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!)

Fabric Challenge

Months ago the La Conner Quilt Museum announced a fabric challenge. The entries will be displayed in conjunction with their annual quilt festival in  early October. Entries that are donated to the Museum will be sold and the proceeds used to keep the Museum up and running.

I cannot resist a fabric challenge. This one was a stumper though. The busy paisley on the left is a Kaffe Fassett print, the contemporary print on the right is by Brandon Mably.

I can imagine a lot of people being put off by the colors. That wasn't the issue for me. My problem was in reconciling the two disparate styles of print!

There is a month left to the deadline for submitting a piece. So far this is what I have:

I don't remember what possessed me, but recently I had a go at making some flower shapes out of rick rack. Then I also tried ribbons. It was fun; I may even do more. What I'm going to do with them remains to be seen. At least they are in the colors of the challenge prints. I may get an entry made yet!

As our outdoor temperatures finally approach normal around here I'm thinking the next couple of months may be a good time to focus on hand work. I'm woefully behind with my bead journal project for this year. I have a couple of months done, and pieces and parts and ideas for one or two more. This seems to be my pattern though, letting them pile up and then doing several at one time. For me, it's all about learning what my processes are and accepting them. So I'm trying to remain calm.

I've also indulged in a few new inspiration books. Two are softcovers and will have to be disassembled before I'll be able to enjoy them. The other is on my Nook Color. Finally! one of the types of books I missed the most, available for my particular type of e-reader! This is the whole reason my DH chose the Nook over a Kindle for me: color pictures. There just haven't been many books I was interested in available for the Nook. Now I'm reading about mixed media artists and their obsessions for collections. I feel right at home. :- )

Shock and Awe

I'm stunned by the news that Joan Colvin passed away in September. I only just learned of this when I saw that the La Conner Quilt Museum is having a special exhibit of her work. It opens November 23 and will run through the end of the year. I never had a workshop with her but met her on a couple of occasions at the museum. She seemed like a kind and generous soul. There's no question that her quilts are works of beauty. How fortunate the world is that her work will survive even though she is no longer with us.

And now I would like to humbly report that I have completed two of the six (or maybe it will be 7) gifts that I wanted to make for family members in the next few weeks. One has already been shipped. It's a birthday present, not a Christmas gift. Both turned out well, but the second one turned out even better than anticipated! (That would be the 'awe' part.) DH wants it for his own. We'll see ;- ) Hold a good thought for me as I embark on the next one, won't you?

I went to a smaller branch of the Post Office to ship the package yesterday. Actually, I went to two. The first one is so small they close for an hour for lunch. Wouldn't you know it, I got there half an hour before they were scheduled to reopen. So I went to the next one. Slightly larger, more people, but not as crowded as the branch nearest my house. From there I drove on to the site of our local quilt guild's semi-annual retreat. The church where they hold their meetings every month is too toxic for me anymore but the grange hall has been a safe place for me in the past. It was so good to see friendly faces again! I got to show off my Lincoln Logs top - for which they had made the blocks - and showed off my newly completed gift as well. I had a quick look at what everyone else was working on and caught up on some of their recent activities. {sigh} It was so pleasant. Unfortunately, something got to me and I had to leave after an hour or so. It was a challenging drive home, I have to say. I so wished I had someone with me who could have done the driving. But I made it home safely and crawled into bed. DH made dinner for me, bless his heart, and we watched a little TV before I went to bed for good. I slept deeply in spite of the exposure(s) and feel pretty good this morning. (whew!) There are two art shows going on this weekend that I would dearly love to go to. After yesterday's experience, however, I think I'll just stay home and sew...

Ta Da!

My first picture uploaded! Hurray for me!

This is a detail shot of a preemie quilt I made recently. As soon as I learn how to fine tune the image of the whole quilt I'll share that with you.

I think this preemie quilt turned out pretty cool. It moves from a crazy patch block to one giant Log Cabin-type block with every strip being a different color/print. I'd been wanting to try this particular design style for a long time. It was fun to actually do it and have it turn out so well (in my eyes at least!). It may be hard to part with this one ;- )

Yesterday I went to the La Conner Quilt Museum to see the exhibit of Gwen Marsten and Freddy Moran's collaborative quilts. I lucked out in that there were only a handful of other people there and no-one was wearing toxic fragrance. The color in those quilts sure brightened up the place! Lots of gorgeous reds (Freddy uses red as a neutral; works for me!) and tons of fun prints. There was actually one quilt that hurt my eyes to look at. Those who know me well will be surprised to learn this because I love bright saturated colors. The truly odd thing about this is that it was one of the calmer quilts. I think what was happening was the juxtaposition of red and yellow was aggravating my astigmatism. Other than that I can't account for it. Suffice to say that I thoroughly enjoyed being able to see these quilts by two of my favorite quilters/artists in person. If only I'd been able to go on opening day when both Freddy and Gwen were there!!! {sigh}

On my way home I still felt well enough (in spite of the absence of obvious toxins, something in that building makes me ill; that's why I had to quit working there) to stop in at my LQS where they are celebrating their anniversary with a sale (fancy that!). I was able to buy Gwen and Freddy's book, Collaborative Quilting, and a few pieces of fabrics at 20% off. Let's see... I bought a red batik, a funky stripe of red and orange and green and black, a yellow/orange batik, and a multi-color on black print in Robert Kaufman's "Color Quake" line. All very bright and happy :- )