More on the quilt show

This was one of my other quilts in the show.  The pattern is called Monterrey Medallions.  There were several quilts in the show made from the same pattern and it was fun to see how the different color choices changed the look of the quilt. (click photos for larger view)

I also entered this Wonky Log Cabin quilt from a pattern in the book Blendable Curves by Peggy Barkle.

Lynn Gettelfinger made this cool version of the map of the Charleston area.  She said that she used an actual sized map for her pattern and everyone was amazed at how accurate she was with all the creeks, etc.

This quilt by Rosalind Hunt and quilted by Linda Barrett won Viewer's Choice.

A small little piece by Jennifer Ley.  This one has cool beading, but the photo doesn't show it very well.

Charles Towne Landing Fence is by Tommie Burwell. 

Jeanne Pedersen did a great job replicating her photo

Another quilt by Jennifer Ley

Quilt show

Today was opening day for the Cobblestone Quilters Guild show.  It's been 2 years in the making and I believe it is a beautiful show. 

The Best of Show - Bed sized quilt was Southern Comforts by June Bohac and quilted by Karen Kendo.  This quilt just happens to be our raffle quilt and some lucky person will be able to take it home tomorrow evening.

Best of Show - Wall quilt was Red Hot Baltimore by Beverly Cone.  Shortly after Beverly submitted the paperwork for the entry she passed away suddenly.  We were so pleased that her family agreed to submit the quilt and were elated when it won. 

Best track (long-arm) machine quilting and best applique was Red and Green Revisited by Darlene Donohue and quilted by Debbie Yezbak.

Best machine quilting - stationary machine was Grandmother's Legacy of Flowers by Paige Alexander

Best Hand Quilting and Best Theme was My Southern Heritage by Margaret Jones

Sunlight on the Reef by Lynne Gettelfinger won Best Use of Color

l'edredon de Bess (Bess's Quilt) by Evelyn Richards won Best First Entry in any Quilt Show

There were 2 Judge's Choice quilts.  Yellow-Bellied Slider by Lucretia Pope

and Buzz...Buzz...Buzz by Nancy Barnette and quilted by Kathy Kean

Here's my little whole cloth quilt with its blue ribbon

I'm exhausted and my feet hurt.  Putting on a quilt show is not for the faint of heart!



Floors done!

It took longer than I expected, (10 days!) but our floor refinishing project has been completed!  Jerry wasn't too enthused about us doing the project - he said he would have been happy leaving the floors as they were, but after they were completed he admitted he really prefers the new color and finish. 

We have to wait for another 24 hours before any furniture can be returned to the room and we've been told we can't put rugs down for a week.  Apparently the texture of the rug can be imprinted in the finish. 

The timing for this work wasn't the greatest as I have been tied up working on our quilt show and Jerry has been working to get ready for the LeMons race - both events are being held this weekend.

I'm pleased to be able to share that my little whole cloth quilt was awarded a first place blue ribbon for its category.  Of course there were only 2 quilts IN the category so I had a 50/50 chance!

I'll try to post a photo of it with the ribbon soon.

Floors

We are in the midst of having our floors refinished.  It sure makes a mess!  The sanding has taken 3 days.  I think they will have another partial day of sanding before the stain can be applied.  This is what the floors looked like tonight.  Just bare wood.  The wood is yellow pine with big old knot holes.  I really don't like the knot holes.  It reminds me too much of 1950's basement paneling.  Especially when the poly on it had yellowed somewhat.

Besides, every once in a while I'd catch one of the knot holes out of the corner of my eye and would think it was a roach - one of those big 'ole palmetto bugs that are so disgusting here in the south.

This photo of the entry (which I snagged from the Real Estate listing back when we first bought the house) shows what the floors looked like before they were sanded.

The new stain will be a darker color - more of a cherry but of course putting it down on the pine floor means it won't look quite like real cherry floors.  Sure hope it won't be too dark!

So, while they've been working on the floors I've been hiding out in my studio.  Since I have to stay home I decided to make use of my time.  Yesterday I cut out a one-block wonder quilt.  I sewed up a number of the blocks and threw them up on the design wall.

It's always fun to play with one block wonder blocks.  I have quite a few left to sew, but since I'll be tied to the house for the rest of the week, maybe I'll get them all sewn.  Then I'll have to play around with layout.

Sixty??

As hard is as it for me to believe I turned 60 recently!  How in the world did that happen?

I was the youngest of 3 - the only girl.  I was always jealous of my brother Claude because he inherited our dad's blond hair and blue eyes.  Ed and I took after our mother.  I had those cute curls for a while but later my hair went pretty straight.

My closest friends were the other girls living within a few houses of mine.  Liz was born only a month after me and we seemed to do everything together.  This is me (on the left) and Liz (on the right) 

There's Liz again on the left (with the hat) watching me blow out the candles.  Aren't those drapes just the best?  I remember they had some vivid colors!

My mother used to give me those horrible home perms - which I suspect is the culprit here

Here we are on the 1st day of school.  I'm the 2nd from the left and there is Liz next to me in the middle. 

I was an awkward kid.  I first got glasses when I was in 5th grade.  They were not the best look for me.   That's Liz again with me in the photo. 

This was my first communion dress (for the Episcopal church - I suspect the blue jacket and sash would not have been allowed in the catholic church) 

My mother had a big thing about not wearing glasses in photos so she had me take mine off for this photo.  It was about a year later that I got my first pair of contact lenses.  I haven't worn glasses since.   

And of course we had to have a photo with Liz in it!  Guess my mother let me keep my glasses on in this one. 

I hear many people about my age talk about how they feel like 60 is much younger today than it was when we were kids.  I wonder if our parents said the same.  I don't feel like I think 60 should feel, except for my knees - they act like they're 160!

To my dear friend Liz, Happy 60!

Uncle Bob

I have a small family.  My father was an only child and my mother only had a sister, Rustle.  (Rustle's birth name was Mabel, but she hated that name and changed it as an adult to Rustle.  Russell is a surname back in the family tree and I wonder if that had any bearing in her picking Rustle as a new name.)   Aunt Rustle was married to Uncle Bob.  They had two sons, Donovan, and Rob.

Aunt Rustle passed away about 12 years ago.  Yesterday we lost Uncle Bob. 

 Uncle Bob (on right) with his 2 sons Rob (on left) and Donovan (center)

 It's funny, but Uncle Bob was just always in the background of my childhood memories. I remember bits and pieces of the summer I was 5 and I lived with them. My single parent mother couldn't leave me home alone all summer with my older brothers (who were 9 & 11) so on Monday morning she'd drop me off at my Aunt & Uncle's and leave me there until Friday evening. They only lived a few miles from us so I never understood why I couldn't go home every night, but there is probably something I don't know about the entire situation. Anyway, I remember the flow of a 'normal' 1950's family with the husband leaving for work in the morning and coming home at dinner time while the wife remained home.  It was so different from what was happening in my house!  My cousins hadn't arrived yet, so it was just me with my Aunt & Uncle.

I bought my first car from Uncle Bob. A 1961 VW Bug - for which I paid him $200 cash. I didn't even know how to drive a stick shift when I bought it but he kept assuring me it wouldn't be hard to learn. I still drive a stick shift, so I guess he was right.

A story about him that will always remain with me. Bob was a pilot (he was retired from the Air National Guard) and was once in a small plane crash. When the emergency crews arrived they initially thought he had not survived and he heard them say they were not going to worry about him because he was dead. He managed to move enough to alert them that he wasn't dead and they loaded him in the ambulance. On the way to the hospital the ambulance was in an accident!

Jerry & Uncle Bob shared the same birthday.  When I first started dating Jerry and he told me his birth date I didn't believe him.  After all that my Uncle's day - how could anyone else share it?

It had been several years since I'd seen him but I can still hear his chuckle.

Rest in Peace Uncle Bob.  You'll be missed.

A day late and a dollar short

When we moved into our new (to us) house the lot next door was for sale.   Our lots here in this neighborhood are rather small and the houses are fairly close together.  We decided that if the price was right we would like to buy that lot which would give us some nice open space to one side of the house.  As it was we were already mowing a portion of the lot and the kids could use that area for kicking around the soccer ball, etc.  Hayden even wanted us to put a swing set there! 

The only thing stopping the purchase of the lot was the necessity of selling our other house.  Once we had the proceeds from the sale of that house we could purchase the lot.  Alas, one month before closing on the old house the lot sold (after being for sale for at least 2 years!)

Turns out a builder purchased the lot and this past weekend preliminary work began.

The lot is right outside our bedroom.  Guess there won't be much sleeping late for a few months as they build the house. 

Design issues

I am trying to finish up a quilt for my art group's Charles Towne Landing challenge.   We were tasked to use photos taken at the Landing as inspiration for our work.  I was taken by the various pathways I saw and used these photos for inspiration:

Sorry about that last photo, I just can't get it to rotate properly.

My original plan was to depict each photo and then join the 3 pieces together as one quilt.  The trees in the middle with the other two in opposite corners.    The trees in the middle of this:

(these are not done yet, but are fused enough to be able to put them on the wall)

 We are limited to a maximum size of 36" and I obviously didn't give the measurements serious consideration.  Each of the 3 individual pieces is too big to use the way I'd original planned. 

So, on to plan B - but I don't know what plan B is!  This is the only way I can stay within the required 36".

I know at one time we talked about maybe being able to do more than one work - I wonder if they'd let me do 3 small works!? 

Any advice on composition would be welcome.

A bit of 2011 review

2011 was a busy year for us as we moved in the middle of the year.  I've used the move as an excuse for not getting much done quilt wise this year - but I suspect I might have been a slacker anyway!

Early in the year I attended the Mid-Atlantic Quilt show in Hampton, Virginia.  I really like the shows put on by the Mancuso brothers.  Lots of beautiful quilts, wonderful vendors, and classes by national teachers. 

I took the class Arc-I-Textures with Carol Taylor whose work I've always admired.  The class was fun, but I did not love my piece after it came together.   It's still hanging on my "wall of shame" and may remain there to mock me for some time to come.  I'd like to try the technique again in a different color palette.

At the end of last year I joined a local art group - Art That Works.  The group issues quarterly challenges.  One of the challenges was to use a haiku as inspiration for for a work.  I must confess that this butterfly was something I'd started in a class with Marilyn Wall a couple of years ago, so I wrote a haiku to go with the butterfly. 

Black/white butterfly

flitting around the garden

delicate beauty

Unfortunately, I STILL haven't finished this work - although now all it needs is to be quilted, so I've made progress.

The zentangle challenge was a really tough one for me.  I had a horrible time just trying to doodle to create zentangles.  Others find very relaxing, but I found my inner critic really speaks up when I try to do it.  I finally ended up with this piece, which isn't really a zentangle, but about as close as I was going to get.  One good thing about challenges is learning whether a technique speaks to you or not - and this one sure doesn't!

Another challenge was to use a technique out of a book, magazine or published source you've always wanted to try.  I was interested in a resist technique I'd read about on the blog Tommy the Material Girl that I follow.  She describes the technique using Elmers gel school glue here.   I just used the glue as it came out of the bottle and, like Tommy, found that the lines were too gloppy.   I used a variety of paints and inks to color the background and the leaves.  It was kind of fun to do, but I'd certainly try to fine tune the resist application the next time.

We've also been working for the past year on our Charles Towne Landing challenge.  Charles Towne Landing is the site of the first permanent settlement in the Carolinas.   After a photo field trip to the park we were challenged to make a work inspired by our photos.  I found I was very taken with the various walkways in the park and had many photos of them.  Eventually I decided my piece would feature those walkways.  My eventual plan is to combine these 3 different small pieces into one piece.  My problem right now is that the finished size of our work can't be larger than 36" and my current plan is too big.  I'm still working on it and we're due to reveal the quilts in a couple of weeks YIKES!

We are slated to display the quilts at Charles Towne Landing in a special exhibit in April so I better get busy.

My guild is gearing up for its quilt show the first weekend in March.  I'm going to enter 3 quilts. 

Stars over Monterrey:

Whole Cloth (made in a machine quilting class with Judy Heyward using her pattern)

Wonky Log Cabin

If you're in the area March 2-3 make sure to stop by the show!