I'm home from my visit to Tempe, Arizona. What can I say but no snow, no ice, warm/hot temperatures, sleeveless blouses, culottes, sandals and a lovely visit with our daughter and son-in-law. I won't list all the places we went but I did attend (by myself because she was working) the AQS quilt show in Phoenix. Yes, this country gal was in downtown Phoenix, all by myself, and nothing bad happened to me! I spent a wonderful day at the Convention Center viewing all the quilts and browsing the vendor booths.
I completed a Pastor's Attic Quilt block while I was in Tempe. The first 5 blocks in row 1 are finished. I chose to chain-stitch embroider the narrow stems. I'm not talented enough to make 1/8 inch applique stems. The original quilt has an embroidered swirl in the center of the X flowers but I liked the idea of french knots better, so that is what I did. The center of this block and the X's were back-basted then needle turned appliqued. The rest of the flowers were regular needle turned. All of the background fabric squares were cut into larger blocks and will be trimmed to the correct size after ALL the blocks are appliqued.
I've totally finished one of the Scrappy Majestic Mountains quilts (except for the label so I guess it isn't completely finished after all). I had pulled the box of my mother's homespun fabrics and cut everything that was large enough to make an 8-1/2" square. I hope our oldest grandson likes the quilt, it is rather somber. There are some blue homespun fabrics in there which help to brighten it up a little. Those are leftover from the valances I made years ago for the laundry room There are 100 blocks in this quilt and in a perfect world, she finishes at 60" X 75". The blocks aren't square and finish at 6" by 7-1/2".
As usual, I stitched in the ditch horizontally and vertically using a variegated brown thread. For the backing, I pulled fabric from mom's earth tones stash. There is a lot of striped fabric in there and it is time to use it. It seems right to use her fabric in quilts for her great-grandchildren. I've washed this quilt but it seems to have a pink tint in the photo. It doesn't look that pinkish in real life. Homespun fabric bleeds at least the older fabrics do. I've had these fabrics in a box for almost 10 years and who knows how long mom had stored them.
The light colored homespun fabrics were all used, so I pulled fabric of my own I purchased years ago. It never really worked in any of my projects, the background was too beige but it was perfect for the homespun fabrics. This quilt will hopefully look less dreary than the first one. A grandson from a different family will be receiving this quilt so they won't be able to compare them. There are 80 blocks in this quilt arranged 8 blocks by 10 blocks, there weren't enough blocks left to make it as large as the other quilt. You HAVE arrange the blocks with an even number vertically. It just won't work, trust me, I tried it with 9 in a row. It just won't work unless you want to make the layout called Streak of Lightning which I didn't.
Another Zippy-Strippy quilt top is ready to be quilted. I'm leaving for Tempe, Arizona in a few days and I doubt she'll be quilted before I leave. I might try to get her sandwiched so she is ready to go when I return home.
Two more Sweet Surrender blocks are completed and I've started prepping the next four blocks.
Someone e-mailed me and asked how I am doing these. These blocks are triangles. I am using the same background fabric for all the applique blocks and I can get 4 triangles and 2 half triangles on a width of fabric. I've completed the 4 half triangles and 8 of the full triangles. Now I am prepping blocks 9 - 12 to take along to Arizona.
After I had finished the last block for the Pastor's Attic quilt, I prepped another block to be ready to go. I'm doing mostly back-basting applique on this block. I want to get the back-basting completed here at home so I don't need to drag yardage fabric along. I've marked the background fabric with a Frixon pen. Please don't e-mail me and tell me the marks will re-appear if I put the quilt in the freezer! Really, how often do you put a quilt in the freezer? I'm also taking along an older EPP project and yarn to knit a dishrag or two. I doubt I'll complete all these projects, but I don't want to run out of handwork. Our daughter is taking off several days of work and we will be gone a lot during the day. She lives in a different time zone than we do, so my normal waking will come at 3:30 AM - 4 AM Arizona time. That is when I'll be appliquing! There won't be much slow-stitching going on here today until this evening during the Super-Bowl. I'm probably the only person in the US who doesn't care who wins. I'll just keep on basting my block.
My Amaryllis have started blooming. I stagger planting the bulbs so the blooms are spread out over several months. These 2 decided not to get as tall as normal. They're still beautiful, but just short!
