Quarter Blocks

I finally finished my rug order. Now I can concentrate on just the quilting. 

I have been working away on the red and white quilt. I have all of the quarter blocks done.

I expect the quilt will be finished in the next day or 2 now that all of the small seams are done. There is less to tell about this quilt; since usually, a lot of the decisions I make have to do with pairing many prints together, and strategies for keeping those pairings organized. It this quilt there are only 2 fabrics; and all of the blocks are the same. Very unusual for me,

Guild Dinner, Red and White Quilt

Tonight we had our annual spring dinner at guild. It is the last get together we have until August.The theme of the decorations was patriotic. I won this lovely flower arrangement as a door prize.

 

I have been working on the red and white quilt. I made one entire block to test out all of my patch measurements. It went together how I was expecting it to; so now I will proceed assembly line style and chain piece everything.

All of my HSTs are finished and sewn in pairs.

Next on the agenda is to all the single red triangle, white square, and press. I am trying to decide how to do the pressing. On the first block, I tried to press everything towards the darker fabric; but that made some areas pretty bulky, so maybe I will try pressing the seams open.

 

I'll write again when I have more done. Thanks for stopping by.

Blogger's Quilt Festival Entry

This is my first year blogging, so this is the first time I am trying to enter The Bloggers Quilt Festival. I hope I can figure out the technical aspects of getting my quilt included; but, we shall see. You never know until you try!Thank you to Marianne at The Quilting Edge. I have been enjoying her wonderful blog for the last few months; and I found out about the Blogger's Quilt Festival from her blog. Also, many thanks to Amy for setting this up.

 

Here is my entry. It i called Let's Polka. I was inspired by a cheesy wall hanging that was on the wall in a health club I was exercising in at the time. I guess I stared at it so long while doing yoga poses, that eventually, it formed an idea in my head. I think that is not what is supposed to be happening while you are doing yoga. Oh well! It just goes to show how these ideas can hit us anywhere. The original wall hanging had large, simple, shapes, with some dots and some stripes. It made me think I wanted to make a quilts using clean, classic, graphic, fabrics.So, I limited myself to stripes, dots, and solids. I added a lot more color than the original piece had. I chose a group of very simple blocks. Since the blocks were so simple, I thought it would be fun to group them so that the same fabrics were near each other, or even touching to form different shapes; instead of scattering things that are the same across the quilt. This quilt was machine quilted by my friend, and fellow blogger, Regina Carter. It was her idea to quilt it with a pattern called bubbles. I love it!

detail

detail

Let's Polka measures 77" x 90". Last month, I was in the Inman Park Festival in Atlanta, GA, and this quilt was displayed prominently on the back wall of my booth. Someone who saw it in the festival ordered a king size version of it! Yeah! So I think this is why this quilt is in the forefront of my mind now. Of course my favorite quilt is always the one I am currently working on; but, I think we are meant to put finished quilts in the festival.




Thanks for taking a look!
Candace

Lots of Red and White HSTs

My red fabric has arrived; so I am spending my sewing time making lots and lots of red and white HSTs.

I am also making a patriotic potholder for next Tuesday's spring dinner with my quilt guild. I can't show you that until it's over; because no one is supposed to know what mine looks like.

Quilt order, Finished blocks

Where does the time go. I can't believe my last post was over a week ago! How did that happen!? I think spring plays a major role. I am blaming spring because of all of the gardening and planting I have been spending time on. 

Also, I am the chairperson for my quilt guild's (The Cotton Boll Quilters) first quilt show in many years. I have had a couple of meetings dealing with that recently. We now have a firm date. Our show will open January 12, 2013; and be up until March 2. The show will be at The Art Station in Stone, Mountain, Georgia.  

I finally, finally got all of my square in a square blocks for my Bird Cage quilt trimmed.  I have all of these blocks for 2 different quilts finished and ready to go, but, I have struggled to find time to arrange them so I can sew them together.

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to have one of my quilting friends, Eleanor come over to visit for a little while, and I did get to work on the Bird Cage quilt. First I wanted to put all of the blocks up on the design board just for the joy of seeing them spread out in all of their wild and craziness.This was the quilt where I challenged myself to use a bit of everything, Kaffe, batiks, paisleys, plaids, stripes, you name it. It will be interesting to see how all of that variety works together.

I really enjoyed seeing them all up together. It made me want to make a quilt just out of this pattern. I have a had a quilt in my head lately, that is based on a view I saw off of the deck at quilt retreat last year. It was spring time, and the sky was a very clear, strong blue. That blue mixed with the bright green of the new leaves, mixed with the darker greens of the evergreen trees, and all of the browns a greys of the barks; seemed like it would be an interesting color scheme for a quilt. I also wanted something that would evoke the business of all of the textures of all of the different types of leaves. I wish I had my camera with me that day, I had hoped to get a photo when I went back this year, but the atmospheric conditions were not the same. I have been collecting batiks in greens, blues, browns, and greys, all year, anticipating eventually using that color scheme on a quilt.  I wonder if this could be that block for that quilt?

Anyway, back to this quilt. My plan was to do a ring of these small blocks around my large bird cage blocks. I got 2 of 4 done.

I haven't shared with you my biggest news. I got the order from the Etsy customer I have been conversing with the last 2 weeks!

This is the drawing he chose.

I have the red on order. It should be here next week. I was able to find the white locally. So I got it already. This week I washed it and cut the small squares for the HST. I marked them; so when the red gets here, all I have to do is get it washed, get the small squares cut, and start sewing.

That's all I have for now!

Festval Photos

     I had a great time at the Inman Park Festival! I'm only sorry I had no time to do the tour of homes. I bet it was out of this world The houses are so beautiful from the outside.

     I completely forgot to bring my camera on Saturday. I have never taken a video of anything, put if I ever did; that parade would have been the thing to video! It was such fun! Any attempt on my part to try to describe it would surely fall short; so if you are really curious, look up the Inman Park Festival website.

     I did remember my camera on Sunday however and took a few booth shots for posterity. The lighting was a bit challenging. The sun was in my eyes as I was taking these. I'm sure it was in the camera's eyes too.

 

Then, there was the very sunny view up and down the street in front of my booth.

 

For the most part it was pretty covered up with people, but I took these early in the day.

 

Then there was the much cooler, shadier view up and down the street behind my booth. Fortunately, I was on a very tree covered street, so I was spared from being fried to a crackly crunch!

I really enjoyed being there. I just love an outdoor art festival! Always have! But oooh! it sure did wear me out. I must be getting too old for this kind of thing. My friend, Eleanor was kind enough to remind me that back when I used to make a habit of doing this kind of thing as a weaver; it was still the '80s. Sheesh thanks!

    Well, I maybe getting an order from this festival! I'm not sure yet, but someone didi invite me into their home, when the show was over to audition a quilt.They are trying to decide between getting that quilt, or ordering a larger one. I'll have to let you know. But, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

     Speaking of possible orders, I'm still working with my friend from Spain to see if I can come up with a quilt design that grabs him. Wish me luck! I quit putting the drawings on the blog, because he isn't accessing them there anyway. But, the good news is, that making those drawings have given me lots of good ideas for future quilts! (just what I needed-more quilt ideas-my head is about to explode as it is.) I guess I am just one of those people that sees quilt ideas everywhere-even with my eyes closed.

     I met with my quilt friendship group tonight, and spent some time trimming my square in a square blocks. Slowly but surely.......