Art in the Redwoods 2011

I'm afraid I'm very behind with my blog posts. Art in the Redwoods happened in August, and I told you that my quilt earned 2nd place here. Now I want to finally show you another beautiful quilt that won the first place ribbon.

First place was won by Jo Dillon, a quilt she called "Turkish Delight." My poor photo doesn't do it justice. But you can see the intricate piecing and beautiful shading she used. Jo makes really incredible quilts.

And, once again, my quilt, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which won second place. SisterStitches quilted this great big quilt for me.

Quilt for BabyStitches

Here is the quilt that I just finished and sent off to BabyStitches, our granddaughter. (See her own blog on my sidebar or here.) When she and her parents were here for Christmas, DaughterStitches really liked the quilt that I had made for BabyStitches to use while at our house. Something about it was just the right size for her little bed. It's kind of an in-between size, similar to a lap quilt.

She asked me to make one that they could use in their house in the same size, and in colors that would match the

nursery. I offered to make a scrappy quilt, as I did here. My reason for this was that this is a pretty fast quilt, and I might get it finished before BabyStitches goes to college!

Here is a close-up of the quilt, showing some of the fabric detail, and how the edges fray. All these little squares are just sewn (raw-edge) onto the quilt front in a random order. After the quilt is washed, all the small pieces of fabric fray around the edges, making a fuzzy edge to them.

And another photo. I like the pinks and greens that DaughterStitches and Son-in-Law-Stitches chose for this quilt.

For the binding I used some beautiful light green twill fabric from HarmonyArt. I'm proud to call this amazing fabric designer a friend. She lives near me, and I am always amazed to see her fabric collections--check them out!

This final photo shows the back of the quilt, as well, which is a pink flannel print. Nice and cozy for BabyStitches!

Very Scrappy Quilt

I'm really getting there with this scrappy quilt!

I referred to it way back in September in this post. I got the idea from the blog by crazymomquilts.blogspot.com. I was so excited to try this idea, but I still have a lot of fabric scraps left!

I did it a little bit differently than crazy mom did, but not much. I sandwiched the quilt top, batting, and backing, then basted it by pinning on the patches. That anchored everything quite well. I started to use my walking foot to sew around the edges of the squares, but that was way too much turning of the quilt around in my machine. The quilt measures somewhere around 40-something inches by 60 inches. That's a lot to push and pull through the machine for 2" or 3" lengths of stitching.

So I switched to the free motion foot,

and just did my best at getting fairly straight lines around the squares. I have to admit that I didn't worry about it too much. And they are not all sewn on perfectly, but that's ok.

If I did it again, I might make some loopy-loops between the squares, so I wouldn't have all those starts and stops to make. But what the heck! I spent some nice quiet time snipping all the threads and taking out a few remaining safety pins. I went outside and sat in the unusually warm sun to snip the thread ends, with just a light breeze, and the ocean waves crashing in front of me.

I have the binding chosen and pressed, so hopefully tomorrow I'll get this baby finished and I can show you the finished product. {Way to put the pressure on, MissesStitches!} Just had a little interruption this afternoon when the power went off for a bit. There wasn't a storm, so I'm not sure why, but my lights got dim, and my sewing machine and iron were idle for a short while.

Getting Almost.......Where?

I've been working, off an on, on my tumbling blocks for at least a couple years now. I mentioned them in this post, and also here.

I counted up today, and I have completed 275 of those little buggers!

Feels pretty good--at first.

But my book tells me that I need 300 tumbling blocks for just a twin size quilt!!!

Do I want a bigger quilt than that?

Do I want to work on this for a few more years?

How long can I really expect to live?

All questions to ponder.

But we quilters can sometimes be very patient. I think I'll keep working so I can get a little bigger quilt than this. Anyway, doing this little hand-sewing is

kind of therapeutic for me. (yawn) I'll post again in a

couple years about this project!

Blue Flower Quilt

Finally finished my blue flower quilt last week. Not too bad, for starting it in June. I needed some handwork to do for a long car trip, so I bought this blue flowered print. Yes, technically this quilt is a cheater! I quilted all around the scalloped edge of the flowers, and the inside dark blue circle.

I found some cute blue polka dot fabric for the backing, and I think it shows off the quilting quite nicely.

I really enjoy hand-quilting; I find it very relaxing. And very satisfying. Thanks to the great Clover Black Gold needles that SisterStitches gave me, it went quite smoothly.

I'm going to keep this quilt at my house for when BabyStitches comes to visit. It will be her quilt for when she's at Nanna's (MissesStitches's) house. It's not real big--a good size for a lap quilt or a snuggle quilt.

Obi Quilt

This is a quilted wallhanging that I made using a Japanese obi. A couple years ago I went to a vintage kimono sale, and picked up several kimono and obi, thinking to use the nice (mostly silk) fabric in quilting and crafts. This obi is a very deep purple/maroon color (almost brown), with a pretty texture woven into it. I attached it to a piece of raw linen, and that in itself was a challenge. The obi is actually made up of quite a few thicknesses, some of which are all sewn together in the long obi, and some of which are not completely sewn together. I sewed the parts that I could on the machine, and the rest I tacked down from the backside of the linen, so my stitches wouldn't show. I wanted to do my best to ensure that this wallhanging doesn't go limp on the wall and sag. So I reinforced the back with fusing and heavy fabric, before echo quilting around the obi. It makes my shoulders ache just to remember it! Quilting that baby was really tough. It was very heavy and hard to manage, as any large quilt is. I used the walking foot on my machine, and had to pivot and rearrange every so often. But now it's done and I'm happy!

It's now hanging in our guest room. From a bamboo pole, which I think fits the "mood" perfectly. Plus, bamboo is lightweight (good for something overhanging a bed in earthquake country) and strong (good for a heavy hanging like this).

Here is a close-up of the obi, showing the beautiful texture in it.

Internat'l Quilt Festival--Long Beach

I can't believe it! My quilt actually made it into IQF Long Beach! Even after I was notified that it was accepted, it still was hard to believe until I actually saw it there hanging with all the other quilts in the special exhibit, West Coast Wonders.

I have to give credit where credit is due. I made this quilt in a class I took from Judith Baker-Montano, who is a fantastic crazy quilter. She is such a good teacher, a fun person, and so inspiring.

See, there it is (in photo at right), my little quilt among some of the others in the exhibit. BTW, you may notice how small mine is, compared to the others. Well, I had to add 5" of borders on all four sides to get my quilt up to the minimum size accepted!

And here is the neat little ribbon that I got to wear around the quilt show, saying "See My Work."

A big quilt show like this is just fantastic, seeing all the amazing quilts--so much inspiration! To say nothing of the vendors! Lots of people selling lots of things that are absolutely necessary to quilting! Including shoes and lint removers!

I went to the quilt show with one of my quilting buddies, Carol, who also had a quilt in the show. It's this one at the left, depicting bare trees in a forest fire. (It looks brighter and more orange in real life.) Carol's quilt was in an exhibit called Journal Quilt Project II: Elements--Earth, Water, Air, and Fire.