Finally finished

One of the members of my guild, Judy Heyward, is a VERY talented quilter with the awards to show for it. One of her quilts, Charleston Beckonings, (which can be seen here scroll down to "First Entry in an AQS Contest and click on the link) has won awards all over and was a finalist in the $100,000 Quilting Challenge (winner to be announced in March.)

Judy recently taught a class on a simpler version of her winning quilt and I knew I had to take the class if only to have some of her massive talent rub off on me!


This is the quilt I made from the class. It is supposed to have another border and the leaves were supposed to be appliqued onto that border. I decided I didn't want to add that border, so I appliqued the leaves on the inner border. The outside edge is very narrow and needs a good pressing before I submit the quilt into our guild show. A day or two before the class I decided I wanted to do a pieced background for the Palmetto rather than use one fabric. I rather like the effect but all those seams ended up being a problem, so there isn't much quilting in that area. The quilt isn't really that out of square, I just pinned it to the wall to take the photo and didn't do it very well.

I wonder how many others from the class will submit quilts!

Happy New Year!

I've been neglecting my blog lately and don't really have a reason. We haven't been that busy, although I have been dealing with a cold the last few days.

I've actually been sewing this week. I finished one wall hanging and am in the process of quilting another. Our quilt show is coming up quickly (see the countdown over there on the right??) and I need to get some things done for the show.

I don't have photos of the quilts, but do have these cute photos of Hayden eating dinner tonight. Looks like she enjoyed it doesn't it?

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Christmas greetings from not so sunny South Carolina!

The holiday was quiet here. The Craig, Chrystal and the kids were here for Christmas Eve. We had a LowCountry Boil and then opened presents. We stopped by their house today to see what the kids got and it looked like ToysRUs in their house. All in all it was a wonderful holiday. I even managed to do some quilting tonight.

Hope your holiday was wonderful!

Hayden the red nosed reindeer?

Hayden is getting into the Christmas spirit. Cute isn't she?

Volunteer of the Year

One of the things Jerry does to keep busy in his retirement is volunteer for the
Trident Literacy Association. He teaches computer courses and has helped to keep their hodgepodge of computers up and running. He also recently helped them write a grant proposal to obtain funds for computer upgrades. They had hoped to get $2,000 but were thrilled to be granted $20,000.

Jerry was asked to attend the board meeting on Wednesday to discuss how to spend the grant funds. To his surprise, the real purpose of his attendance was for him to be honored as Volunteer of the Year! He doesn't say too much, but I think he was pleased with the honor.

Congratulations Jerry!

The truth comes out...

Back in September we were awarded yard of the month for our subdivision. (see my post about it here)

I finally found out what REALLY happened. Turns out the yard of the month committee called our house a few days before Jerry 'stole' the sign and told him everyone would be out of town for the holiday weekend and for him to just get the sign himself and put it in the yard. He then spent the next couple of days trying to make me believe that he was planning to steal the sign! I knew he hadn't stolen the sign, but it's good to finally know the whole story!

Christmas parade participants

We were in Savannah this past weekend. Jerry and our friend John ran the Savannah River Bridge Run on Saturday morning. Jerry & John have decided that they are "professional bridge runners" Neither of them runs a lot of road races, but they decided they like the challenge of running over bridges. They run the Charleston Cooper River Bridge Run every year and now have added Savannah to their annual list of bridge runs. John's wife June and I are the cheerleaders.

Last year we all went down for the run and only stayed overnight. This year we decided to spend 2 nights so we could enjoy a bit of Savannah. Saturday afternoon we strolled through areas of the city and ended finding a good vantage point to watch the Lighted Christmas Parade that started just after dark on Saturday.

As the end of the parade, behind the last police car, 3 college-aged kids were marching as the tail end of the parade. It was obvious that they were not official parade participants - especially since one of the women was carrying her purse. They were having so much fun that we decided to join them. We hopped in formation with them and ended up walking the rest of the parade as part of the entertainment!! It was loads of fun. At one point the parade organizer came up to us and told us all how pleased he was that we were enjoying his parade so much.

Hopefully the race and the parade are on the same day next year. Watch for us.

MIA

I've been missing in action lately. Not for any good reason, just haven't had much to post about.

I feel like I should always add a photo to any blog post I make so here is today's.




This quilt was made for a QuiltArt challenge called Why Is The Sky Blue?

When the challenge was announced I immediately thought about the beautiful cobalt blue Skyy Vodka bottles. I requested, and was granted, permission from Skyy Vodka to use images of the bottles in my quilt. It turned out to be harder to execute than I thought it would be originally. Probably because I used all sorts of non-traditional quilt fabrics. The orange background is rayon. The bottles are made out of satin, velvet, and lame' among other things.

You can see all the quilts submitted for the challenge here

One man's trash...

This year my guild, the Cobblestone Quilt Guild ran a mystery quilt in the newsletter. My buddy Karen was making the blocks but decided that she hated most of the yellow/orange blocks. I told her I would adopt those poor unloved blocks because I loved the colors. (I'm of the mind that you can't have too many bright colors!) Here are the blocks I got from her.




After playing with the blocks for a while I finally decided on a way to set them while adding some additional blues and greens. This isn't done yet. I was working on this at TTT (trailer trash Tuesday) at Karen's and we all decided that it would be fun to add something else. I don't have a photo of what I've done yet, but will post one soon.

I think I'm going to name this "Trash or Treasure?" Karen still thinks it's too bright, but I don't.







Karen ended up making 2 tops out of the mystery quilt blocks instead of one row quilt. I like what she did, and am glad she included at least SOME yellow/orange!

Veteran's Day

Since today is Veteran's Day, Jan over at Serendipity Quilting mentioned that her hubby, affectionately known as Cabana Boy, served in the Marines. I thought I'd share that Jerry also served 20 years. His time was spent in the submarine service and several years ago I made this submarine quilt in his honor. The back of the quilt has a listing of all of his duty stations with the dates during which he was at each location. We had to pull out his service record in order to get them all. There were a couple I'd even forgotten about - for instance, he once spent 6 weeks in a school in Memphis, TN and I don't remember him ever doing it! It's hard to believe that he has been retired from the Navy for nearly 17 years. Heck, that's almost as long as he was on active duty.

Thanks to all the vets who served and also a big thank you to those who held down the fort at home while the vets served their time.

Finished Dormer

The dormer is finally finished. I'm in the process of moving back into the space right now. Of course, even with the remodel, I don't have enough room!

Del recently asked me if we were done and to post photos. Here are a couple I took the other day when I started a bit of unpacking. Jerry was still putting up shelves for me at the time.

I'm still trying to decide where to put my cutting table. Right now I'll try it here until I see if that works.




The shelves will be all across the back wall. Jerry cut down the shelves I had and made them work with brackets. He thinks I'll have more shelf space than I did before, but I think it's less.



The one side wall didn't change so there's really no change here.



The dormer didn't really add much floor space, but it sure makes a difference in relation to the light in & head space in the room. I still need to get blinds for the windows. I'm anxious to get sewing up there!

How to ruin a good day

Our mini quilt group (the Ducks) met this morning and we had a good day making cute purses out of Santa hats. After leaving Ducks I stopped at a store for some shopping. I purchased a couple of things and while at the register I noticed that the cashier automatically gave me the senior citizen discount. (they give a 10% discount on Tuesdays.) I noticed the sign above the registers said that the senior discount is for those 60 and over. At that point I mentioned to the cashier that I didn't actually qualify for the discount and she just let it go. I think I'm offended that she thought I was 60. sigh-- guess I'm looking worse than I thought!

Journal Quilt 2007

Today is the opening of the International Quilt Festival in Houston - THE quilt show. For the past 5 years or so one of the special exhibits is of Journal Quilts. Members of the QuiltArt email list were invited by Karey Bresenhan, the force behind the show, to create a monthly series of small 8 1/2" x 11" works which would be shown in Houston each year. The hope was that participants would use these small works to try out new techniques or ideas without having to commit large chunks of time or materials. It was a highly successful project that resulted in a book being published last year with photographs of many of the journal quilts.

This year Karey decided that the project had run its course and that for the finale participants would create one 17" x 22" quilt that used at least 3 different techniques found in the journals pictured in the book.

This is my quilt entitled Celebration. Last year I had a quilt juried into the Houston show that paid tribute to the old Cooper River Bridges in Charleston, SC. (the quilt pictured in my header - which can also be seen here) Those old bridges were town down and replaced by a modern new bridge. Included in the big opening celebration for the new bridge was a spectacular fireworks display, which was the inspiration for this work. This was my class project for a class taken on Quilt University from Helen Marshall.

Here are a couple of detail photos. I won't get to Houston this year to see the journal quilt display, but many people from QuiltArt have promised to take photos of the display to share.

Catching up

I haven't been posted much since going to Florida for the submarine reunion and then going to my mother's to help her get moved to Detroit. We had hoped to put my mother on a plane last Wednesday, but things didn't get set up in Detroit in time for us to do that. Instead, Jerry & I came home on Wednesday (and it POURED rain all the way from Florida to South Carolina). We are going to drive back down to my mother's on Tuesday to help her pack her suitcases and then we'll put her on the plane on Wednesday the 31st. My brother will have everything lined up for her at the retirement home in Detroit (hopefully!)

Besides taking care of the issues with my mother, we've been finishing up the remodel of my quilt studio. We have one final inspection to have done and then I can move all of my junk back into the room. I'm having trouble deciding where I want everything to go, but I'm anxious to get moved back into the room and to get all of my assorted sewing stuff out of the rest of the house.

Jerry and I went to the fair this afternoon and when we got home the kids were sitting in the living room waiting for us. What a nice treat to find them here. They'd come over for a belated birthday celebration for Jerry since we were in Florida for his birthday last Sunday. They'd taken Noah & Hayden for photographs earlier today and already had the photos to share. I think they're WONDERFUL, but then again I'm biased.

Rolling over

Here's Hayden with a big smile after rolling over for the first time. She's obviously proud of herself!


We've been in Florida since Wednesday. Until Saturday we were in Jacksonville where we attended a reunion of the USS Grant, one of the submarines Jerry served aboard. On Saturday we drove down to Venice where my mother lives. She hasn't been doing very well lately and has spent some time in the hospital due to bone breaks from falling. We need to get her moved closer to family so she's going up to an assisted living facility in the Detroit area. There she'll be close to my brothers and her grandchildren. Jerry and I spent the day weeding through the accumulated stuff and packing up some boxes.

Today is Jerry's birthday. I'm sure he would have preferred spending the day doing something else! Happy birthday honey!

Pretty little girl

We had Hayden try on the smocked dress that I made for her. The neck size is just right but the sleeves sure are puffy!

I think she's so cute in it.

Work in progress

I can't believe that I've actually been sewing, what with my sewing room being dismantled right now, but I have. I ran across a pattern in a French magazine (QuiltMania) for this top and just decided it was something I wanted to do. I've always liked quilts with some dimension and used some Australian fabric fat quarters for the blocks.

I started this on Thursday and finished today - which is really speedy for me! Here it is in progress with all the blocks pieced.



















Once I finished piecing the blocks and adding all the borders it was too big for my design wall so I had to put it on the floor for a photo. I don't usually work this big (it's about 64 x 75) so I don't know what I'll do about the quilting. I might try to find someone to baste it for me so I can quilt it myself. It was fun to do. I think I've named it Aussie Shadows.
(photos are clickable for larger view)

Two cuties

My two favorite grandkids! Aren't they cute? Can't wait until Hayden has more hair so she can wear bows!

Dyeing again

I've been doing some more dyeing. I'm going to be taking a class that calls for a six to eight step color gradation and tried it out in fuchsia. I think a couple of the colors are too close to see any difference. The blue in the photo is an over-dye of something I did in lesson one of my dye class.









These are also over-dyes. The one on the left started out orange and I dyed it in a combination of blue and hot pink. It's interesting how the color came out. The pink was a one color attempt at tie dye. I think I did it wrong. The blue was from lesson one and I over-dyed it with a purple. The last one was a yellow that I over-dyed with green.

I'm still trying to find an easier rinsing method!

Fractured Flower completed

(clickable for larger view)
I have finally completed my fractured flower quilt (here's where I first talked about it). Starting in the upper left and going clockwise my segments were made by Sandra Burket of Texas, Roberta Ranney of Missouri, Rhoda Forbes of British Columbia and Diane Becka of Washington.

The deadline to finish was today and I just put in the last stitch this morning. I wish I'd quilted with a different color thread. I had trouble finding the threads I wanted because of having my studio all packed up for the dormer addition.

After seeing how some of the others have completed their quilts, I'm feeling like mine is pretty ordinary. Once the photos are posted on the QuiltArt web site, I'll post a link so all of the quilts can be viewed.