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