This blogpost continues my work on a quilt inspired by Kathy Schmidt’s Cell Block Blues pattern from her bestselling Rule-Breaking Quilts book.  (Check here for my book review.) At first I thought all my blocks (and I had no idea how many I would make or how large this quilt might be) would have bright hand-dyeds (all made by me!) as the stems and veins.  As the quilt took shape, though, I decided a bit of subtle would be a good think and make a good transition to the outer edges of the quilt which, in my mind, would be the remaining squares and rectangles from the original ten fat quarters of batik.

Another set of blocks, adding some blues to the bright mix

At this point, the design wall was getting crowded, so I removed the other “stuff” so I could spread out my blocks into what might become the final quilt.  It is fairly unusual for me not to have a final image inside my head before I begin, so I was enjoying working this way for a change.  It definitely won’t become my “new favorite” way, but I sure had fun with this one.  You’ll notice in the photo above that there are blobs of white-white fabric and dark-dark, and it got tricky getting the direction of the stems correct and preventing same-fabric from touching the same-fabric in another block! In this case, contrast is good.

The quilt grew and grew; finally, I decided I had enough blocks.

By this point, I had as many blocks as I thought I needed.  My design wall is 6 feet wide at the widest point, and I had just about reached that size, which I decided was plenty large.  As the blocks went up, I scattered the colors and the direction of the blocks as if they were swirling upwards in an autumn gust.  The bright colors are clustered in the center with the blue-vein blocks on the edges.  Now it was time to fill in the pieces.  To my dismay, I didn’t take in-process photos until after the whole thing was sewn together.

Filling it in to become a rectangle

The top is now about 40×60 inches.  This is what is left of the initial ten fat quarters, with a 6×12 inch ruler for scale:

what's left out of 2 1/2 yards of fabric (ten fat quarters)

Not much!   Seven of the ten original fabrics are pictured here.  The rest is totally used!  The white one on the right and the dark blue on the left were purchased for value-range (i.e. light-light and dark-dark) and were essential, but they really grab your eye almost too much so I stuck to the medium-dark to medium to medium-light fabrics for most of the work.

When I went to the Batiks by Design website it appeared some of the fabrics I used were sold out, so I called the store and thankfully they still had some of them, so my outer border and binding will not have to feature prints not used in the center.  I’m so glad they were willing to custom cut some pieces for me to match what I already had. Here’s to good quilty service…thanks ladies!  I’m planning on a narrow inner border of the bright colors all the way around the top shown above (probably a finished 3/8 or 1/2″ wide multicolored strip), with a wider (3-5 inches?) of squares and rectangles of the blues, with a slightly darker blue batik for the binding.  What do you think?  Suggestions?  I’m thinking maybe some of those larger rectangles on the outer edge need to get sliced up with some of the medium-value pieces set into them.  Maybe with some angles? Let me know what you think!

Last year, Karey Bresenhan and company (the forces of nature behind the International Quilt Festivals) had a great idea:  an exhibit of the photos quilters use to inspire them.  The small exhibit was such a success that they are doing it again this year, and two of my three entries were accepted!

The theme this year is Reflections.  As soon as I heard that, I KNEW I wanted to have this photo as one of my entries, titled Joy Reflected.  It is the day we brought home our puppy for our son’s 9th birthday gift:

Joy Reflected: the day Pigwidgeon (the pug puppy) came home, with the dearly departed Yeti-dog on the left and Eli on the right

I also remembered a photo I took while on a visit to the Maine Coastal Botanical Gardens with the Frayed Edges.  Since the photo was a bit tippy, I fiddled a bit with it in photoshop to make it look better (including odd clipped edges).  It is, to me, one that captures all the elements:  Earth (the rock and trees), Water (caught in the carved boulder),  Air (reflected sky) and Fire (that helped create the rock), so I called it Elemental:

a foggy Maine day reflected in the carved boulder

When I was teaching in Arizona, the hotel in Flagstaff had these AMAZING carved doors.  I am always on the lookout for quilting motifs, so snapped a few photos.  Although this photo didn’t make it in to the exhibit, I still like it.  And I, my camera flash and the overhead lights are reflected in the shiny doorknobs:

This year instead of two league teams, we ended up with just one because we didn’t (a) have enough boys to field two full teams and (b) didn’t have coaches (volunteer!) for two teams.  That meant for the first time there were cuts (SOB) to the roster.  We really miss the other boys, but my goodness this combined team has really improved dramatically this year!   They WON the Harvest Cup tournament in York over the Columbus Day weekend, a first for our area, and on October 30 they beat the PAYSA team to advance to the semi-finals and finals next weekend!

It's a big wide field to run; that's our son as goalie in the yellow shirt, far right

Sometimes it is terrifying for the goalie, but better when your team is there to help you defend the goal (Pen Bay is in blue)

The PAYSA team (red shirts) was by far the best team we have played all season. In honesty, the outplayed us the entire game, dominating the pace and direction of the game.  But in the end, Pen Bay (short for Penobscot Bay, the large inlet halfway up the coast of Maine on whose shores you can find Lincolnville, Camden and Rockport, among other towns) United won by 3-2, holding off yet another surge by PAYSA at the last minute to hang on to the win.

Sometimes it is lonely being the goalie. And cold. It was so chilly--a high of about 50 with the wind blowing--that the refs let the goalies keep on their long pants! (In Eli's case, flannel holiday jammies!)

Another nail-biting moment as the other team attempts to score...notice how well placed the PAYSA kids are to receive the rebound

The ref just blew the game whistle--PenBay had held off PAYSA by 3 to 2!

A team of very happy 13 year old boys and very happy coaches, too!

The end-of-game shaking of hands of the teams and refs

As we were walking to the car, one of the PAYSA coaches was wonderful…congratulating our boys on a win.  We allowed as how, frankly, they had outplayed us the entire game, but he said yes, but your  boys were still able to make the points when it counted and win.  Gracious, generous…and I agree:  our teams would both improve if we could play each other more during the season.

But before we left the field, the boys surprised us (the parents walking across the field to the team bench) by stringing out in a line and racing across the field, bursting through and round us:

Team spirit--after the game, racing across their half of the field in unison (sorry about the overexposure, no idea what happened)

And racing back–yes, they covered the field!

And back...thatsa lotta boys!

We didn’t have a team photo of ALL the boys (one or another was always missing before), so we got a team photo….a line of kids and coaches, and a line of mostly moms armed with cameras snapping away madly…of the 12 or so shots I got, this was the best (no one making weird faces, blinking or looking down!)

A team photo--victory!

So, you might ask, what have I been doing?  OK, no, you probably haven’t been asking.  But it has been insane here.  We are hoping to buy a new house and move in January, so there have been MANY (way too many hours) doing real estate related stuff.  The good news is that our house got a contract on it in 12 days, in this economy!  The bad news …well…. I’ll share when all is said and done (you won’t believe the story when I can finally tell it).  Let’s just say EVERYTHING is on track, and we do expect to move (so much for January as making quilts time!) in January—yeah!

In the meantime, I’ve not been able to concentrate a lot on art quilts.  But I liked that use-a-big-print sampler I made for my free-motion class  so much that I decided to make a bed quilt, possibly as a project piece for a future book (yeah, shoot me again please!). Here are the squares pieced with the sashing into rows:

Big prints with white sashing (vertical pieces)

Adding the horizontal sashing....it has been a LONG time since I've done precision piecing!

And the first of the rows with the horizontal sashing added..I am going to LOVE this quilt.  But it’s a good thing I am probably buying an HQ16 sit-down machine early next year as I will need the space:  this quilt will finish at about 100 inches on each side!!!!

The top three rows now have the horizontal sashing....

And I’m getting ready to head out on Nov. 2 for the International Quilt Festival in Houston.  I will have four quilts and two photos on display!

Cookie? PLEEEZE Cookie! is in Art Quilts-Miniatures in the juried show

Joshua is in the Beneath the Surface Exhibit

Koi and A Sense of Place:  The Wall are in the 500 Art Quilts exhibit, where the quilts are from the Lark Books book of the same name.

and in the Eye of the Quilter Exhibit, I will have two photos!  I’ll post those photos in a post in a few days!

But here is the pile of “getting ready to take” stuff, including some in progress postcards for a swap. I’m going to take some of this round’s swap cards for my demo in the MistyFuse booth!

Nearly two years ago, someone on one of the lists I’m on posted a link to this video… I am thinking it must have been someone from Australia who had seen this on television there.  Anyway, it is a moving and powerful song, and  having just watched it again felt the need to share.  I hope you enjoy: