks add some borders. 

My next project is my Relay for Life Raffle Quilt. I have it all cut out and a good start on sewing the blocks together so hopefully the top will be done in the next week. When that top is together I need to add some borders to my niece's block for the round robin.

One Block Wonder

Life just doesn't slow down around here. I have been keeping busy with work and getting the business info into the computer. I was focused and finished the computer work by Friday evening! Just in time for my daughter, grand-kids and niece to arrive for the long weekend. Usually when they come I make sure I can spend all my time with the kids but this time I had my quilting class scheduled for Saturday and I wasn't going to miss it!

Here is the quilt top that the person teaching the class made using the pattern. Can you see why I was interested?

Here is the fabric I chose for my quilt. This is the one I liked best but wasn't sure it was as good for this quilt. 

As it turns out, it did work well for the blocks! Here are the blocks I had done by the end of class on Saturday. 

It was so fun to see other quilter's fabric choices and then to see how the blocks turned out. This is the fabric my table mate brought. She wasn't sure if she was going to like it since there was so much of the brown.

But this is how her first blocks turned out! She was still thinking she might add blocks from another fabric to add some green but she was going to wait until she had all the blocks done.

Here is another animal print that someone was using and her first two blocks.

Here is an interesting dragon print

And here is how the first three blocks turned out!

Here are a couple more of the beginning blocks

We had a lot of fun with our company and while the kids were stringing beads on some thread with their uncle I managed to finish up the blocks from the class. This morning before everyone left we went over to the church so we had a place to layout the blocks on a design wall. Here is one of the pictures we took as we were rearranging. 

I am not sure if this is the final picture or not. We pinned all the blocks to the flannel sheet so I can hang it on Sally's design wall tomorrow at craft night and see if I am still happy with it. If I am, I can start putting it all together.

I am definitely excited about trying this technique with some other fabrics!

While I was working on sewing the rest of the blocks, my niece started cutting pieces for my Relay for Life Raffle Quilt. I am making a twin sized Monet's Wedding Ring like this one only I have an off white for the background and miscellaneous scraps for the rings. I got the background fabric today and hope to start cutting tomorrow or the next day.

Meanwhile, I have started cleaning up the sewing room. I got a lot of the mess on the sewing table sorted out so tomorrow I can put some of the piles away where they belong and sort some more! Once it is cleaner it will be much easier to finish up some projects! Wish me luck!