Orange Crush Mystery Quilt and Spring Batik Block Swap

I am getting ready to participate in the Orange Crush Mystery that Bonnie Hunter has on her Quiltville website. Opening day is April 1 - don't know how much I will be able to do that day since that is DH's birthday, but I'll get started soon after that. After a shopping trip yesterday in Charlottesville, VA after DH ran in a 10-mile race there I now have my fabrics - I was unsure about the green fabric because it might not read as a single color, but I really like the design and with there being a bit of yellow that connects it to the orange/yellow batik, and bit of black that connects it to the black fabric I'm hoping it will work. Not sure which of the blues I will use for the accent - I guess I'll decide that as we go along. I have never done a mystery before, though I did follow along with Bonnie's last one. Along with these fabrics we will be using a lot of light and dark scraps. I have some small pieces of lights and darks selected but haven't cut them yet. Bonnie has said we can cut them into 2" strips, as well as some 3.5" strips of the darks. Since she hasn't said yet what length to cut the pieces from these strips I am waiting on that. If need be I can use various light and dark fat quarters rather than these smaller pieces that I have selected. I doubt that I will be able to keep up with the others doing this mystery since I have several other quilts and quilt projedts underway, but I'll work along on it as I can. Part of the fun of doing this will be all the back-and-forth between the participants on Bonnie's chat group. This will be a new experience for me because I've not really made a scrap quilt before. I did make the BargelloBowl quilt with Bonnie's group, but I don't think it would be considered a "scrap" quilt. I'm making several quilts with lots of different fabrics, but I'm not sure that they would be considered scrap quilts.

I also am working on 5 blocks for the Spring Batik Block Swap on Carol Doak's Yahoo group. Here are the first two that I have finished. This one is #102 from her 300 Paper-Pieced Quilt Blocks - This one is #162 from the same book - Each of these blocks is supposed to have some green in it and the block is supposed to represent spring - and of course be a Carol Doak design.

Senior Center Quilting - pt 2

After we finished the placemats for the Meals on Wheels participants some of the Seniors in our quilt group wanted to do something for ourselves. One of the Senior Center Board members had given me a couple of pictures of a jar, or pantry, quilt that he and his wife saw on display in the Midwest during a cross-country trip. I had seen the blocks on Janet Wickell's Quilting About site for a ginger jar and also the more traditional mason jars. I printed these out for the ladies and we decided to each get some fabrics and share them with the rest of us. So far one lady has made 4 wall hangings or small quilts using these patterns, two are quilting or ready to quilt wall hangings, and I am ready for the borders of mine. Here are pictures of the top 5 rows of mine, and the bottom two rows, and the strips of braided border that I have done so far. I will be putting the woodgrain fabric on the sides, then a narrow border of the background fabric before I attempt to sew on the braided borders. They are pretty stretchy so I am concerned about how to do that neatly, but I have gotten some advice from folks on the Quiltville Chat group so hopefully it will turn out OK. I got the directions for doing this border from Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville.com

A couple of weeks ago I was telling the Sr Center ladies about my Atlanta Shop Hop fun and how some of the ladies on the bus tour wanted to see how I made the Grandmother's Flower Garden pieces with Quilt Patis. Two of them got interested in making some of their own so I shared some of my florals with them and they are off and running with it. They will probably be finished before me! Here is a photo I took yesterday of my GFG - with some of the top row partially finished and auditioning for a position!

I think that those who are going to do the Pantry Quilt are far enough along on them that we can begin thinking about what to do next. Last summer and fall we made 20 blocks for a sampler quilt to donate to the Senior Center and some of us are in the process of quilting those blocks, then we will assemble them as a quilt-as-you-go. I am thinking ahead to our next project. I'd like to do one of Bonnie's scrap quilts for the Center to raffle or to have on display. If we give it to the Center we can use some of the fabric that has been donated to us and each of us could make some blocks then we could sew them together. I'm going to show them pictures of some of those quilts in the next week or so and see what they think of that.

Senior Center Quilting

In May of last year I asked the folks at the Senior Center where I volunteer as a computer teacher and Medicare Part D advisor if there was any interest in my starting a quilting group there. My idea was just to get together with others who like to quilt, NOT to teach a class. Well, yes, there seemed to be some interest, but of course more interest in my teaching than in everyone just "doing." So, I needed to plan something for each week's meeting. A few had done some quilting before, but several had never quilted, and some did not have sewing machines. The first few weeks we spent going thru the fabric contributions on hand at the Center, then we decided to do a sampler quilt. Each of us - at that time about 8-10 - were to do 1 or 2 blocks. I brought in lots of patterns for them to choose from and some more fabrics. We eventually got 20 blocks made, then I showed them how we could assemble it as a quilt-as-you-go quilt with several different ones maybe helping with the quilting of the blocks. Some of the blocks had to have a bit added to the edges to make them be the right size, but I have done that to most of the ones that needed it. I'll post pictures of mine when I finish quilting them.

Before we finished this project I had the idea to make placemats to give to the Meals on Wheels participants that are fed out of the Senior Center. Turns out there are at least 60 people in that program so we had lots of placemats to make, but a few of us got really busy and by mid-December we had about 70 placemats which were distributed to the Meals on Wheels clients before Christmas. Here is one of the placemats that I made. It is from Six Halves Make a Whole - 6 fabrics -1/2 yard each - of coordinating fabrics make 6 different placemats with each fabric in a different position in each placemat. I wish I had taken a picture of all of them before they were distributed, but the day I brought my camera they had already been rolled up and tied and ready to give out.

In the meantime we had found 20 blocks in a box that was donated to us by the family of a recently deceased quilter that were clearly intended to go together - and with them was enough fabric to use as sashing around these blocks. One of the ladies volunteered to piece them together. I put on two borders, using fabric that we had decided on as a group when we took a field trip to the VA Quilt Museum (about an hour north of here) and to a quilt shop. Then the lady who assembled the quilt took it to do the long-arm quilting on it. I got it back from her about 3 weeks ago and finished it today. At her suggestion I did the binding differently - cutting the backing a bit wider that the top and folding the backing around to the front and blind-stitching it to the front. I thought it was really hard to do the corners neatly that way, but I got it finished and this afternoon I finished the label and gave it to the director at the Senior Center. It will be raffled with the proceeds going to the Senior Center. They had a recent quilt raffle that brought in enough money for them to spend some of it one a Brother sewing machine for the quilters and others who meet there to use. Here is a picture of the quilt on our bed. We are calling it Bertie's Purple Lady because it was Bertie Golden who pieced the blocks. I will take a picture of the label when I am there next week. I wasn't sure it I would be able to finish it this afternoon as I don't often have time to do things I want to do when I meet with them!

More in the next post about what we are working on now.

The Greater Atlanta Quilt Shop Hop was such fun!

I am now back to DD and DSIL's house in Marietta after completing the Greater Atlanta Quilt Shop Hop - 13 shops in 2 days! What fun to take the tour with a bunch of like-minded shoppers!! I am SO glad I took the bus tour that was organized by Sarah at Intown Quilters. It was well worth the $100 to have John do the driving; I definitely want to do it again next year and I expect to see some of the same ladies on the tour next year. I met Shirley, Martha, 2 Mary K's, Diane, Anne, Deborah, Lucretia, Bonnie, Bess, Thea and Thea's mom, and others. We shared our purchases, our projects, and our lives during the long drives from Decatur to Covington, Conyers, Jonesboro, Newnan, Hiram, Lawrenceville, Duluth, Sandy Springs, Marietta (3 shops) and Holly Springs. Each shop had made a quilt using the same blocks, and each shop gave us a pattern for their block. It was so interesting to see all the different quilts made with the same blocks. At Red Hen Fabrics I saw Sandie, the woman who quilted my Van Gogh's View and shared my happiness about her quilting with my friends on the bus - and gave out some of her business cards. I even met a lady at one of the shops who had read my blog entry yesterday or this morning about going on the bus. An unexpected treat was meeting Aunt Philly at Stitchin' Time - the creator of Aunt Philly's Toothbrush Rugs. She was demonstrating her method of making these quick, completely washable rugs and some of us bought her pattern or her CD, or a starter kit -- and I practicing making it on the bus back to Intown - sure made the trip back go fast! Now I've got quite a few fabrics that will be "seasoning" as Lucretia says while I plan for their use. Maybe at least one of us will even be one of the prize winners.

Add to all the fun of the Shop Hop the fact that I have seen, or will see, my mom, 3 of our kids and their spouses, all 3 grands, and a friend of a friend back in Lexington - it will have been a great extended weekend. Only one thing could have made it better - if DH had been along for the trip so he could have seen the family too.

I'm in the Atlanta area this weekend

I came from VA to the Atlanta area yesterday to participate in the Greater Atlanta Quilt Shop Hop. I signed up for the bus tour that between today and tomorrow will take us to all 13 shops. I am staying with DD and DSIL in Marietta and have to leave in a few minutes to drive the 15 miles or so to Intown Quilters where the tour starts. Yes, they suggest that I allow about an hour to get there since I have to go on I-285 from Marietta to Decatur. At times like this I have to remember exactly why it is that I want to move to the Atlanta area when DH decides to retire! The reason is that 3/4 of our kids and all of our grands live here between Athens, Marietta and McDonough. Wish me luck on the drive. The funny thing is -- this shop is across the street from where the Marietta family used to live! Oh well, here goes.

The other two blocks for an ALA quilt

Here are the other two blocks that I recently made for a different quilt for the ALA BiblioQuilters. This quilt will have all purple and green Log Cabin blocks, and I volunteered to make one of each. It will also be part of the Silent Auction that will be held at the American Library Association meeting this summer in Anaheim. The center block will be the same in all of them, and the organizer also sent one purple and one green fabric, along with one beige that we could use if we wanted to. I used her purple and green ones on the longest outside positions, and the beige is in the top center of the purple one. I had not made a Log Cabin block in a long time but liked doing these and now want to do some more for myself!

Sterling Touch Quilt Blocks

Recently I joined the ALABiblioQuilters Yahoo Group - a small group of librarians and library-related folks who make quilts to be in the silent auction at the annual American Library Association conference. Since I attend this conference most years with my husband I offered to help make some of the quilts. This year they are making three, and I am helping with two of them. I have finished the two blocks for the first one - "Sterling Touch." This pattern was in Quiltmaker last year. The organizer of this quilt sent me 3 pieces of material - I needed to use at least one in each of the blocks. The rest of the fabrics were to come from my stash. In this one the fabric of hers that I used was the tan with burgundy brush strokes in the small triangles on the outer edge. This is the bottom center block. The second one that I made was the left center one. The fabric that she sent that I used in this one was the burgundy oak leaf design in the center. The organizer of this quilt converted the patterns that were in the magazine to paper-pieced designs. It took me a pretty long time, and a special trip to a quilt shop 45 minutes away from here, to come up with fabrics that I hope she will approve of!

The other quilt I am helping with is a log cabin design - I have one of them partially finished and have selected the fabrics for the other one, and hope to finish them both today. No quilting since Friday night -- we spent the weekend painting our hallway. We finished just in time for me to watch the last few laps of the Daytona 500! None of my favorite drivers finished in the top three but it was an exciting finish!

Questions about Guild Size

I recently volunteered to be on a committee for my guild to come up with some ideas for having small group experiences within a large guild. How do you put people together diplomatically, or do you let them put themselves together by interest group, geographically, etc. And are there other ways of having the large group seem small enough to make friends and have a chance to enjoy being with each other? At the moment our guild has 63 members, and probably 20 of these have joined in the last 2 years or less. If everyone on the rolls came to our monthly meeting it would be standing room only. We are currently using a place for our guild retreat that can only hold 22 sewing machines, and some people are unhappy about that. Some have suggested that we limit our size to 65 - but several of us are opposed to that at this time. If any of you have ideas about our concerns please let me know. Our committee is having its organizational meeting this Saturday, but our investigations into this issue will be going on for awhile.

Center of BargelloBowl is Finished!

I was up until 3 am, but did get the center of my BargelloBowl finished. It is 48 1/2 by 64 1/2" - each square is 2", so there are 768 pieces in it! That is not many pieces for one of Bonnie's scrappy quilts, and with only 32 different fabrics I'm not sure it qualifies as "scrappy." I am very happy with it, and am now thinking about borders and binding, and then quilting. For the border I am thinking of using the purple "Raindrops" with maybe squares or rectangles of the other fabrics arranged to look like they are floating on the purple. Not sure how to do that yet, but I am thinking about it. This was a fun quilt to do, a design that I had wanted to do for a long time, and pretty quick, though several others on QuiltvilleChat got finished way before me! Getting the intersections to all match up worked well most of the time, but at 3 a.m. I am less of a perfectionist! I hope that I find the time to do other bargellos. I have a book of bargello designs in needlepoint from 1967 - might be fun sometime to convert some of those to quilting. I also ordered the Twisted Bargello pattern that so many on QuiltvilleChat have talking about.

First Half of BargelloBowl Quilt is Together

Thanks to all of you who replied with your thoughts about which layout I should use. I finally decided on using just one square at the top and bottom of the stairs. I am not sure what my quilting pattern will be but I think I will try to follow the lines of the fabrics and if that is the case I thought it might be easier to do if there was only one block at the ends of the stairs. I have 12 of the 24 strips together and am now working on the 2nd half, then I'll sew the two halves together. I'm still hoping to get it finished before I go to bed, but we'll see. I've had some trouble getting a few of the seams to line up correctly, but I am trying to not get frustrated! Here is the first half I also took time out to fix pizza for dinner - from scratch, including the dough! This would have been a good day to order out, but our tradition is that I always make it at home. It was good, but took about 2 1/2 hours for fixing, eating and cleaning up. And watching all those commercials took time too! Some of my favorites were the baby for eTrade, the dog and the horse for Bud, James Carvill and Bill Frist for Coke --- oh, and the oboe player who became a football player. It will be interesting to see which get the most chatter over the next few days.

Back to the machine now.

Layout question on BargelloBowl Quilt

I have cut my 4 tubes of strips and am laying them out to see how I want that to go. Can't decide between having one square at the top and bottom of the "steps" and having 2.

I will sew the first six strips together and then see if I can decide - and in the meantime might get some input from others.

My fabrics for the BargelloBowl quilt

I now have my fabrics cut for the BargelloBowl quilt. I have agonized over the fabrics I wanted to use for way too long - after all it is supposed to be a scrappy quilt, right? Well, I decided to use teals, purples and blues and only 32 fabrics, so each fabric will go completely across the quilt. Here are some pictures of my run. I just laid out the strips on top of each other to get the general idea of how it will look. They are shown in order from top to bottom.





Now I need to start sewing the 4 groups together. It's a good day for staying inside here - freezing rain, ice and sleet apparently this morning and even though the temp is 37 now there is still ice on the trees and bushes. I do have to go out later for hair appt, but I'll get some strips together before then I hope.

BargelloBowl '08

One of the Yahoo Groups I belong to is QuiltvilleChat, hosted by Bonnie Hunter She is one busy lady, but has decided in the midst of having packers come next week to move her family from SC to NC that she wants to do a quilt on Sunday during the Super Bowl, and she has invited the members of her Chat group to join in. She/They/We will be making her Scrappy Bargello quilt in a lap size. For that we need to have 128 strips - 2 1/2" wide by 16" long. I was undecided about whether to join in or not, but after seeing this logo that one of the members designed today I thought I just really NEED to do this! I have not made a bargello before, even though I have collected a lot of fabrics with that design in mind. Not sure how scrappy I will make mine - but I have a few days to decide. Anyone want to join in??

Copyright Issues and Jumping to Conclusions

One of the Yahoo Groups that I belonged to until just recently was Quilters Corner Club. It is now defunct, mostly because the person who started it has apparently disappeared, and the other two women who were in it with her started, and recently expanded, a new group called One Stitch at a Time Saturday night I read on the OST group that the founder of QCC, the nowhere-to-be-found young woman, was selling as her own designs a group of New York Beauty patterns that look to be identical to those designed by someone else. On the QCC site they are called the International New York Beauty BOM. Beginning this past June she posted for our free use two patterns per month. If we did not get them from the site during that month then we had to buy them from her. A few months ago she started selling all the rest of the 25 if we wanted to move more quickly than two a month. In early January we expected the next two to be posted but they never appeared. We then began hearing the the other two women could not contact her, and soon they pulled out completely from QCC. I have already made 4 of these blocks and had planned to make a pillow using some of them, as well as finishing the BOM as they appeared. The OST woman said she was going to throw all of her patterns from the BOM away and I gathered thought we should all do the same thing. After reading this, and seeing the photo evidence they presented, I found some patterns and books by the designer who they told us was the actual designer and purchased them online. Later that night, or the next morning, I read a follow-up posting from someone else who was trying to set the record straight. This person, who as far as I know has no contact with any of the other women, told us that she emailed the "actual designer" who told her that indeed the patterns were designed by the first person. Seems that a fabric shop where the "actual designer" recently held a class was looking online for a picture of a New York Beauty quilt to advertise her class. Rather than get a photo from her, they just went online and found this one and put it on their website as hers, when in fact it was from the first young woman. Apparently they are taking that picture off their website, although it is still there as I write this. I did think it was odd that as I looked at designer #2's patterns and books I did not see any that looked exactly like the International NYB from QCC, but it never occurred to me what the real reason for that was. I did however like her patterns, and will be happy to have them in my collection. When this mix-up was pointed out to the OST women, including a quote from designer #2 the response was that there was to be no more discussion of this topic on OST. Clearly there is more going on there than has been said, and the fact remains that the first young woman is the only organizer of a retreat scheduled to be held in WV in April that now no one can find out anything about. I have not signed up for that but apparently several people have, and have paid for it. Messy, messy, messy!

I plan to continue at some point to complete the NYB blocks that I have already, and if we never get any more of them I'll just do something with the ones I have. And the pillow is still on my list of projects. One of the OST women is now designing some other NYB blocks that I may also use for something, but they are a different size from the others. Here is a photo of the 4 blocks I've made so far -

If you have followed this saga and are not confused to this point - then good for you!!

Hydrangeas and Butterflies pillow finished!

Tonight I finished the paper-pieced pillow-top that goes with the Hydrangeas and Butterflies quilt. I did the piecing on it months ago. It was the first Carol Doak design I did before I started on last year's Fat Eighth Swap in her Yahoo Group, which took place from April - June I think. I used some of the same fabrics that I used in the quilt, and made a cording edge using the same stripe that I used for the binding of the quilt. It is probably hard to see the back of the pillow, maybe some of it in the second picture, but it is the fabric from the border of the quilt. I hand pieced it, and just finished assemblying it tonight. The cording gave me a few problems, but I really wanted to use it so I kept working with it. This completes the Hydrangeas and Butterflies "set." Now on to other projects!

Allie's Green Batik Quilt

Our youngest daughter, Allie, has been visiting us since mid-November. She had been working as an intern on an organic farm in the Hudson Valley of NY, and after a visit with us left this past Friday to go back to work on that farm for a few weeks before moving to a nearby farm where she plans to work this coming season. During the last couple of weeks that she was with us she decided she wanted to make herself a quilt using some of my batiks. She was living in my sewing room, surrounded by my stash and I think it must have been calling her name! She likes to make up her own designs in her quilts, and her knitting. She has two quilts in progress that I have pictures of on my Quilting Links webpage - http://mamanance.info/quilting/index.htm#family She hand-pieced and is hand quilting them, but this time she wanted to try out my Brother. She started on it Jan 7, and finished all but sewing down some of the binding by the time she left here Friday. She had never machine quilted but practiced a bit with the walking foot and with free motion, and, as I guessed she would chose, she liked the free motion better, so did a meandering stitch all over it -- and seemed very happy with the results!

Van Gogh's View is officially finished

Just a few minutes ago I finished sewing the label into Van Gogh's View so I can now say it is officially finished. Usually the labels come later, sometimes much later, but this time I thought I would do it while I still had the quilt. I made the label using 18-count cross-stitch fabric, and did the lettering in backstitch, then put a border around the label. I'd hoped to have it finished by Christmas, but that didn't happen. I'll be shipping it to our daughter and her family in GA.Tuesday since tomorrow is a holiday.

Hydrangeas and Butterflies wallhanging is finished!

This afternoon we hung the completed Hydrangeas and Butterflies wallhanging in our room. I have documented some of the progress in making it on my Quilting Links webpage I began this project in September 2006, a few months after we painted our bedroom and got a new comforter, etc. The room is blue, and not a pale blue, and the comforter has a large block of lime green, one of blue and one white, so I knew from the beginning that it needed to have blue and lime green in it, and I knew where in the room I wanted to hang it, so that limited the size. After looking and many fabrics on quiltshops.com I saw the large hydrangeas fabric and knew right away that I had to use that fabric. I looked at the collection it was in - Lakehouse's Hydrangeas and Raspberries - and bought some of those fabrics, along with the butterflies fabric that was in a companion collection by Lakehouse. I found a pattern using big blossoms, that actually used the hydrangeas fabric, but the pattern had some aspects that I didn't like, so I designed my own. I used other fabrics besides just what was in the Lakehouse collection to make the borders around each block. It is hand quilted using the Baptist Fan pattern in the 4 big blocks, a cable around each of the big blocks, and a diagonal grid on the border. For the binding I used a striped fabric from Lakehouse and cut it on the bias so that the stripes would go at an angle. I am so happy with the way it turned out - I have been making extra trips upstairs just to look at it today! I have a paper-pieced pillow using several of the same fabrics that is almost finished that will go on the bed. Can you tell that blue, yellow and green is my favorite color combination!

Daughter is home; 1 treetop done

The traveling daughter is home, all safe and sound with no apparent problems. When she called this morning from DC to say she was that far it was a like a big weight off my shoulders. Kristie and Cindy, thanks for your comments.

I appliqued the smaller treetop on Van Gogh tonight, and 1/2 of the larger one, but it is time to put it up for the night. I work at the hospital tomorrow, but will try to finish it tomorrow night and get started on the label.

Progress on Van Gogh Quilt

Here is a picture of one of the trees on the Van Gogh quilt. I have machine quilted the two trunks and treetops. The trunks are appliqued on and I will be working on getting the treetops on today.