Surprise Finish

Last year I didn't finish the challenge project I was working on for the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum in time to submit it for their annual quilt festival. In fact, it's still in pieces. But I wanted to try to participate again this year and asked my friend to pick up the challenge packet for me. You can see the two challenge prints here.

I struggled with what kind of entry to attempt this year. Since the sewing caddy proved to be too challenging last year I decided to simply make a little wall quilt. I also made the executive decision to ignore the obvious theme of the challenge fabrics. Once I threw that out the window the green shades in the prints became the challenge. I decided to focus on the shade I liked the best... and that led me to my Halloween prints!

The nine inch liberated star took care of one of the challenge prints. I fussy cut my favorite part of the second print, the concentric circles, and used them in 4.5 inch star blocks. The question was, how to use them?

You can see that in the end I put them in the corners of this 15" wide, 18" high composition.

After stitching in the ditch around the main elements I felt the quilt needed something more, and the dotted background print needed to be tempered somehow. Whether I accomplished that or not is up to the viewer. My instinctive approach was to use beads and sequins to disguise the busy print and fill in the less busy prints.

You should be able to double click on the pictures to see more details. I took my cues from the skeleton band and did my best to create an outdoor concert scene.

If you look closely you may be able to see that the name of the band is The Rolling Bones. All I need now is a title for this piece. I have some ideas, based on the idea of an annual concert, but so far I haven't been able to pin it down. Suggestions are welcome!

On a similar note, I recently made this 8 inch friendship block for a guild member. She asked for Sunbonnet Sue blocks, with Sue doing something the maker enjoys. I do not enjoy applique (even though I can bead the dickens out of a textile!) so I immediately began to think about how to piece Sunbonnet Sue. Eight inches is pretty small for someone who also does not paper piece so I had to keep it simple. I don't remember now what inspired this version of Sue but let me present my Wiccan-bonnet Sue:

She's not exactly doing anything but she does represent my love of piecing and skulls and Halloween. ;- )

I believe I mentioned that I was preparing quilts for a local show. The quilts are home again. Unfortunately, they picked up enough fragrance from hanging in a public space for three days that I can't be close to them yet. On the happy side, we've had a couple of truly sweet early summer mornings so I've been able to have the windows open to speed the airing out process. I'm having second thoughts about entering any of them in the county fair now though. The other side of that coin is that the building in which the quilts are displayed at the fair is pretty open and therefore well ventilated. Maybe they won't pick up as much scent in that venue. I'll leave the sleeves in place for the time being; the fair is only a couple of months away.

It's been a rugged several weeks in terms of my health and well being. There's no real promise that things are going to be better from this point forward but I'd sure like to be able to post more often again. And see what everyone else has been up to while I've been out of commission. Fingers crossed! (Lord knows that will work as well as anything else I've tried!)