It is here!

Last summer I signed up to do an art quilt for the Inspired by the Beatles an Art Quilt Challenge. I was not allowed to show photographs for a long time. Although the book has been out for a month, for some reason my order took forever to get here. 

I got a package!

The tracking said that the package should arrive on the 30th.  YES! A key in the mail box!

A box from Amazon!

And yes, the box was from Amazon! Wahoo! I had two dogs on leashes with me, so I had to wait to get back to the house before ripping open the box.

So pretty!

I was so excited to see the beautiful covers! I had added my friends copy to my order and I also bought one for my Dad.

My Quilt!

What a thrill to see my quilt in the book! They are in alphabetical order, so I am near the end. And this week they are at Houston, I wish I could be there, but it wasn't going to happen this year.

My fabric choices

I had this vision when I got my title of "Twist and Shout". I was hoping to find some vintage 60's fabrics, something with a bold print. After searching for months, I couldn't find anything. I had called out to my former group in Salt Lake and a friend commented she didn't have a 60's print but had something she thought would work. And she did!

My cut outs

Drawing is not my strong suit. And after trying to find some twisting silhouettes, I finally just broke down and did my own drawings. And it turned out to be just what I wanted. I first quilted the background with a twisting design. I forgot to take a lot of the in progress photographs. I then fused the silhouettes and stitched around the edges.

In progress

You can see the layout here and the quilting shows up nicely in this photograph.

Ready for the binding.

Like I said, I forgot to take photographs, so I don't have a finished photograph! My daughter was visiting from England and we were heading up to the lake for a week. So I was rushing around getting the piece ready to mail before we left since the deadline was the next week. I mailed it off and headed to the lake.  Then realized that I didn't have a finished photo.

You can find the list of venues here!

This is my off the wall post for this week.

Blogger's Quilt Festival Entry #2

This is my second entry to the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side! I decided to enter my Rainbow Utah quilt into the ROYGBIV category.

Rainbow Utah

I made this quilt to honor the fight for equality. Since this was finished, there was a ruling on October 6,2014 and marriage equality is now legal in Utah. I may add some more text with TAP to update this piece.

Ready to be bound

This is my first time working with Trapunto. I enjoyed the process! I am looking forward to doing it again. I hand dyed the rainbow fabric in the center.  The quilting lines are intentionally not straight. The colors are more accurate in the second photograph.

I blogged about my other entry here.

Check out the rest of the entries!

Since what I am working on cannot be shown publicly yet, this will have to do for my Design Wall Monday post this week.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

I am excited to enter the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side! I decided to enter two quilts. This entry will go in the art category. This is my second boat using these fabrics. They are all hand dyed with the exception of the batik binding. I used the leftovers from the original boat. I just started sewing all the pieces together and I ended up with another boat!

Odin II

Auditioning the parts

Sewn together

D cup

After I had it quilted, it had a huge bulge in the center. So I decided to block it before I trimmed the edges.

Dye run

I laid the piece on the ironing board and spritzed the bottom half with water. Let is set for a few minutes and then steamed it flat. Moved the piece and spritzed the top half. After letting it set for a few minutes I cam back to find that the orange dye had run into the sky. It showed up in several spots. So I made a plead to my friend and found out you can get it out using Dawn natural essentials. I used a small washtub, added a bit of the dawn to some warm water and then soaked the piece. After a few minutes I went to check and Voila! The run was gone! I then blocked it again, trimmed and then bound it.

My Name

I am not good at free motion quilting. I do try to hid my name somewhere in the piece when doing free motion. This piece combined walking foot quilting with the free motion.

I am blogging about my second entry here.


This is my off the wall post for this week.

Check out all the quilts at the festival!

Monday Morning

I had joined a 4" block swap at a local guild. We were to swap 2 sets of blocks with each participant and an extra one for the upcoming raffle quilt.  We did the swapping last week. Some really fun blocks came in the batch. I decided to set aside 12 to make a small quilt.

12 blocks for a small quilt

On Friday I blogged about using the rest of the blocks for making some prayer flags. I had seven finished and hung them on my back fence.

Ready to tie together

Just need to attach the twine

Yesterday I sewed on the rest of the 14 blocks I am using for the flags. So  a total of 21. I ran out of time before dinner, but just need to sew the twine on the last few blocks, that should go quickly and then they can go out to the fence.

The leader project

I am sure that you all will get sick of the seeing the leader project, but it is growing. Slowly, but surely! I am on the long rows, so it doesn't seem to feel like it grows much, but it is!

Saturday's Sunset

I just love sunsets! We get some really awesome ones here, so I decided to share Saturday's sunset with you.

This is my Design Wall Monday post for this week.

Off the wall and onto the fence.

This week my good friend Lisa came to our guild and gave a talk on Prayer Flags. She did a great job! Good information, good history, great examples and a wonderful slide show. I was so into the lecture that I forgot to take any photographs during the lecture, or of her samples.

Also at this meeting we swapped our 4 inch blocks (that I have been whining about for the last couple of weeks). I decided to make Prayer flags using my cute little blocks. I only have 7 done so far, but will add more flags as I get them finished. 

My string of 7 flags

Love the way these turned out!

My sweetie insisted that I back up to take a photograph so that all the "yard art" is in the foreground. We have a thing for rusty junk, er, um, art pieces found in the wild. That milk can was bought at a yard sale probably about 30 years ago. It has moved all over the place with us. The axle has crossed state lines twice. The giant cog is new this year.

Peaty and Eddy love the dirt hill!

This is my off the wall post for this week.

Cold Monday

It turned cold all of a sudden yesterday! At least this morning the wind is not blowing. I spent some time in the sewing room, and will go in there again today.

I got this month's sample block made. I am going to make November and Decembers as well. I will hand out the patterns this month. Then next month will be the sashing instructions and in December the border instructions. It has been a fun block of the month, good participation from the group.

My Emerald Pools sample

I always have a "leader" project for when I am chain piecing. I know that Bonnie Hunter is famous for this idea, but I have been doing it for a long time, way before I ever heard of her. Great minds think alike! I love her patterns, she has really taken the scrap quilt to new level. Right now my sample from my class is my leader project. It is on the wall right behind me as I am sewing. So it is easy to grab two squares and sew them together.

More leftovers

I had so much fun sewing the second boat from the leftovers of the first boat! I found some more leftovers which I pinned to the wall. I hope it inspires another art piece.

4 inch blocks

Last week I finished sewing my 4 inch blocks for the swap that is due on Wednesday. I always end up making a couple extra in case. I decided I am going to make prayer flags out of my swap blocks. I tested the idea using my extra blocks.

This is my Design Wall Monday post.

Fun on Friday!

I wanted to work on my Friday post first thing this morning. I am at the quilt shop today and it has been so busy that this is my first chance to work on the post. Busy is good!  Had a batch of women come in who are in the area for a quilting retreat. It sounds like they are having a very good time this week at their retreat! I love going to retreats!

Autumn Sunflowers

I sold a quilt this week! It is going to California to live in my old stomping grounds in Sacramento. It is a great feeling when someone plunks down cash to buy your work! I am thinking about selling some of my 12 by 12 quilts. A group of us took turns selecting words and everyone made a 12"x 12" quilt inspired by that word.

California Blues

Prairie

Here Comes the Sun

Given to my friend Sandy.

Peace, always in Fashion

Given to my friend Lisa.

Music Man

First Snow

Chaos

This is my off the wall post for this week.

World Wide Blog hop

I was tagged by Jan to do a post for the world wide blog hop!

#1 What am I working on.  I am doing a piece for an upcoming book celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the National Parks. I cannot show my piece, but I was lucky to get a Utah park, Capitol Reef!

#2 How does my work differ from others in my genre.  Not sure that I am that unique. I do feel my work is a bit different then the local quilters here in rural Utah. Not a lot of art quilting going on here, but they are very supportive of my work.

#3 Why do I write/create what I do?  I started to blog shortly after moving to a very rural area. It was a way to reach out to the outside world.

My View

#4 How does my writing/creative process work?

My work has evolved over time. I now try to make a statement with my art quilts. Recently I blogged about my quilts in the Springville Show. I had the most wonderful comment on that post.

Saw your quilt Saturday, it was truly a highlight of an outstanding show. My wife and I both voted for it for the people's choice award!

Since my blog address was not posted anyway at the exhibit, it meant this gentleman went out of his way to find me to tell me how much my work meant to him and his wife! That is better than any ribbon I could have won at the show!


I am tagging my friend Nan. I have been enjoying getting to know her the last couple of years. She won a ribbon at Springville. Note the photograph below.

Quilt by Nan Sturgill

And I am also tagging my friend Sandra. I have known her for a lot of years through the quilt guild. She is a quilt appraiser living in one of my favorite places in Utah, Moab!

She has two blogs and a facebook page. 

http://utahquiltappraiser.blogspot.com/

http://starleyquilts.blogspot.com/

https://www.facebook.com/TextileTimeTravels

I am also tagging my friend Lisa. We get into all kinds of trouble together! She helps me keep on track.
http://somethingcleveraboutnothing.blogspot.com/

This is my Design Wall Post for this week.

October Off the Wall

parts

4 inch blocks

One set done!

It doesn't add up

Fancy pants drawings

UFO

After all of the excitement of the last couple of weeks I need to knuckle down and get some serious work done in the studio. I cannot show my National Parks project. So I will show my 4 inch blocks for the guild swap. I need to make 2 sets of 16 blocks. I have my first set finished. I then cut a bunch of one inch strips to make courthouse step blocks. After getting my sample block halfway sewn I realized that a 1/2 inch grid would not work to make a 4 inch block. So back to the drawing slip.

I got a batch of blocks sewn together. I have had them for 11 years, they are signature blocks from one of my California groups. It was nice to look over all the names and remember the wonderful people I met while we were living there. It still needs the borders added, but will have to wait until after the National Park project is completed.

This is my Off the Wall post for the week.  Come back on Monday the 6th, I have been tagged by Jan to participate in the around the world blog hop!