Let's see...where did I leave off?

Goodness, it hardly seems possible that my last blog post was in March. I knew as Spring was approaching things were going to go into high gear: I'm a teacher and Spring is "testing season," I've also spent a tremendous amount of time working on design plans for our log home, and working on the occasional necessary gifts. Something was going to have to give and blogging was it. Let's pick up where we left off.

The largest project I worked on and finished (Oh yeah!) is Mixed Flock. It appeared in the Northern Shenandoah Valley Quilt Show in the newly created Modern Quilts category.

Mixed Flock: designed stitched and quilted by me

In my last post I drew out possible quilting plans that included some pretty labor intensive straight line quilting. In the interest of actually getting the quilt finished in time for the show I ended up spiral quilting the center section and grid quilting the borders. I'm happy with how it turned out. 

In addition, I entered four of my mini quilts in the show:

Mini quilts

Clockwise from top left: Baby Nova, Dashing Geese Mini Quilt, Apple Blossom Celebration, and Wonky Crosses. Most of the time these mini quilts hang on the walls of my office at school. Making mini quilts is very enjoyable because they are so much easier to finish up on my small Janome sewing machine.

It was fun to participate in the quilt show. It's a biannual show so the next one is in 2017...maybe I should get started on a quilt now so it will be finished in time :o)

Well, that's enough to get us started. I'll be back soon with more of what I've been up to. Happy quilting!

Random Sampler & Other Progress

Hooray! I've made progress on my Random Sampler! Going with the idea to build one section at a time I took inventory of the blocks I've already made and began grouping them into a section. Then, I worked to fill in the holes. Here's what it looks like so far:

Random Sampler section one

The top row features a squash blossom, an applique branch, maple leaf cluster, and several flying geese blocks. The second row includes a basket, a wheel, Rocky Mountain Puzzle*, and finally Duck Tracks*. (Patterns for these last two blocks can be found on Quilters Cache.) This section measures 20" x 32". Due to the odd size of the maple leaf cluster I added a strip of fabric to the left side of the squash blossom block to bring the string of blocks up to the correct length. 

I'm so happy to have made a bit of progress on this quilt! Now I have to discipline myself and return to two quilts in the process of be quilted. One is the Social Climber quilt from the Faith Circle, and the other is my Mixed Flock quilt for the local show. I've made good progress on the Social Climber quilt and it shouldn't take too much longer to have it finished. 

Mixed Flock has me wondering how best to quilt it. To try out some possibilities I took a picture of the quilt top and lightened it up on the computer. Then when I print it out I used a pencil to draw out quilting ideas. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Quilting ideas

I need to stick with straight line quilting because I don't think my free-motion is where I want people giving it close inspection. I still have not figured out how to quilt the colored stars. I'm hoping that as I begin working on it additional inspiration will come. 

Finally, perhaps the most exciting progress!! On Saturday we met with a log home builder and walked over our land to select a house site! We gave him the plans we'd put together and now have to wait for a quote to come back. We'll see what comes of this once we have some solid numbers. That patch of woods up there in my blog header just may have a house on it!  For now, I need to hold myself in check and not get too excited...like that's possible :o)

Happy quilting!