Vacation and Mail

Last week I got back from a three week vacation visiting family in the Northwest!  We started with a surprise (for my mom and dad) family reunion in Gig Harbor, WA, drove to Boise, ID to visit with all of my husband's family and then back to Washington for a week with just us and the parents.  It was fun visiting with everyone and my kids loved getting to play and meet all of their cousins.

While I was on vacation I took a break from reading blogs and posting here.  It was kind of nice, but nice to be back too.  :)  The first thing I did when I got back was open the package from my Pillow Talk Swap partner!

 I love the pillow Leila (needleanddime) sent!  I love the curves, the points, the colors...everything!  Plus she hand pieced the middle!  I am soooo lucky!  Thank you!!!

I also got a package of fabric from the people at the Iowa State Fair for the Quilt Block competition.  I like these fabrics much better than last years, but working with only three colors might be challenging.  I wonder if they realize the fabric designer, Vanessa Christensen, lives in Iowa.  We are using fabrics from an Iowa fabric designer for the Iowa State Fair.  Kind of cool!  :)

Hope you are having a great summer too!

This Week...

This week... I have worked on appliqueing the hexagons onto a linen background for my Pillow Talk Swap pillow.  Before appliqueing, I layered the linen, fusible fleece and backing and quilted them together in a grid pattern.  I added some hand stitching around a few of the hexagons last night in pink and yellow and plan on using one of the fabrics on the side as a backing.

This week... I learned that if your eight year old wakes you up in the middle of the night saying that she had a bloody nose you shouldn't blearily ask if it has stopped, (yes) and tell her to go back to bed, assuming that she only got blood on the worn old baby blanket she is holding.  Because the next day you will find yourself facing the prospect of scrubbing dried blood out of a new quilt and wondering how she only managed to bleed on the white fabric on the front of the quilt and miss all of the dark fabric on the back.  Thankfully it came out much better than I expected.

This week... I have realized how hard it is to get pictures of large quilts.  The sun, my husband-quilt-holder and non-bloodied quilts never seem to be in the same place at the same time!

This week... I learned that there is a Modern category in the Iowa State Fair!

183 Modern - a quilt using a new design or reinterpreted traditional design, including improvisational piecing, alternative block structures, or emphasis of negative space and asymmetry.

I worked with the Fabric and Threads superintendent this fall to get this category added.  If you live in Iowa and have made a Modern quilt would you please consider entering it?  Please?  I would hate to have asked for a new category and have no entries.

To enter a quilt in the Iowa State Fair:
Go to the Iowa State Fair 2013 Categories/Premium Books Page

1. Read the Fabric and Threads Booklet to see how many things you would like to enter.  Only one entry per category.
2. Fill out an online entry form.  You do not have to know for sure what you are going to enter at this time.  It will simply ask you how many entry tags you would like.  Each tag can be used for any of the Fabric and Threads categories. 
3. Drop off your item on July 27th.
4. Pick up your item on August 19th

I would love to see a bunch of modern styled quilts hanging at the fair!

Pillow Talk Swap 10

the fabric pull for my partner

For the last month things have felt a bit more calm around here.  Maybe because the baby is sleeping through the night now?   I started to feel kind of itchy and wanted to do some social sewing.  So I signed up for the Pillow Talk Swap.  This is my first time in the swap and man, is it fun!  We have all been assigned secret partners and people are posting pictures of fabric pulls and pattern ideas and asking for feed back.  There are so many great fabrics and ideas that I wish I was 10 peoples' partner!  ;)

My partner said she likes blues, greens and other pastel combos.  She also had some pictures of pillows with hexagons in her inspiration mosaic.  You know how I love English paper piecing!  So I ran with her hexagon inspiration photos.  So far I have appliqued 1 inch hexagons onto a variety of 1.5 inch hexagons.  The plan as of now is to space them about 1/2 inch apart and applique them onto a linen background.

I am loving how it looks and loving making it!