ROUND ROBIN QUILT FINISHED!

I love how this round robin turned out! It's my first one and I was very pleasantly surprised when I got it back in May.  Quilting and binding didn't take too long and I wanted to get it finished for the first meeting of our guild coming up in September.  

Yesterday, we went to a park close to our town for a picnic and I took this quilt and the quilt in the header so I could get pictures of them in the park.  I love the background of green in the photo.

My oldest grandson leaves for college next week and since he worked at a camp all summer, he was only around here for a couple weeks.  Other than our 50th anniversary weekend in 2012, he had never met his cousins before.  So the picnic was a good chance for him to spend a little more time with Abby, age 7, before leaving.  With a 13 year difference in ages, they don't have much in common other than family, but they had a nice time exploring the creek running through the park.

Thanks for visiting!

WESTERING WOMEN BLOCK - OOPS! Change that to ROUND ROBIN BLOCK

Here is my Westering Women block for July!  ROUND ROBIN block for the next season at my quilt guild.   I decided I would do it for another year because the RR quilts came out so nice.  If I get very frustrated this year with coming up with a new border every month, I might not do a third year of it.  

I don't know what happened to my mind, but I had been looking at the Civil War Quilts web site to see when the August block will be posted.  The August one will be posted on the 31st, so currently I am up to date.  I like it that these are 12" blocks.  And we only have to do one per month.  I'm not sure it will make a big enough quilt but I can always add wider sashing and borders.

This RR block is also 12" and I made it with CW fabrics, so that probably added to my confusion!  Am I getting old or what?  I found this block in Quiltmaker's 100 Block Vol. 2 from Winter 2010.  It was done in black, red and white.  It was stunning, but that doesn't really go with my decor, so I opted for the CW fabrics and changed the black to blue.

I'm also trying to get some projects finished for a possible craft show coming up in December.  I have 3 of each of these pillows almost finished.  They were in a panel and I also have a lap quilt that goes with them.  The pillow cover tops are quilted and the backs have a velcro closure so they can be taken off and washed.

Have a nice weekend!

UFO WALL HANGING FINISHED!!

Oak Leaves and Turkey Feathers, designed by Jan Patek is finished!  It was an idea that I blogged about here.    It measures 78" square and only took 5 years to get it completed!  I feel so good having this one finished and I'm quite happy with it.  

All the fabrics, except the outer border backgrounds were in my stash at the time I was picking them out.  Well, I think I did buy some orange pieces as I didn't have much of that.

I quilted it totally free hand as I hate marking quilts.  When I started, the only idea I had was to put veins on the large leaves.

I quilted spirals in the center of the flowers and then just made lines around the other section.  All the appliqués were quilted around.

I had no idea how to quilt the triangles in the inner border so I just did lines in the middle triangle and sides.  Then quilted loops in the green ones.

I used a variety of Sulky threads to quilt on the appliqué pieces which were stitched on with zig zags.

For the border background I quilted a variety of things:  feathers, swirls, stippling, etc.  The backing was found in a thrift store not knowing it would be perfect for this quilt.  While I was quilting this I kept track of my time and figured out it took approximately 16 hours to do the quilting. I also used 11 bobbins of cocoa Essential Pro thread from Connecting Threads.

My next project is quilting the round robin from my quilters guild.  I decided to quilt it with a Baptist fan design and I'm using Barb Vedder's  large baptist fan template.

I'm using Superior Threads Fantastico purple variegated thread for the top and white Essential Pro for the bobbin.  This one is going a lot faster than the Oak Leaves quilt because the fan quilting is large.

Two of my grandsons started school in Virginia yesterday and school for Abby starts Sept. 6 here in Oregon.  My oldest GS will be a junior in college.  I'm looking forward to cooler weather, although we have had a more pleasant summer this year than the 2 previous ones.

Happy stitching!

BASTING, QUILTING AND AN AWARD!

I hadn't given it any thought whatsoever, but a pregnant friend from my quilt guild asked if I would take her quilt to the Yamhill County Fair for her as her baby was due at the same time and she thought she might be busy!  Well, I decided to enter my Baskets of Blue since I was going there anyway.  It won First Place in the category of appliqué by one person and the Best of Show ribbon!  What a nice surprise!  

This week I got busy and basted a couple wall hangings.  The "Oak Leaves and Turkey Feathers" is one that I started a few years ago and I wanted to get it finished for fall so I could have it as "Fall" decor.  Yesterday I started quilting it.  It is quite big - it just about covered the whole top of my king size bed, but I didn't measure it.

I also basted my round robin from last year and want to get it finished so I can take it to my guild meeting in September.  We have been off for the summer and I plan to hang both of these quilts in the "Treasusres in the Attic" show at the Yamhill County Heritage Museum in September.

This is my first round robin and I have decided that I will do it again this year (after having decided not to do it again).  I think I'm a glutton for punishment!  They can be fun, but they can also be very frustrating - trying to come up with a border for a different RR every month!  Why do I do this?

NEWPORT QUILT SHOW II AND ADVENTURES GOING HOME

More pictures from the quilt show.  This one was my favorite!  So scrappy and a great variety of fabrics!

New York Beauty

After the show, we stopped along the road to take a picture of the ocean - so beautiful!

Somehow, on the way home, I missed a turn and we were talking a lot, so maybe that distracted me.  All of a sudden we were entering a small town and I didn't remember ever seeing this town on the way from Lincoln City to McMinnville.  Luckily, there was a quilt shop there, so we stopped to find out where we were!  We had kept going North and ended up in Cloverdale, OR at BJ's Quilt Shop.  The clerk explained how to get back on track, but we had to do a little shopping!

It turns out that I had been to this shop a few years ago when it was located in a house.  They just moved to this shop recently.  Was that serendipity? or what?

Next door to the quilt shop is one of the best antique shops I have ever been in!  So, if you ever make its to Cloverdale, OR, be sure to stop in both of these stores.

Our day ended up being a lot longer than it should have been, but we all enjoyed it nonetheless.

QUILT SHOW IN NEWPORT OR

Yesterday, my next door neighbor, her mother and I went to Newport OR on the coast to a quilt show and had a great day!  Here are some of my favorite quilts.  I will post more tomorrow.  Some of my pictures aren't real clear, but I wanted to show those quilts anyway, so I hope your eyes don't cross while looking at them.

Paradise in Bloom designed by Judy Niemeyer 

These last 2 are mini quilts that I really loved!

It's always so inspiring to go to a quilt show!  Stay tuned for some more pictures of quilts as well as the story of our day.

GOALS FOR AUGUST

I'm up to date on the Westering Women blocks.  The last one was super easy!

I have been working on a UFO lately.  It's a quilt I saw at Lori's home several years ago and liked a lot.  I don't remember when I started it, but I got tired of having it in a box, so I determined to myself that I would at least finish the top.  It appeared in the Fall/Winter 2005 Quilt Sampler magazine and is called "American Crossroads."  I already had 93 blocks finished and needed 63 more to make it into a queen size quilt.  I just finished 24 blocks!  So now I "only" need 39 more.  I'll try to get them made this week.

So, it seems I am back in the groove!  I also plan to get 2 wall hangings quilted this month.  One is my round robin!

Do you have any goals for August?