It is Fair Month!

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind!  I confess.... I love seeing my quilts on display.  I am not in it for the money, as a blue ribbon is only $3, but I do love to display my quilts.  I gift a lot of quilts, but each year I look back through photos and decide on some quilts to enter in our local county fair.  I am a co-superintendent of the quilt/afghan dept. and take an afternoon off work to help check them in.   I decided on 9 quilts/wallhangings, all in different categories to enter this year.

I am there for the judging and I am the one who stands with the judge to tell her which category this quilt or afghan is in.  Our fair is judged on the American system, one set of ribbons unless there are 10 items in the category or more.  Many years ago I was doing a LOT of quilting for others and started entering in the professional division, although I am FAR from a professional.  I still enter that category as the fair board said it's hard to switch back, even though I don't quilt for pay anymore.

I did get my Canyon Dance quilt finished.  Terrible photo in a hurry before the fair.

Canyon Dance

quilting closeup

We had a LOT of entries this year.  84 to be exact.  My friends got this display set up after judging.  I have two quilts in the front row.  My Canyon Dance with Best of Show professional and my Crown of Thorns with a blue and extra $15 sponsored cash award at the judge's discretion.  In the photo are also my Splash of Lime and Cat Houses and Snippets.  My friend also made a Canyon Dance with my templates and her quilt is on the front row right.

 I was working with two young men on the other side putting up afghans and smaller quilts in the two  photos below.  My One Block Wonder is in the second phot on the bottom.

 Then my friends did this wall with the wallhangings and tablerunners.  The screens are up so nobody can touch or steal!

 Another view of my Crown of Thorns and Canyon Dance after the screens are up.

I actually did very well, winning 9 blue ribbons.  Part of the fun of fair weekend is family.  This picture is distorted since we were in a curve, I am really not such a giant, my mom is taller than me!  Me, mom, SIL Dee holding Isaak her grandson, niece Kylie, sisters Lori and Sue.  I hadn't gotten back in line after finding a classmate walking by to take our picture.

So if that wasn't enough.... there is another fair in the next county.  They allow entries from the surrounding counties and I have never entered before.  I have never even been to that fair!  My husband wanted to go to "town" and pick up some things and I said if we went Tuesday I would enter quilts.  So after work we did.  I picked 5 because their categories were very limited.  They judge on the Danish system, entries get a ribbon if they deserve it.

I had to go down Saturday as my car was throwing codes and needed a checkup so I went to the fair. I was shocked to see the entries behind plastic, but at the same time, it keeps dirty hands off of them!  I was awarded 5 blues!   I went back Sunday afternoon to pickup up my entries.

Baby Boy Grandson quilt

Canoyon Dance was all folded up and laying down.

Two wallhangings

Crown of Thorns with a Best of Class.

I want to get back to some quilting, all I have done is make a big mess, trying to design a small wallhanging for th Teal Swap to support Ovarian cancer.  

Linking up with Small Quilts and Doll Quilts for Design Wall Monday.

Two Christmas Quilt Finishes!

In my last post I showed that I was quilting on my Snippets quilt.  I finished it last week.  I did pretty simple quilting, straight lines until the border where I did feather and curly q quilting.

Snippets by Cottonway pattern

 The striped binding was a great finish I thought!

 Closeup showing some of the Jingle fabrics, along with others from my stash.

 After I finished that quilt I was still in the Christmas mode so I quilted my One Block Wonder.  I LOVE this quilt!  It is not huge.  I just quilted a simple, quick allover design with a pale gray thread. The fabric is a Hoffman Spectrum digital print called Poinsettia.  I loved it so much I ordered more of the fabric off ebay, I couldn't find it anywhere else!  Then I was at a quilt shop an hour away Friday and found enough left on the bolt to make another one so I bought that too!

One Block Wonder

 I added a lime flange and red binding to finish it off.

 Closeup of some of the blocks.

 Next up is my Bonnie Hunter Easy Street mystery quilt.  I really am trying to finish UFO's!

I finally received my pillow cover from the Quilted Pillow Cover swap on Instagram. I sent the Red Fox Faces pillow I had posted earlier to my recipient.  She was supposed to send to another person and that person was supposed to send to me.  This was all secret at the time.  Anyway the third person had not posted updates and would not respond to emails and the hostess had my recipient send to me instead.  We had filled out forms stating color preferences, styles, etc.  The funny thing I had commented on Instagram that I thought this was too busy when she first posted fabrics and I thought it wasn't that cute, not knowing I was going to get it!   But, wow!  She turned it into an artistic creation!  The quilting is impeccable and it has amazing detail!  I am so impressed and thrilled to receive it!  I am just glad she had been told to wait and not sent it to the person who flaked out!   

School started last week and it was tiring!  I also spent two days this weekend refinishing my front and back decks.  I usually hire it done, but couldn't find anyone.  When we built our house the composite decking was just coming out and we went with the cedar.  It's great except for having to refinish it occasionally!  I'm glad that is done before winter sets in.  

Linking up with Small Quilts and Doll quilts, check out all the inspiration from other bloggers!

Making Progress!

I was able to finally turn my 110 Canyon Dance blocks into a quilt top.  In an earlier post I had auditioned sashing, but decided against it.  I already have a Canyon Dance that is a little brighter, I was just trying to use up some of my batiks!  I will probably eventually donate this quilt, when it makes it to the top of the "to be quilted" pile!

Canyon Dance

I spent quite a bit of time piecing a backing out of leftovers for this quilt.  I LOVE these fabrics.  I pieced this top in November, 2015 and I want it done this year for Christmas, so I thought August 

was a good time to do it!  I am ready for machine quilting now.

Snippets by Cottonway pattern with Jingle fabrics and a few others!

 I had picked up a couple pair of eclipse glasses earlier in this month and took them to work today.  My husband had another viewer at home that was free in the paper.  My coworkers and I stood outside and watched the eclipse.  We are north of the area of totalality and had about 95% coverage.  I did not take pictures of the eclipse with my cell phone, but thought the crescents in the shadows of a tree were pretty interesing!

Linking up with Small  Quilts and Doll Quilts and MCM and Oh Scrap!

Actually finished a quilt!

School starting is almost here and I am trying to get some more quilts finished before then!  This year I redecorated my dining room and it's mostly aqua/teal, gray, and taupe.  Instead of a wallhanging I bought a large clock, but still have a shelf with a quilt rack on it for a quilt.  I did make a new tablerunner and then decided this quilt would fit in there nicely.  I saw a similar quilt at the Moscow, ID quilt show a couple years ago and found a FQ packet at a booth and whipped up this top right away.  The pattern is Cotton Candy Dots by Amalie Scott Designs with added dots.  Of course then I stashed the top in my cupboard unquilted for a couple years.  It worked well for what I wanted and the coral is a nice accent color.  I NEVER thought I would have orange in my house!  But I tell myself it's not really orange!

narrow framing strip before a scrappy binding

This is the quilt kit I bought with my gift certificate winnings at the LQS where I turned in my winning Row by Row quilt.  Sugar Plum Christmas by Bunny Hill designs.  I just need to get going on it!

For my birthday last month I got this new chest.  I put the ironing table I made on top of it.  It's the perfect height!  I had seen the chest in Boise in May and didn't bring it home as I was with my mom and driving her car.  I looked all over up here and in Spokane and didn't find anything I liked better so my sister picked this up for me and brought it to McCall to give to me.  I wrote her a check, yep, I usually buy my own presents!  I haven't filled all the drawers yet, but I will!  They are great for some of my crafty items like ribbons, zippers, embellishments, etc.

I took a walk in our woods behind the house this morning and was trying out the camera on my new phone.  I am having difficulty taking straight pictures of quilts, so I thought I would try something outside!  I have been dealing with plantar fasciitis for a couple months so it hasn't been a great summer for walking and it's also been way too hot!  Hopefully I am on the mend now.

Row by Row Finished and Other Happenings!

I have had a lot of things going on, which is the story of my life.  We had our family here and had another family wedding and then we kept our 5 year old grandson for an additional week.  I took him home (six hour drive) and went shopping with my daughters and sister.  It's convenient that both my daughters and both sisters live in the same metro area!  We were shopping for baby quilt fabrics for my younger daughters twins due Dec. 5th.  They are a boy and a girl!  This is what we ended up with. The boy fabrics will blue to orange and the girl the yellow to purple, so four fabrics are the same and the gray is the background.  I have plenty of white and black in my stash so they aren't in the picture! The staff at Quilt Expressions in Garden City, ID was very patient and we took over a table in the back laying out fabrics for over an hour!

 I did finish my Row by Row On the Go for 2017!  I was the first one to my local quilt shop (third year in a row) and this quilt uses 16 rows!  I made a lot of thread changes while custom quilting this quilt.  I's HUGE, 94 X 105.  I received a nice gift certificate and I will show what I bought later.  For scrappy I guess it turned out okay!

I took a picture on a piece of equipment in front of our old barn.

 As I was taking the picture I had to quickly grab the quilt as my husband went by in a combine cutting lentils!  You can see the dust stuck on the combine!

 Laying in my yard.

 A few of the rows.

My finished 16" pillow cover for a swap on Instagram.  I have not yet received mine.  I should have put the pillow form inside for the pic!

 Many pieced backing for the Row by Row.  I did not want scraps leftover!!!

Linking up with Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.  Check them out for other great quilts!

Row by Row and Mini

I have completed 16 rows for the Row by Row.  I am in the process of assembling them so I roughly threw them out on the floor with colored strips.  The bottom right shows how it will look with a spacer fabric.  I think it helps calm down the scrappiness.  I am not a huge fan of random scrap quilts so this is a bit much for me, but I think in the end I will be happy with the quilt.  I hope to get it assembled soon, but we have grandkids here and we have a bunch of family things going on when their parents get back.

I joined a quilted pillow cover swap on instagram and showed the fabrics in my last post.  I made 9 blocks finishing at 3" X 4" each.  This is what I had at that point.

I decided I had to make 3 more blocks and added sashing and borders.  It will finish at 16".  I realized my muzzle fabrics don't have a high enough contrast but they look better in person.

Last week I spent a couple days in the lovely town of McCall for my annual huckleberry picking trip with my sisters.  The berries weren't quite as plentiful, but we had fun and went swimming in the COLD lake and took a drive around the lake and saw things we had never seen before.  We also had dinner with our cousin who had arranged for a house for us to stay in again.  These pictures were taken from the north end of the lake, where we had never been before.  The town is at the far end of the lake in the lower picture.

Making Progress

I have not totally finished anything in the last week, but I have been sewing!  I mentioned in my last post about a contest to guess the number of quilts in my linen closet and instead of picking a quilt out of there for Chelsea, I found a top in my stash and quilted it.  Chelsea said she liked outdoor things, but also purple and teal and bright colors.  Years ago (more than 10, less than 20!) my guild had a block exchange where you picked the pattern and could provide fabrics and other members made blocks.  I chose a tree, but not in your typical greens, I chose turquoise.  I call it Blue Spruce.  I had the top together, but it was in my massive pile of unquilted tops.  I found some flannels for the backing in my stash (I will get a photo of those for my next post).  I have it quilted, and the binding stitched on, it just needs stitched down.   The interesting thing is that Chelsea's great grandmother was in my quilt guild for many, many years and recently passed away at age 95.  She made a block in this quilt!

I have been a charter member of a local quilt guild since 1993.  The guild has changed and lost a lot of members due to various reasons and they also moved the meetings to daytime.  I cannot attend with my work schedule except for two months out of the year.  Over the years we have done several quilt shows and I have been involved in several of the fundraiser quilts.  

A few years ago as a challenge we were each given a piece of fabric and asked to make something outdoor themed for a raffle quilt.  We didn't have a lot of members and didn't get a large amount of blocks back and the blocks have sat for a few years.  I made the larger center block with my challenge fabric.  This year the members made some 18" finished log cabin blocks  to try to extend the size of the quilt.  The idea was that the quilt could be finished and given to the recipient of a Habitat for Humanity house.  

I was asked to assemble the quilt as putting together odd size blocks is one of my specialties and I have given guild programs on this.  I played with the blocks for a while and finally came up with this arrangement.  I had to make 5 more log cabin blocks and adjust some others.  I am very finicky and blocks should measure the correct size at each step of the process as you are making log cabins and they didn't.  I square mine up after each round.  The quilt top now measures 90 X 108 and the last I heard the group was going to have it machine quilted and then raffle it off afterall and donate the proceeds.

Clearwater Quilters Opportunity quilt top assembled by me

closeup of my block based on a book I can't find right now!

There were 4 leftover disappearing 4 patch blocks and one applique block that didn't work in the quilt.  I made 6 more disappearing 4 patch blocks and assembled this top.  It is 38 X 48 and  might be used on the back or as a quilt for a care center resident.

I have been spending most of my time working on the row by row quilt.  I have 11 rows done and plan to do 5 more.  I actually went to all 16 of these shops!  I am making this quilt queen size.  This is not the arrangement I will use and it will have sashing.  I have more one more vertical row and the others are horizontal.  This is my third year and next year slap me if I decide to do this.  The instructions are generally quite awful and to support the shops I purchased kits and I was short fabric on more than one.  I do have another bright  row that I hope will offset the one bright one.  There was one that was all pastels and I redid it.

pastel row that doesn't fit in the row by row quilt

Fancy Fox is the pattern my daughter brought me in April to tell me she was pregnant and that was the pattern for her baby quilt.  I have not yet purchased fabrics, I will go visit in a couple weeks and do that, but for her I get to make two quilts, yes twins!!!!!!!   The fabrics pictured are for a quilted pillow cover swap on instagram.  I am making a small version of the Fancy Foxes with these fabrics.

Linking up for design wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.