ThreadBear

A lot of things are getting done around here. I mentioned last post that I’d finished my pupster quilt. Well right on the heels of that, my “River Challenge” got completed.  This is unusual because I tend to start tons of projects and unless they are for a specific event (like weddings, xmas, birthdays…), I never get to the end product.

But on to my ‘river’. What is it?

Well… my rather artistic quilt group, the Knot Even Quilters (of which I am one of the lesser of the artistic, but I have fun) set up a challenge. We drew a river on a sheet of paper, cut it into 9 sections and each of us took a section. We then picked fabric that each of us would use in the river.

Rules?  Only rules were that the outer edges of the river itself had to stay the same size so that we can hang our rivers side-by-side and have them “flow” and to use some of the focal fabric.  Can you see below where the quilts on the sides of mine match up?  That was it!  It really ended up being a lot of fun. Here are a couple of photos that Kathy Schmidt took of my quilt since I haven’t broken out the camera to take my own:

River Challenge ("Just Before Dawn")

River challenge close up

It’s got a lot of everything in it — some piecing and lots of fusible/raw-edge applique. I even broke out my embellishing tool and hot glued little pearls and crystals. That was just too much fun! Just for something different, there one small area with couching because I didn’t like the way that raw edge was looking. I was most pleased with the river itself and the forground which is a pieced almost crazy quilt looking section. Quilting all done on the longarm.

Pop on over to Kathy S.’s blog and see the rest of the quilts.  They are all so cool and different. We are excited that they will be featured in the Quilt Patch’s fundraiser show in May (weekend of May 14th).  If you are in Tecumseh, you’ll have to stop by.  Its a fundraiser for the project to transform the old Carnegie Library building into a welcome center for the area (hopefully will house other non-profit groups and all kinds of wonderful things). I’ll post more on that when I get more information.

Happy Quilting

~Kathy

Do you name your quilts?  Maybe that sounds like a silly question but I was thinking tonight how I do give my quilts some sort of name.  Very rarely do I just stick with the name of the pattern and more often than not it is a name that blends not just the pattern design but what the quilt means to me. Sometimes its the fabric or the purpose, who it is for or why I’m making it.  Often, just the name helps me determine how to do the final quilting or even what I will put on the label.

For example, I made a quilt a couple of years ago that was an attic window pattern. Nothing special per se, but I was using a landscape print so that it looked like you were looking out of a cabin into the woods. It reminded me of when I lived in California and we would travel up north for vacations into the redwoods. So the quilt became my “Hotel California”.  Every time I worked on that quilt and even when I made the label, the Eagles song ran through my head. It still does whenever I think of this quilt. When I made the label, I took a scan of a vintage redwood photograph and added my quilt name.

Hotel California

Hotel California label

This weekend I was finishing up my “Berry” pupster quilt and knew that it needed a name (well, a name other than just ‘his’ name), especially since he will be going in the Sauder quilt show.  And of course it came to me… “Love is a Warm Puppy”.  I’m so thrilled to be done. It was very hard to take that first stitch, but it came together so easily. Love my Statler!  Recommendations from fellow longarmers were to use a smaller needle (yes, I did break one!) and slow down.  But there were no problems going through the fusible nor did any of my piecing fall apart.  I’m very pleased and I hope you will stop by Sauder to see him in person.

Love is a Warm Puppy

That’s all for this week.  Happy (and warm) quilting everyone!

~Kathy