Designing Monday

It was Quilt Show time this weekend in our neck of the woods.  Our local guild sponsors a show every other year in March.  Everyone helps out and it all went very well.  I even recruited my husband and daughter to help set up and take down.  I took photos of some of my favorites, although I didn't have time to take as many photos as I would have liked.  So enjoy!

 The maker of this quilt is my appliqué idol.  Such great work.

 My friend, Barb made this great Civil War sampler.

Love, love this quilt.  It won a Judge's award.

 Detail shots of ribbon embroidery on the quilt above.

Nothing on my design wall today.  Hop over to Judy's blog
 to see some more beautiful quilts.

Designing Monday - Threads of Memory Part 1

I have decided to take on Barbara Brackman's latest Civil War quilt.  It is a BOM, so I should be able to keep up. LOL!  Here is my first block.

Portsmouth Star

My task this week is to add more quilting to my Idiom quilt for the upcoming quilt show.  I sort of short cut the quilting part so I could get it bound and entered in the judging last week.  So now I need to give it some pizzazz.  Hopefully that won't distort  the quilt or I will have to take the binding off and do it again.  That doesn't sound like much fun.

Have a great week.  Hop on over to Judy's blog  to see some more beautiful designs.

Happy Belated Pi Day

Did you celebrate?  We did.  With a big old piece of pie.  Mine was strawberry rhubarb.

Hope you had a great pi day!

Vacation Time

So what's going on in Texas these days?  We enjoyed some beautiful warm days and some sightseeing too.   On our way South we happened to pass by Sikeston, MO about lunchtime and without much arm twisting was able to talk my husband and daughter into going to Lambert's.  This is one of my all time favorite places to eat.  There are only 3 that I know of.  One in Sikeston, one north of Branson and one in Gulf Shores, AL.  It just so happens that we have been to all 3 of these places in the last 2 years and so have hit them all.  You order a meat and 2 sides and the waitstaff comes by with big pots of black eyed peas, fried okra, macaroni and tomatoes and their trademark "throwed rolls."  It is always so funny to see bread flying across the room.

This was our daughter's first time.  She ordered a chef's salad and you can see it was colossal.

 While we were in Houston, we visited the Johnson Space Center.   Much of it is a children's science interactive are, but there are lots of space vehicles and rockets, etc. to view.  We took a tram ride to see the astronaut training area and the ISS full scale models.

These weird looking things gave me the creeps.  Look like something out of a sci-fy movie.

We took Flat Stanley along and took his photo on the Space Shuttle potty and in the cockpit.  I figured First graders would love that.

 On the space center property there are a herd of long horn steer.  Who knows why.  No explanation given on the tour.

 The next day we went to Galveston.  This amusement park is built out on a pier.  It was very hazy and got worse as the day went on.  So we headed indoors to visit a Rainforest arboretum/ botanical garden/ animal house which contained beautiful orchids,

 colorful birds,

 and furry critters like this little guy.  He was so funny.  Every time I got ready to click the shutter on my camera he turned his face away.  Maybe he doesn't like the flash, but he seemed to sense exactly when I was pressing it.  So this is the best of many, many, many attempts to get his photo.  Maybe he is just camera shy?

 At the end of the day, we ate at a pier side restaurant -- fabulous seafood.  Here are our 3 kids --
our daughter, our son and his girlfriend who also lives in Houston.  What a cute bunch.

In a New York Minute

I seem to have gone Missing in Action.  The time seems to be flying by and I have been busy, busy.  Since my last blog entry we travelled to Texas in search of sunshine and warm days.  We did find some warmth and the sunshine was a little spotty, but that's okay.  Our son moved to Houston last year and this was our first chance to visit.  He is doing well and it is fun to see his apartment and his place of work and all the day to day things that he is involved in.  Skype is great, but seeing everything first hand makes it so much better, especially when it includes hugs.

We spent 3 days in Houston and Galveston and then toured most of East Texas.  My husband was born in Texas and lived there until he was about 10.  Both of his parents were born and raised in Texas, too.  We did some family research and lots of sight seeing all in the quest of warmth.  Everyone who lives in the snow belt knows what I'm talking about.  The weather was great until it was time to head north and then we faced a terrible ice and snow storm driving through the Ozarks.  Yikes!  Lots of accidents, but we tried to stay behind the snow plows and managed to make it safely to southern Missouri.

As soon as we returned home I had to get busy on my challenge quilt for our guild's upcoming show at the end of March.  I wanted to have mine completed in time for our meeting two days ago when the guild voted on their favorite quilt.  I believe 32 people signed up for the challenge and 6 completed quilts were brought to the meeting.  Prizes were given to the top 2 vote getters.  I didn't win a prize, but the two quilts that won were really outstanding.  I told myself that I would have probably won third prize if they had had one, but truth be told all the quilts were terrific and all deserved to win.

The theme for the challenge was Idioms.  We could pick any idiom and design a quilt to express the idiom.  We were given a piece of fabric that we had to incorporate.  I started with the idiom "In a New York Minute."  I have always wanted to try making some NY Beauty blocks, so I figured this was my chance.  I found downloadable patterns so I could paper piece all the spiky parts.  I enlarged them to 10".  I arranged the blocks in a circle like a clock since a NY minute means things are happening quickly.  I decided to make each quadrant of the clock a different season. So each NY Beauty block has a color scheme to match the season.  Hopefully you can figure out which is which.  The challenge also stated that the quilt had to be a minimum of 100" around the perimeter.  GRRR!  So I had to add borders.  This led me to flying geese -- which led me to the title of my quilt which is Time Flies -- In a NY Minute.  I could not have picked a better idiom because I was sewing on the binding minutes before I had to leave for the meeting.  I could not decide on the fabric for the binding and I had fabric flying everywhere.

Here is my quilt in progress:

One block for each season

 Trying out borders

Pinned and ready to quilt

 The pinky purple is the challenge fabric

Ready to show

Close up of gingham binding