QuiltCon - bias challenge & charity quilts

Of all the quilts I saw I thought the bias challenge quilts were the best group as far as workmanship and design. Again, I apologize for my photography. The third one down was a bit messy, but overall this group's pieces were well made and the designs were complex and interesting.

Here are some of the charity quilt. They had them hanging in two different rooms. They were not labeled and I have no idea what charity they were donated to. The workmanship was fairly good overall, but I thought many of them lacked a strong design direction. There must have been a designated color pallet as I saw the same colors though out the quilts. There had to be over 120 charity quilts so this is a small sample of what was shown.

This one was my favorite of the charity quilts.

I found out yesterday that the call was out for art for the Akron Art Prize for 2015. I went ahead and signed up so it is full speed ahead! I received another t-shirt in the mail while I was away for this piece - OZZY!

I still need to gather a few more t-shirts. My piece last year was 88" x 88" which was a bit under their max size of 96" x 96". This year they have reduced the maximum size to 72" x 72".

Back From QuiltCon

Here is my car in the snow when I arrived back in Ohio.

Once I got to my house I had to leave the car in the cul-de-sac. I had to go put my boots on so I could shovel the driveway and move the deep snow the plow had left earlier that day. My neighbor brought over the mail and helped me shovel - thank goodness!

The event had ups and downs. The opinions I post will be my own and not all of them will be complimentary, but this is my blog and I can post what I want. I have a lot of experience in quiltmaking as well as business so my level of expectation is up there. For the time and money I invested to go to this event, I was expecting to be blown away, but I was not. There were some pieces that were well done and others that were embarrassing like this one and this picture makes it looks better than it was!

I have a bunch of photos that I need to sort and label so I will be posting about this event over the next several days.

More pouches - what am I thinking!

This is such a last minute project I must be out of my mind! I have a bunch cut out, the parts and pieces laid out, and two with the zippers installed. Now I just need to get faster at putting these together. I did get one completely done. I want to take these with me for little gifts.

Last evening I had dinner with my brother who was in town from California. It is -2 this morning and he is not digging this weather. After I got back to the house I changed clothes and went for a walk. I still needed 5,400 steps for the day. Next I needed to sew a label on a baby quilt for my brother to take back to CA with him. I picked the improv blue log cabin quilt that I just finished recently.

After that I worked on the pouches. I think I will have to leave work a bit early so I can do a load of laundry and finishing packing. My neighbor is getting the mail and watching the house along with the housesitter so I think I am set.

So no posting until the 24th, but I will have a lot to post about!

New projects and more snow

I worked hard this weekend on many different fronts. I got both pairs of pants made.

I made two pouches - the long one has my sewing supplies including a 12" ruler - that is why it is so long and a pouch for my cords and iPod. Now that I have a fitbit and a iPhone, I have a lot more cords I need to have a place for - charging cords, ear buds, receptacle block. Now they all fit in a pouch. I used elastic to hold the cords in place and I had some 2 1/2" elastic that hold the iPod security.

I want to make more of these for gifts so I have the zippers, skull fabric, and fabric for the lining all laid out ready to be cut.

I received an order from Fabric.com with some flannel. I had placed an order for some pant material and I needed to order something so I got free shipping so I bought some flannel solids to go with all the plaids I had left from the xmas quilt. Well, they cancelled the pant fabric so all I got was the flannel. I ended up having to place another order for pant fabric. Anyway, I washed the flannel and went ahead and cut it into 3" strips so it is already to go.

Sherwin Williams had a coupon for 15% tape so on Saturday I walked in the cold and at times snow the 2.1 miles one way to the store. I needed to get my walking in anyways. Remember the house with the Nemo sculpture in the front yard I posted not too long ago? Well, the house next door set up a display too. We received about 4" of new snow this weekend.

There were not too many people out as it was cold - the mid 20's - and there was a lot of plowing that needed done. I enjoyed my walk listening to some tunes.

Here is the temp this morning according to my car

I also spent a the good part of Saturday and Sunday cleaning house. My brother was suppose to come over Sunday, but called and asked if we could meet tonight instead. Well, house cleaning never goes to waste and it needed done anyway!

5th finish of 2015

It was a long time coming, but I finally got the binding done! This quilt is 34 1/4" x 41" and will go into the baby quilt stash.

My next sewing project will be to make two pair pants. I washed the fabric and laid it out on my big table after I clean off the table this morning. I was up at 4:15! I did need to go to my brother's house this morning and hit a couple grocery stores before work. These pants were not on my UFO list, so I will be putting them on my new projects list.

The next UFO I will be working on is a smaller convergence piece. This is the only one I ever did. I found some thread in my stash that looks good with it.

I have a very busy weekend ahead. Have a great weekend!

Binding and t-shirts

I thought for sure I would be able to get the binding done on that little quilt, but no. After my walk, then some aerobics, and laundry, I just didn't have enough time. I only have one more side to hand sew and it will be done tonight!

The other day I went thru my rock t-shirts to see what I had collected up to this point. Hum, a sad, small group so far. The Metallica t-shirt had a design on the front and the back which was nice. I asked my brother who tours if he had any shirts that he didn't want. He told me he would send me some. Since I have not had much luck finding shirts at the Goodwill, I guess I will be turning to ebay. I look for the lowest price with shipping. The AC/DC shirt was a small size and small sizes and damaged shirts go fairly inexpensively. As long as the design is in good shape I could care less if there is a hole under the arm or a tear.

Binding progress and some QuiltCon exciting news!

I went for my walk straight after work, had a bit of a rest, then got to working on the binding. The corners were sewn. The quilt was trimmed and it was on to the hand stitching. I only managed to get the gray stitched on the one side, but it is progress!

I will have this one finished before bedtime tonight. I will have to think of which UFO I am going to tackle next.

My "Where's Jimmy?" quilt has been accepted to be displayed in the Massdrop booth during QuiltCon! It was one of the rejected quilts, but now it will be there anyway! Hot Damn!