Bloggers Quilt Festival Entry

I've been looking forward to the Bloggers Quilt Festival because I have a special finish for the year of 2016. My very first donation quilt! We will talk about all the blah blah blah's in a minute so without further ado, here is 

BARN STARS

OK, now for the blah blah blah's. Back in 1985, I graduated from St. Benedicts. I attended 7 schools in my life and this was the school of friends I bonded with and will never forget. I can run in to a classmate and it's like we never left.  Well I ran into one one day and we decided to have a class reunion. We got 6 other people on board to help and now we are planning a reunion for 2017! Problem is, we have no money for a budget to plan.

I decided to make a quilt to raffle off to make some cash for the event. We thought we would be able to enter it into the St. Ben's summer social and give half of the proceeds to the school, and keep half for our reunion. Well, it didn't quite work out like we thought. Father explained that the money for the social goes toward tuition costs for less fortunate students. He didn't want to set a precedence. Although we completely understand, it was a little disheartening.

I still want to find a way to raffle this off to raise funds for our reunion, but I'm afraid I don't know where to start. I know legalities are involved with permits and such, so it's a little daunting. Suggestions would be appreciated!

This quilt started with the fabric and sort of evolved. I had no pattern or direction and just kind of went with what came to me.

Close up of the quilting, zippling.

I bought all solid fabric at first but even that decision quickly changed. I originally was going to make one big star. My goal was to make it super big, super fast! I can never keep things that simple. It went from one star to 4. then while making the stars I wanted arrows on the top and bottom. I knew I did NOT want a border. I really wanted to keep everything floating.

The whole thing measures about 70 x 98. Hmmmm, I may have to tweek it if I ever make a pattern. Not exactly standard. I know my long legged friends would love it, though;)

The back was an evolution of left-overs. I always seem to have left-overs. I think the back deserves a little personality too. Don't you?

With the quilt label, I added some ravens to represent our school mascot

And no quilt photo shoot of mine would be complete without my little Zoey

I mean...look at that precious smile :)

I hope you love it as much as I do! I'm really pleased with how my first quilt design turned out!

Good luck to all who participate in the Bloggers Quilt Festival!

A year....I'm still here

Wow, I can't believe it has been a year since I have blogged. My free time seems to be non-existent. Work, clean, fix dinner, clean, laundry=mental exhaustion. I think I need a class on how to better manage my time.

To be fair, there has been nothing I felt like blogging about last year. My free time was taken up by a quilt. A quilt I didn't want to do. An unsatisfying quilt(to me).

You see, back at the end of 2014, My aunt purchased an Amish quilt top. She asked me to put it together for her. I don't enjoy doing this type of work, but after much persuasion and negotiation, I agreed.

I don't like to work that way. It's not enjoyable for me to finish someones work. But, she's family. A bit easier for me to back down on my firm NO!

To make matters worse, my sister was pregnant and begged me to make her an entire layette about 1.5 months before her daughter was born. So right when I finally get some momentum going on the Amish quilt, I had to stop and work on baby things because the baby was coming soon. Guess what? I STILL need to make a bed skirt and a baby quilt :O. But I had to stop that project because, well, she was born, and my aunt was becoming impatient.

My sister and niece

this window cushion was a challenge and took FOREVER!!! getting the foam in was even worse. I ripped the cushion the first time because it was a tight fit, as it should be. After a little googling, and repair, I found the proper way. but the foam in a plastic bag and vacuum the air out. Put it in the cushion (quickly). then rip the bag off. It's a little cumbersome, but doable. It was hard to find a bag the right size.

Then my niece was born with a heart defect and went into congestive heart failure. She is soing fine and thriving finally after surgery to repair the holes in her heart. That put things on hold as well. We were all so scared!

Well, I FINALLY got the king size Amish quilt top FINISHED!!!!!! YAY!!! Huge burden lifted!

Amish quilt

So now I can get back to doing me. I have learned to say NOOOO!!!!!!!! It really is a matter of my own stress levels.

To bring you to current events, I'm making a quilt for my daughter's room that we are planning to re do. I will blog about that later. Yesterday I made my first public appearance!! I was asked by a colleague to take part of an around the world folk art bazaar for charity at one of the elementary schools at the school corporation I work for. It was my first public appearance :)

I  did a quilting demo for free motion quilting and had some of my quilts on display. It was fun to see little ones, both girls AND boys interested in what I was doing. I wish I had gotten some pictures, especially of this one little girl who already had her own sewing machine! LOVE TO HEAR THAT!!!!!

Me and Erika

I met the sweetest, most intersting foreign exchange student from Slovakia. Her name is Erika. She is 18 years old and she was demonstrating "Mal'ovanie Voskom" which basicall means, painting with wax.She melted crayons and painted designs on eggs. She learned this technique when she was 8 years old when she joined a creative club after school.She makes them every year before Easter.She is a kindred spirit in that she has a broad range of creative interests(like me) including sewing!I was so nervous to do this event, but meeting new people and seeing the little ones take interest made it all worth it!

Erika gifted me 2 eggs! Aren't they BEAUTIFUL??!!