Three Rivers Quilters annual show was last weekend.

 This was my entry. 

I didn't take too many pictures the show was quite crowded.  They have a slide show of the winners here.  The Best of Show quilt is amazing.

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I finished this customer quilt yesterday afternoon. It's all flannels top and back.
I did a swirl echo on it (from the Pajama Quilter), it gave it really nice texture, especially with it being flannel fabric!

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I loaded my little Swoon block sample and got that quilted before I load the next customer one.
I'm going to make this into a pillow...so my first Christmas gift is about done!

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Urban Birthday is a flimsy.

On the design wall now is this one from Sunday Morning Quilts.
 I am going to try to just take my time with this
 and piece the rows s-l-o-w-l-y.
(ha-ha --I did say "try")  
I don't need another baby quilt (right this second anyway) nor do I need another flimsy.

This pattern uses the cut off triangles from piecing binding. I use 2 1/4 inch strips for binding rather than the 2 1/2 strips most people use. I didn't have enough of them so I would say a good half of these I just cut from the 2 1/2 inch strip bin. 

After I got it all arranged on the wall, I thought perhaps I should make it bigger.
And then I smacked myself and came back to reality.

almost there....

Jonquils & Stars 80 x 80

I thought I could take a bunch of pictures out on the deck.

I nearly froze and then the wind blew and flipped the quilt over and I said 

enough...brrrr.

 

the center, I do like the quilting.

all blocks & seams were SID and then each big star block quilted differently.

I didn't quilt in the background of the blocks and after I unloaded it I didn't like it.

Too much 'poofing' going on as you can see in the star block above.

I have a customer quilt that must be done first -I've had it longer than I thought I would. 

 I honestly didn't think the quilting on Jonquils would take sooooo long; calling this a good learning experience.

After I quilt the customer one, I will re-load and quilt the block background.  I am hoping to enter this in a show here that has an entry deadline of the 18th. 

If I don't make that one, there is another one in the Spring but I'm shooting for the first one. 

I will take more pictures after I really  finally finish it. :)

Design Wall Monday (Week 23)

Another Monday already!! 

Here is my wall.  I have the leader/ender 9-patch & Snowballs back up. I think a 9 x 12 block setting will give me a good single bed size quilt, with a border or without....we'll see.  So I will need to make 38 more blocks.  I just love the scrappiness of it. 

The batik blocks to the right are 9" blocks the 1st 2 are block-a-days. I'm making the next bunch of 12" blocks from batiks with a black background and 9" blocks from brights...but I got confused and made these 2 from batiks~ The 3 on the far right row are the first 3 blocks for this year's Shop Hop Progressive quilt. I'm using the same batik color-way so the 2 block-a-days will hopefully fit in! I think I like to make things difficult for myself sometimes. 

The shop hop starts this Wednesday through Saturday; 12 shops. Libby and I are going,this is our 5th year, I think.

 I believe this year we finally have the perfect itinerary; efficient while avoiding the city of Pittsburgh during rush hour; which has been our nemesis in the past! Last year was the first year using a GPS--didn't get lost once. Of course, our getting lost, confused and turned around in the good ole days of MapQuest made for some hilarious moments.

Several times we'd be amazed at MapQuest's accuracy and singing its praises only to be cursing it's existence later as we drove on and on looking for "Lovey Lane"...which we never did find.

A few times I thought we were going to end up in Ohio. And actually another year we did. We were on the PA turnpike and were suppose to get off the last exit BEFORE the Ohio line and we were gabbing (I know it's hard to believe!) and missed it. The nice toll booth man let us u-turn at the toll plaza and head on back into Pennsylvania.

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These are June and Augusts'  Monthly minis; they were on the wall earlier for this photo.

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This weekend was a local guild's show. (Blog-less, Libby and I entered quilts. Here are her three entries.  It was Libby's first show, she received 2 ribbons. She was very excited!

 

My Mariner's Compass quilt was voted "Viewer's Choice". I was excited too!

 

The show is held in a little church and it was impossible to get a straight on shot as the rows were so close together.  It was a fun afternoon of looking at quilts, talking about quilts...you know-all that good stuff!

For more quilting 'good stuff'. Visit Judy's.

A little self "horn-tooting" (blush)...

I entered my Spring Journey Sampler quilt in a local guild show.  I was surprised and thrilled to receive a 3rd place ribbon! 

I had 2 reasons to enter this quilt:  first I was so  happy to finish it and so pleased with my feathers on it that I wanted it 'seen'!  And 2ndly, I wanted the critique of a non-partial judge.  

There were 18 quilts in the same catagory as mine.  And the other quilts were bee-u-tee-ful, so I felt very good about getting a ribbon at all.

And although it clashes with my livingroom (ugh). I have it hanging for Easter anyway-  I do want to look at it for a bit longer before it gets put away and last but not least-- I must get some use out of the dang hanging sleeve I had to sew on to it for the show!

It's the flu bug that won't go away

and I'm starting to get annoyed! I did manage to get all the rows for my 9-patch quilt sewed together but it's slow going. Yesterday, Paul took me to the BVPiecemakers quilt show. My Folk-art Flowers quilt took 1st place in it's category! I was pretty happy.


When the show was over, we had to wait about 45 minutes for the guild members to take down the quilts before they would let us claim them. Paul and I took a walk in the county park where it was held. It was a beautiful day. On the way home I took these pictures.




The leaves are just starting to look beautiful.
My diamond string quilt is together.

So this is my blog...

So this is my blog. It's a quilting blog, but I don't just quilt. So this is going to be a little look at what I think about in a day/week whatever. It should be mostly quilty but for example right now I'm thinking of our little dog Otis.Hubby cut the grass  it has been cold and the grass is covered with dew....

So Mister Otis comes in from his morning duties with green feet, both stained and with little tiny grass clippings stuck to his fur.
This is Annie:


Today I am marking a quilt top that I made in 2004, I think. It's a sampler but the setting is different leaving 4 large corner triangle areas. I've never quilted it partly (mostly) because the thoughts of all that hand quilting in those triangles was overwhelming. Now I have the HQ and it's time to finish this. I drafted a feather pattern yesterday and today am going to just mark the spines of the feathers on the top and then load it. I'll just free-hand the feathers. But I wanted to flow of the spines to at least be uniform when the quilt is done.
Tomorrow, I take my Folk art quilt to the drop off point (at 7:30AM!) for the Beaver Valley Piece makers show this weekend. It's about 45 minute drive, that's so early for me. (whine, whine, whine). Meghan was going to go with me, then we'll have breakfast on the way home, but she's really sick now, flu like so I may be going alone. Thank goodness for the GPS and Nyquil/Dayquil for Meg!
Also today, I will work on the diamond string quilt that is on my design wall I think I have 24 more blocks to make I know I have enough strips cut for another one.