Fractured Quilt

I'm taking part in Tomme Fent's fractured quilt challenge. There are 40 of us taking part. We were all provided with this photo of a flower that had been cut into four segments. (the blotch on the right side of the segment on the top left is the result of me spilling paint when I was trying to add shadowing and color depth to my pieces)




We each are to construct a quilt the exact size of the photo and are to do our quilt in segments as well (adding seam allowances). All of our work is supposed to be sent to Tomme by July 9th. She will then mix up all the segments and baste 4 random ones together and return a basted quilt to each of the 40 participants. We then have to embellish as we wish and quilt the work and forward photos to Tomme.

I've actually made my segments twice now. I just didn't like the first effort very much and besides, when I spilled the paint on the photo, I also spilled it on one of the segments!

Here is what I finally ended up with.



I'm still not completely satisfied with the final product, but I'm going to have to go with it because I've run out of time. I'm still trying to decide whether I want to do any embellishment before I send out the segments. Some people have done a bit to highlight the pollen on the flower.

I took this project with me to Karen's for TTT. She was surprised at my 'working style' because I do a lot of contemplation before making a decision, while she was busily doing some machine applique and got a lot done in comparison to my limited progress.

7 Random facts

Karen over at Quilting with Karen has tagged me with the 7 random facts meme. So...here they are.

1. I'm still kind of afraid of the dark. I hated coming home from work to a dark house in the winter. One of the advantages of being retired is not having to do that!

2. I lived in Scotland for 2 years back in the 1970's while Jerry was stationed there with the US Navy. Craig was born there. (hence his good Scottish name!)

3. I worked for a year after high school before going to college. I was a keypunch operator at Ford Motor Company. I HATED that job.

4. I don't like cats, but really love dogs.

5. I can touch my nose with my tongue which is possible because I don't have that little thingy that attaches the tongue to the bottom of my mouth. (does that thing have a name?)

6. I used to be a pretty good bowler - with an average of about 165 - but I always slide on the wrong foot making people watching think I'm going to hit myself in the leg with the ball.

7. My first car was a 1961 VW Beetle that I bought from my Aunt & Uncle. I couldn't drive a stick shift when I got it, so my brother had to drive it home for me. Most of the cars I've owned since then have been stick shifts, including the stupid station wagon we owned with four on the floor! Who equips a station wagon like that?

Here's the obligatory Hayden photo.

Precious grandkids!

I've hesitated updating my blog because I didn't want the baby photos to drop out of the prime viewing spot. Chrystal shared more photos today and here are two really cute ones. Personally I think my grandkids are far cuter than anyone else's, but I suspect I'm slightly partial.

Hayden Elizabeth

Hayden Elizabeth was born yesterday, June 18 at 4:32 p.m. weighing in at 7 lb 1 oz and measuring 20" long. She's beautiful isn't she?













This is how Noah and grandpa spent the day while we waited for Hayden's arrival!













Chrystal very kindly allowed me to be in the delivery room and I got to see Hayden make her entry into the world. Also in the room were Craig, Chrystal's Mom and Chrystal's good friend Ronna (and maid of honor) who just happens to be a nurse at the hospital and just happened to be working yesterday. Ronna wasn't on the floor but was doing behind the scene tasks yesterday so was able to keep sticking her head in to see how things were going. Chrystal asked her to stay during delivery. When it came time to cut the cord, the Doctor asked Craig if he wanted to do it. Craig wasn't the least bit interested in doing it so Ronna said she would - and did. I thought it was neat that she could be a special part of the birth.

Here are Chrystal & Hayden shortly after birth

















Daddy and Mommy think Hayden is gorgeous.
















Noah thinks she's pretty special too!

Baby Watch

We've been on baby watch for the past week. Poor Chrystal has had a couple of times when she thought "this might be it" but it turned out not to be. Last evening was one of those times. We brought Noah here to our house just in case. He'd already planned to spend tonight with his other grandparents so Craig picked him up tonight and took him to Chrystal's folks. I imagine Craig & Chrystal are enjoying some peace and quiet before the baby's arrival. If she hasn't arrived before Monday, the dr. is going to induce on Monday morning. We can't wait!

Donation quilt

Every year my guild, The Cobblestone Quilters adopts a community service project. This year it's baby quilts for a couple of our local hospitals. My mini group had a lesson recently on making an interesting cut up 9 patch block and most of us used our blocks to make baby quilts. I feel like this particular quilt is too big, I probably should have only used 4 blocks instead of 6. I hope they find something to do with the quilt anyway.

Tuesday sewing

My friend Karen has a separate studio on her property. It's the manufactured home her mother-in-law used to live in before they had to move her into an assisted living facility. Karen jokingly refers to her Tuesday sewing get-together as Trailer Trash Tuesday (TTT). I haven't been able to join the quilters before, but now my Tuesdays have opened up so I can go have fun too.



I packed up everything I wanted to take with me last night. I decided to finally make this Sweet Treasures purse. I've had the materials to make it for some time but hesitated to start it because purse making isn't my strong suit. I figured someone at TTT would be able to help if I got stuck. They probably could have too, IF I'd remembered the pattern!








Karen let me go through her drawer of purse/tote patterns and she had one by fellow South Carolinian Jennifer Amor that would work with the amount of fabric I had with me and it was a pattern I also have so I knew I could start it with Karen's pattern and finish up at home with my copy of it.
Here's the pattern I ended up using - although I'm not doing it as a flamingo purse because the fabrics I'm using don't lend themselves to a flamingo applique.
I'm doing the closed purse, not the open tote bag. I'm disappointed that I had to change my plan because of the forgotten pattern, but I think it will work out okay.

Challenge Ideas?

My quilt guild (the Cobblestone Quilters)will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2008. I have volunteered to coordinate a quilt challenge for the anniversary. Because I'm more of an artsy-fartsy quilter and my guild is fairly traditional, we've asked for someone else to work with me on the rules. (I think they're afraid I'm going to require everyone to use silver lame'!) So far, no one has volunteered, but I'm sure someone will. In the meantime I've been trying to come up with some ideas.

Here are some of the things I've considered:

*The use of 25 of something in the quilt (25 different fabrics...25 pieces...25 blocks...)

*The use of silver fabric

*Use a technique learned in a class taken through the guild

*A representation of what the guild means to the maker

Anyone else have some ideas to share?

Because Karen said...

Our mini quilt group met for sit and stitch this morning and while there my friend Karen mentioned that I haven't been updating my blog very often. I told her that's because I haven't had any good photos to share. So just to appease Karen, I decided to post of photo of an old quilt.

I started this submarine quilt in my first 5 day class with Ruth McDowell at the Empty Spools Seminars in Pacific Grove, CA. Because Jerry served in the submarine service for 20 years, I'd always wanted to make him a submarine quilt. Ruth helped me achieve that goal. I used a lot of the reverse side of the fabrics for this quilt - including the entire outside border. All of Jerry's duty stations, and the dates during which he was assigned to each, are listed on the back of the quilt. (We had to go through his service records to figure all that out!) There are also several duty station patches on the back as well as on old cross stitched set of dolphins (a pin that submariners wear once they've qualified aboard submarines - explanation and photo can be found here)