Yesterday at Guild

Look what someone brought to yesterday's Prairie Quilt Guild meeting for me - selvages! I guess it doesn't take much to make me happy, does it? I have "plans" for another selvage quilt but am still collecting and have to finish a few projects before starting anything new.

 And then something happened which hasn't happened in a really long time, I actually won a door prize! I'm not a "lucky" person so this was quite a shock. The prize? A pair of spring loaded cutting shears from A-1 Singer Sewing Center in Wichita, Kansas. I may have to frame that winning ticket.

Our speaker, Cathy Miller - the Singing Quilter - was a lot of fun to listen to. About half way through her presentation, she got my whole attention when she brought out her crazy quilt and then her 1/2" hexagon project and finally, her 1/4" hexagon mini quilt called "Insanity"! It has over 3000 1/4" hexagons in it. Go to her website, click on Quilting and then Cathy's Quilts to see photos of her quilts.

 If you go back far enough on this blog, you can see pictures of my finished crazy quilt and my 1/2" hexagon project in progress. What you don't know is that I have a pack of 1/4" hexagon papers from Paper Pieces in my quilting room just calling my name! So far, I'm resisting. A project made of 1/4" hexagons is not to be entered into lightly but yes, I know, resistance is futile.

Come back in a few days to see pictures of some Hanky Panky from my younger days!

Wedding in our future!

Next spring there will be a wedding in our family! Our daughter is engaged and we are in full wedding prep mode. Searching for a wedding dress, bridesmaid dress fabric, table decorations and all the other details are taking up quite a bit of my time.

Some time ago, I was "talking" to another blogger, Merilyn in Australia, about black wedding dresses. Perhaps she doesn't remember anymore but I told her I would post some photos of the black wedding dresses worn by relatives and here they are (finally).

 As I understand it, white wedding dresses came into style when Queen Victoria wore one in 1840. Mennonites from the Goessel, Kansas community continued to wear black wedding dresses until the early 1900's. I'm not sure who broke the tradition and was the first to wear a white wedding dress but it must have been shocking to this community.

 

 Sara (Voth) and Benjamin Nickel

married December 18, 1890

Sarah (Goertzen) and David H. Thiesen

married December 2, 1913

Sometime around this time, colored wedding dresses must have come into style. In 1925 when my maternal grandparents married, the bride wore a peach colored dress.

When I'm not thinking about the wedding, I'm still working on my guild's challenge quilt. Elvis has joined me! Just a little teaser there. I will show pictures when I can which, unfortunately, will not be for awhile.

Until next time, Mayleen

A most spiritual bug!

Since I'm busy working on my "confidential" project, I can't share my progress with you. Let's just say its slow, tedious work. Why can't I ever decide to make a quick, easy quilt?!?

So instead of quilting news, here's what's happening outside in my yard.

 Do you see my visitor?

 Last week, I noticed this Praying Mantis in whats left of my flower bed. Seeing it perched there took me right back to my grade school science project. I collected and mounted bugs for months (?) and the morning I was turn my project in, we found a Praying Mantis, as I recall, on our screen door. I have no idea what grade I received for my project or what my project even looked like but I do remember the excitement of finding the Praying Mantis. Funny what you remember from school days!

Yesterday, our high temperature was 90 degrees, tomorrow it will be in the mid 50's with a freeze warning for Friday. The flowers no longer look so pretty and the leaves have mostly blown away in our Kansas wind. It has been really windy the past few days. On Friday, anything that's still blooming will be frozen and soon everything will be brown. Brown is my least favorite color because it reminds me of the long winter months I'll spend waiting for spring colors.

Tomorrow, I'm going to bring in the pots of geraniums but unfortunately, I haven't been successful with overwintering them in the past. There are four plants - white, pink, hot pink and red. I'm not sure why I like geraniums so much. I do remember my grandmother having at least 8 of them in her south facing bedroom window. Perhaps its the memory of her that makes me like them. Guess which color is my favorite?

Time flies

Another week has flown by at my house!

 My beginners applique class project has been a struggle. This is my second attempt at all four hearts appliqued to the background. I was supposed to use needleturn and reverse applique techniques but after seeing the result, I started over and went back to using the template and starch method on most of the hearts. I doubt that I'll be making many applique quilts even though I would very much like to.

Wondering about this fabric combo? So am I!

Hint: Its for a project previously mentioned on this blog that I'm supposed to keep "confidential". ha.

Seven Days in September!

The past seven days have been full for me! I'm the Membership Chairperson for our quilt guild and since our fiscal year is beginning shortly, our membership renewals are also in full swing. I think I'm caught up with a lot of the paperwork but everywhere I look in the office, there are turquoise forms laying about! (We color code by year and some of our forms are then that color.)

This little guy, our first grandchild, was born last Friday, September 21. Unfortunately, Connor and his parents live many miles away and we won't see them until Christmas. Pictures and Skype are great but nothing's as good as some in person time which we're looking forward to very much!  

 Then last weekend, my daughter and I drove up to Kansas City to do some shopping. She was looking for clothing and shoes and I was looking for, what else, fabric! In fact, fabric for the "In Living Color" challenge I told you about in my last post.

I've settled on a theme but that's about all I can tell you, for now, since we're supposed to keep this "confidential". Someone from the challenge committee has been known to read this blog so I better be good. By the way, I don't want you to think I bought that whole bag of fabric. It also contains fabric from my stash which I plan to use in the challenge quilt.

Because my schedule's been crazy lately, I haven't had as much time to work on  my hand sewing projects as I'd like. This is the Jubilee+5 Garden Quilt and I don't think you can see it but I've big stitch quilted a few more blocks since my last post. This isn't a portable project so I don't get to work on it as much as I'd like.

 My reproduction of Ann Ruggle's hexagon quilt is portable so I've been taking it along with me to work on while I visit my mom at her nursing home. I can usually get an hour's worth of English Paper Piecing in while I'm there. I usually spend part of my Tuesday's at Schowalter Villa in Hesston, Kansas. Many of the residents and workers are interested in my quilting and I'm enjoying hearing their quilt stories!

As you can see, I have all of the pink/brown flowers done but I've only been able to sew part of one on to the center (at the top).

Because someday, maybe even this winter, I would like to start working on a Phoebe quilt of my own, I signed up to take an Applique class at one of our local quilt shops. This really wasn't a good time for me but I'm not sure my life is going to slow down anytime soon.

Last night was our first session and this is all I got done! Its a good thing you can't see those curves aren't the smoothest but I guess its OK for my first time at needle turn applique. I think I will hide this block in the lower left hand corner of the wallhanging I'm hoping this becomes! (That's where I hide all the blocks with "personality".) Only three more hearts to add to this block. Don't know why the background looks so blotchy and am hoping the camera just took a weird picture.

I hope the past seven days in September have been good for you!

Until next time, Mayleen

I'm stumped!



I know this shouldn't be difficult but I cannot seem to come up with an idea for my quilt guild's 2013 challenge. I'm getting nervous because I feel the clock ticking away getting closer and closer to the February completion date. The theme is "In Living Color" and we have to use a recognizeable piece of each of the fat quarters in the photo. This is a serious challenge for me because I would not normally use either of them in a quilt. I do not mind the forks and spoons but I feel I must cut that black fabric into very small pieces.

Here are a few of the "MUSTS":

The name of the quilt must include a color and you must feature that color in the quilt. Phrases come to me like Jolly Green Giant or Yellow Submarine but nothing appeals to me yet.

You must include at least one of the following: a person, an animal, a reptile or a fish. Embroidered fish swimming around a yellow submarine with the Jolly Green Giant looking out a window? 

This is not going to be easy but I guess that's why its called a challenge! 

Week 2 of One Hour of Simply Needle & Thread

I accidentally uploaded these pictures in reverse order and instead of starting over, I'll just explain my progress but sdrawkcab!

While I was preshrinking backing fabric for my Jubilee+5 Garden quilt, I needed another hand work project and remembered this Ann Ruggles hexagon quilt I'm trying to reproduce. This is a project that I purposefully began to have something small to work on in waiting rooms. I'm not making speedy progress and that's actually good because it means I haven't been spending a lot of time at appointments lately! At the right in the photo, you can see what it might become someday.
Here are some of my hexagon flowers waiting to have more hexagons stitched around them. I'm using 1/2 inch hexagon papers to English Paper Piece. Remember the 1/2 inch is the measurement of each side. Just for fun, I also have 1/4 inch hexagon papers but those are just to look at! Very tiny. The fabrics I'm using are all Jo Morton or are associated with her.

Here's my calendar showing my stitching time for last week. I had a fairly busy week and thought I was doing well to get 8 hours of hand work in but after I'd written Saturday's time down, I did another 2 hours of stitching bringing my total to 10 hours for the week.

This past week I finished hand piecing the quilt top, pin basted the quilt sandwich together and started big stitch quilting it. I think the backing I chose will work well with either the gray/polka dot or pink fabric for binding. At least, those are my two binding choices now.

And here it is - my big stitch quilting progress - eight blocks. I always thought big stitch quilting was a relatively quick way to quilt. I've decided it might be for someone else but not for me. I see my stitches get wobbly and crooked which seems so much more noticeable since the stitches are larger and yes, orangy red. So, I pick them out and do them over. That, plus, my fingers are sore because its been three months since I did any hand quilting. Its not speedy progress, for sure. I'm wondering what color to quilt the gray/polka dot sqaures - cream or gray?

Hey, see that block to the right of the sunflowers? The one with the orange center, yellow petals and blue background. Looks like a dandelion puff to me getting ready to blow away in the wind. Interestingly (to me anyway), even with the drought we have a few dandelions growing in our front yard.

Until next time, Mayleen