Hi all - I've been meaning to blog and life just got in the way! Took a mini-vacation to my house in Gold Country and then went over the mountains to Reno to see my grandkids. Highway 108 over Sonora Pass is a road that is only open a few months a year and now I understand why...it is so narrow and curvy and the pass is 9600 feet. They were working on the road and then it started to rain and lightening. Yikes - I was so happy when I got down from there and hit US 395. Thought it would be smooth sailing from there - but first more road work and then miles of stopped traffic. What the heck had happened and more importantly how the heck was I going to get to Reno? So it turns out there was a flash flood and the entire highway was submerged, plus a mud slide from a hill that fell down with huge boulders and trees. I back tracked to a Best Western and learned that I could either go back over the mountains through another pass called Kit Carson pass (also only open a few months a year) or drive east and then north up to Reno. I went out east and eventually made it to Reno at 7:00 p.m. rather than the 4:00 p.m. I expected. Did you know that much of Nevada looks like you are on the moon? Well, at least that's how I felt as I drove through desolate moonscape/landscape on my way to Reno. This was an adventure that I would happily have skipped!
I have not gotten much done in the way of quilting because of my adventures on the moon, but did manage to pick up my finished Spiderman and the Avengers quilts to bring to my little boys - who were so thrilled to get them! Here they are:
Other than the color around the Spiderman blocks, I made the quilts identical so that there would be less to fight about.
Thanks to a brilliant suggestion by Ruth Beebe, I had my long arm quilter Dee Small add spiderweb quilting to the quilts. This is a close up and you might be able to see the quilting a little better on the back (again identical).
Yes, that is a label on the back of the quilt - can you believe it? It's not very fancy but the little boys were very pleased with the fact that each of their quilts had their name on the label. Small pleasures!
I did also spend some time photographing two of my quilts and then submitting my photographs to New Quilts of Northern California for the exhibit at PIQF in October. I don't know whether one of my quilts will be selected for the show. I did have one selected last year and it was so fun to see my work hanging at a big quilt show! One of my friends from the BAM guild and I are going to photograph our quilts using a hanging system that she had installed in her loft with the hope that we will obtain more professional results. I would like to submit a quilt or two to QuiltCon, but need good photos.
I'm going to get back to quilting now that I'm home. Have a number of projects in the works. More about that later...
Aaaaanyway, that's it from the Robertson household.
I wanted to spend some concentrated time sewing this weekend. What with the Olympics on and weather so nice, I have been finding it difficult to sew in the evenings. There just too much else going on. So, I took the entire weekend (except for some Boo time and going to Costco - what a scarey annoying place to be on a weekend!) and I worked on projects.
I got up early on Saturday and got started with a nice cuppa coffee. I wanted to take on a project that needed finishing, so I turned to the scrappy Mod Mosaic blocks that have been sitting around for more than a year. I just could not bring myself to deal with them in the past because several of the blocks were poorly made and I only had 16 blocks total, counting the bad blocks. Luckily, I was on a mission and got started. I re-made the 2 worst Mod Mosaic blocks that I received from the swap that were holding up completion. I tried to save parts of them, which probably just made the whole process take even longer than if I had started new blocks. It took me about 1.5 hours for each block - so there went most of the morning!
Then I laid out the blocks (with the 2 new blocks I could put together a small quilt top - 4 x 4), decided on which block went where and got started putting them together with 1" Kona white sashing (the same width as the Kona white used to make the blocks). Along the way, I heard a voice in my head nudging me to make more blocks so that I could have a larger quilt. Do you ever do that to yourself? Do you think that you just need to make a few more blocks to make the quilt larger which would then make it "better"?
Well, I silenced that voice very quickly when I counted out how many more blocks I would need to have a larger quilt and multipled that by 1.5 hours each block. No way was I going to invest more time making even more blocks so the top would sit around even longer while I made it bigger.
Common sense prevailed and I have now put the top together. I can't say that I am wild about it, but I can say that the top is done. and here it is:
Then I put together Wendi's basket blocks for the Bee Awesome bee. This bee was started specifically to deal with unfinished projects that the group might have from blocks they received in other bees that weren't made properly, or where members dropped out and you never received your blocks even though you made blocks for everyone else...you know how it goes sometimes. Wendi's blocks were very sweet and very simple. That pretty much shot Saturday what with my trip to Costco and all.
Sunday arrived bright and early and I decided to take some strips of fabric that a friend in the guild gave me and make a postage stamp block out of them. Pretty little strips in purples and blues. The strips were already sewn together and then I cut them into 2" blocks. I decided on a complicated arrangement that required me to cut apart most of the strips of blocks that I had just made and after laying it all out and having just enough little blocks - I made a BIG mistake and trimmed a little block down because it looked too big. Yikes! I didn't have any more of the fabric, so I then tried to trim down every block that was in that part of the block so I could finish what I had started. That was my SECOND BIG mistake. I should have stopped and thought about what I would do and regrouped. Instead, I soldiered through and ended up with the biggest lopsided mess you could ever expect to see! It's a finished lopsided mess, however, so I guess that's something to be said for it ... but there will be no photos of this mess!
I was a little gun-shy after that experience and thought I should carefully think about what I was going to take on next. I'm in a Round Robin Bee with 3 other quilty friends of mine and I had been spending quite a bit of time thinking about what I would do for my round for Sheetal's center medallion. Here is Sheetal's medallion with a 1.5" linen border that I have added:
She asked for a scrappy approach, but I was having a little trouble with the contrast between the very planned center medallion and the fabrics that she sent along, which indeed were very scrappy. I finally decided that I would use this linen and a lovely Cloud 9 organic fabric as the segway between her rather formal medallion and the scrappy rounds to come. I will show you my next step or my completed round in the next blog - depending upon how quickly I finish and when I have time to blog again.
I hope you are all enjoying your August and spending time working less and enjoying more! I'm thinking about ice cream right now - must be summer, eh?
Aaaaanyway, that's it from the Robertson household.
Quite a while ago I showed you a photo of the quilt top I called Screaming Green hanging in my garden. It's a Bento Box quilt with the blocks set on point. I am happy to report that it is now a finished quilt and here it is:
Here's a close up:
The back is very simple - Denyse Schmidt all the way, as is the binding.
I have tried my hardest to get a true representation of the citron green that I used, but it was not to be. It is photographing much yellower than it is in real life. Oh well...
Next in my little back of tricks is a photo of the wonky 9 patch (pattern and tutorial by Elizabeth Hartman (Here) that is also finished. Tada:
Here is a close up and a photo of the back of the quilt:
Hope you are moving along in your projects and finding completion.
Let me know what you are up to when you can.
Aaaaanyway, that's it from the Robertson household.
