Progress

I have been plugging along with Max's Christmas quilt. Bob has been sick this fall, and so I haven't had as much time to sew as I wish.  But the 2-block quilt is very nice  to work on, it's not a complicated quilt, but very pretty, and I find it an easy way to relax after a stressful day.  Here's how it looks up on my design wall so far:

I have all the unit pieces cut out and sewed, now it's just a matter of sewing them into 9-patch blocks.  I have all of the B-blocks done and am now working on the A-blocks.  

2017 Darlington Quilt Show

The Darlington Quilt Show was this weekend.  There were over a hundred entries, I entered Something Blue, Whirligigs, and the Pot Holders.  VERY EXCITED to say that Something Blue won the Viewers' Choice Award, so I have a second award winning quilt! (The Harry Potter quilt won in 2013.)  We had a good turnout for the show, the raffle quilt was won by someone in Darlington so it stays local.  AND  the Author Quilt was also taken off the wall in the Darlington Public Library and put on display in the quilt show as well!  So I'm very pleased with the show this year.

Here are MY entries in the quilt show:

 

 

One thing different about the quilt show this year was that we had a quilt appraiser, Sandy Schweitzer, do a "Quilt Walk", where anyone who was interested could walk with her at a scheduled time through the quilt displays, and she would talk about certain quilts that she thought were outstanding, or interesting, or had something to teach us about "the good, the bad, and the ugly" of random quilts on display.  It was all very interesting, and I learned a lot.  She stopped at both Something Blue and Whirligigs on the Quilt Walk and had a little bit to say about each:

     Something Blue--the "style" is very popular in this day and age, and even though the quilt is beautiful, well-constructed, and is challenging to make, it would probably not raise much money in an auction as it can be purchased at a lower cost in many places. You would probably not get your money's worth, not even to cover the cost of materials in making the quilt, to say nothing of your time and effort.  The market has a glut on these kinds of paper-pieced quilts.

     Whirligigs is a "fun" quilt, but hard on the eyes.  "You cannot look at it for too long" because the colors are so bright and the background black offers too much contrast. (bright against bright).  "There is nowhere for the eyes to rest, so they will tend to drift out of the quilt, perhaps to the wall, or a neighboring quilt."  You want to have good contrast, but also something that will bring the eyes INTO the quilt, not out of it,  

Also, neither of these quilts have labels. (bad!)  

That's ok, I still like my quilts!  :)

Pot Holders

Now that I have finished the Something Blue, and the Fan Quilt is still on the design wall, I decided to do a fun little project before I jump into the heavy duty quilting projects again.  I saw this really cute "beer" fabric at Heidi's quilt shop and couldn't resist.  I've been thinking about pot holders as potential Christmas gifts, and the beer fabric would be perfect for the men chefs in my family!

I've never made pot holders before, but Heidi was helpful in telling me what I might need.  Only thing I didn't have was "Insul-brite," which is the heat reflective material that is used inside the pot holder to protect your hands from the heat.

Heidi didn't have this particular kind, but something similar on a bolt, so I bought a yard of it and some beer fabric, and came home to play!  Little projects like this are fun because they finish up quickly, and are easy to do.  And you have a quick gift.  The only tricky part was making a loop with the binding.  I'm sure there must be a simpler way than how I did it, but I am satisfied.

The pot holders have 4 layers:  the backing, the batting, the Insul-bright, and the top which can be a pieced block. (This would be a good way to use up orphan blocks.)  I started my potholders with 10" squares and after all was said and done and trimmed, they ended up just slightly larger than 9".

Here they are, 4 so far.  I will be giving these in pairs, so  I have 2 gifts done for Xmas!  (SHHHHH!  Don't tell!)