MQS Quilt — will I ever get it done?!

I have been so busy the past couple of weeks!  Mostly just trying to do too much in a short amount of time I guess.  I have been trying to get things organized and prepared for my classes at MQS, then this past weekend I taught a small group of girls from my LA Guild (who agreed to be guinea pigs) my Innovative Wholecloth Design class.  We had a lot of fun, and I am anxious to see their finished wholecloths.  Oh, and then of course I had to start my entry for MQS.  I got my quilt marked pretty quickly, I started with just the main elements, and then decided on and marked the rest of the smaller stuff.  I would normally just do the feathers freehand, but because I want the placement to be just right so the little circles on the feather tips line up pretty well, I ended up marking those in as well.  I have all of the main motifs stitched in, and am now working on my fillers.  I worked doing fillers for about 4 hours yesterday, and ripping out some pebbling (yikes!!!! Especially when it’s black thread on black fabric).  I had planned to spend today doing some more on my quilt, but woke up with a terrible stiff neck and there was no way I could quilt.  Sooo, I decided to spend that time getting groceries and at least getting something accomplished (plus I won’t have to do it this weekend when W.Mart is so full I can’t even get a cart).  But, at least the day ended on a good note — I found out that I got 3rd place in my catagory at Paducah for my quilt Grandma’s Clock. 

Here are a couple of pics of my new wholecloth so far (not that there is a whole lot to see) —

  

Last but not least, I’ll finish with a puppy pic — DH would probably kill me if me if he knew I was putting his pic on here, but it’s a cute picture.  What you can’t see in the picture is DH’s shoe kinda chewed up a little <G>.  Do you believe it, he chews up his fathers shoe, and then crawls on top of him and uses him as a bed <VBG>! 

 

Grandma’s Clock

I have been working today on re-doing the hanging sleeve for my quilt “Grandma’s Clock”.  It was juried into the Paducach Show, and when I got the entry info, I found out that it needs to have a different type of sleeve than what is on it now.  Geeze, I don’t like doing the sleeve any more than doing binding, and now I have to do it twice <G>!  Anyway, I thought I would put a couple of pics of the quilt on here, including one of what I marked before quilting (it is all marked with sharpened regular school chalk), and one REALLY close shot of the background fill I used (since I have had a bunch of people ask about this).  Enjoy!

Raffle Quilt Picture

I just got this preview of the picture that will be distributed to our LA Group (OLAQ) members along with our packets of tickets to show what they are buying tickets for.  I think it looks like a postcard to me.  Tomorrow is our LA meeting, I’m anxious to see the raffle quilt in person, now that the binding and blocking have been done, and even more excited that I get to bring it home with me and will actually have “show & tell” next week for my regular Quilt Guild meeting (I’m usually lucky if I have show and tell to take once a year!).  Although I suppose I kinda do have more if you count the quilts everyone else brings that I quilted.  I spent most of today getting ready for the meeting tomorrow, I’m doing the program on self publishing.  This isn’t anything I’ve ever done a program on (I’m really not much for the “lecture” type of thing to begin with), so I really needed to get some stuff down on paper so I don’t draw a blank when it’s time for me to do my thing.  Now—to go study my notes.

Zeke’s Little Brother “Junior”

A while back we decided that we would get our dog Zeke a little brother so he would have another dog to play with.  So we started our search for another doberman puppie, but didn’t have any luck.  We have always just bought our dog’s, never adopted one from a local humane society, etc.  I read on Suzanne Earley’s  blog that she had recently adopted a dog,  so I thought I would check into that on the internet (this was something I previously hadn’t thought of).  We found a couple of pups at a local doberman rescue, but they were always gone before we got through the “process” with them (you had to have a home visit, application, etc.).  We also had been considering getting some sort of hound dog, as we had a really hard time finding a vet who did ear cropping when we got Zeke.  So after checking http://www.petfinder.com for a couple of weeks, I found a hound mix at the Animal Protective Leage about 2 hours from us.  Yesterday was DH’s birthday, so Josh (DS) and I drove up and brought the little guy home for a suprise B-Day present for DH.  It was great, he had NO IDEA we would do something like that.  We decided before we even found a puppy that his name would be “Junior”, and gee, it is pretty fitting for a big old hound dog.  Junior has only been here for about 24 hours, and Zeke is still not real sure about him, but he’s slowly coming around.  Here are a few pics of Junior.  And one of the two of them together.  I was hoping that a puppy would get our 5 year old couch potato a little more active, but as you can see in the picture of them together, I think I might just have two of them now <G>.

  

  

Kicking myself in the (you know what)!

So the other day on the way to the store, they were doing some road work and I was sent on a detour.  Along this unfamiliar route I passed a big old house for sale — hmmm, I need to see how much that baby is.  I have to say that I am NOT in the market for a house.  I really love our house, but —- this is something I would be willing to sell my current house and move to.  So anyway, I look it up on the internet, wow, that is a great price (must need work).  I made an appointment, and we went to have a look yesterday.  Turned out the realty woman got tied up, and we got to go check it out on our own (even better, so we could “really” check it out with out her following us around).  So anyway, it is great!  It does need work, although it is mainly cosmetic stuff, nothing too major (DH is a contractor).  It is probably 3 times the square footage of our current house, and has remained totally unmolested through the years — still has all of the original woodwork, mantels, pocketdoors (we couldn’t believe the woodwork hadn’t been painted at some point).  So home we go, alot to think about —- give the realtor a call, and of course, just my luck, it is a forclosure —- so the wait till you sell your house plan is not an option (which was also our only option).  So, this just has me kicking myself today, and mad at myself for even going to look.  Here are a couple of pics of that “so close, yet so far away” dream house project. 

 

The Raffle Quilt is Finally Done!!!

The quilt is 9o x 90, and it is called “Amish Electrified”.  I will now pass it along to Janice, another member of our group for binding, it will then go to yet another group member, Shirley for blocking.  Then —- I have to decide —- to crystal, or NOT to crystal???? My first thought is absolutely, but I don’t know if the people who will be purchasing tickets for the quilt would want to have them on there??  What do you think??

Not doing so well with the upkeep!

Geeze, just realized today that I am already lagging behind in keeping up with a blog.  I think I just get my self going on too many things at once, and keep thinking, I’ll post tomorrow, and “don’t”.  I have been busy working on planning for QwM, as well as STILL working on the raffle quilt I mentioned in a previous post.  This raffle quilt has really stressed me out —- I want it to be super nice to bring in $ for the event, but —- I don’t want to go overboard, and not want to give it away, ya know?  So I have been stressing on finding a happy medium as I work.  It should be done in another day or so, and I hope to present it to the group at our next OLAQ meeting this Sat. (boy I hope they like it).

 I did get some great news yesterday evening — I received an email from the Road 2 CA Quilt Show that my wholecloth “Grandma’s Clock” won 1st place in the Innovative Wall Other Catagory.  Wow, I am really surprised with this quilt, it is really doing well at the shows.  I should probably tell you that although I have been making quilts for shows for quite a few years now, I normally only make one  or two a year just to enter at the machine quilting show, MQS (by the way if you go to their site, under 2007 winners, you can see a picture of “Grandma’s Clock”, it got 2nd place in Wholecloth), but anyway, I normally make a quilt, send it to that show, and then it gets folded up and put away.  Last year I decided that if my quilt did ok at that show, I would try to enter some big national shows — and so I did, and have been quite happy with how well my little quilt has done.  It has already (including R to CA) won 3 ribbons.  I also am having this quilt appraised while it is at the show, this too is something I’ve never done, so I’ll be interested what value is put on it (you know I just always put $500 as the value for any of my quilts, probably not the best plan, but you know how that goes?!).

 OK, enough rambling, I have to get back to doing some more micro stippling on the raffle quilt.  But, before I go, I want to share a pic of the Christmas present my sister made me this year (she and my nephew were actually able to come home this year for the holiday, which is a great present in itself, as we don’t get to see them very often).  But I wanted to show everyone.  I wore this the other day to a meeting Nik, and got tons of great comments on it!!

Hopefully I’ll have pics of the Raffle Quilt to share soon!

Jodi

Christmas Wallhanging

I gave up making quilts as Christmas gifts a few years ago — by that time of year I did NOT want to deal with any more quilts.  But … this year, I decided to give in and make one small wallhanging.  Recently at a class, my MIL Bona (a LA quilter also) was telling some of the girls there about how I wouldn’t give her one of my quilts (she just folds them up and hides them away after she makes them anyway, she explained to them).  So I decided to make her a small wallhanging this year for Christmas. 

The color made it kind of hard to get a good pic.

With no Flash

Close Up

I really would have liked to keep it for myself — another reason I stopped making quilts for gifts!

New Blog and Zeke’s new bed

Apparently the new dog bed just doesn’t compare to the good old couch —- the red that you can see in the foreground of the picture is his new bed.

Well, I have decided that I need to finally try to keep a blog.  I started to do this a few months ago, but just never got around to actually posting anything.  With teaching, and trying to stay ahead of my Christmas rush quilts, the last few months of 07 were just crazy for me.  I am hoping that I will be able to do alot more quilting for myself this year, and have started to drastically reduce the number of customer quilts I will be doing (we’ll see how long that works though, as I tend to not be able to say no to my customers).  I am so excited to currently have only 1 customer quilt in my studio and as a bonus, it is not a rush. 

 The LongArm group I belong to (OLAQ-Ohio LA Quilters) will be putting on our second event this year called “Quilting with Machines“, and I have volunteered to make and quilt our raffle quilt for this year.  I am piecing it today, and hopefully I will start the quilting by Mon. (as soon as the batting I ordered arrives).  I am kind of anxious to finish this project so that I can get to work on re-doing my studio.  Nothing too major, but I just feel like I need a change, and a nice fresh room to get me moving on MY quilts for the year.  I will be painting and getting some shelving and a countertop so I can TRY to get a little more organization in my tiny little room.