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. :- )

While We're Waiting

My little Priority Quilt inspired by the Transitions challenge is bound and waiting for its' registration number from the AAQI. Before I send it off I will show you how it turned out. In the meantime, I've been reading this lately:

I have learned so much about my husband from this book! Obviously I bought it with myself in mind but holy cow! it explains so much about what's happened in the garage (and every other room my husband takes over for any amount of time). I would love for my husband to read the book himself because he and the author are two of a kind in many ways and he would find it uplifting. I may have to settle for trying to work in as much of the advice as I can from the sidelines as it were, because DH is pretty overwhelmed by his job these days. I'm getting some good ideas for myself though. It may not be evident here on the blog but hopefully it will make a difference in the rest of my life. (I have a terrible time making appointments. Once they're made I'm okay, but I put off making the phone call until it's nearly too late.)

I haven't sewn since I finished the Priority Quilt but I am thinking about what to tackle next. I still have two and a half ornaments to make for the Bead Journal Project: May is about half done, I need to do one for June and now August as well. Guess I'm just not that interested in hand sewing at the moment.

I have 76 six inch liberated log cabin blocks that I've made as a result of random 15 Minutes of Play.

I don't know why I'm so anxious to use them up somehow, but I am. This morning the thought came to me that I could sew the blocks up into a medallion of whatever size and then border the medallion with strips of leftover fabrics, log cabin style again, until I had a top big enough to cover someone. I've always wanted to try the "single giant log cabin block" kind of quilt.

See this? This is what my mother referred to as a pie basket. I believe she was given this one as a wedding present. That would have been in 1953.

It had two trays that sat on top of one another and would hold a pie each. I've used it to transport cupcakes and cakes but I've never been a big pie maker. That's my sister. I sew and bake cookies and cakes, she knits and bakes pies.

Anywho, before I even read the book at the top of this post I took the trays out of the basket and brought it into the studio for storing those larger pieces of leftover fabric. It's been very helpful to be able to grab the basket when I needed something bigger to cut patches or strips from and to have a place to just toss prints that were nearly gone but not quite.

This is where I'd like to pull those bigger strips from for my giant log cabin quilt block. At least to begin with. I'll probably have to resort to my stash of older prints eventually. Or improvise in another way. ;- )