Month 10

is officially done!  Not much has changed since my last post on this quilt, but I have since added two dark floater borders which frames the rest of the quilt very nicely.

The pattern called for three borders, but I cut that down to two.  Two of the original borders finished at only half an inch and the bigger border finished at three quarters of an inch.  Didn't sound like much fun to me!

Month 11 is well underway. This month has you make a paper-pieced border of flying geese.  All the fabric is cut and I have sewed two strips of flying geese.

26 left to go!

My youngest and only daughter had her dance recital this past weekend and I wanted to share her picture.

She went from five to about 15 years old in half an hour!

Another warm welcome from Montana

A few of our guild girls headed south into Montana yesterday for the Makoshika Quilt Festival in Glendive, Montana.  What a beautiful, warm sunny day we had.  After our long, long winter, it was nice to see the temperature pass +20 Celcius.  Our first stop was at Quilts and More in Sidney, Montana.

Mmmmm, Batiks!

Our group...me, Theresa, Chris, Colleen, Terry, Lori and Christa

And then off to the show where we saw some very beautiful quilts.

My favorite of the show...Bali Wedding Star

Amazon Star

In the Throes of a Summer Evening

Scrappy Batik Stars

Hand Appliqued and hand quilted

Yep, this is the second Bali Ring made by the same person!

Summer Love

Color Play

Its too bad that you can't see the quilting or the embellishing on this one.

I think its finally spring!

And the only Block Party quilt that I will show is one of my own.  I made this quilt for my Aunt Jane who lives in Detroit, Michigan.  Jane so graciously gave me a gorgeous Coach purse for my time and effort.  Thanks, Jane!  For the rest of our quilts, you will have to attend our guild quilt show which will be at the Torquay Community Centre on June 28 & 29, 2013.

I feel like I'm being watched...

We finished up the day at the Enchanted Room in Glendive and I forgot to take any pictures of the store this time.  It is an incredible store so full of warmth and inspiration.   Three of us headed home on Friday evening, but we left five down in Glendive to stay the night and to bring home our quilts.  Last I heard, they were drinking Margaritas and eating deep fried pickles.  We may never see them again!

My last picture doesn't have anything to do with quilting, but being a farmer's wife...

We are hoping that we will get into our fields, too this year!  Come on, sunshine!

A good day...

I skipped guild today to stay home and sew.  I was at a stage in Stars where it was all laid out on my floor in several dozen pieces and frankly, I was too lazy to pack it all up just to lay it all out again.

Partway through piecing the star border.

Star borders are sewn together and trimmed.

Floater border added.

Side star borders pinned.

And finally all four sides of the star border sewn on.  Yay!

It WAS a good day!  And speaking of good days, we are off to the Makoshika Quilt Festival in Glendive, MT tomorrow and probably a quilt shop or two or three! 

A drought for me...

here in Blogland!  I get so bogged down sometimes with what I want to do and say and get done, that I end up being overwhelmed and do nothing at all.  I need to get my Stars quilt done for our guild Quilt Show at the end of this June, so that has been my priority lately. 
I have Month 8 done.

And Month 9!

And I'm excited to say that all 24 of my border stars are together which means

I'm able to assemble the next border in the quilt.  You know what its like when you buy a fabric for a border and then don't love it when you are ready to put it on?  That's what happened to me with my side setting triangle fabrics.  They were too dark and overpowering and so at guild I had the girls help me choose a new fabric which is the background fabric for the whole quilt.  I did the math and I should have enough, but I was able to find another 2.25 yards on the internet.  Thanks Rossville Quilts!

My table is slowly, slowly getting into my basement.

Four drawers, three shelves and two doors!  The wood and the stain are gorgeous.  This unit was all hand pieced by the Amish of Schrocks of Walnut Creek of Walnut Creek, Ohio, USA.

And last week, Christa, MaryAnn and I had the thrill of a lifetime seeing Miss Oprah Winfrey live in Saskatoon.  What a woman!

The electricity in the room was like nothing I've ever experienced before.  It brought tears to my eyes that night and still did today.

Sorry about the bad video taping...I couldn't see my phone screen because I wouldn't take my eyes of Oprah.  I was shooting blind, so to say. (I can't get the video to upload, but I will try again later today) Oprah has said for years that she actively lives gratitude every day by writing in her Gratitude Journal.  Every day she adds five things from the day for which she was grateful.  I finally started mine when I got home.

I just so happened to have the perfect journal waiting for me at home.  This was my door prize from our quilt retreat in January of this year.  Thanks, Colleen.  I've put it to good use.

This weekend our guild is off the the Makoshika Quilt Festival in Glendive, Montana, USA.  Our guild submitted aver 20 quilts to be shown in their show, and will be a good time, I'm sure.

Sewing cabinet update

In this box is my new sewing cabinet.  It was delivered here on Tuesday of last week.  Its sitting in our quonset because I now need 4 strong men or women to help me get it into our basement.  Anyone, anyone???

And our guild is furiously getting labels and sleeves sewn onto our quilts for our upcoming show at the Makoshika Quilt Festival in Glendive, MT.  Its a good lesson for us because our quilts should already have labels sewn on them before they are ever given away!

Thank you...

to my guild girls for reminding me that my effort is sometimes "good enough".  I wanted to try to quilt my Mini Quilt by myself on my own machine using a continuous line design from Harriet Hargrave's Heirloom Machine Quilting.  I gave it a go on some scraps and I wasn't happy with the tension on my stitches...some were very loose and my stitch line was jagged.  My guild girls looked at my practice run and gave me a few tips and told me that it was good enough and to try again.

In her book, Harriet shows you many different ways to machine quilt.  I chose to use the method of tracing your chosen design onto paper that you tear away after stitching on the traced lines.

The gloves make all the difference in the world!

Almost done!

And finally, carefully remove the paper without damaging your stitches.

Hide your tread tails in the batting

I wish that the quilting showed up better in these pictures, but quilting always seems to be the hardest to take good pictures of.  The quilting turned out really, really well for my first time at it.  You can see a teensy weensy bit of the blue ink used to trace to design onto the paper.  I will have to try to fix that.

We spent last night at show and tell with the Weyburn guild girls.  Thanks so much for the great evening!  We enjoyed it. 

There is guild tomorrow, but I can't go.  Christa will have to fill us in.