Really off the Wall

I am still so excited to announce that I have a quilt in the upcoming "Inspired by the Beatles an Art Quilt Challenge" book! It is available for pre-release orders at Amazon. Which means I really should preorder my copy!

This week has been busy and I have gotten a lot done on an art quilt, but I am not ready to show it publicly so for this week's Off the Wall I am posting photographs of the weeds, er, um wildflowers from my "nature-scaped" backyard.

Sego Lily

My herb garden is doing ok, still needs some weeding and trimming. I love my chives!

I cut all the blossoms to make chive blossom vinegar. Even after only a couple of hours the color is leaching from the flowers! I made some last year, it is great for making vinaigrette. Has a nice oniony taste and a lovely color. Have a wonderful weekend!

Design Wall Memorial Monday

I finally got a quilt finished! Last year Brenda of Pieplate Patterns was the president of our Quilt Keepers group in Wales, Utah. She gave us a block of the month and I joined in. I really enjoyed piecing the blocks every month.  I did get the top finished earlier this year and got the piece quilted earlier this month. Now it is bound and hanging in my entry.

I have had these blocks floating around the studio since March. I decided to redo one block because it had some raw edges that would not be hidden under the seams of the sashing (and it wasn't crooked enough). I do plan on another version of this quilt as you go technique and I have that not crooked guy and a partial in these blues and greens. I may go with the blues and greens again, and I may just go some other direction, who knows? I have my sashing auditioning on the wall. I may have to go back to the scrap bag to find a few more strips. I am pretty sure that I want to use that dark green for the binding.

Another thing that has been hanging around on the design wall is a challenge that I am doing with a friend. She provided the shell stamped fabric and also the hand dyed orange/goldish piece. I have an idea and have several other hand dyes auditioning on the design wall. Hopefully if I get the sashing finished on the blue/green guy I can get going on this one.

And I have some exciting news!  In the upcoming release of "Inspired by the Beatles an Art Quilt Challenge" I have a quilt that will be in the book!  We just got notice of the cover and are allowed to start talking about the book! My quilt is "Twist and Shout".  I can't share a photograph of it yet, but I will as soon as they say to go for it! I am told that the book is available to pre-order at Amazon.

This is my Design Wall Monday post!

Small Town Quilt Show

Every Memorial weekend our small town of Ephraim, UT puts on Scandinavian Festival. The town was settled by Mormon Pioneers from Scandinavian countries. Our little quilt group puts on a quilt show in conjunction with the festival. It is a non-judged event with Viewer's choice awards. Letting everyone (including kids and husbands) vote gets them involved in looking at the quilts. I spent 4 hours helping hang the show today. Here are some photographs of the quilts. Sorry about the bad lighting, lots of sun shining through the windows. The price you pay for a sunny day!

We hang a clothesline along the railing for small qults

Our community service quilt

First aisle in the middle

Second aisle, the two quilts on the right are mine

Other side of aisle one

Horseshoe Mountain Quilt Guild raffle quilt

Each year the other local quilt guild, The Horseshoe Mountain QG, make a raffle quilt. They raise funds to give a scholarship to a student at the local Jr. College, Snow College.

Antique quilt

This year we had quite a few antique quilts come in. I love the soft, warm look of the above quilt!

Two more of my quilts.

Another Old quilt

Detail of a mend

Interesting choice of  fabric

The center square

Another mend

The above piece really intrigued me. It was made from denim and heavy pant fabrics. The gentleman who brought it in didn't know who made it, but suspected it was a family member. It was found in a family sheep camp (sheepherder's trailer) underneath some boxes or something like that. I love log cabin designs and this is definitely the intended design. It weighs a ton and is hand quilted.

Crazy Quilt

Crazy quilt Story

The gentleman who brought in the sheepherder's quilt also brought in the Crazy quilt above. He bought it at a Hollywood Estate sale. He said he has a photograph from the show of Robert Young with this quilt on his lap, but he couldn't find it to hang with the quilt.

Vintage Sue blocks

These are vintage blocks that someone sashed with modern repro prints and had the quilt machine quilted.

Another Older quilt, probably early 1990's

Back side of Aisle 2

Back Wall

Lovely stars.

Noah's ark

Vintage quilt top, recently quilted by a mother and then bound by her daughter

Quilt back, just as pretty as the front

Quilt front, just as lovely as the back

I would guess from the 1980's

Beautiful wool quilt

Nice sampler

It was an exhausting day, but I really think that the show looks nice! So if you are anywhere near Central Utah in the next two days (Friday or Saturday) stop by and check it out!

This is my Off the Wall post for this week.

Design Wall Monday

For last week's guild meeting we went to Tracie's house for a potluck and trunk show. After showing us a few quilts,she let us wander her house because she had quilts all over the place!

I love this version of a log cabin quilt!

Her closet full of quilts!

EZ Crazy quilt

I had forgotten that she had taken my EZ Crazy quilt class when I first moved here. I love to see finished quilts from my classes! It was a fun meeting!

My Iris's are in full bloom!

On my "wall" this week is to finish the binding on my sampler Block of the Month from last year. I can't see the black threads in the evenings anymore, so I need to work on it during daylight hours.

This is my Design Wall Monday post for this week.

Design Wall Monday

What a surprise for Mother's Day, Snow! My first thought is "there go all the baby peaches on the tree". 

My backyard, May 11, 2014

And then I realized I could have one more snow dyeing session! So I rushed around getting my PFD fabric ready to go into the tubs and sweetie filled them with snow.

One of my tubs of snow dyeing

I like to let them melt overnight, so today is rinse and washout day!  I will post the results later in the week.

And since I was unable to go out and pull weeds, I spent some serious time in the sewing room. I was able to get my design arranged, triangles sewn into squares and then the squares squared up. Today I will sew the squares into a top. I am happy with the way it turned out. Can't wait to see how Diane's turns out.

This is my Design Wall Monday post!

I am participating in Sew Mama Sew's giveaway day! Go to this post to enter!

Guild meeting and then the trip home.

I had a wonderful trip to California! The David Taylor class at Empty Spools was wonderful! My class project is not ready to be shown yet, still a lot of work to get it ready. I also visited friends. I went to the monthly meeting at a guild that I had belonged to when I lived in Sacramento, the Northwind Quilters of Fairfield.

This is the new opportunity quilt for the upcoming show in March of 2015. It is a very large quilt! This group is famous for their applique skills!

Another group was visiting with their opportunity quilt, I forgot the name of the group. I really love the bright colors that were used! They had permission from Karen Stone to use her pattern.  The quilting on it is lovely, hopefully the ticket that I bought will bring me this lovely quilt! One can hope. 

Strips

Block

Just a quick trial of the layout

I stayed with my friend, Diane and I brought a project for us to sew. I had seen an article in an older AQS magazine and thought it would be fun to try it out. I brought 6 different fabrics and we each had a half yard of the six to work with.  Maybe it was seven.  Anyway, we had a lot of fun! I only got to quickly layout my triangles before needing to pack my bags. I will try to get the top sewn after the weekend.

Diane's EZ Crazy quilt

Diane had finally finished a quilt top from a class she took from me many years ago. It is lovely!  The colors are much brighter than in the photograph.

Fresh homemade salsa

Diane made me dinner several nights. She made this fantastic salsa to go along with the pork tacos.

Cactus in bloom

More blooms

Close up

Palm tree coming back to life

Bougainvillea 

I stopped by my Dad's house on the long drive home. His cactus garden was blooming like crazy! I love the delicate flowers!  Last winter his town had an unusual snow storm, it dumped quite a few inches of snow and I thought that the palm trees were gone.  But they are coming back again!

This is my off the wall post for the week.