Ready for Allietare!

Life is finally settling down at least a little - I am home for three weeks straight - and I am ready to get a few things done!  I am busily binding my Grand Illusion mystery quilt so that it will be ready for show & tell at our Allietare mystery kick-off party a week from Saturday.

I finally had a chance to pull fabrics for Allietare over the weekend. I was able to cover everything from stash except for the gray - I didn't have a piece that big or anything that was really the right color. I stopped by Jackman's in between rug hooking classes last weekend (I will share more on that in my next post) and found a piece of a blue-gray that really works well with my colors. My fabrics are mainly reproductions with a few batiks and contemporary prints (especially neutrals) mixed in.

I really love the colors this year! I am betting this will be a gorgeous quilt!

I pulled the final loop on the pineapple rug this weekend!  I am so excited to actually finish a rug for a change - it's been a LONG time!  I still have to bind it of course, but that is the easy part,

I found a fantastic teal-colored chunky yarn at Nola's for the binding. I surged the edges yesterday and will get started on that this week.

I hope to be back later in the week with a finished quilt to share! 

Very Little Progress...and a State Fair Rant

Okay, so let's start with the rant. I won't devote my entire post to complaining, but I just have to point out what to me is quickly becoming an injustice in the quilting world. I have nothing against digitized embroidery and applique - in fact, I own a machine and a couple of patterns and have done a little of it myself. I do believe that the end result can be fantastic and that there are lots of people out there making gorgeous quilts using the technique. The issue I have is when it seems that the workmanship involved in completing a machine embroidered applique project seems to be judged as equal to that of a needle-turned hand applique project. As someone who has done both, I know the difference - and pretty much no matter how complicated the embroider/applique project is, an intermediate to advanced hand applique project is much more difficult and requires significantly more skill. The two should not be judged side by side as applique.

When looking at the ribbon winners at the Illinois State Fair this weekend it became clear that the judges were big fans of machine embroidered applique. Those quilts seemed to take all the first place ribbons and the grand champion.  I recognize that there are several different categories and that I didn't spend the time to figure out which ones were in competition with each other, but this gorgeous hand appliqued quilt received second place.  The workmanship looked excellent (apologies for the glare - they are displayed in a glass case) and was clearly a lot more work and required more talent than some of the quilts sporting the nice blue ribbons. I didn't catch the quilter's name, but in my humble opinion she deserved first place and the grand champion ribbon!

So enough with the fair...or should I post at least one picture of the butter cow?

It was so ridiculously hot on Saturday that I had a tough time resisting the urge to join the butter cow in her display case. But instead I controlled myself and stayed just long enough to take a few pictures and then headed back to the somewhat air conditioned Hobby Building.  

I really haven't gotten much accomplished since my last post. I did make a little bit of progress on my new UFO from the MSQC retreat (the Quatrefoil quilt).  I finished all of the four patches yesterday.

Here are the blocks I completed at the retreat. I'm not entirely sure that the fabric line I selected - this was a mystery quilt involving a layer cake so I was choosing blindly- is going to work out, but I am forging ahead anyway. The color in the picture is terrible - the one above is closer to reality.

I have also done a little hooking on the pineapple rug. I need to cut more background wool to finish off that left side before moving on any farther on the right. I hate leaving all the background until the end!

I have big plans for getting lots of things accomplished next weekend. I don't have anything planned for the first weekend in a long time.  I am looking forward to it!

Wooly Woolens Fun

I had an absolutely fantastic time in Kansas City last weekend!  Janice & Jim Johnson are always fabulous hosts!  We had a great group of people - some of the regulars and a few new faces.

This was my second workshop with Jayne Hester and I am really thrilled with how my rug turned out. I would have never come up with the idea to run with teal in a pineapple and certainly would not have used teal for sunflowers, but I am so happy with the colors!

I've actually made a little more progress since I got home, mainly filling in background.  This is such a small rug relative to my usual projects - it might actually be finished reasonably soon!

Jayne's specialty is low contrast, old-looking rugs.  I think she stepped out of her box a bit for me (although my colors certainly aren't "bright" relative to a lot of things I do!). Many of my classmates had much more subtle rugs. Jeannette's was very neutral:

And Leah's was done in shades of gray with just a hint of lavender:

Cindy's rug looked amazingly old - and she is a ridiculously fast hooker:

There were lots of other great rugs - I got sidetracked taking a picture of the fabulous lunch Jim was preparing and missed getting pictures of the rest. Lunch was beautiful, too - you can see why I was distracted! 

This delicious lunch came from Jim's garden (he even claims to have grown the sausage!). As usual, all of the food was wonderful.  It was a great weekend!