Here’s another project–my quilt guild’s raffle quilt for this fall. Obviously, everybody worked on it, but it is one of my original designs I’d love to win it for myself (no dogs on the bed if that happens!!!)

Tanka, my first Hoffman Challenge quilt, is finally back from its cross-country travels, and I’ve started in on 2010’s Hoffman Challenge quilt. Here’s what the fabric looks like–gorgeous, isn’t it.

Also been making my swimsuit cover-ups for the kids in my daughter’s preschool class, and doing a brisk business of it, if I may say so. I think I’ve sold over 10 of them in the past month.

Finally, there’s my almost complete Christmas project, “A Cuppa Christmas Cheer” that I’m hoping to have done this week. I’ll post a pic of it when I do.

Is that busy enough to excuse not posting? Hope so

Here’s a link to the traveling schedule (Trunk Show C, Paisley)

Now back to Fall cleaning.

Now I’m waiting for the official letter (I went and looked on the Website instead) so I can have a sneak peek at next year’s fabric.

This year’s challenge fabric was a beautiful cream, green, and brown paisley design with pearlescent highlights. I had the circle design in my head for months, but couldn’t get the original design to work out. The second tack I tried was a Tiffany brooch with pearls and green sapphires, but that one didn’t work either. Finally, about 3 weeks ago, this one fell into place.

I was going to machine quilt it, with my lovely new Fabu-Motion. However, the learning curve was a bit steeper than I expected, so I was forced to hand-quilt it as usual. I used my “whipping” stitch (from Quilt and Embellish in One Step!) on the background paisleys (I got it out of Quilting Makes the Quilt, which I picked up at a library booksale for under a dollar) and the brown vine design on the flowered border (notice the pearl accents).

The green paisley print is the challenge fabric that I hand-dyed. It’s folded in a fan design, then echo quilted at 1/2″ intervals. I’d like to add some beading to that section at some point, but I ran out of time to do it.

Now that the quilt is finished and I can focus on other things, my daughter is clamoring for my attention…like making quilts out of clay

I’ve had this top pieced and sitting on my quilting frame since the first week of January. Only the fact that we were heading up to New York to see my in-laws, and my darling little niece, lit the fire under me to get the whole shebang finished. I actually finished it around 1:30 a.m., only hours before my sis-in-law and little Susie showed up at Grandma’s house.

This was my first foray into fusible/raw-edge applique, and I think I really like it. The main drawback is trying to get a needle through the fusible web can be a real killer on the fingers (I keep forgetting to ask my dad for a pair of hemostats).

Here are a few close-ups:
The apron and pantaloons are made of a cute white eyelet fabric I’d bought to make pants for my daughter (before deciding that sheer white fabric probably wasn’t the best choice for a very active and messy little girl), and the basket can actually hold things.

Since Susan means lily, I chose those flowers to grace Susie’s garden. The fabric was perfect. But it was this section of the quilt that held me back so long–those stems and leaves were a real pain in the boohickey to do (not to mention the stamens–I had bandaged fingertips by the time I’d finished).

And since she’s a little brown-eyed Susan, I had to include a couple of those lovely flowers up at the top of the quilt.

Hopefully I’ll have some time later on this week to post on my first experience as a quilt show vendor, and joining the local quilt guild, and some thoughts on quilt patterns.

Although I usually prefer to design my own quilts, I still browse through the numerous quilt books out there for new ideas.  Several months ago (like about 6 or 7), I was captivated by Ricky Tims’ Convergence designs. 

I thought, “Cool! This’ll be a nice, easy project.”

Famous last words.

Actually, I did get the quilt itself done fairly quickly.  It’s nice and small (29″ x 29″) I had the fabric already in my stash, begging to be used. A week, perhaps, is all it took (which is pretty good with a four-year old under foot).  Getting the back/binding on and the appliquing and quilting done…that took a while.  Granted, I was interrupted by two other quilts (only one of which is finished), a craft show, my quilt patterns up for sale, Christmas, Punkin’s birthday, repainting my living room…

Okay, okay.  Enough excuses. 

Here’s the finished project, called “Hope Rising,” after a David Crowder Band song I’ve gotten addicted to recently. It seemed an appropriate name, with the butterfly motif (and with all the stuff going on around here).

Here’s a close up of the appliqued butterflies. I wanted them to look like they were flying out of the fabric, in an Escher-esque fashion, so I did little to set them apart from the rest of the design.

Here’s a shot of the back, showing the very simple quilting pattern I used. The radiating lines accentuate the butterfly explosion on the front.

This is the first quilt I’ve kept for myself. Or rather, for my family–it’s now up in my daughter’s bedroom. She has a matching blanket made long ago from the blue-green batik, and she kept admiring the pretty butterflies.

Recently a young girl in our church was diagnosed with leukemia. Knowing from (second-hand) experience how miserable hospital stays are, especially for chemo, I thought it would be appropriate for our church’s quilt ministry to make her a big, soft blanket to snuggle in when things got tough.

The information I was given was: green, pinks, and reds, and likes dogs, cats, horses, and her American Girl dolls. I finally settled on hearts and an adapted Scottie dog pattern, turning it into a West Highland Terrier instead (one of the American Girl accessories is a little Westie named Coconut.)

Usually when we make quilts, we ask the church members to make a “signature” block, some sort of design, verse, etc. that fits the theme of the quilt. This time however I thought it would be more meaningful if the girl’s peers made the personalized blocks. The artwork may not be tops (what do you expect of 5-12 year olds?), but the love definitely comes through.

In another change, since I wanted an extra-soft quilt, I decided to work with “Minky” (or Jo-Ann’s answer to Minky, though the adorable red paw print fabric came from Hancock’s). But while the stuff is super-duper cuddly, it’s stretchier than all get out, and the nap makes it annoyingly slippery. The stretch I got around by ironing stabilier to the back of all my fabrics before cutting them out. The slippery I just had to learn to pin the things like crazy. Thank God for my walking foot.

I really wanted to get this quilt done by the end of November, so during Thanksgiving holidays my mother and I sat and quite companionably pinned, ironed, and stitched together the whole quilt (Thanks, Mom!). Between Thursday evening and Saturday at 2:30pm we managed to finish the thing.

Instead of batting, we ended up using a big piece of white fleece. The backing too is fleece–that wasn’t my first choice, but the first choice didn’t look right, second didn’t have enough fabric, and third would have required me to iron on stabilizer to the whole 56″ x 56″ quilt backing. I don’t think so. I found another big piece of red fleece in my stash, and away we went.

My mother had the cutest idea, one I think I’ll use again. The top corner heart has a hidden pocket. If you just look at it from a distance, it looks the same as the other hearts. Up close you can see a little pocket, perfect for hiding treasures right within easy reach.

Anyhow, it’s done. Now I just have to finish six quilt patterns, eight swimming cover-ups (I’ll post on that one tomorrow…hopefully), and my convergence quilt before December 13th, and my niece’s baby quilt before Christmas. Sigh. So many projects, so little time.

Started this in August for a contest. Got the top done in a weekend, as the contest required, but the quilting took much, much longer. Didn’t help that I kept getting side-tracked to other projects.

This is one of the quilt patterns I’ve actually sold in our Ebay store. You can find it here.

I’ve donated the quilt to a charity event to be held this Saturday. It’ll be auctioned off to help raise money for a very sick little girl.

Here are some of the quilting details I put in. They were fun, but a bit time-consuming, especially those pinwheel blocks.

I’ve researched your entry and your quilt was selected to travel in Quilt Collection “D”… CONGRATULATIONS on being selected to travel in this year’s Hoffman Challenge.

After sitting there and blinking my eyes stupidly for several minutes, I picked my jaw up off the keyboard and went to the Hoffman Challenge website to see where exactly my little baby was traveling. Seems she’s been in the Midwest (Colorado, Texas, and South Dakota) since August, and will eventually hit Iowa, Florida, Georgia, Washington, California, and New York before I get her back next September.

Okay, so she’s only one out of 200-plus quilts chosen, but it was my first contest entry ever, and my first completely hand-stitched and hand-quilted piece, so I’m still quite startled and more than a little pleased. Truth be told, I’m proud as a…as a peacock