Weekend finishes

The weekend was sunny and warm - perfect summer weather.  I potted up lots of impatiens but still have some bare spots to cover in the yard.  Our lilies of the valley are blooming and looking fabulous with a backdrop of blue violets which will be removed as soon as they finish blooming.  Those violets always come back stronger each year.  Guess I'll be going out looking for plants tomorrow - hope there are some left!

I finished two guild challenges today.  First is the Asian panel everyone received this past fall.  I was going to cut it up in some way, but then I decided to use it to try "big stitch" quilting.   I found out that was not really for me.  It's hard to pull a big needle through the three layers of the sandwich.  

I did a little big stitch, and like the way the mountain looks.  For the tree I switched to regular quilting thread and a conventional stitch.  It really gave a lot of texture to the otherwise flat surface.  I also experimented a little with gold metallic thread, another difficult item to work with.  But I'm so pleased with the way the moon turned out that I'm calling this piece Moon Over Mt. Fuji.  

Mainly, I'm relieved to be finished!  And what will I do with this piece?  I'm not planning to hang it on a wall.   Maybe someone will need a gift sometime!  This will be shown at the June guild meeting, and I'm curious to see what others did with their panels.

After attending two talks about mini quilts this spring, I suggested a summer mini quilt challenge to the guild.   Even though I won't be showing my 10" square until September, I was anxious to give it a try.  And I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  

I used a paper pieced pattern from a friend, rotary cut the pinwheels, and paper pieced the flying geese from The Border Workbook.  A friend gave me a fat eighth of the print I used for the star points and outer border/facing.   I'm pleased with the way my Turquoise House Mini turned out. 

I noticed some people wearing name tags made of mini blocks at the state guild meeting, and this is something I'd really like to try this summer.

Next on my quilting agenda are a few blocks of the month that I haven't gotten around to along with more Dear Jane blocks.   After that, I hope to put the borders on the hankie quilt and start quilting it.   I have two empty project boxes but I don't want to start any more projects until I've cleared away some more UFOs.

Guild Block of the Month

 We had our first Heart of Vermont quilt guild meeting Tuesday night, and it was so good to see everyone again.  Some hadn't been for several years due to COVID.  We sat in "teams" for the month we'd been assigned to.  With such a large guild (80 members?), we like being broken down into teams so that we meet new people.  When the guild first started, some of the people were very clique-ish.  I always try to sit by someone I don't know, but others were adamant that they had to sit with their friends.  I found it very annoying.  

We'll have a choice of where to sit during future meetings, but at this one, we made plans for our monthly programs.   We have some outside speakers coming, which is always fun, and then some home-grown programs this year.  I'll be doing the January program on UFOs, something I am very familiar with.  I want to encourage a little swapping of UFOs during that session, and I hope some will take me up on it.

There is always a block of the month, and last night "Indian Star" was introduced in a red and white colorway.  Above is my block to swap next month as introduced the other night, and here's my variation to keep.   As you can see, I wasn't wild about the suggestion to use just one red fabric.  I'll be curious to see what others do.  If I'd had a lighter red in my stash, I might have used that instead of the red on white.  But I like the way the block turned out.

We also were issued a challenge.  A quilter passed away, and her husband gave Suzy a batch of Asian panels and fabrics.  Anyone who wanted to, took one to work with in any way desired.  We'll have show and tell toward the end of the year, probably in June.  

I chose a panel with a deep purple background and what appears to be Mt. Fuji.  I'm putting it away for now and will get it back out later in the year.  Working on it will be a good snowy day project.  And yes, fall is here today, and a cold front with night temperatures in the 30s is predicted.  But there will still be warmer days, which is good because I have a little yard work to do.  

Guild challenge

This year one of the guilds I belong to had a challenge - to "modernize" a traditional quilt block.  Each person was assigned a particular block, and mine ended up being a favorite, Ohio Star.  We had had a program on the "modern quilt movement" at a guild meeting, and I came away more confused than I was going in to the program.  The ladies said there were "no rules," but then they proceeded to list rules.  At a quilt show a couple of years ago, there were quite a few modern quilts, and it seemed to me that many were oversized, stripped down, not as cluttered, using solids and lots of open space.  The quilting on many of them was minimal.

The reveal for this project was to have been this past Tuesday, but since we didn't meet, we have been posting photos on Facebook.  Here is my Modern Ohio Star.

The medium gray is a solid, and the background is a textured navy, Quilters' Linen by Robert Kaufman.  The blocks are 3" which was fun.  

After I finished the top, I saw a Quilting Arts program on TV which showed a very strippy scrap quilt.  I decided to make another Ohio Star with just one block in a similar style.   This became the back, but the wallhanging is reversible.

I quilted this very simply with horizontal lines spaced about 1/2" apart.  That's hard to do well - you really have to concentrate to keep going straight.  It was a fun challenge, and I'm enjoying seeing everyone else's creations.  I do miss going to my guild meetings monthly!