SPQG 2013 Quilt Show Part 1

Last weekend was the Sioux Prairie Quilt Guild's annual quilt show. I'm always in awe of what these ladies can do. I try to remember that they've been at this for longer than me and that my quilts are getting better, but there are days I feel like a fraud being in the same guild as these amazing women. They are very encouraging and remind me that before you can be an expert you have to be a beginner.

I'm very grateful that they let me take pictures to share here. (They actually laughed when I asked if it was okay, but I know some shows are more picky about those things.) I apologize for the picture heavy post, but it was extremely hard to choose which quilts to share.

First up is the finished Penguin Quilt top. Our backdrops our limited in height so the large quilts have to have their tops folded over. I think this is still one of the better pictures I'm going to get of this quilt.

Feeding Time by Kymberly Pease

Barn quilts are becoming very popular in our area. I love the idea of a quilt filled with barns with barn quilts on them.

Barn Quilt by Phyllis Van Peursem

I don't have a picture of it, but she used the extra blocks to make a cute chevron on the back.

Bright Zig Zag by Carolyn Elder

This one might look familiar. I thought I'd show everyone what Coffee Lover's Delight looks like when it isn't being blown about by wind or struggling to fit it all in the frame.

Coffee Lover's Delight by Kymberly Pease

My guild is lucky to have several hand-quilters. This quilt is by one of the women who inspires me to master this art form.  Right now the thought of hand-quilting a bed-sized quilt is daunting. Not only did she make this quilt, but she had several other large quilts in the show.

Lone Star by Mary Ellen Winter

A close up of the hand quilting.

 This quilt has 50 different shades of red in it! I can't imagine how long that search must have taken.

Red and White Pineapple by Mary Ellen Winter

Last week I shared my submission into last year's challenge to literally interpret a quilt block. This is the winning quilt.

Pineapple Quilt by Barb Tazelaar

Coffee Lover's Delight

Coffee Lover's Delight has been done for a while and has been patiently waiting for me to photograph it. (I never realized how much traffic drives down our street at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. In the twenty minutes I was setting up and taking pictures three different trucks drove past. I can only imagine what they thought of the crazy lady spreading out a quilt in the front yard.)

It took me a long time to decide how to do the quilting. After talking with the ladies in my guild they suggested doing Xs through each block. I really love how it turned out.

I've blogged about the making of this quilt here, here, and here. It's an interpretation of the Road to Tennessee by Mary Lane Brown.

The fabric is Java by Deb Strain. In order to get the two-tone blocks I used four charm packs, but I had half of two charm packs left. The corner stones and sashing are also from the Java line. I added 2.5" sashing around all of the blocks to separate the X and Os. The sashing wasn't in my original plan so I didn't buy it with the rest of the fabric. Unfortunately when I went to get my brown the LQS was out of the browns in the Java line, but I think it matches really nicely though.

The backing is also from the Java fabric line. 

One of my favorite parts of this quilt is the label. I love the surprise of this little coffee mug on the back. The date shows just how long this quilt has been waiting to get on the blog.

Sock it to Me Week 5

My sock needles are looking very sad right now.

That's right. They're empty. This week I've been distracted by lots. I showed you the penguin quilt this weekend, but that is just one of the things distracting me. I've started clearing out the yarn stash by making baby hats. 

Judging from how slowly the hat is going (more so how little attention I'm giving it) this may not be the best plan for downsizing the stash. Most of my knitting time is going into the purple monster.

Have I mentioned lately that this sweater has 13.5 inches of knit stitches one after another after another? I just hit 11 inches and the prospect of finishing in 2.5 inches is very motivating. I'm trying to decide if I want to do 1.5 inches of that as ribbing for the bottom or do a turned hemmed which will require me to knit an extra 2 inches in a contrasting color and then turn the hem and bind the live stitches to the back side. (Yes, that sounds complicated to me too so I'll probably do the ribbing option.) You may have noticed that this sweater has no sleeves, but it has been decided that when my needles are free this sweater is going to have some time out in the stash while I move on to my green sweater that's full of lots of fun cables. Eventually the joy of cables will wear off and the idea of straight stockinette sleeves will feel like a break rather than a chore. When that happens I'll spend a week or two making sleeves and then will get the joy of a quick finish.

The last distraction has been quilting related.

Before Christmas I was spending more time on the pinwheel quilt than Christmas presents so it got banished to the closet so I could focus better on the stuff on a timeline. My quilt guild's show is 15 weeks away. Sounds like plenty of time, doesn't it? Then I realized that before the show I want to finish hand quilting the pinwheel quilt, machine quilt Coffee Lover, finish and quilt Hobbit, finish Penguins (although since that quilt is a workshop quilt I am allowed to display the top unquilted) and possibly do the Challenge quilt (a modern 5'x7' quilt in solids that is machine quilted by the quilter.) Suddenly 15 weeks does not seem like much time at all.

Coffee Top is Done!!!

I'm starting to think that this quilt might have a curse on it. My first goal was to get the entire quilt done over the summer to show at my quilt guild's fall guest night. I was humming along nicely and only had to sew the rows together before the top was done and my machine broke down. I got my machine fixed and  managed to finish the top in time for guest night. (I even had a week to spare.) Then the week before guest night I start coming down with some coughing illness and am to sick to go to guest night. I'm slightly worried to see what new disaster will come up when I actually start to quilt this thing. (I can't decide what I want to do for quilting though so I have some time before that occurs.) Despite all of the problems with this quilt I'm absolutely loving how it's turning out. I can't wait to cuddle up under it this winter (or next if the quilting curse is bad.)

*It's not the greatest of pictures, but with the curse that is this quilt what else did you expect. I promise when I take the finished pictures they will be good. I've even started plotting locations for this quilts photo shoot.

If you're interested in the pattern it's based on this quilt on Moda Bakeshop's webpage. 

Coffee Lover's Delight part 2

I got a little side tracked with Coffee Lover's Delight. I went to my local quilt shop (LQS) to purchase fabric for the sashing and the back of the quilt and discovered they had two charm packs of the Java fabric line left. I was a bit worried about the quilt being too small so I snatched those babies right up. I started laying things out and realized I only needed 10 more squares, but since I had the previous 20 squares from the first two charm packs laid out with duplicate prints in the corners I decided it was okay to only use half of the fabric in each charm pack.

I'm afraid I didn't take any pictures of the new blocks, but they look like the others. I have gone off of Mary Lane Brown's quilt pattern a bit. To really make the Xs and Os pop I wanted to add sashing between my blocks. I cut the brown 2.5"x10" and have added 2.5" white corner stones to each block. The result is a 2" sashing that's the same width as the center squares in my blocks. For this quilt I decided to add the sashing on two sides of each block and then sew the blocks together rather than trying to wrestle with long pieces of sashing and creating more points to get off. When finished there will be brown on all sides of the block and white squares at each corner. Here's what two of the blocks look like with the sashing.

                 

I have all of the rows sewn together and have half of the rows combined for the top. Unfortunately my machine has broken down and the repair shop is an hour and a half away so it will be a while before there are any more updates on Coffee Lover. 

Coffee Lover's Delight part 1

After a lot of knitting, I've finally started working on a quilt. Much easier to share when it's in progress than a weird bit of knitting on the needles. This quilt is inspired by Mary Lane Brown's "Road to Tennessee." Her tutorial for the block is wonderful so if you want to know how to make the blocks check out this site: http://www.modabakeshop.com/2011/08/road-to-tennessee.html

One of the variations Mary suggests is Xs and Os. When I saw that I immediately thought of Moda's line Java. At first I tried laying out my blocks by color.

It looked cute, but I wasn't totally happy with it. I tried mixing up my blocks and giving it a more scrappy look. I absolutely love this layout.

One trick I've learned with quilting is to take a black and white picture once you have your layout finalized. This lets you see how well everything balances.

I really want the Xs and Os to pop so I've decided to do some brown sashing between my blocks with white corner stones. When I was shopping for my brown fabric I found a few more Java charm packs. I think that my quilt is very heavy on the blues and light on the dark colors so I'm going add 10 more blocks to get a little more variety of color. If you make this quilt one charm pack will give you 10 blocks. I enjoy having my blocks with two matching colors in each block so I'm going to be using 4 charm packs, but I'll have one charm pack left over. (Don't worry, I've already got plans for that one.)