What I've been working on

I have 5 quilts entered in our guild's show and none of them have been finished yet! I have until February 28th to finish up, so hopefully I have enough time. Several of them just need sleeves and labels but my seahorse quilt "George & Gracie" had not even been quilted when I submitted the registration form.

I started the quilt in a class with Susan Carlson last year at Asilomar. I've decided I don't particularly like the construction technique and will not use it again. We cut the fabric shapes we wanted and lightly glued them to a muslin base. Once the image was completed a layer of tulle was stitched over it and then it was sewn onto the background. There are way too many raw edges that are fraying along the edges of the seahorses and I'm thinking I'm going to have to use fray check or something to seal them off. I hate to go that route, but I have to do something.



I started quilting this and it wasn't working. I'd used a really bad batt - which I thought when I purchased was Warm and Natural but it wasn't - and the design wasn't great. I decided to rip the entire thing out and start over with a new batt.

I flipped through several books and came across an interesting idea in the book "Quilting Makes the Quilt." It's supposed to look like seaweed and air bubbles under water. Not sure I succeeded.

I thought I had a brilliant idea of first drawing out the quilting outline design on tracing paper and then actually stitching through the paper onto the quilt. So I wouldn't be picking little bits of paper out of the stitching I used a large basting stitch - which was probably a mistake. I think it would have all come together better if the outline stitching had been tighter. Oh well, another lesson learned. (click photos for large view)



I need to figure out how to bind this. The background fabric was a one yard piece I had in my stash so I don't have any more for a binding. I'll probably end up just facing it.

Quilt show

My guild's quilt show is the first weekend in March. I took care of registrations for the show and spent most of a recent weekend working on the paperwork. We have about 235 beautiful quilts for the show and I know it's going to be a great exhibit.

Here are the entry forms stacked up on my dining room table.





Karen and I sorted them all by category and made sure that each quilt was entered in the appropriate category. I then had to copy all the forms, complete entry number cards, and stuff all the envelopes to send confirmations to each entrant. It's a lot of work, but I'd much rather do this job than some of the others that are necessary to assure a good show. Luckily there are other people that like those other jobs!

Family

Sometimes Noah gets aggravated with Hayden but generally he loves his little sister. (click photos for larger view)


Craig and the kids were just laying around the house recently.

Rockettes

The road company of The Radio City Christmas Spectacular made a stop in Charleston this weekend. They say we were the last city on their 31 city tour. The performers must have been exhausted but it didn't show. The stage was smaller than at Radio City and there were fewer Rockettes, but it was a good show. The only thing I missed was the live animals they use at Radio City.

I hope if we are included in future tours that they come before Christmas. It's kind of strange to have Santa talking about the anticipation of the holiday when the holiday has already passed.