Oops!

Sorry but I gave out wrong information about the voting for AQS Fall Paducah.  Only the First Place winners in each category can be considered for the top prizes.  Please vote...they are stunning!

I feel like the email we got to tell us that we placed was a little ambiguous, and now I am embarrassed to be mistaken.  It is the first year for this type of show...

"Contentment" did win Second Place in the category "Wall Quilts: Applique."  I am doing cartwheels!!  A few years ago, I got an Honorable Mention, more recently a Third Place Ribbon, and now Second Place.  I am climbing the ladder!

This will keep me shooting for improvement.

In stitches,  Teresa  :o)

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) 

So...where HAS she been?!?

Yes, I have been missing in action.  It has been an eventful summer in many ways.

My daughter studied abroad at Oxford, near London England.  She managed to find time to see some sights including visiting the main studio where the Harry Potter movies were filmed.

My little theatrical gal was dragging us to several "dinners and shows" all over the state.

Then, there was a birthday celebration with homemade pizza and chocolate-dipped strawberries for these two nuts, who were born three days apart.

It was an AMAZING blueberry harvest!  I froze 25 gallons, and that was after my sisters were here, picking like crazy!  Some of those berries were as big as GRAPES!  We had a lot of rain and they just seemed to plump overnight.

My oldest brother was in a serious motorcycle accident, hitting a pick-up truck head on...surgery, and now a rehab hospital in southeast Alabama with multiple injuries.  It will be a long recovery for a 65 year old man.  I was hoping this would discourage him from "all his toys," but that sounds unrealistic.

My "Contentment" quilt is in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the AQS show.  If anyone is going tomorrow, please take a picture of it for me!  I was so hoping to go, but I am needed here right now.  It will go to the first ever Fall Paducah show next.  I just discovered that I am 231 miles from Paducah.

I have been doing a lot of work FINALLY getting my quilt room the way I want it...I will show pictures next time.  I have also managed to unpack the last of our boxes, pack up more of my parents' stuff, and put it in an out-building until my sisters can go through the boxes.. 

The chaos makes me crazy and now I can finally see the end of the tunnel from this move!

I had an intense bout of bronchitis/coughing...so unfair for that to happen during the summer.

And finally, I initiated some therapy and a mood elevating medication early in the year to deal with grieving and other issues. It has been helpful, but hard.  Lots of reading, lots of writing, lots of setting boundaries, and lots of meditation.  

Oh, and through a sleep study, I realized that I was nearly dying every night through episodes of not breathing and discovered how little sleep I've been getting...for a long time!  I LOVE my CPAP machine.  Now Steve and I have "his and hers" competing machines and lots of great white noise in the bedroom...when we go to sleep we look like two aliens.

We'll help Riley get moved back into college this weekend, then I am going to lock myself in the quilt cave...yes, there is a lock on the inside of that door, much to my delight!

In stitches,
Teresa   :o)

Man seen lurking in quilt cave...

The man seen lurking in my quilt cave was none other than Mr. Fabric Therapy installing blinds.  I was pretty excited...the sun really beats down on this end of the house in the late afternoons.

I ordered blue because countertops and some fixtures are blue...and I just love blue.

It has been way too long since my last post, but things have busy here.  Two long road trips, a quilt show in Ohio, blueberry season, MOWING season (zeesh!), wind damage, house guests...you name it, we've had it.

I love blue, and these are blue (my favorite color) and TASTY!

The bushes are loaded from all the rain we have had and I patiently pick off the first ripe ones...now they are ripening fast and furious and I am having a hard time keeping up.  My visiting sisters will fix that over the next two weekends.

And then there is the mowing...on this 800-acre treasure forest, we have about 50-60 acres that are cleared and need to be mowed.   The clearings contain blueberry bushes, apple and pear trees, and nut trees.  It is like playing a video game to mow around all the trees.  In last years drought, I mowed every 2 weeks or so...this year it is every week or less.

Then there is wind damage to trees to deal with...this tree snapped off between two outbuildings and somehow managed to miss both structures.  It takes up to five years or so for drought-damaged trees to shed limbs or even die, and they don't really look stressed, but they are weak and come down easily in windy storms.

Riley is home from college and now a junior!  We've been spending some time working puzzles and just hanging out together.  She is off to England for 6 weeks to study at Oxford starting at the end of June.  I am worried about all the stuff happening over in Europe now, and will be having a hard time letting go of her.

There are a few stolen moments to work on projects, but never enough time.  This is another Lori Smith design I am prepping so that I have some "baggie" blocks to take with me to sew while away from home.

I have also been drawing the saxophone family for my continuing Baltimore Rhapsody music project.  I think these were the hardest to draw for some reason.  As I prepare the blocks for applique, I may simplify the designs slightly so that the applique is not so scary!

And I had prepared the freezer paper patterns for another Lori Smith pattern a few years ago.  It was fun to pull those out and start picking fabrics and working on some of the motifs.

See my little numbered freezer paper squares?  I am labeling my bird and flower motifs since I am going to perform some of the applique hand stitching before adding the pieces to the background.

Wow, I really need to spend some time covering my pressing pad...that looks AWFUL...how embarrassing!

All these little applique steps I can do upstairs at night...my husband likes me upstairs with him in the evenings...the little whiner...

I am in the process of adding the final borders to this "Little Treasures" quilt, then it will be ready for basting/hand quilting. That is a downstairs, quilt cave project...Steve needs an evening hobby to that I can be in the quilt cave more often.

Yesterday I spent 4 hours in the early morning picking blueberries and 4 hours later, mowing.  That doesn't leave much goofing off time in the cave.

"Contentment" was just accepted to AQS Grand Rapids in August, so it (and hopefully I) will be making another trip.  Then it may be going to the Fall Paducah show.  That will be a new show...anyone else going??  It is supposed to be different from the spring show.

I hope the beginning of your summer is going well!  There is plenty of things to do this time of year to distract us.  The Alabama summer heat will soon keep me inside except for right after dawn and in the evening.  Time to be in the quilt cave while the "whiner" is busy working!

In stitches,
Teresa   :o)

The 41st Annual Sauder Village Quilt Show 2017, Part Five

I was so struck by this tiny miniature,,,the precision and the winding colors in the star.  So much beauty in a teeny tiny package.

On the last day of the show, they reveal the People's Choice for small and large quilts.  Pat Morrow's stunning wool village won the People's Choice for large quilts.  It is pictured in Part Two of these posts.

Well, these 5 posts of pictures cover probably one third of the quilts in this show.  I did my best, but could not get them all.  This is such a nice destination quilt show every year.  Next year, Edyta Sitar will be one of the teachers for the week!  Make your plans now...

In stitches,
Teresa  :o)