blogger's quilt festival

It's time for the semiannual virtual quilt festival, sponsored by Amy!

This time, I'm showing a little quilt that was a mini-group project a while back; we all started with the orange & green mottled batik and swapped around a variety of other fabric strips -- I think three of us made quilts and as always, they all look quite different!



I can't wait to take a tour and see what else is on display!

a few more robins to entice you...

I just thought I'd throw out a few Robin photos to get the juices flowing...  this first one is a project that I quilted and bound and then sent off to its final owner

the next one was done by an online group I used to be in -- I made the center block

 this was one of the Spring Fling Round Robin projects from a few years ago

 and this is another.  I made the center block on this one...

 Here's another project from an online group I'm in

 and last but not least, this was made by one of my local mini-groups -- they were not at all happy with my center block, but I just had to do it!

Tell me I'm crazy

  Kate was reminiscing this morning about the Spring Fling Round Robin projects that Margaret used to host -- and despite the fact that I know there are always some "issues" with round robins, I'm thinking about starting one up for bloggers with a little bit of swapping history the ability to commit.

The best thing about the Spring Fling was that you got back a finished quilt.  I blogged about one of them here, and I'll post photos of the others later this evening.

They would be small quilts -- maybe 20" by 20" at the most, with a center, 3 rounds, and then quilted & bound.  That's 5 people involved in each one.  So -- are you interested?  Are your friends interested? Let me know either by comment or email.

PIQF Favorites

It's always so difficult to whittle down my PIQF photos to a few favorites, and my list of favorites changes each time I look at them!

That said, here's a little gallery, with captions underneath:

Color Values by Beth Nufur and Shelley Knapp

a detail of Color Values

Synchromesh by Mary Kay Price

The Squirrel's Speech by Barbara McKie

 A detail of one of the squirrels -- these are photos she took, and they're beautifully embellished with thread painting.

Fighting Dragons by Jan Soules

 View From My Window by Gisha Wogier

 Jump! by Lyn Banks

 Fern Pool by Gloria Loughman -- she taught classes at PIQF this year and I hope she comes back next year...

Papaver by Janice Gunner

There are a few more photos at my flickr site here. Hope you enjoyed the show!

stop it -- just stop it!

For some reason, in the last couple of months I've been plagued with spam comments from essay writing, dissertation writing, web promotion and other fly-by-night services around the world (lots in Russia and Ukraine, for some reason).  The comments aren't overtly objectionable, just totally irrelevant to anything I post on the blog.

Am I the only one with this problem?  I went back to having word verification, but that hasn't stopped the flow...  

I have no idea why these people would think that spamming my tiny little blog is going to bring them business -- to the best of my knowledge, none of my readers are looking for dissertations-for-sale. I know I'm not!

I've Been Orange

 

It's been a long time since I posted -- I've done some sewing in the last couple of days, though.  It's Orange month in the scrappy challenge, as I mentioned before, and I managed to use up almost all my small pile of scraps on this cute table-runner.  I found it while googling "pumpkin quilt pattern" and it's here at The Plaid Scottie and it's 12" x 60".  I'm planning some quick meandering quilting and orange binding.  The background is something I hadn't used before, called chambray.  I like the linen look of it, but it's quite floppy, and almost feels like sewing with rayon. I might go back for some in a brighter color for a shirt, but probably not for another quilt project.

I have a ton of photos from PIQF last week that I finally downloaded, and I'm hoping to post a few favorites tomorrow in between some more sewing and power-washing the brick patio before the moss takes over completely!

intermittent autumn

It rained at home last week while the weather was fabulous in Madison -- today it's raining again but the report has it heating back up to 80 later in the week. How confusing!

I bought a beautiful pumpkin on Saturday and we put it next to the front door on the porch -- tonight I came home from work and found this:

 I've never had that happen before! Squirrels, maybe?  It's not messy enough for raccoons.  Looks like they were trying to carve a nose in it for me...

This is orange month for the rainbow scrap challenge. I have only a pathetic little collection of orange scraps so I am thinking about a crazy-pieced pumpkin like this one I made for a swap a couple of years ago:

any other ideas?  I skipped the last two months so I feel like it's time to jump back in.

Early fall in Madison...