Tag: Red White Challenge

Quilt Shows

Red/White Mini Quilt Show

Elizabeth E.8 Comments

After seeing the quilts along the streets of Temecula, I headed to the Temecula Quilt Company, a shop that specializes in reproduction fabrics, which lies about 4 miles inland from Old Town Temecula.

As usual, she had done the displays in such a perfectly arranged fashion.  There’s a little excitement when you have a quilt in a show, even a mini one, and I hunted for my two.

Right away I see one of mine: the folded quilt on the lower left.

It’s a deeper red than those around it and I like how she harmonized all the patterns together along with color tones.

Some quilts were tiny, some small, some larger.  Sometimes we think we can only make giant-sized quilts, but these little ones carry great visual punch.

Some quilts have more red, some have more white.

What makes this starry quilt intriguing for me, is the tilting of the central stars in the blocks.

Teensy little rooster quilt.

With a fabulous label.  Wouldn’t it be very cool to have a “signature label” like this one?  I suppose that #184 in the upper left corner is her personal number of quilts?  I’ve got to make smaller quilts so I can catch up!

The quilt on the upper right (center-ish) is compelling with all the applique symbols.

In the classroom area, she had this giant red/white quilt top started.

More classroom quilts.

Close-up.

I started chatting with the shop owner as I exlaimed at how much I enjoyed her display.  Next year, she said “Blue and White!”  I laughed.  She asked me if I’d seen my quilts and I told her I hadn’t found my table runner.

“The sampler from around the world?” she asked?  “We put it up front where we could display the full length of it.”

Ah, there it is!  Thanks again to all my participants.  It looks great.

As I sat and ate my lunch — she’d provided All-American Hot Dogs to go with these deeply All-American quilts of her mini-quilt show — I could take in all the quilts around in this area.  It was a lovely, satisfying day, spending time with quilts and with other quilters, and I appreciated all the efforts of those who put up displays for all of us to enjoy.

I strolled around the shop once more, trying to see everything.

The show will be up for the month of October — if you are in the area, I’d suggest heading there to enjoy all these quilts!

Quilt Shops

To Temecula!

Elizabeth E.3 Comments

What does that mean?

It means that today was the day I dropped off my Red/White Challenge Quilt to the Temecula Quilt Company.  The grand opening is October 1st and will run for a month.

My friend Leisa helped me measure them for the tags we placed on them.

I received a very cute thank you gift, shown here with one of Temecula Quilt Company’s patterns (they have a line of their own).  I love the slogan printed on the top of the pattern: What has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1).  This is so appropriate for their shop as they use a lot of traditional patterns with reproduction fabrics.

This is a little kit to make a pillow (see above photo) and on the back of the thank-you gift were three magnets from the great Red White quilt show in New York!  I was pretty jazzed about this.

One of the things I love about this shop are the displays.  Everything is so creative and interesting which makes you want to take everything home.  But of course you can’t.

So this is why I bought the pattern.  I may make it in different colors, but their theme resonates with me.

Another clever display.  Most of us have these wooden spools hanging around and here’s what you can do with them: make a mini quilt and wrap them up for display.  The spool will keep the quilt from flopping over, and you’ll have done something interesting with the spools.

Check the  website of the *Temecula Quilt Company* for more.

Finishing School Friday

Red/White Table Runner

Elizabeth E.3 Comments

Ta-Done!

Gathered here are:

a block from Sue (Canada)
a block from Kay (Australia)
a block from Leisa (California)
a block from Sarah (California)
a block from Rhonda (Virginia)
a block from Lisa (California)
and a block from me, all combined to make a table runner that will remind me of these lovely quilting friends.  For even if I didn’t know them at the beginning, I’ve made some new friends by the end.  Thank you, one and all.

I stippled it with invisible thread on top, and red rayon thread on the back.

Because I might want to turn it over and use the reverse on occasion, I hand wrote my initials and the date.  But I have this blog to remember everyone by–now to take it to Temecula and enter it in their Red/White Challenge.

(Originally labeled FSF, for Finishing School Friday, a series I ran for a while.)

WIP

WIP–Red/White Table Runner

Elizabeth E.6 Comments

Even though my week was somewhat stalled, due to Lack of Personal Energy (that even chocolate and caffeine couldn’t fix), I did force myself to some progress on the Red/White Challenge blocks.  I wanted to make a table runner, but didn’t know how it would come together.  I played around with a lot of ideas, putting the blocks on point, but in the end, it was all about getting the blocks to interact together.  I love how they seemed to “converse” when they were up on my pin wall and I knew if I put them on point, that conversation would vanish.

So I made a mock-up of the blocks with a checkerboard border.

Then I kept switching around the order of the blocks until I got an arrangement I liked.

Stitched together and pinned–ready for quilting!  It’s good to have something smaller to work on, because school started this week.  For those who don’t know, I teach English at a local community college, and this semester (they rotate our classes) I’m teaching Introduction to Literature.  We’re diving into poems right off the bat, so I thought I’d offer up this poem by Billy Collins, as a tribute to what students in literature classes can do to a poem.

Introduction to Poetry

by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.

But the most important thing of all is, it’s my daughter’s birthday.  Because she developed pari-partum cardiomyopathy upon the birth of her last child–a life-threatening disease–I celebrate every birthday I can.  Happy Birthday, Barbara!

And if you’ll indulge me for one more, here’s my husband and I with most of our grandchildren, taken at the last family reunion.  I LOVE glow necklaces!

Originally linked up with online Digital Group WIP Wednesday.

See finished runner here.

WIP

Doing Nothing But Making A Mess

Elizabeth E.6 Comments


This is WIP Wednesday, hosted by Lee of Freshly Pieced Quilts, who is fabulous and writes us all a thank-you note for posting.  My mother and grandmother salute you, Lee!  (As do I.)

Let’s start with a quote from Andrew Wyeth, a great American painter, culled from the Brandywine River Museum when I visited last fall:

“I dream a lot.  When I’m doing nothing is when I’m doing the most.  Sometimes when there is great tension, or lots taking place, I may get an idea or an emotion, and it hits me strong.  I let it build in my mind before I ever put it down on the panel.  Sometimes I do my best work after the models have gone away, purely from memory.  (1996)”

I’m kind of in a fallow period right now as well. It’s time to make the shift from an all-quilt life to a life shared with the papers and detritus of my real job: an adjunct professor.  I’ve been quieter here on the blog, not because I haven’t lots to share, but I had to get that pesky syllabus over to the Copy Center on campus, as well as the Get To Know You form for the first day.  We’re also slipping out to a family reunion and a camping adventure in a National Park before I start back up again, so I’ve been doing the regular things like getting the car prepped, tires checked, laundry.  Well–you’ve all been on vacations and you know what’s involved.  Perhaps because of this, I relate to Wyeth’s comment “when there is great tension, or lots taking place”  it’s hard to be creative.


But since these Wednesday posts are about Work In Progress, I give to you my WIP: cleaning up the sewing room.
No lie.

Another lovely view.  Sometimes I just pile the stuff here and there, making way for that next project.  I’ve been trying to finish up a few things (two more coming in the next couple of weeks–on Fridays), yet you can see on the corner of my elevated cutting table a stack of reds and whites.

The Red/White Challenge finished ahead of schedule!  Here they all are, with my block on the top.  I have them up on the pin wall, just percolating there as I think very sweet thoughts about the women who took a chance on me and my quirky idea.  September 1st is the deadline for the Temecula Quilt Company’s “quilt show” and I want to have something new to add.

Somehow the idea of a table runner keeps popping up.  This book is an inspiration.

Blocks on point, bordered by a log-cabin type of block?

Or with a checkered block in between them?

I’m going to let it rest while we do family stuff for a while, and see what comes up after things simmer down.

Blog Strolling

RedWhite–AUSTRALIA

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

How fun is this?  The mail lady rang my doorbell and gave me this lovely package all the way from Australia.  I practically grabbed it out of her hands.

And look what was inside–these lovely Shoofly blocks from Kay from Down Under.  She has a funny story (which she gave me permission to relate) about these blocks.  Seems she had them all completed and ready to send off when her niece spotted them in her sewing room.  She grabbed them and gave the dogs a bath with her aunt’s “pretties.”  So Kay sent off for more fabric, and remade them.  I’ll always think of this story when I look at these blocks.  The dedication of the quilters in this red and white challenge impresses me over and over again.  Thanks, everyone!!