President's Challenge Award Winners

And a drum roll please....

These are the winning quilts of the President's Challenge as decided by guild members votes:

First place is Wendy Oskam

Second place is Judy Taylor (hiding behind that envelope full of cash!)

Third place is Diane Black

Congratulations to these talented quilters!

And thanks to President Barb for all the fun and energy that was generated from this challenge!

President's Challenge Quilts Revealed

Tonight was the first guild meeting of the season and also the night for quilters to show the finished tops/quilts made from the mystery pattern we had received in our newsletters last year. The quilt design was created by Susan Druding and can be seen here. Our guild president issued a challenge to sew the mystery quilt and bring it to the meeting tonight for viewer's choice awards. There were 10 quilts on display - 8 were queen size quilts and 2 were wallhangings. These photos are the 8 large quilts. It was great fun to look at all the quilts, see the fabric combinations used, and see how the variation in colour values change the look of the quilt design. (Sorry for the dark photos...our meeting is held in a very large room with a high ceiling - it's difficult to photograph large quilts)
There were two of us who redrafted the pattern and instead of sewing 12" blocks, we sewed 3" blocks and made wallhangings instead of the queen size quilts. And here are those two crazy quilters...our Vice President Nancy (who paper pieced her quilt!) is on the left and I am on the right.
We had a viewer's choice vote for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes, donated by our President. Check in tomorrow to see which quilts won a prize.

Challenge quilt is done!

I spent most of my quilting time this weekend finishing the President's Challenge quilt. You can read about the challenge here and can read all my blog entries about working on the challenge quilt here. This was a mystery quilt which used 12 fabrics, and I challenged myself to make the quilt from my stash. I am proud to say that I did not buy a single thing for this quilt, including batting, backing and binding! I have had the top sewn together and the backing pieced together from scraps since the middle of the summer. But of course I waited until the weekend before the deadline to quilt the thing! I used lots of pastel shades of thread and had a ball with the quilting. I decided I wasn't go to do the grid thing (stitching only in the ditches) and tried to think of different ways to quilt using a combination of the free motion foot and the walking foot. To some people this is torturous, but I really enjoy it! I also love to change thread colours frequently, since I get bored easily of quilting with the same thread. Changing colours keeps me interested! I am happy that it is finished by the deadline (including the label!!) and it will hang tomorrow night at the guild meeting with all the other challenge quilts. I will post photos on Tuesday night, so come visit my blog on Wednesday morning to see how many finished quilts there are at the meeting.

Today was changing of the quilt displays in my house. I have quilts hanging in every room (at least one or two) and change them monthly on a random basis (ie. whenever I have time). Today I decided to put out some of my fall quilts, since the weather is starting to turn cooler. I have posted this photo before, but I will show it again since it is one of my favorites. It is a round robin quilt that I hang on my dining room wall. It is 54" x 55" and is called "The Great Canadian Fall Quilt". The rows were made by Linda Grover, Cathy Carritt, Gail Wiebe, Shelley Belot, Carla Watt, and Carol Stevens as part of a round robin group project. The rows sat in a box for a few years, until I finally put them together in 2005 with the encouragement of my guild's UFO group, which is now called the Friendship Group. (Shhhh...don't tell them that I still have a few UFO's that they don't know about!!!) I quilted each row differently, mostly using my free motion foot and it was tricky getting it evenly quilted. The back is pieced from one of the extra rows and extra churn dash blocks that I had made a long time ago. You can see my little label on the bottom corner of the backing which lists all the quilters who contributed to my fall wallhanging.

Good as new!

I had a wonderful and relaxing quilt retreat this weekend.  

I made a list of all the things I'd like to work on and spent some time with each one. First I updated my 365 quilt entries. Here are my 3 months of strips hanging in the storage room. I bought a couple of new Zig millenium pens since the two I started out with seemed to be getting a little worn out.

I also worked on my Journey of a Quilter BOM and finished the stitching on block one. This was very relaxing and I am really enjoying this project. The photo is a little bit yellowy, but it was late at night when I finished. I made a couple of changes, such as I took out all the stitched blocks of T pins - just a personal taste thing - I didn't like the look of them, so I'm replacing those pin blocks with regular fabric. And instead of using the DMC floss colours Leanne recommended, I am using up the floss I collected from my days of cross stitching in the late 80's. Then I finished tracing the stitch patterns for block 2 and pieced block 3 which is the photo on the right.

I also did some hand beading and worked on an abstract challenge piece that is not anywhere near ready to see the light of day (it's ugly!).

I fixed a big mistake on my President's Challenge mystery quilt - I had sewn the last two rows on upside down! You can see these rows here. I carefully ripped out that seam and resewed it the proper way around. Then I added some borders and pieced the backing. I am so proud of myself for using all stash fabrics from start the finish. This is the backing made from leftover pieces from the quilt top. So now I am thinking about how to quilt it - I still have a month left to finish that.

Mostly I enjoyed the peace/piece and quiet of my studio. I sometimes listened to music, and sometimes listened to the birds singing outside. I feel well mended and ready for the second half of summer vacation with the kids.

President's Challenge & Family Challenges

In any spare moments, I have been working away on my President's Mystery Quilt Challenge. You can click here to read about this challenge. I have all of the 56 blocks sewn together into rows and have been sewing the rows together. On the right are two rows finished, which involves matching 20 seams accurately. It has been tricky and I have been debating what variances I can live with. For example...here is one such decision on the left. The seam is not quite matching...it is out about 1/16th". That bugs me because by the end of the row, everything is way out. And to add insult to injury, in sewing the last two rows together, I put the wrong edges together and have to unsew that entire seam, which had matched up really well!! Borders are optional, so now I am trying to decide about how to stitch together the scraps to make a border, plus a binding and backing.

In other creative pursuits this weekend, we have been preparing for my son's grade 6 graduation, which requires him to have a nice haircut and clean presentable clothing... I gave up on any kind of formal outfit/suit long ago! We have been "in negotiations" for days and have accomplished the haircut, which I love and he can live with, and a tentative plan for clothing...the rules are no skateboard shorts, nothing with holes, rips or grass stains, and no slogan tshirts (like "Football is everything" or "Live free or die").

Also this weekend my daughter had a pool party invitation and she wanted to make a fruit tray. I said "why can't you take some chips/junk food like all the other kids are"?? But she insisted that she wanted to make something, so we went shopping on friday after she finished writing her exams. Then we spent most of saturday morning washing, cutting and arranging the fruit. And here is the fruit tray which evolved into a tray plus a carved watermelon bowl. She was delighted and we had lots of fun together.

Scrap Challenge

Last September the president of my guild issued a "President's Challenge" to the members. Each month in the newsletter a new block pattern was published, with instructions on how many of each block should be made to construct a mystery quilt. Some months we made 2 blocks and some months we made as many as 14 blocks! I followed along each month making the required number of blocks, using the fabrics I had chosen. I challenged myself to only use fabrics from my stash of batiks, and to substitute other scraps if I ran out of fabric along the way. It was quite difficult, especially since the pattern instructions required us to select 12 fabrics to start, but I am proud to say that no fabric was purchased for this challenge! Here is a photo of all of my completed blocks...9 months of patterns, 9 piles of blocks labelled with the name of the block and how many I sewed. This month's newsletter will give the instructions of how to sew the blocks together and we have the summer to complete our quilts. At the September meeting, all the mystery quilts will be displayed and viewer's choice awards will be given. I still have to decide if I have enough fabric leftover for a border and to piece some type of scrappy backing and binding from the leftover bits. This will be one very busy looking quilt...don't you think!??!?!