Sew Nice Mini-group Challenge

My mini-group is doing a Japanese challenge for a local quilting show in October.  And, I'm going to a retreat this weekend....a great opportunity to make some progress on this challenge.  I have a quilting book that shows man-hole covers in Japan.  Evidently, each town has designed their own.  So, I've taken Shannon Town cover design and modified it a bit.   Here's the design from the book:

After playing around with it for a while, I came up with this:

Of course it needed to be enlarged...so I greyed it out to conserve ink and printed it out 32" square.   This will be the first quilt I've done in reverse applique.  I taped the 32" pages together and also taped some wonder under together to cover it.  Last night I traced all the lines.   Today, I will apply the wonder under to the back of my black cloth and cut out all of the white areas above.   I'm going to stick with greens for the pine trees and may vary the colors for the Chrysanthemum and the purple background....but I'm envisioning satin stitching all in black.   Since I've never done this, I might have to do some creative cutting of the background colors.    Hopefully, when I'm finished placing the background colors, I'll be able to iron the black cloth to the colors without leaving an area of wonder under uncovered.  Gosh I hope all of that makes sense.   If not, this'll be another learning experience.

Getting ready for our guild's show...

Alas, I still don't know how it happened....but I somehow volunteered to co-chair the Friendship Star Quilters show this year.   If any of you have done this...you know it's no fun....lots of details....lots of politics....learning lots of things I didn't know about my guild.  Somehow it'll never look the same to me.  Still, I'm not a quitter so I'll keep going forward.  

Here's the first quilt I'm putting in the show.   You'll notice that it matches the picture at the top of my blog.   I took a Betsy True class where we were encouraged to take a photograph and reproduce it on a quilt.    Here's my completed quilt:

It's only an 8x10 inch quilt.   I am very pleased with the results.  It's only been 9 months since my Dad passed away, so this quilt means a lot to me.   The picture was taken in the early 1960s at a racetrack in Maryland.   Miss you, Dad.

New Quilting Digs

It's taken a month to move my stuff from an unfinished part of our basement to a finished area.  What a difference it is just having some sliding glass doors to view the outside world.   After the last rain, there must have been 20 robins hopping around looking for worms and the daffodils are now blooming.  Here's a peak at my new digs.

Call me crazy...but I just love having all the tools I use most often hanging over my sewing machines.   Those Octopus laundry hangers from Ikea hold quilting gloves, containers to put pins, a 2.5 inch rular to measure binding overlap, seam rippers, brushes to clean the bobbin area, magnets that hold the needles I use for burying threads and labels.

This is my ironing board.   Since I've moved, I've had to put sticky notes on all the drawers so I don't have to open them all up to find what I'm looking for.  This cabinet is a stand-alone kitchen cabinet from Ikea.  I covered the wooden top with batting and ironing board material.  Notice the shelf at the end of the cabinet.   Ikea came up with shelf brackets that attach to your counter top (actually used for desks)....so I didn't have to screw the brackets into the wall. 

Finally, here's my view out the sliding glass door.  Our Dachshund, Misty, keeps her favorite toys on her bed by the door.  She has already tuned into the sound of the blinds opening so she can come down and take a nice sun nap by the door while I'm quilting. 

Thread Tails and Vapor Trails: A Navy Quilt Challenge

Sometimes it's difficult to find common ground in a marriage when your hobby is quilting and your husband's hobby is working.   He loves to go to aircraft shows though. On on more than one occasion we have gone to the Sun and Fun air show in Florida and the Department of Defense Open House in Maryland.  So, when I saw the Thread Tails and Vapor Trails 100th Anniversary of Naval Aviation Quilt Challenge, I thought this had to be a perfect match for us.

After researching Naval Aviation for months, I was drawn to the Osprey, a helicopter that could convert into an airplane during flight.  While the Naval Aviation Centennial next year celebrates the influence of flight on a seafaring military, it seemed to me that the Osprey also represented a little of the future of naval aviation: an airplane able to set down as easily on land as on an aircraft carrier.  I selected two photos from the Navy's Osprey web page:

It took a while to figure out how to use Photoshop to create a design I could live with. My first attempt didn't really look like an Osprey to me at all.

Then I remembered that I had ordered some Transfer Artist Paper (TAP) from Leslie Riley a while back.   So instead of printing directly on fabric, I printed the Osprey picture on the TAP and ironed the image to the fabric.   Other techniques tried during this challenge were: using Organza to represent the wings of an Osprey bird, using some shiny halloween fabric to make the windows look translucent, adding charcoal netting to the aircraft carrier runway to make it look gravelly, and stippling in stripes. Here's my attempt:

Usually, when I photograph my quilts, I take them outside on my deck to catch the sunlight.  Unfortunately, the entire east coast was socked in with rain yesterday.  And, of course, I waited until the last minute to finish this quilt.  So, at the Friendship Star Service Project Workshop yesterday, I caught the flourescent light from the ceiling and had a friend hold the quilt for my pictures.  It's not the best picture to send in, but I'll hope for the best.  I should hear from the challenge sponsors by October 8th whether my quilt will be accepted as one of many from all around the country to celebrate in cloth the 2011 100th Anniversary of Naval Aviation.  If it doesn't make it in....I've learned an awful lot to improve my quilting skills.    Wish me luck!



Dad gets an award!

Last Saturday nite at Old Dominion Speedway in Manassas, Virginia, my father, Bert Robbins, received a plaque declaring him a Stock Car Racing Legend. 

Old Dominion's website tells the story: Over the years, the Old Dominion Speedway has provided the area with exciting NASCAR Racing Series action, Saturday night style. This is where the local driver can come out, try his hand at driving a powerful stock car, and maybe, just maybe, move forward into racing as not only a hobby, but as a way to make a living.

Many drivers who have competed on the 3/8 mile oval have went on to make it big in the top rank Winston Cup Circuit. Drivers like Darrell Waltrip, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, Morgan Shephard, the Burton brothers, and of course the "King" Richard Petty. By the way, 2 of Petty's official 200 wins are at the Old Dominion Speedway. Other Winston Cup drivers who have visited victory lane include Ned Jarrett (a 500 lap event), Junior Johnson, and the late Elmo Langley.
 
Dad is now 79 years old and doesn't race anymore.  He did race at Old Dominion speedway, however, with many of the drivers mentioned above.  I get a kick out of this one race result from the October 1964 Nascar Newsletter.  Dad came in 5th behind Ned Jarrett, David Pearson, and Richard Petty.
 

Here's a photo of one of his first race cars and his last.
 

Okay, so what has this got to do with cloth and creativity.   Nothing!   I did make him a single bed quilt once with these pictures in it, but forgot to take a photo of it before I wrapped it for Christmas.  I guess that just makes me a proud daughter!

Shameless Plugs

It's so exciting to finish a quilt you've been working on for almost a year.  Alright....so it became a temporary UFO for a few months.   I confess!    Here's my America quilt which I named "We the People".

The pattern is by Debra Gabel.  And, speaking of her design expertise.   Check this out! Amazon has listed Debra's new book due out early next year. 

One more shameless plug....One of the quilt guilds I belong to is having a quilt show next month.

Hope to see you there!

Who knew?

At my mother's 80th birthday party in April, a woman in her nineties was admiring the quilts hanging around my house.  When she indicated she used to quilt in the old days, I asked her if she had any stray blocks around she'd like to get rid of.  Then I didn't think anything of it.  A month later my mother hands me a Woodward and Lothrop box with quilt blocks in them.  All the the blocks were hand-pieced.  A note included said that she'd made a mistake by combining cotton and polyester fabrics in the same blocks.  If I could make a charity quilt out of any of the blocks, I was welcome to them.

I added some sashing, quilted them so that the hand stitches would never come out and ...voila!  Two Linus quilts have been donated to my guilds charities.  The guild is sending her a thank you note along with the picture above.  It makes my heart feel good!