Catching up and the UFO Challenge.....

  I don't think I ever posted a photo of the strip quilt when I finished it, so here is a photo of it draped on the end of my couch.  I'm looking forward to putting this on our bed when the weather turns cooler.  Too hot right now!  I made 2 pair of pillow cases to go with it.  I call it my "M&M quilt" because it reminds me of a bowl of M&M candies with all those bright colors in it!  (or maybe jelly beans?) And also because it will go on our bed ........we are Mike and Mary...2 M's!

M&M Quilt done

I decided to make a little log cabin quilt....lap size.....out of the left over strips from my M&M quilt.  

I just finished the top except to add a small border.  I think I can put this one together myself and do some stitching in the ditch to quilt it...I hope!  I sure wish I was better at the quilting part of quilting.

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The UFO Challenge

Every quilter has lots of UFO's....admit it!  All those UnFinished Objects sit around in a drawer or bag and never got finished because we got excited about some new project or we got bored with the old one or couldn't figure out what to do next!  Well a local quilt store....The Quilter's Nest....decided to help us take care of this problem by issuing a challenge to register 12 UFO's at their store.  Each month they will draw a number between 1-12 and that is the UFO you are to try to finish in that month.  If you finish it you can bring it for Show-and-Tell on the last Saturday of the month and also be registered for some prizes!  I had no problem finding 12 UFO's to register and so I signed up.

 The number drawn for August was #4 and that was my "butterfly project".  

I think I started these in 2008. 

 I had made these two small butterfly pieces with the idea of doing more and them making them all into a big wall hanging or "something". No real plan in mind.....just wanted to applique butterflies!  Well, after two butterflies and flowers, I put them in the drawer and they had been sitting there ever since.  So what to do with them??????   I decided to make each one into a small wall hanging and will give them to my sisters for Christmas.  I had to add the borders, hand quilt around the butterflies and flowers, and then I machine quilted around the borders and a bit of rambling quilting on the background.  Added the bindings and my first UFO is FINISHED!  Yeah!  

September's UFO.....#11 was drawn.

This was a workshop I took in January 2011 to learn to make the little coffee-filter batik fans that are on this runner.  It was a lot of fun, but I didn't want to make a whole quilt of them!  So I arranged mine into a rather large runner.  Because of the nature of the block, putting them in rows like this makes it asymmetrical in appearance.  To combat that I have decided to add an extra strip of fabric on the two odd ends which makes it symmetrical again, but now it seems "unfinished".  

My plan is to add applique of some sort on the fat parts of the two border ends.  Then I will have to layer, quilt, and bind the whole thing.  OK.....I have a month to do this!  I can do this!

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(Not off to a good start.  I spend all morning looking for the fabrics I used to make the fans and found all but the reddish one....which is rather important for what I wanted to do with the applique.  Darn!  I have no batik that matches in color.  Hmmmmmm.....thinking.)

Update next month when the next UFO number is announced and hopefully this is finished.

Links for Grand Rapids, Michigan Quilt Show photos....

We went to the Grand Rapids Quilt Show earlier this month and the quilts were fantastic!  So were the extra exhibits.  Here are links to web albums of the photos that I took at the show.  The first link is for the main quilt show:  Grand Rapids Quilt Show

and the second link is for the extra exhibits that I have some photos of: Grand Rapids other exhibits

And here is a link for my post on the Quilt Barn Trail in Vicksburg, Michigan.

I hope to get something new posted in here, soon.  Have been working on some UFO projects mostly and a log cabin from the scraps left over from my strip quilt.  Just need to take some photos!

Posey County Quilt show....

Saturday we went to the Keck Gonnerman Antique Machinery Association's 22nd Annual Show in Posey County, Indiana.  It also included a quilt show.  Here are some of the quilts.  I will not say anything about them....they speak for themselves.  Most are hand quilted and some are antiques.  A lot of nice embroidered tops and old fashioned patterns.

Nature Crazy Quilt finished at last!.....

I finished it!  This is both the hardest and the most exciting thing I've ever done.  I have wanted to do birds or other nature stuff on a quilt almost since I started quilting.  I never had the nerve, or the patterns, or the know-how.  I finally decided to give it a try and worked out the patterns based on some paper-pieced patterns in books by Margaret Rolfe, that I altered to make them more real looking and usable as needle turned applique.  Some of the patterns I made by looking at drawings on the internet and adapting them.  

 The crazy quilt background is from the Kwik Krazy Also pattern where you stack 12 pieces of fabric and whack them according to the pattern and then restack them and sew them back together.

 When I started doing the crazy quilt stitching, I was just "making it up" as I went.  My favorite method of sewing :-)  Then I began trying to add realistic looking wildflowers to all the bird blocks.  That was fun and I used my Wildflower Field Guide for guidance as well as the internet.  I still have some just made up stuff, too.

On the three flower blocks, I also added butterflies, caterpillars, grasshopper, tree frog, bees, ants, snail, etc.  And there are three spider webs (for luck!).  The biggest one on the lily block has a garden spider in it with his signature zigzag (which I didn't do very well).  The raccoon block has dragonflies (the blue one is a Blue Dasher male :-)

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I almost feel bereft now that it is done.  I have worked on this for many months and many hours and it seems weird to be finished!  The quilting is so-so....I just machine stitched it in the ditch.  Looks OK on the front, but the back is sort of puckery in places.  I'm not good at the quilting part, but wanted to do the whole thing myself.  I will make a fancy label for the back eventually and will post it when it is done

Raccoon, Iris, and Wren in progress....

I'm still working on these nature blocks....still having fun with them!

Almost done with this Raccoon block.  I was going to do a little thread work on the raccoon body, but not much else to add.  Making dragonflies and Cattails was fun :-)  Not totally happy with the yellow water lily.

 The Iris  has a lot to be done on the block yet.  I decided I would embroider bugs and butterflies and such around the flower blocks, but I did put a vine with a couple of types of flowers here....Morning Glories and Scarlet Creeper.

I just started the Carolina Wren tonight.  I still have to add the beak and legs and maybe work on eye and wing and tail feathers.  He may be my only bird with legs.  Somehow he just seems to need them.  I just noticed that I have a photo of a real wren on my sidebar almost opposite this photo....how appropriate!

That leaves me just one more to do the applique....a Day Lily.  Then the rest is all embroidering until I decide they are finished.

Blue Jay....another block started!

The only thing I seem to be working on is my nature quilt.  I did a recent update in my other blog...click here

The most recent block I am working on.....Blue Jay.  Needs a bit more work on the feathers and all the other fancy stitching.  I may actually finish this someday!  LOL.  Four blocks to go needing applique!

See my other blocks and recent stitching work.....here.

Nature Blocks update.....

I was stalled on this project for awhile, but have picked them up and been working on them the last few days. (Click photos to see larger slide show).

 I just put this Cardinal on a block last night.  I'm mostly happy with it.  He will be sitting on a large branch, I think.....so I can avoid doing anything about feet or legs.  None of my birds so far have legs :-)

 I have been adding to the Goldfinch block.  I felt it needed more white on the wings and tail, but think I over-did it.  I like the wings, but may take a black marker and do away with most of the white on the tail.  I just added the thistles in the lower left....one of the Goldfinches favorite flowers :-)  I gave him a sunflower, too above him and wheat to sit on (without any legs :-)

 This has been my "stumbling block"....best name I can give it!  I made the pansy and didn't like it.  Stared at it for days trying to figure out what to do to like it better.  Then I added a hummingbird....didn't like it either! This block has been a cursed one....and cursed often.  I've been adding thread to the hummingbird to give him texture and shiny highlights, and like it better, but this photo doesn't show it very well.  Maybe if you click to make it bigger.  Did more work on the pansy, too and begin stitching the seams to draw the eye away from both of them!!  Sigh...this will be the block I never like, I am sure.

The woodpecker block....I began embellishing it.  I found the neatest book about embroidery and tried an idea from it...the circle thing.  The book is by Brian Haggard and he has a blog.  I also tried to make it look like the woodpecker was pecking a hole...so-so, but acceptable.  Stitched a few seams.  I now have seven blocks out of the twelve started!  I think a raccoon block will be next to give me another mammal to go with my squirrel block.  Since I just photographed a raccoon family, it seems fitting to make one on a block.

I do enjoy working on this and am glad I got (sort of ) past my "stumbling block"...a.k.a. the "pansy and the hummingbird".  I'm looking forward to seeing what I decide to do with these block eventually.  I'm thinking a black fabric to sash them and borders.  Will have to start looking for pretty floral black fabrics or what ever I think might look good with these......oh, boy.....a shopping trip!