Don't Look Anne!

Do you ever get stuck in the design phase? I am stuck right now. Big time. My friend, Anne and I are doing another challenge. We did one 2 years ago, check out the results here. I really enjoyed it and it was a good stretch for my artistic side. So we decided to do it again. Anne got to set the rules this time.  We swapped two fat quarters, one had to be hand dyed by us, the other could be dyed, but also needed some sort of surface design on it. I was able to do my dyeing late last year, scroll down on this post to see the fabric I sent to her. It also shows the 2 pieces that she sent me. They have been auditioning on my wall ever since. Our original due date was September, Anne moved it up to July so that we could enter them in the Springville art museum's annual show.

Progress? or is it?

I had an idea right away, but could not work on this piece for a while. I still like my idea, but the last couple of weeks I have had trouble getting my idea to work. Yesterday I actually cut fabric. That is when I found out the stamped FQ was 18"x16". So I need to revise my border idea. Today I need to work the shop, so maybe tomorrow will bring actual work on the project.

Some of the fabrics that have been auditioning for the challenge piece.  

This is my Off the Wall post for this week.

At the Lake

I am spending the week at the family cabin at Bear Lake.  Some friends were up for a couple of days and unfortunately it rained most of the time while they were here. Now the weather is beautiful!  I have been photographing some of the wonderful flowers in bloom around the area.  Hoping to find a couple that may turn into an art quilt piece. 

My buddies for the week, left is Eddy and on the right is Peaty.  They love coming up to the lake!

The water level is down quite a bit.  I was standing at the high water mark when I took this photograph.  The lake is very shallow at our side of the lake, so when the water goes down, it really goes down.

This is my off the wall post for this week.

Sourdough Starter

Going away to college quilt

Starter box

My nephew graduated high school last week and will be headed off to college in a couple of months. I like to make a "going off to college" quilt for the nieces and nephews to take with them.  This is the last one to go. One of my favorite boy/young man color schemes is plaids.  I have made several Sourdough quilts and always have some leftover parts (starter) that I feed the box, make the quilt and have leftover parts and so on.  It is a very basic, easy to customize design.  9 inch squares mixed with a variety of 9 inch nine-patches and four-patches.  You can lay out the blocks in any way you like. If you are in a hurry, you can use more 9 inch squares to cut down on the sewing time.  I have to still make my four-patches, but I have my big squares and nine-patches laid out in a diagonal setting. I think I will use it this time. Disregard the hourglass quilt peeking through the "design wall bed". I have a quilt on the real design wall that I cannot show publicly yet.

Check out what everyone else is up to this week at Judy's blog.