Yesterday, I spent the day with a crew from my guild, hanging quilts that have been entered in the county fair. I was so tired last night that I didn’t even get up for my once or twice bathroom trip!! I came home and made Pizza Margherita with whole wheat dough from Trader Joe’s. Steve accused me of being grumpy – I think I was. Went to my room and watched Six Feet Under and unquilted a piece I am working on. I wasn’t happy with the quilting.

Here are pics of my day yesterday. Here you see piles of quilts which have been judged.

Our first job is to sort them by size and staple the ribbons on the tags.

Here are the guys on the cherry picker hanging the first quilt.

We decide where to hang the quilts and get them on the right size pole. Then we hand them off to the guys who graciously follow our instructions which sometimes means taking down a quilt and hanging another because we didn’t like the way it looked.

See, here is a group assessing the situation.

This was a crowd favorite. She had machine quilted it on a regular size machine and it looks fabulous.

In addition to hanging quilts from the beams, we also hang them on the walls.

;Here is a long view of the quilts hanging from the beams. The quilt in the center won Best of Section and Best Hand Quilting. It was done by a member of my guild. She does exquisite hand quilting and wins this award every year.

On the tables above, you can see all of the assorted home dec stuff that was entered – knitting, weaving, tole painting, scrapbooks etc., etc. My friend Pat wasn’t there to help me give the award for the tackiest item in the room so I decided not to reveal my choice. Instead, I will show you these felted dolls that I think are so adorable. I took the picture for my daughter, Steph. I think she should make some.

The studio is a disaster area. I had to clear a place for Stevie to come and watch a movie with me tonight. We watched The Notebook, a schmaltzy, tear jerker – but great – especially for a couple of old farts such as we are.

I have almost finished 7 quilts. The final two are not quilted as I decided to have a nice evening with Steve rather than running the sewing machine full tilt.

This one is named Reflections because some of the fabric looks like reflections of flowers and foliage in water. I made 4 more blocks and added some non-fused blocks. I think the quilting will really enhance this one.

This is named Dot Calm. I love the calm and soothing colors in this piece. I fussy cut circles to fuse over all the quilt.

What did I learn from this? It is a good thing to push yourself creatively and to get  past obsessing over details and just do it. I will say that as I got to the end of the week I started obsessing and that is why the last two are not complete.

Tomorrow I am going to the fairgrounds to hang quilts. This is something I do every year with some good friends. I never enter anything, but I love checking the judges comments, seeing who won ribbons and then helping to decide how to hang the hundreds of quilts. We usually have a couple of cute college kids on a cherry picker at our beck and call! I’ll post pics tomorrow night. It has been hot, hot, hot so the comfort level will not be great.

Please go visit Filambulle who was inspired by my technique and created a lovely quiltlet – much nicer than mine!! I believe she found me via one of my daughter’s blogs. Her new blog is in French.

I put the finishing touches on the flamingo, titled A Delicate Balance. I added the sun and a binding – the perfect fabric found in my batik stash.

I also finished one of the fused tops from last night. I added some circles in different sizes and some quilting. I’m not sure how to title this. Right now it is Going in Circles.

Today I went to see Cynthia my hair stylist for color and a cut. While we were waiting for the dye to cure, she said she wanted to give me a pedicure. I am a low maintenance kind of gal. I don’t really pamper myself much so this was a special treat. I have coveted DebR’s lovely toenails. Now I have some great toes, too!

Tonight, I got so carried away cutting curves and rearranging them in blocks, that I ran out of time to technically finish the quilt by stitching. But, I think three quiltlet tops trumps one completed quiltlet.

These are all silk and fused. They are about 15 inches square.

Again, the problem of photographing at night makes the colors off and the images a little blurry, but when the quilting is done, I will retake the photos.

For this project I cut 9 inch squares of fused silk. I layered 4 at a time and cut curved pieces. Then assembled them and fused to batting in a grid pattern. I am looking forward to quilting these. I have had in mind, for awhile, a large quilt with larger blocks using a curved  pattern. 

On another note, I managed to get my available memory on the Mac from 5 + GB to 9+ GB and successfully installed Microsoft Office. Now I have to order Tiger. I MUST maintain my photo and graphic files every week.

Diane stopped by today and found out what chaos I am working in with my marathon quilting, but I must say that I am extremely content and stress free. I’ll clean the place up when the week is over.

The quilt of the day is a flamingo to grace our newly painted turquoise bathroom. It had to be long and narrow. This was done with raw edge applique, glued down just enough to allow for stitching – which was fun on the flamingo. This was a little ambitious for the time I had tonight so the binding is not done. I had this quilt in mind for awhile so the sketching had been done. I did have to buy some pink fabric. I also got a new bolt of wunderunder with a 40% off coupon. Last night I used up my current bolt fusing the silk.

I spent much of the day doing a clean-up on my Mac. It is so clogged with photos, graphics and newsletter files that I  am running low on memory. I want to install Tiger and some other software so it was time to do some housecleaning. I made a good dent, but there is much more that I can save to cds or trash!! I also met with a member of the church who is helping me update the church website. What a sweet guy. We have been communicating via e-mail and I had not met him because he goes to a different service than I do. I’m really excited about his ability to help me get the dinosaur we now have looking updated and easier to navigate.

It is really past my bedtime. I have to go to sleep and dream up another quilt for tomorrow.