More Circles ... For a Good Cause

I used the sample blocks from the 6-minute circle demo I mentioned yesterday to make placemat's for one of my guild's community service projects. You might recognize them as two of last year's lotto blocks: Sunrise and Bead-on-a-String.



I had fun playing with quilting designs over the weekend and finishing them up–the bindings are sewn down by machine, so no Slow Sunday Stitching for me today.

I wanted to try Karen's Feather Galaxy fill pattern ... but I never quite found my rhythm.

The dark gray thread showed up a lot more than I expected on the gray-on-black background, too.

I will likely try it on another project and probably change it up enough to make it work better for me. You can see what it's supposed to look like in this YouTube video.

Even if it isn't "right," I really do love the combination of spiral, feather shapes and pebbles.

Looking for Mr. Right - My Finished Wall Hanging

It was an 11th hour finish of the wallhanging I made for the Northern New Mexico Quilt Guild's retreat raffle quilt. Here it is thrown over the rail on the porch outside the retreat center.



I didn't take a photo of it hanging inside (on an improvised hanging system using a curtain rod and two bungee cords ... that worked surprisingly well)–I will update this post with a photo of that because I had low expectations that it would work at all.  Here it is "test hanging" on the gray-green wall in my kitchen earlier today.

Updated with a few more photos of the quilt:  hanging at the retreat behind the fabric sale table; a close-up of my improvised quilt hanging system (using two bungee cords); and a peek at the back.

(click for larger images on Flickr)

After tormenting myself trying to decide on thread colors and quilting design, I decided to go with a simple spiral, using medium gray thread.  I tried a different approach to quilting the center of the spiral (bad idea), but I am still happy enough with the result.  Here are detail photos of a log cabin block, an Oklahoma Boomer and one of Julie's "Boomerettes"(there is a second boomerette on the back). 

(click for larger images on Flickr)

At some point during the quilting and binding, in my easily amused mind, the quilt became Looking for Mr. Right. 

The quilt measures 36-inches wide by 42-inches high. The spiralling quilting lines are approximately 1/2-inch apart - quilted on my little purple Bernina using the the walking foot.  Here it is one more time, in the sunny courtyard ... my outdoor photography definitely need work :-)



The quilt top has been waiting to be quilted for a while ... I ended up finishing the quilt the day before the retreat.  I'm celebrating this 11th hour finish on the following:

Block Lotto Show & Tell
Can I get a Whoop whoop? on Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Crazy Mom Quilt's  Finish it Up Friday
Fabric Frenzy Friday on Fort Worth Fabrics
QuiltShopGals' Creative Goodness
Richard and Tanya's Link a Finish Friday

When you can't quilt ... PLAN

Over the weekend, I was shocked to find that simply pushing a rotary cutter was painful and the up and down of working on blocks on a design wall and sewing and pressing seams wore me out.  I'm frustrated that a couple of projects I hoped to plan this month ... may not happen.

In the meantime, I'm PLANNING for the future.

Just about the last thing I did before getting hit by the cell phone menace early Tuesday morning was attend the guild meeting.  Myrna (on the left) shared a variation of the slice quilt that she will be organizing in 2015. Each person in a group of six, buys a poster, slices it into 6 pieces (in any way she wants) and hands them out to the other members. This is Myrna's quilt and the poster she used for her piece (held by guild president Cindy).

I have ALWAYS wanted to work on a slice quilt.  I signed up immediately and hope that enough other members who need to meet in the evening or on the weekend will join me. 

Julie has announced that she'll be leading the Cotton Robin one more time and I can't wait. This year, she is asking us to challenge ourselves with a color theme that's new to us and ... I have an idea.  Click over to the cotton robin to check out the dates for this year (and also look at all the quilts we made last year–it was big fun and I am ready for more of the same.) 

I may start my Cotton Robin quilt with a little hand appliqué ... I'm thinking I might be able to handle that while I'm mending. 

I took paper and colored pencils to the urgent care today and sketched an idea for a modern quilter's code ... as it turned out, I waited for more than 2 hours before I was seen and spent another 2 hours mostly waiting once I made it to the back of the house, so I was glad to have something with which to entertain myself. 

For those that are following my saga, the consensus continues to be that I'm bruised but not broken, which is good news, if a little unbelievable because everything still hurts so much ... 

Retreat!

I think quilt retreats are universal in many ways.

Quilters gather in a large room, with cutting tables and ironing stations.   Sometimes you're one of the lucky few with a spot near the window and enjoy the natural light; sometimes you end up in a dark corner, glad you remembered to bring some lighting of your own. 

The food is always good.  You may not have as many vegan and gluten-free options as I enjoyed today, but it's always tasty. 

The kale chips were a nice change from the usual chocolate and sweet/salty snacks.

Finishes are shared and celebrated. 

If you're organized and focused, you can get a lot done. My day today started like this.

Looked like this for much of the day.

And started to look like this around dinner time.

At the end of the day, I had 19 feathers completed ... and 33 more in progress. I couldn't resist bringing the finished ones home so I could put (some of) them on my wall.

(It was after dark when I got home so the light/color in this photo isn't great.)

Really, the biggest difference between the retreats I've attended, in California, Michigan, Texas and New Mexico is the architecture. 

Traditions Transformed: The Artistry of Quilting

Yesterday I went to the Northern New Mexico Quilt Guild's Quilt Fiesta 2012.

It's a compact show with only a handful of vendors, but I managed to take a couple hundred photos anyway–though that number includes photos of the labels so I could identify the quilts and photos of the ribbons so I could remember which ones were judged as best in their category.

The theme of the fiesta was Traditions Transformed: The Artistry of Quilting. This is a detail from an unassuming little quilt in the show that I loved for it's transformation of a traditional bow tie block.

The quilt, named We Used to Go Dancing, was made by Esther Milnes of Santa Fe in memory of a gentleman, using his ties and pieces of his favorite tuxedo jacket.

I loved the cleverness of it ... and apparently one of the judge's did too. It didn't win a ribbon in its category, but had a Judge's Award ribbon.

It's interesting to go to a guild show if you're from out of town or newly arrived but haven't yet met anyone from the guild or joined it.  You may not know the story of 4 or 5 quilts made from the same pattern–in this case, it was Edyta Sitar's appliqué quilt, Hop-to-It–but there's usually one or two patterns/workshops that seem to have been popular. This version was named, Thumper's Garden and was made by Toni Bolton of Santa Fe and quilted by Lynne Horpedahl.

As you walk through the show and read the labels, you quickly learn the names of the Long Armer's who quilt for others and notice overall how many quilters quilt their own quilts ... or not. 

You might get a feel for the balance of traditional quilters/modern quilters/ art quilters in the guild or in the area (you don't have to be a member to enter quilts in this particular show).  Art quilts were well represented here.  This one, a color study by Gretchen Garnand of Santa Fe, is called Finding Balance. 

I don't know if the trend to print photos on fabric and stitch over them to create thread paintings is growing or dying, but I especially liked an example of the technique in the show named Larry is a Quilt of Larry, by Jennifer Day of Santa Fe. Here is a detail:

Just inside the entrance of the show were examples of work from the three small groups within the guild: Crazy Quilters, Art Quilters and Appliquérs.  This small 2-color appliqué quilt by Barbara Bogart  seemed very timely. 

Did this show help me make an informed decision about joining the guild?  I think so.  Although half their meetings and 2 of 3 of their small groups meet during week days and so my participation will be limited, I plan to check them out at their next evening meeting.

If you'd like to check out some (many) of the rest of the quilts from Quilt Fiesta 2012,  here's the link to the slide show version of my photo set on Flickr: 

NNMQG Quilt Fiesta 2012 Slide Show