Happy Easter

Playing

I have been making decent progress on the girl's baby quilt. The prairie points have all been made and trimmed and the backing fabric arrived today. I will finalize the quilt top tomorrow, but yesterday and today I wanted to play a little. I have been making 5 inch squares of scraps ala "15 Minutes of Play" by Victoria Findlay Wolfe. It is great fun and you can just let your mind wander as you rummage through your scrap piles. I was kind of forced into it when Charley, the newest cat, discovered the box of scraps on the floor of my sewing room. He had all kinds of fun jumping in and out of the box, playing with the scraps, and generally making a big mess. Well, thought I, he has a point. If he can play, so can I. Here is one of the squares set into a saw-toothed star.

Snowy Progress

A record 12.2 inches of snow fell yesterday. This is a view out the back door and as you can see, the bald cypress is quite laden with the snowfall. It's very beautiful, and the school districts have given the children a snow day. I expect to see quite a few sledders out on the street later on. The temperatures have not been brutal, hovering at a a degree or so above freezing. This means driving will not be a problem. Our street is quite clear. The county trucks came through yesterday afternoon and laid down salt, which is very productive when the temperatures are at or near freezing. I took advantage of the weather to sew some yesterday and here is the result.

A white border goes on today and then prairie points. I am itching to make some blocks ala Victoria Wolfe's "15 Minutes of Play." Charlie, the newest cat, entertained himself yesterday playing in the scrap box. This alerted me to the fact that there is quite a bit in the box right now and a peek at the Material Obsession blog this morning gave me the idea to whip up a few of Wolfe's scrappy blocks.

Baby Blocks

Not the best photo, but I have begun the baby quilt my sister asked for. It is the girl's version of the baby quilt that I posted about here. Today I will add the white setting triangles, sashing, and border. Next up - the prairie points.

Several people have asked about photos from my guild's recent show. I will post some in a bit, but first I want to get a slideshow completed of my photos from QuiltCon. It has turned out to be a larger task than first anticipated. The QuiltCon brochure gave permission for the quilts to be photographed and shown publicly (as long as it was not for a commercial purpose), but with one caveat - attribution must be made to the quilters. Therein lies the rub. Although I took photos of the labels so as to capture this information, some of the photos are not clear enough. It has been a bit of a chase around the web, looking at what others have posted, trying to nail down some of the quilter's names. Unfortunately, about 90% of the time, the poster has not complied with the restrictions regarding attribution. The photos are just published with a comment such as "cool quilts I saw at QuiltCon." If I can't figure out the last two or three, I will have to remove them from the photos I post.

Seven Pointed Star

Grandmother's Choice this week is a seven pointed star for Australia. Can't say this is one of my better efforts. I should have starched the heck out of the fabrics BEFORE using them. This is a Kaffe stripe and the background is a Kaffe shot cotton. Really, folks, it does look a little better in person. All the colors are a bit brighter. When I tried to lighten it a bit with software, it just washed everything out.

This past weekend our guild held their biennial quilt show. By all measures it was a success, even though we won't have a financial report for a bit. Attendance was up by at least 10% over past years. Saturday was  International Quilt Day and Sunday was St. Patrick's Day, so maybe the two combined gave us a bit of extra luck. Ricky Tims generously allowed us to display five of his quilts, one of which will be sent on to Paducah for the April show. It was great to see his quilts up close and be able to study all the intricate detail. He may tout his "Caveman Quilting", but none of that was in evidence this weekend.

Four couples that quilt together were featured in the show also. Even though I know all eight of them, it was fun and enlightening to see their work displayed in this way.

Another Morris Block

Another William Morris block is finished. I used the new technique for applique which I recently learned. I don't think it was all that beneficial for this simple block. The blue insets in the leaves could have been done easier and faster with plain old-fashioned needle turn without all the fuss of one-use templates and loads of starch and glue. It's also very difficult to push a needle through dried glue spots and the starch makes it hard to reshape points that I wasn't satisfied with. The technique does result in beautiful and fool proof placement and the benefits would be much more apparent in complicated patterns.

A warm quilter's welcome to Kevin and Rachael. Thanks for following.

Ocean Wave

Grandmother's Choice this week is Ocean Wave. My version is pictured above. I just about went nuts keeping all the half square triangles corralled and in their proper place.

Matsuri

I have been participating for several years in a workshop at the Quilted Fox called East Quilts West. We use the book of the same name by Kumiko Sudo and each month make a block from the book. It has been a wonderful way to expand one's use of texture and color. It is not a construction technique class. One participant in the past glued the pieces to poster board each month! This particular block is Matsuri, or Folk Festival.

Charlie is turning in to be the only cat in the menagerie interested in sewing. Although he looks as though he is sleeping, he only blinked because of the flash.

Thimble and Thread Quilt Expo

The local Webster Kirkwood Times newspaper carried a great article today regarding our guild's upcoming quilt show. Check it out! Here is one of the two quilts that will be raffled off at the Expo.

International Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day! Here is the optional block 7 of Fox Has Spots. I laid out all the blocks so far and am getting excited to get them all completed. I have done the BOM from Quilted Fox for several years now and have only finished one into an actual quilt. Two more are mostly finished as far as being quilt tops. They are aging right now, waiting to be quilted.

Two of Us

I started working on the new BOM at TheQuiltShow.com in January. The pattern started out with the sashings (the green ones in photo above). Then in month 2, instructions for the second set of sashings were published. I couldn't settle on a color scheme and found it difficult working backwards as it were from sashing to main block. So, rather than flail around wasting fabric, I set all aside until instructions for the main blocks, New York Beauty, were posted. That happened on March 1 and I have been happily machine piecing ever since. The red violet backgrounds will also probably be scrappy as there isn't enough of the Cherrywood fabric on hand to make the entire quilt. Or maybe I will buy more. Who knows? It may seem like a disorganized way to work, but I have run into several of the big name quilt people who do the same, so I can claim good company if nothing else.

New Blocks

Welcome aboard to Corema! Thanks for following.

 The Grandmother's Choice block this week is Grandmother's Dream. The historical entry that accompanies this block is an especially interesting read.

Another finish this week is the Block of the Month from Quilted Fox. Happy Monday, Everyone!

Ladies' Wreath

Last Saturday, Barbara Brackman posted this block in her Grandmother's Choice series. I finished mine just under the wire. Tomorrow morning a new block will be posted.

Since I have been home from vacation, there has been little time to sew.Today was the first time there was an opportunity to do so. Most of the day I worked on completing a second entry for our guild's quilt show in two weeks. The guild president always presents a challenge and this year it is "Gray, the New Neutral." Not wanting to show my hand just yet, it will be posted, along with my first entry, after the show, which is March 16 and 17.