Back in the Sewing Room

The quilts are now back home from the state fair. I have turned my attention to other projects.

I am working on Kimberly Jolly's 2019 scrap challenge. She has saved scraps from every quilt project she has made in 2919 to make into a pinwheel table topper. She is offering a free pattern, here.

I am working from years of bonus triangles that I have saved. I had an overflowing box of triangles, most of them were already sewn. I took days to go through and size each of them into the nearest useable size using my BlocLoc ruler. Many of them were 1.5", which are used in Kimberly's project. When I had sets of four, I put them into the pinwheel box. I still had many odd numbers of 1.5" to save for another time. I had many in other sizes also. I organized all of them in a recently cleaned out drawer in my sewing room.

 

The project calls for 440 pinwheels, 2.5" unf/ 2" f. I have 443 completed and ready to begin assembling.

I got tired of pinwheels, so I returned to the Winter Wonderland quilt. I finished the embroidery this week. The blocks were already completed and waiting to be added.

It has been such a long time since I have done much embroidery that I couldn't remember how to do the feather stitch. I did a Youtube search to watch videos. That worked. Done now and ready for the longarm.

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Update on State Fair

Many thanks to follower Kitty who asked for an update on my state fair submissions. I have been very lax about keeping up with my blog posts. Sorry.

DH and I went to the fair on opening day. We bee lined it to the quilt exhibit. I had four submissions and three of them received ribbons.

Double 9-Patch received a second place red ribbon in the lap quilt/wall hanging category.

My problem child, the red and white, didn't get a ribbon. I am anxious to see the judges comments to see what they had to say about it. I had a bit of an issue when looking at the other quilts in the "two color" quilt category. I would argue that some of the entries I saw, including the first place, had more than two colors. Oh well.

Audubon's Christmas took a first place blue ribbon in the Holiday Quilts category. I am thrilled with this result. I was obsessed with this quilt for a year and used many new-to-me techniques.

As we went up and down the rows of quilts I couldn't find my Halo Medallion quilt. The category was bed quilts machine pieced and machine quilted, #03. Quilts are hung by category and in numerical order, so as we came to the end of 03, I was very confused. I didn't see my quilt. I thought maybe they had accidentally hung it in the wrong group. When we had gone through all of the exhibit and didn't see Halo Medallion, I had a bit of a panic attack. Did they actually lose my quilt? Or worse, had it been stolen? I was able to find one of my long arm guild friends who is on the state fair board. I asked her if quilts were displayed in any other areas. She directed DH and I to the main entry lobby where the "big winners" were hung. I think I had heart palpitations.

OMG. Halo Medallion won Best of Show! There it was, beautifully displayed in a glass case at the main entrance for all to see.

Poor Halo Medallion didn't get any recognition in the AQS shows where it was juried in. In that venue, it was in the same category with works from professional quilters with national reputations. The state fair was the right place for it to really shine.

I am, of course, very pleased with how my quilts were judged at the state fair. I really look forward to getting the comment sheets when we pick them up at the end of the fair.

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Ready for the State Fair

I will be entering four quilts in the Kentucky State Fair this year. The drop off dates are the 10th and 11th. I put all of my final changes on my projects today. How about that. I am not running up against a deadline for once.

The first entry has been featured on my blog many times before. The Halo Medallion which has shown in four AQS national shows. I shared lots of photos when this was a work in progress.

I don't know why this is showing sideways. Here is a close-up of the center.

The next entry is my red and white Star light, Star bright quilt.

I had several problems with this one. First, after I had the top quilted, but still on the machine, I re-read the requirements for this category. A minimum 300" perimeter was required. Oh scrap! I needed to add borders all around to this already quilted piece in order to make the minimum. You can see the red and white outer border with corner blocks. I figured out how to accomplish this. During that process, I had a very unfortunate rotary cutter incident. I had to put a patch on the backing fabric. The second problem was that I had severe color bleeding, despite the fact that I washed the red fabric before I started the piecing. I followed directions I found on Margaret Solomon Gunn's blog (find it here).  Overall, I am happy with the quilting. Here are some detail photos.

My third entry is a double nine-patch. I am most happy with the quilting. This is very much in the style of Judi Madsen. I love her style.

My last entry is in the holiday category. I made Kathy McNeil's Audubon Christmas quilt. I tried many new techniques on this wallhanging. I am very pleased with the way this turned out.

Here is an overload of close-ups.

Now I can relax and work on some other projects.

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