Another UFO Moved to the FO Column

The Finishing March plays on; a post-manuscript-completing urge to complete something else.  Namely quilt tops from the Past.  This time the top was made in 1998....  Or, at least, as close as I can figure, it was 1998.  And I may have this story totally tangled, but, as I remember it, here's how it came about:  Judi Blaydon, a literary enthusiast, issued a challenge to retreat goers. Use a passage Judi chose from The War of the Roses, a novel by Warren Adler, as the creative springboard for a quilt.  
Doing lots of fusing I made a small top, displayed it along with other challenge results at the retreat, and then put it away.  But, when I came across it recently, I was happy to see it again and thought it deserved to be quilted.  

I especially liked the positive/negative thorns.

And the yellow-green/green-blue/red combo holds up.  

Another FO for our guild's mini-quilt auction, April 2012.  Yea!

More UFO's into FO's

Two more UFO's became FO's at stitch group this morning.  They are both destined for the mini-quilt auction at the Kaw Valley Quilt Guild show in April 2012.  Proceeds go to local non-profits.  


You've seen both of these projects in unfinished stages.  The first is from the workshop Carol Taylor taught this summer.

The second is Sarah Fayman's second challenge--the challenge fabrics are the solid brown, deep blue, and violet. 

Both pieces were free cut.  I tamed the 9-patches with a ruler before sewing the blocks together.  


Done and done.

All that glitters...

Thanks to Linda Frost for a swell idea!  Sitting on my back porch, Linda asked if the privacy fence around the back garden belonged to us or the neighbor.  When I told her it is ours, she brightened and said she had seen a photo online of just such a fence with marbles in it.  Not long after she left that afternoon, Linda sent the link, and I was pretty knocked out.  


Yesterday my husband helped me drill holes in a section of our fence where afternoon sun streams through the slats.  We made two basic sizes of holes and then customized most of them with a burr to accommodate the somewhat-less-than-uniform small and medium marbles.  Here is the happy result:

Taking the "U" out of UFO's

Bobbi Finley and I are winding up a new book, which C&T Publishing will be releasing in August 2012.  We are very excited about it and will tell you more about it as the release date nears.
We made some really terrific quilts for the new book.  A LOT of quilts--there are 18 projects!
We had a wonderful time making the quilts for the book, but, in order to get them all done by deadline, we didn't work on much else for quite awhile.
Now that the deadline has come and gone, I am all about finishing, finishing, finishing some of those UFO's cluttering my shelves.  So, imagine my smile when local quilter Lori Kukuk, recently empty-nested on account of the Boston Red Sox organization's drafting her son for its pitching squad, expressed a need for something to keep her occupied...  She took a top I put together in 1996 (Clinton was President, and we'd never heard of Homeland Security) and quilted it with a simple, overall design.
Here's a photo of the quilt, not yet bound:

It's a strippy using blocks my grandmother made long before I knew her and fabric from the stashes of gone-but-far-from-forgotten friends.  There weren't enough of any one type of my grandmother's blocks to make a quilt, and, because they were all constructed from the same family of inexpensive feedsack and dress cottons, I used them together and arranged them in strips.  I put my grandmother's smaller blocks on point and framed them with a friend's green-on-green that is very close to the green from my grandmother's era:    

And here is one of her postage-stamp blocks:

 The back I pieced way back when has a hand on it and this inscription:
Made in 1996 by Carol Gilham Jones using Grandmother Themer's blocks and fabric from Louise Townsend and Marion Mengel.

Crossroads

The Douglas County AIDS Project's annual fundraising art auction is coming up.  Last year a small group of us made and donated Vuvuzela:

This year we've gone in quite a different direction.  A member of our quilt guild inspired us when she showed an antique silk quilt that has been in her family and on which she'd been doing some conservation work. We slightly modified the pattern of the antique quilt and stitched blocks using primarily remnants from a tie maker.  We unified the composition by using a dark red, changeable silk in two corners of each block.  The quilting is machine herringbone stitch on major seam lines.  Here's the happy result:

We hope it makes a fortune for a very worthy non-profit organization.

Lotus Project complete

Some months ago I wrote about a Florida/Michigan group of quilters who had chosen Bobbi Finley's Lotus pattern from our book, Tile Quilt Revival, to use for a project in which each member of the group made her own Lotus quilt in her own choices of fabrics. (See this blog for January 24 and 26, 2011.) The Lotus quilts are complete, and here is a picture of the quiltmakers and their quilts:

They are beautiful!  Thanks for sharing.

Sarah's Challenge(s)

Back from the top of the world.

This glorious photo was taken by Bev Chapman, who has such an eye!  She's a trooper of a hiker, a great story teller, and an extraordinary photographer.  We were on the summit of Snowshoe Mountain on a gorgeous August day.  

So, back in the Heartland now and back to the design wall and the sewing machine, with an August 1 manuscript deadline behind me and UFO's to transform into FO's.  

Sarah's first challenge is DONE:

As promised with acceptance of the fat quarter (see the border) that started this challenge, it will go in the mini-quilt auction, proceeds to non-profits, at our guild show next spring.

At the guild's show-and-tell, it was great fun to see the variety of ways folks used the challenge fabric. Sarah rose to the occasion and announced a second challenge.  This time, 3 solids--deep blue, brown, and violet.  She had "a little bit Amish" in mind.  Here's the top I've made, which I'm calling, Not at All Amish:

Here's a detail in which you can see the 3 solids:

The violet is a beautiful thistle color, isn't it?

Happy September: