Sisters Quilt Show First Installment

Attending the Sisters Quilt Show in Sisters Oregon has long been on my bucket list. Well today was the day.  The weather was great. It was a bit on the hot side. There were close to 2000 quilts hung allover town so I am sure there are some we missed. I took photos of my favorites. Stopping to read all the cards and photograph each one for the maker was not an option. I will post all my photos over several days till I post all of them. I will just let to pictures speak for themselves.

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Ewe Revealed

At long last Ewe is ready to go off to my little grandniece. This has been a well traveled quilt. It went back and forth from New Mexico to Texas several times when I was working on the applique. Then it went to Oregon. I really love this quilt and might make a miniature version for myself.

I first saw this quilt when my friend Shelley posted one she made on her blog. I liked it so much I made my own version. Thanks Shelley! Of course Shelly only spent a fraction of the time I did to make hers.

Because this is for a small child I used a black sharpie for the applique eyes. I would have used buttons.

I like the detail on the flowers and leaves.

I was working on the quilt at a different retreat year and my friend Suze found some fabric with butterflies on a white background. She brought it over to me and suggested that I fussy cut and applique them on the quilt. I love the whimsy they add. Thanks Suze!

I had to take a closeup of the flowers when I did my photoshoot. The flowers in Central Oregon are all blooming now.

Instead of putting a seam in the background fabric I opted for a stripe to add interest. You can see some of the detail quilting of the flowers on that purple strip.

The label below has a story. At the retreat I attend every February my friend made a quilt out of adorable machine embroidered sheep. She noticed one did not have the blue fabric on the ear and was not going to put that one in her quilt. I told her I would love to have it. She even gave me a scrap of the blue fabric and I did needle turn applique so it is now complete. It was the perfect thing for a label for this quilt. Thanks Judy!

So how do you quilt the black hexie to make it look like a sheep. This was the hardest decision during the quilting.  I finally decided to try to make a realistic face. I  googled sheep photos and did a series of drawings. Then I drew the one I liked with a white removable clover pen on the quilt. I am quite pleased with the result.

On The Forest Floor

I finally finished another task for my online crazy quilt class with Kathy Shaw. This is a more complex motif. Since I love nature I decided to just draw my own design instead of choosing an online clip art design. Just think of this little guy hiding out under the mushrooms on the forest floor.

About a week ago we went to the Ice Cave East of La Pine Oregon. There are two entrances. The ice was melted and the floor of the cave was pooled with water and cold so we did not go in.

I really love this shot looking out of the cave entrance. That is about as far into the cave as I went. These are lava caves made as rivers of lava continued to flow after the surrounding lava flow had hardened around them. Central Oregon is all about volcanoes and there is some very cool stuff to see because of all this volcanic activity.

First Top From Scrap Bin Challenge Finished

I finished my first top from the scrap bin today! When I started I just had a few ideas. I knew I wanted to make stars. Then I decided to use 4 patches in the alternate parts of the block. I then decided to sketch it all out. I really liked the drawing so I kept going with the idea. The star points are all brown. When I was trying to find enough brown is when I decided to sort thru the entire bin and separate by color. What a huge difference that made. I will continue to keep scraps by color from now on as it saves so much time and energy when you do not have to keep going thru the pile over and over looking for those little pieces of a particular color.

So this is the bin that this lovely top was made from. Yes it is possible to make beautiful things from random scraps. In this case I used muslin as a background. I did buy muslin yardage for the alternate squares and the border but did so after finding and using muslin for the star pieces. I then decided on a plain background which will be a place to do any kind of fancy quilting I want to.

This morning when I pulled out the top without the borders I was second guessing myself and was thinking this is not going to be a pretty quilt after all. Then I attached the first plain border and the checkerboard border and like it much better. I was wondering if I should add the second plain border and am glad that I did. When I hung this up between two trees next to my RV and stood back I knew that I had made the right choices!

This is what we do on weekends.................we took the motorcycle out on Saturday and saw Paulina Lakes in Newberry Crater. What a great ride. We went from the hot desert to the snow.

This is Fort Rock. It is a giant ring made of lava that once stood 500 feet tall but is only about 300 feet today. It is a out of the way sight to go see and was well worth the trip.

Tri-Recs

I have been busy with my scrap bin challenge. Sorting fabrics by colors sure has made a huge difference. Above you can see what I am working on as my second quilt from my 18 gallon bin. But lets back up. How did I get there:

I sorted all the fabric by color and put each color in separate bags. Above is all the blue fabric.

So the bag got upended and the sorting will begin.

First I did a sort. Some things are sorted by shape, some by type of fabric like applique or solids.

The piles look so much neater after pressing.

Then the fun began with cutting. Above is a sample of the blue fabric after cutting. I have two sizes of squares. Two sizes of large triangles with the Tri-Recs tool, and just one size for the long skinny Tri-Recs tool.

So finally after cutting Tri-Recs out of the green, blue and purple fabrics I have a really nice assortment for a quilt with the cool colors. I cut these with a loose plan. This project was planned with two things, shape and color.

So now the fun begins with the little triangles. These will add some sparkle with little pops of color to the quilt. It was really fun to play with combinations of these. I pulled all the ones that have three of the same fabric and then chose a contrasting triangle to go the center. I played with them till I was happy with them. The was quite some rearranging. After that I paired the skinny triangles . With those I chose similar colors to make a pair.

Then I had fun arranging the triangles. They looked really nice.......so I took a photo. Looking at a photo really helps you see how something looks. Humm..................ok but.................how about I make larger shapes...............like diamonds out of similar colors.

Winner!!!! This is not the final arrangement. I still  need to play with this quite a bit, but at least I have a definite plan.