Saturday I wanted to bind the landscape but couldn’t get to my fabric for all of the stored furniture in front of it so we spent much of the day moving things back to the living room instead.

You can’t imagine the grout dust all over everything!! I’ve had to dust, vacuum or wipe down every surface, both horizontal and vertical, and every item before setting it in place. Even the insides of cabinets is covered, as well as the walls and woodwork. Even the clothes inside my closet with the doors closed will need to be washed!

Bright side: Spring cleaning will be done early this year!

We are expecting another storm tomorrow so I need to get into town today to ship “Spring Encounter” to the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival in case I can’t get out tomorrow. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been shopping, with all of the snow we’ve had. It will be good to get out again! Maybe tomorrow I can sew.

It’s already February! What happened to January? We are in the midst of a blizzard, snowing and blowing and bitterly cold on top of yesterday’s ice it is treacherous out there with 5-10 ” expected.

The tile men did come yesterday to work on the floor, but I hope they don’t try to come today. Our dead end road may very likely drift closed and I sure don’t want them to have to spend the night!!

Yesterday’s mail brought an acceptance letter from the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival in VA for “Spring Encounter”, three for three so far this year!!

Last week I got the news that “Spring Encounter”, my fawn quilt, won first place in the wall hangings at the AQS show in DesMoines! That was exciting! Wish I had had time to go up and collect the prize money!

We did go to the opening of the Kansas Art Quilter’s show in Merriam, KS recently and thought, as usual, that the gallery had done a great job of hanging it.  The artists are members of “EDGE” the exhibiting artists of Kansas Art Quilters and they are not even all from Kansas! The theme was “What’s UP?”

“What’s Up At The 4-H Fair?”

“Nasturtiums”

And lastly – a shot of my featured artist corner at the Topeka Art Guild Gallery for September, which is no longer up, but that’s how behind I am! It’s all mine except for the glass and painting at the far lower left.

I’ve made good progress on the new piece in spite of only having had maybe two days of uninterrupted work on it. I’m at an impasse though right now- not being happy with any of the choices at hand for background. Today with a fresh eye, I will revisit the stash and hope I will not have to shop elsewhere.

Saturday’s mail brought a thin envelope from AQS and the sinking feeling that my entry had been rejected – but NO! – my last entry was the fawn quilt and it is already gone for Paducah. The envelope contained my prize money check for Burlingame Fire at Lancaster. Now that’s a good kind of thin envelope!! (For those of you who are not entering shows – no one wants the thin envelop that only contains a rejection letter; the desired envelope is the one that contains all of the paperwork of acceptance, shipping instructions and a contestant’s ribbon usually. The FAT envelope!)

Bathsheba has been sold and has gone to a new home!!

I’ll miss having her here, but I’m glad she’s out of storage and being enjoyed.

Yesterday we had to go to town to deliver everything to the tax preparer, ship patterns and generally run errands. I found a sale on roses so now I have to make time to plant four rose bushes. Two climbers for the gate and two Knock-Outs for who knows where. Those are the ones that are supposed to bloom all season.

It was on the schedule to ship “Spring Encounter” to AQS but I ran out of time to package it so will have to do another trip to town today for that – no wonder I never get caught up.

I missed a deadline yesterday by leaving it to the last minute, and recently realized that the deadline for IQF is in May! Can I make something? I don’t know!

Yesterday I taught a Machine Quilting class at Stitching Traditions in Topeka. It was the class that had to be canceled back when the weather was so bad, but that was not a problem yesterday. Spring was in the air with temperatures in the 60’s! The class went well and everyone made great progress on their way to becoming super machine quilters.

The morning e-mail brought news that “The Merchant’s House” won Viewer’s Choice at the current show at The Topeka Art Guild Gallery.

The show, “Paint Pink” will be up for another month.

When I got home my acceptance letter for AQS was in the mail. “Spring Encounter” was juried in and will be going to Paducah!

Lyric Kinard just wrote a wonderful post about the jury process on her blog. If you have ever wondered about that process check it out. I met Lyric in Houston the year we both had pieces in “I Remember Mama” and she is one of the nicest people I know! How she finds the time to do all that she does with small children at home is beyond me!

My entry to the SAQA Foot Square Auction has been posted on the SAQA site. You can see it here along with the others so far. Check back often as many more will be added. The auction is always exciting and will take place in the fall.

I see from Vicki’s post that the April issue of Quilting Arts Magazine with my article “Painting With Fabric” is out! I have not yet received my copy. If you are interested, you can see posts and photos dealing with the making of “Spring Encounter” by clicking on “fawn” in the side bar.

 

“Spring Encounter” 46″W x 40″H    Completed Jan 4, 2009

It was such a relief to get my sewing machine back, even though it did cost almost $300.00 to get it fixed. I spent most of the weekend quilting and I think that this quilt has more than I usually do and I do a lot! Here’s a photo of the many spools of thread I used just for the quilting.  Changing threads so often requires lots of burying of the ends which adds to the time spent. But I think the result was worth it

Notice that I replaced all of the quilting on the fawn.  What I had put in earlier just wasn’t pleasing or sufficient and I like this much better. Un-quilting took longer than quilting, though!

OK – Now the top is finished!

Yesterday I got all of the rest of the paper off the back, added the wire to the fence posts with a very narrow zig-zag, gave it a good press and squared it up, and prepared the backing and the batting. Today I will layer, baste and begin the quilting.  It’s three degrees outside so quilting will be the best way to spend this day….

It is currently 48″ wide and 43″ deep and I think the addition of a few more inches really did help.  I especially like how the rock wall goes to the edge, and the area under the fawn’s belly since I changed a few things there. I know that the quilting will add another dimension and that the binding will contain that bit of sky that goes right off the edge. Now it needs a name, I can’t call it the fawn quilt forever!

I’ve spent several days tweaking and making changes and yesterday morning I was ready to complete the final seams and be done!

However, when I measured it, it was about 40 x 44″. I need for it to finish at least 40″ and I know quilting will make it smaller so I tried adding a border to the bottom.  This gave it an almost square to vertical orientation and I had envisioned a more horizontal look.  Adding another vertical border to make it wider looked like just that .. adding a border to make it wider.  I decided what it needed was to have more fabric added from within so another day was spent ripping out and adding in. I think that achieved a much more pleasing composition and the piece is currently off the wall having all of it’s freezer paper removed so that I can layer and begin the quilting.  This has been a much longer than usual process for me. but sometimes that happens. They can’t all be like “Just Dandy”  which went from concept to completion in just one week!