Ooops, it’s been awhile, and I was doing so good!

Last Friday was First Friday and I attended the reception for “Inspirations”, that collaborative exhibit of art inspired by photography. This year we had the main show of new work at the Classic Bean in Topeka and my entry “Prairie Power” won first place in the “People’s Choice” voting. It’s always gratifying when a quilted piece is recognized as art amongst paintings.

We also had an exhibit of some of previous years’ entries at another venue, Nexlynx in Topeka and “Majesty” received a Second Place there.

The Boxer is finished and I am happy with how it turned out. I always prewash all of my fabrics because I still do find some that will run, and when I wet this piece to block it one of the hand dyes did run in spite of that. It was a green so any bleeding it may have done on the front is not noticeable, but can be seen very slightly on the back. Luckily it was not a problem, but it does reiterate the need to prewash.

This shot has too much pink showing, because the morning sunrise was hitting it. Adding green helps but makes the background greenish.  It is nice and sharp though and shows the quilting nicely.

I have managed to find a few snatches of time to sew the final seams together and prepare for the quilting –and even to start the quilting a little bit. I was hoping to be further along by now but there have been too many distractions.

Everything had to go on hold so I could clean up the studio for a local magazine writer who was coming on Friday. The photographer for some reason didn’t come, so I guess I get to do it all over again later.

Tomorrow morning we will have roofers here tearing off all of those 30 year guaranteed shingles that they put on 3 years ago. It must have been somewhere in the small print that the guarantee was only for wind, not hail. Anyway–the dish on the roof will be down for a couple of days which I think means no internet for me. So I will get at least this one post up and probably no more til I get back home from MT as I don’t know how to do it on the road. Which is where I am going to be, because:

Thursday I get to start my much needed vacation. I will be flying out to meet my friend Del in Las Vegas and we will drive up to Montana to enjoy a week long workshop with Ruth McDowell. It is going to be so much fun! Del and I are always looking for a good excuse for a road trip and this is one for sure. This will be about the last (if not THE last) workshop Ruth is doing before her retirement so we figured we needed to be there!

I got an unexpected surprise in the mail Saturday – an envelope with a First and a Second place ribbon from the Kaw Valley Quilt Guild Show!  They do Viewer’s Choice and don’t announce it til the following guild meeting which I had to miss. The small butterfly quilt that I had donated to the Charity Silent Auction won First and Majesty won Second. That’s crazy. The butterfly was not that special! Click on July 2011 in the side bar to see it again.

“Majesty” recently returned from showing at Denver Int. I am constantly amazed at the things judges comment on. “Knife edge to (of?) quilt should not allow front to show on the back.”

Hmmmm- what’s a knife edge? Maybe if you sewed the back to the front like a pillowcase and turned it right side out, that might be a knife edge, I don’t know. I did a faced edge on this quilt because I didn’t want it traditionally bound. It was a design decision. I stitched the backing inside the seam line of the seam allowance as one does for garment facings so that it would turn slightly to the back and not show on the front and would also help the thickness of the area to lay flat. It came out exactly as I planned. The facing finished at 1-5/8″ and there is a uniform 1/8″ 0f the front showing on the back. What the heck difference does it make if some front shows on the back? It’s a wall quilt, you don’t see the back. The main thing is no back shows on the front and it is very neatly done.

She also said there were threads on the back that should be trimmed. I quilted it with invisible thread on the back. It took me almost 5 minutes, but I did find one thread that needed to be buried, I don’t think trimming is adequate.

And lastly “Quilting design, although dense, could be varied in size scale to bring more dimension to the quilt.”

And I suppose if I had done that she’d be saying it wasn’t consistent. The quilting reflects the content of the different areas and is done in many different threads to compliment those areas, equal amounts of stitching helps the finished product to hang flat and square.

Sometimes I wonder if judges even consider their reputations! Clearly this one was scraping to keep me out of the ribbons here which I thought was pretty obvious when I looked at what did win, the top two awards going to the same person, whose work was nice but not exceptional. I don’t expect to win everything, but I do expect impartial, knowledgeable judging.

I worked most of the day on the Harrier with a little time off to prepare a dish to take to a Christmas party/potluck last night which was great fun! The party – not the prep! The weather reports were daunting, didn’t know if I would be able to go, but as it turned out it was not bad at all. A few snow flakes on the way home.

Yesterday’s progress:

I’m seeing things that need to be changed, it’s an on-going challenge. The underwings are white, but there are nuances and shadings to keep it from looking flat, so it’s tricky.

The People’s Choice voting for the Inspirations show at The Classic Bean in Topeka is over and Tammy and I won again this year with her Rocky Mountain Elk photograph and my rendition of it in fabric, “Majesty”. Click on elk in the sidebar to see that one! We also won the Staff’s Choice award once again. Her wonderful photographs make it easy!

Wow, it’s been two weeks since I last posted! During that time there has been a lot going on and I have been busy. Some days there is not time to sew at all and some days, time to only manage a few seams. This week has been better and I’ve had a few days to really work at it. I am all the way up to the top quarter of the piece and it is looking good! As I work at it, I am constantly tweaking and changing things so I try to avoid sewing all of the seams until I live with the fabric choices for a while – but there comes a time when just to get things in perspective, you have to sew the seams! Inevitably then you have to UNsew some seams as choices made at the bottom affect choices made at the top and vice-versa. The long narrow layout (32 X 78″) of this piece presents it’s own set of challenges! Luckily the deadline is April, so I can take my time and enjoy the process.

Locally, “Majesty”, the elk piece is on display in the “Inspirations” exhibit at the Classic Bean at Fairlawn Mall in Topeka until the end of December. Stop by and see it and vote for your favorite work for Viewer’s Choice if you are close. Also at Fairlawn Mall, at the Topeka Art Guild Gallery, until the end of November, be sure and check out the annual juried exhibit, “Kansans Paint Kansas” where “Prairie Fire” was awarded an Honorable Mention!

The handwork is finished on the elk and now he has a permanent twinkle in his eye and for good measure one on his nose!

Close-ups to show the edge finish, facings do give a nice clean finish!

Yesterday I spent some time making half square triangle units for a monthly exchange for a group that I belong to. This month’s color is purple and since I still had fabrics off the shelves and the meeting is tomorrow night it seemed like a good idea! I was on a roll so did the next two months as well! It feels good to have those done and the fused top also, which I finished this morning.

I added some darker blue to the sky behind the white mountains, so they would show up better, but I don’t like it. We were supposed to put tulle over the finished top to hold everything together but I don’t like how that dulls it down. Here you can see the difference, with and without.

I removed the darker sky strips and replaced them with tulle and I like that better. It does the job of defining the mountains but is more ethereal. Some of the pieces are already coming loose so I went ahead and covered the whole surface with tulle.

Without the uncovered surface to compare to, I think it looks OK. Now that that is done I can finish putting fabric away and start thinking about the next project.  This one is to a point where I can put it away for now; it still needs to be layered with a backing and quilted.  I don’t think fused applique will ever replace my pieced work, but it was something different and I think I may fiinish it for an upcoming exhibit at the Topeka Art Guild about Travel, Near and Far.

I tried to get into my blog yesterday but I guess it was down for some reason.

I finished “Majesty”, 35.5 x 42″, last week and wanted to post the pictures! This is the first time that I have done a faced edge instead of a binding.

I am not sure about facings. I read that it gives a more “art” finish and less of a “quilt” finish. It does hang very nicely. It takes longer and there is more hand work because whereas when I do a binding I insert the raw edges of the sleeve under the binding and sew by machine, with the facing method I had to sew all of the sleeve edges by hand. All of the facing edges are hand sewn as well, just like a binding would be. We had the most gorgeous weather last week though, so I was able to sit outside for two afternoons and do the hand work.

It’s done except for hand sewing the twinkle in his eye – what you see here is the white head of a pin that I use to see where the stitches should go. I am pretty happy with the way it came out. There is a LOT of quilting on it!

Saturday I took a workshop with Patty Hawkins from Colorado through the Kansas Art Quilters; she has had many entries accepted to Quilt National, and the subject was landscape, so I thought it might be fun even though it was on raw edge bonded applique/collage which is not a method I enjoy. I was hoping to learn something, which of course I did! It’s always nice to just get away for a while and play. Here’s my start on a piece from a photo that I took on our Alaska trip.

I’m so lucky to have such a nice stash of “nature” type fabrics to work with! In fact I have so much fabric it is overflowing the space I have to store it so I was very happy last week to hear of a local group making clothing for Haiti that was in need of fabric. I boxed up two large boxes of calico type prints that don’t really work for me anymore in the type of work I do now.  They would have been quite expensive to ship somewhere, so I was really happy to have found some place local to take it. A win-win situation for both of us! And now most of what is left fits on the shelves!!

I was accepted to participate in “Seasonal Palette” an exhibit through Studio Art Quilt Associates which will debut in Houston next fall and travel for a year or so after that. Thirty-eight were accepted out of hundreds of entries. We each will make a piece that measures 32″ wide by 78″ high and my assigned season is winter. So, as I have been going through the fabrics for stuff to give away and stuff for the workshop, I have been pulling out possibilities for this new work. I am starting to feel excited about it and anxious to get started……

I’m safely home from my trip to Maryland; it was great fun in spite of the torrential rain. I even brought a little home with me as we had an inch here, which was much needed, after my return!

A special thank you to everyone at Nimble Fingers who made my visit special. The workshop was fun and lots of lovely new coneflowers pieces were started. I hope I get to see photos when they are finished!

Now I need to concentrate on catching up, unpacking and getting back to the routine of my daily life, with the priority of finishing that elk!

Really, I thought by now the elk would be finished. but I am putting SO much quilting on it, it is going very slowly, And I am only working sporadically between other things, so there is not a lot of progress to report. I’ve been busy shipping things out, getting things back and catching up on the entries as well as sorting and packing for the next trip. I can’t believe it is September already!

This time tomorrow I will be at the airport waiting for my flight to Maryland and my visit to the Nimble Fingers Quilt Guild for a lecture and workshop. I see from the weather channel that it will probably be raining the whole time I am there! Here in Kansas we could really use some rain.  At least the weather is cooler at 53 this morning.

Driving to Springfield, MO on Monday, the skies were at times threatening with dark clouds and at times sunny with blue skies – you never know in the mid west! I only encountered a few raindrops though.  This was my first trip in the new car and it was quite comfortable, I’m still getting used to the differences from my old one which I think I like better, but this one is gaining favor!

Could this be the spot that inspired the “Longhorn Splashdown” quilt? There were no longhorns visible this day.

Roadside wildflowers are beautiful this time of the year.

My time at the Ozark Piecemakers Guild for two lectures and a Coneflowers workshop was delightful! Had a bit of an equipment malfunction but nothing that couldn’t be fixed. My hostess and everyone I met there at the meetings and in my workshop couldn’t have been nicer!  If I lived closer that would be a guild to join!

When I tried to take workshop pictures I discovered that my camera batteries were dead. Again.  I had packed the charger but it was in the bag that got left at the venue, not the bag that went with me to my lodging. I guess  I need to start making packing lists!

I arrived safely home yesterday (Thursday) afternoon to a huge backlog of email and stuff to put away so  today will be spent catching up and hopefully tomorrow I can get back to quilting on the elk!