Yay! Something quilty!!

I am not sure WHAT I have won, but at least 1, 2, 3, or Honorable Mention in my category at the Fall Paducah AQS Quilt Show.  

This show, as the newest AQS show, is doing things a little differently from their other shows.  Everyone can vote for the big winners, whether you attend the show or not.  

There are 15 categories of quilts in this show, so that means there are 60 preliminary winning quilts for you to see and enjoy online! If you are interested in seeing this "winners quilt show," and perhaps getting in on the voting, go here after 6:00 PM Tuesday night, September 12.  

There will be a lot of terrific eye candy!

I think they are experimenting with making this show more of a people's show.  Three judges narrow down the field, then real quilters get to vote for the 7 top prizes.

Off I trot to Paducah, KY some time this week...road trip!  It is 231 miles from my driveway.  We are in the path of a weakened Irma, so we will see how much rain we get...

In other news, I seem to be consistently sewing again...I hope it is a trend that continues.

I am working on outer borders for this quilt...finally.

There will be a skinny black stop border after all the busy 6-inch applique blocks.  Then there will be a 2-inch  border of these little devils.

I hand appliqued 116 of these 2-inch (finished) squares.  When all of you were having fun with making one-circle-a-day in the 365 project from last year, I was thinking of making miniature ones...I know, really nuts, huh.

Some day I will be found, sitting in a rubber room, hand appliqueing a cockroach to the hem of the dress I have been wearing for 3 weeks straight...

Two small to trim the backing away underneath the circles.  I made the backgrounds a little bigger than needed, hand appliqued all the circles, dunked the squares in water to soak the glue out, pressed them, and they were trimmed down to 2-1/2 blocks.

Making the circles is easy!  I use a circle paper punch to cut templates from freezer paper.

I scribble on the top of the freezer paper so I know which side of the circle goes "up" when ready them to press to fabric scraps. 

Scraping freezer paper circles off the sole plate of my iron makes me CRANKY!

Then I press the templates on the RIGHT side of the scraps...shiny side down.  (I used my long beading tweezers to handle all this tiny stuff with my mostly useless fingers.)

After trimming a glue-under allowance of about 3/16 inch, they are ready for a glue stick and a good DVD.

The papers are removed, the circles are given a final press, and then they are stored until I am ready to glue baste them to the background squares.  (I find I can reuse the paper circles 2-3 more times...)

I started four lines of blocks, one for each border, and arranged them in a pleasing order, trying to space out the red and pink ones which pull the eye.

Oops...one extra block, number 117.  How did that happen?

Then they were sewn together...

All done!

This is the leader/ender project I was working on as I pieced the border devil blocks together (thank you, Bonnie Hunter!).  The half-square triangles will be trimmed down and used somewhere in the future.

(They really aren't devils...)

I have been working very hard to finish getting my new quilt space finished, but more importantly, comfortable and somewhere I will want to hunker down and enjoy myself.  I will show you soon!

In stitches, Teresa   :o)