Friday, February 10, 2017

no end in sight! How blessed I am :)

My Black and White and One other color quilt is complete. I have named it Ostentatious. But I don't have a good picture of it yet so I think I will write more about it in the next post... plus, I think I'll have a surprise for you :). I can hardly wait!!

Apparently, I have a very difficult time working on only one project at a time. 
While trying to figure out how I was going to quilt Ostentatious, I was inspired to finally at least baste this top that the Maple Street quilters kindly allowed me to practice my machine quilting. I've had the top for close to a year now and haven't had the courage to attempt this on my home machine. Then seeing how well Ostentatious was turning out (and the encouragement of one of the ladies saying it would be nice to see it hanging at Mountain Quiltfest too) gave me the spark I needed to begin! I'm not sure it will be completed in time for the Mountain Quiltfest deadline (I will really have to push it now), but I am so pleased with the progress on it. 

 
And because I got stumped on quilting designs for both the B&W+1 and the Maple Street quilt, I had to distract myself with organizing in my sewing room and I couldn't resist playing in my scrap boxes.  The result is 60  2.5" crumb squares! I couldn't stop making them. My Sweetling (14 year old daughter) was so intrigued by these little squares that she asked if she could make one.  She has sewn a few articles in the past but hasn't cared to sew anything for a couple years now.  I quite enjoyed watching her at the machine.  She didn't care to autograph her block like I suggested, and I'm sad to say can't pick out which one she made from this picture, but it's in there!! 

In the meantime, I am VP of Possum Town Quilter's guild this year.  It looks like my main duty is scheduling education opportunities.  It's an hour drive from the town that I live in to any quilt shop.  I decided to organize day trips to visit some of the surrounding shops. 
Our January day trip consisted of two cars and seven ladies. We first went to Heirlooms Forever in Tupelo.

Kaffe Fassett is one of Heirloom Forever's featured fabric collections.
Kathy Pizza (pronounced Peeza) gave us a fantastic presentation explaining the anatomy of a sewing machine needle and suggested sizes and threads for  projects. 
Since we arranged to arrive first thing in the morning
Kathy had coffee and donut holes waiting for us :).
But she definitely has our total attention!

I had to take a close up of the
simple yet elegant quilting on this circle quilt table runner.

Circle quilts by Kathy Seymour were featured

We had lunch at Peppers in Tupelo, then made our way to the Oxford Fiber Arts Fest 2017.   I got so caught up in looking, that I forgot about documenting and only got this one picture.  Just about everything you could think of for knitting, crocheting, spinning, weaving, tatting, and quilting... all fiber things were repesented there!! 

Lustrous 100% silk skeins shimmering in the sun rays.

Our last stop was to the Sit and Rock quilt store in Oxford. Again, I only got one picture.  I decided I might need this book.  It shows how to quilt a project on the long arm, and how you can also quilt it on a home machine. 

It was a long day. And in the end I concluded that our first day trip was a success. I was quite pleased and the ladies say they want another trip soon!

And I guess, since I was still struggling with a quilting design, I figured another distraction was in order, and decided to try out a new piecing technique. This one will also be in a future post.  But another couple days away from the B&W+1, and the deadline gets closer! Crazy as it is. When it seems I am no longer thinking about it... finally, in the nick of time, the border design magically presents itself! What a relief. And "Ostentatious" is ready to go!! More about it in the next post, I promise :).


Last, but not least. Yesterday at Maple Street, we finished quilting one quilt and another takes it's place on the frame! We'll get started working on it next week.

I've been really busy this past month.  Much of my time inbetween taking care of my family is spent in the sewing room. I estimated maybe 6 hours every day.  So you see...as soon as one is finished, there's always another to work on, another idea, another technique to try.... I could quilt day in and day out, and still never run out of projects! Oh, how blessed I am!! 😊💗

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