Super Quilt Seminar

While I was in Florida, my friend Sue and I attended the Ricky Tims Super Quilt Seminar in Jacksonville, January 13-15. I didn't really know what to expect, all we knew was that it was 2-1/2 days of lectures and demos, with a big screen so everyone could see the demos.


Ricky talked about his Caveman quilts
























And his Harmonic Convergence quilts


























And his Rhapsody quilts













and a lot more I'm sure I've forgotten about, or don't have pictures for. We didn't really know what to expect, or how we were going to feel about it, but it was magical and amazing. If you have the opportunity to attend one, you should go!


Libby Lehman and Alex Anderson also presented at the seminar. I'll show some of their quilts in upcoming posts, and tell more about the seminar as well.


For now, I'm going to go sew something. Thanks for coming by to play. Come back again any time.

A Long-awaited Finish!

I can't remember exactly when I started these placemats. I know I got a kit from an online store for the green ones, which are completely "me," but I had enough of the applique fabrics to make another set. My friend Sue loves snowmen, and blue, so it was obvious I needed to pull some blue fabrics from my stash, and make her the other set. I got the two fabrics sewn together and the appliques fused down very soon after the kit arrived. I did the blanket stitching at a retreat some time later, which must have been in 2004 or 2005. And since then, they've been languishing. Now, here they are -- most of the set of four of the blue (you can only see the top part of the last one):






















One blue one close up:



















And one of my green set close up (there are three more just like it):


















The colors aren't great in these pictures -- the blues are a nice royal kind of blue, and the green homespun stripe and plaid in my set are a lovely hunter green color. I'd originally intended to quilt swirls and snowflakes all over these, but I decided if I finished them more simply, they'd be done, and if I waited until I felt like quilting them with swirls and snowflakes, it might be more years until they got finished. So I just did some channel quilting. I'd hoped to finish these before I went to Florida to visit Sue, or at least while I was there, but neither of those things happened. So now I'll have to entrust them to the USPS to get them to Sue. But it's still snowman season, so we can both use these for a while before it's time to break out Spring things.


I'm pretty pleased with how these have turned out. But the biggest thing is that they're done and no longer languishing on my shelves. Now I'm going to go sew something else.


Thanks for coming by to play. Come back any time.

Best Laid Plans

Well, I've had to change the yarn I'm using for three of this month's sock projects. The originals were either too dark,

or knitted up too busy,



















or I just changed my mind.



















So the new ones, in the same order, are here:








Lighter


















Less busy






I don't have a photo of the replacement for the Wool Ease in Wheat yet, because I haven't quite decided what I'm going to use in its place. ETA: I think I'm just going to skip that pair of socks for the time being, since I really don't have any worsted weight yarn in my stash that's not set aside for sweaters.

Thanks for stopping by to play. Come back again any time.

Yarn Love Delivered

The Annual Cherry Tree Hill January Sale is over. While it was going on, though, I admit that I succumbed to some SEX (Stash Enhancement eXperience, for the uninitiated ;-) Except that if sock yarn doesn't count as stash, then my stash hasn't been enhanced at all. Not even a little.

Yesterday the kindly man in brown (UPS driver) brought me this:

And I had to just leave it like this in the box, because I'm on my way to visit my friend Sue in Florida. But just think of the fun I'll have when I get home! Look at all the amazing colors in there. I can't wait to dive in and play.

I'll check in when I get to Sue's, and maybe introduce you. Thanks for coming by to play. Stop back again soon.

Design Wall Monday

I'm back! I was in Florida visiting my friend Sue, and we went to the Ricky Tims Super Quilt Seminar in Jacksonville the weekend before last. Then I was in Ohio, checking on our house there. While there, I put together blocks from my last Design Wall Monday post (two weeks ago):

They're ready to sew together, now that I've decided I'm not going to sash them. As I was making the blocks, I thought I would, until I saw just how nicely they play when set block-to-block. The photo's sideways, but you can still get the idea. I need to figure out what I want to do for borders, and get this top finished up.

Today I hope to finish up a little something that I've been planning to finish for some time now. Pictures tomorrow, I hope! Some photos soon from the Ricky Tims seminar, too.

Thanks for coming by to play. Come back again soon.

Not the best way to bring in the New Year

We've been dealing with a "stomach bug" at our house. It started the last couple days of last year, and followed us into this year. We're both feeling better now, but it's thrown a kink into how we'd intended to start the year off.

I haven't done any sewing in over a week, but I have been doing a bit of knitting. I got these socks started shortly after midnight on January first, and finished them last evening. They're my first finished socks for the Year of Stash Socks group on Ravelry.

As I was working on them, DH admired them, so I asked him if he'd like them. He said yes, so now they're his. He's really happy with them. And you may notice that the stripe sequences don't fall in the same place on each sock -- my preference is to let them fall where they may, because I enjoy the slight quirkiness of having matching but mismatched socks. In case you're curious, here's what the yarn looked like in the ball.

Today I'm hoping to finish up something that's been a UFO for far too long. I'll show that tomorrow, if I do finish it.

Thanks for stopping by to play. Come back again soon.

Judy L's UFO Challenge

Judy Laquidara is doing a UFO Challenge for 2011. I have way too many to post photos of all the UFOs I plan to finish next year. But I'll show you the first 12, the ones I'll be doing along with Judy and the others who are playing. Instead of numbering them and working on the UFO whose number is drawn for any given month, I've assigned each UFO a month when I'd like to work on it. I'll fit in other UFO finishes as I can, but these are my "official" ones. For the purposes of this challenge, I'm going to consider a completed top, with backing and binding prepared and ready to go to be a "completed project. "

It will be so good to get these projects finished! Here are my twelve "official" UFOs for 2011:

January: Winterscape -- This needs the features and arms added to the snowmen, the top and bottom units sewn together, and a number of borders added, including one pieced border.

February: Thimbleberries Goose in the Pond "mystery" -- This is all in rows -- there are rows of 3 blocks each, and sashing rows. The picture is only of part of the row, but it's all there.

March: Yellow/Orange/Green Bargello -- The picture is of one strip set. I've got all seven made, they just need sewn into tubes, crosscut into slices, and sewn back together.

April: Square Knot (by Peg Bingham) -- The picture is of one block. All the blocks needed for this quilt are pieced, they just need set together and the borders (including a pieced border) added.

May: Broken Star -- This is the center star. The original design has three more pieced diamonds at the tip of each star point. Those diamonds are all made, but I've started thinking that instead, I'll piece all those diamonds into 3 more stars, and just make a quilt out of four big star blocks. I haven't decided for sure yet, and still have a few months to do so.

June: Body in the Kelp -- The picture is of six of the twenty total blocks. The blocks are all made, they just need to be framed and set together.

July: Bargello -- The pictures are of both sides of one tube, which is made and has had some slices cut off of it, though none are sewn together. The rest of the needed strips are cut, and the rest of the tubes are under construction.

August: Tidings of Great Joy -- These are some of the nine patch blocks that will make up several rows of this quilt. There will also be angels, stars, and words in the finished quilt.

September: Pat Sloan's OP Challenge -- Some time back, and I don't remember when but I'm sure it was more than a year ago, Pat Sloan challenged her blog and newsletter readers to pull out their orange fabrics, put them in a pile and photograph them, pull one or more colors to go with them, and put them into a quilt. She designed this block for the challenge, although my blocks are not yet complete. From what's pictured, they get halved in both directions, and a narrow strip of a third fabric gets inserted. They also get triangles on each corner. I have a lot more blocks, and they're all at this point.

October: Ribbon Wreath (by Peg Bingham) -- This has four or six (I don't remember for sure) applique blocks as in the picture, and they're all done. The pieced blocks are all as in the picture, about half pieced.

November: Celtic Cubes (by Peg Bingham) -- All the required blocks for this are to the same point, nearly completely pieced.

December: Summer 2001 QSC "Mystery" -- This picture is just of the fabrics, because all that's done on this is the cutting. Well, most of the cutting. Really? From 2001? Yep -- I didn't cut ahead of time (got busy and ran out of time), so I spent the whole time the day of our get together, when everyone else was sewing, on the cutting. And never got back to it. It's time.

There are SO many more UFOs I have, and as much as I'd love to finish them ALL next year, I know that won't happen. But I am on a mission to finish as many as I can during 2011. Stay tuned, and I'll share my progress. It should be a fun year, making progress on my own UFOs and watching everyone else make progress on theirs. Thanks for stopping by to take a look. Come back any time.