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>

Summer is Here

Tomorrow may be the official start of summer but the summertime heat is here with a vengeance!

So how do you keep cool?  The swimming pool feels like warm bathwater and you hope there is a slight breeze to cool the droplets on your skin.  Or you towel off and go inside to air conditioned coolness. In my case, I work during the day in 68-degree-Fahrenheit air.

Anyway, the weather isn't the only hotness around here. My sewing machine and fingers are hot from finishing up a variety of projects.

First, my longarmer finished custom quilting Mesa Valley and it turned out fantastic!  I am nearly finished hand stitching on a wider-than-normal teal binding. This one will hopefully grab a shiny ribbon in the next quilt show.

Second, I free-motion-quilted a tablerunner and finished hand-stitching on its binding.

I even added some stitch-in-the-ditch lines on a table runner from a couple years ago (*now* it is finished).  This is a Connecting Threads kit.

Third, ummm....I started two new projects. Yeah, I know. I have plenty of UFOs that I need to concentrate on completing. But both of these called so strongly to me. While searching for images of a different quilt block, I came across an image from a completely different quilt. It was a quilt someone had made from blocks received in a block exchange. I had participated in that exchange, hoping so hard that I would be the winner. Alas, I didn't win, but the idea of making my own set of blocks had been percolating in my mind. Seeing that example was the inspiration to finally make my own. I now have eight blocks for the planned 20-block setting, all from my own stash.  It's so nice to shop your own stash!

 

The other new project is from a recent Sew Sampler box. My daughter's boyfriend really liked the quilt pattern. I figured it might be one more incentive for him to stick around for a while if I made this quilt (lol-if my daughter is reading this post, maybe you could curb your morning grouchiness so he will stick around longer than your previous boyfriends).  I finished cutting the fabric last night. It is an easy pattern so should go together pretty quickly.

Last week my hubby and I spent time visiting my parents and helping with home renovations. It was great to see them again, along with my brother and niece. We took a drive around the town and the nearby lakes to check out all the changes that have occurred in our home town over the past few years. It sure was nice to get back home again, though.

Where have you gone on vacation this summer? Or where would you recommend we check out on our next vacation?