My First Quilt Show Ribbons

OMG! I am jumping for joy to learn that all four quilts I entered in my local quilt guild's show were award winners!  Maybe my quilting doesn't suck after all!

Jamestown Landing won a FIRST place ribbon for bed quilt/pieced/duet made.  I pieced for YEARS and Cindy Carey of North Star Longarm Quilting finished it with some marvelous quilting.

Mesa Valley won SECOND place for bed quilt/pieced/duet made. One of my Fat Quarter Shop Sew Sampler boxes included lovely Tula Pink fabrics and a modern Aztec-y quilt pattern. Rather than using stark white, I chose a light sand background. I handed it to Patty Lennon and told her to design something modern to highlight the design and fabrics. She came up with a crescendo-angled design which is a bit reminiscent of crop circles that totally made this quilt sing!

One Fish Two Fish placed SECOND in the show theme category. It is one of my first quilts, and was made for my daughter to take to college. The pattern uses "Mary's Triangles" in various scraps on a deep blue background which look like fish swimming through the ocean. The quilt title is from one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books. My daughter and I selected fabrics with rainbows, cats, zebra strips, red prints, blue prints, and a dinosaur print.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is a baby quilt which placed THIRD in the lap quilt/pieced/single maker category. I had fun incorporating scraps from my other quilts and clothes I had sewn for my daughter (remember that green daisy dress?). I had made it as a gift but could not bear to part with it because of all the memories those scraps represented. It will be held for a future grandchild.

They like me! They really like me! <grin>

Doldrums of October

Hello! It has been several weeks since my last post, but yes I intend to keep this blog active.

I've been reading lots of other blogs.What are your favorites? The quilting-themed ones I check daily are Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville and Cathy's saneandcrazy.blogspot.com. Cathy is a prolific scrap quilter, and I have been having fun suggesting quirky names for her quilts. There are many other blogs I enjoy checking periodically, although they tend to inspire me to pursue 'squirrel' projects instead of finishing the ones I already have in progress.

So why am I feeling the doldrums? My favorite part of quilting is piecing. But right now I have a tall stack of quilt tops to be quilted, and I am in the midst of quilting two rainbow quilts sewn in 2019. These require 11 thread changes because of all the colors. Ok, playing with all those colors is kind of fun. And I have some skill in ditch-stitching and several FMQ flourishes. Then I see all my imperfections - a few tucks on the back side, a bobble in my curves or straight lines, and my rudimentary stitching motifs. Ugh!

Do you feel frustrated, too, when comparing your quilts to at all those beautiful quilts online and featured in quilt shows? Do you describe your quilts as "folksy"? Maybe we need to change that attitude and feel happy when we finish a quilt all by ourselves - that we selected the colors, prints, altered the design to our style and did all the work to make a lovely quilt and those 'imperfections' are what makes it unique.

[Deep breath] Onward and upward!  Here are my quilting goals for 4th quarter:

1. Finish the three 2019 block-of-the-month quilts (don't let them become UFOs!!!).

 

2.  Quilt and bind Arcadian Chain.

3. Pick one of three other finished tops and quilt it.

 

4. Feed my piecing muse by making a simple baby quilt - and finish it by yearend. (Update: Blocks are cut and ready for assembly.)