Two for two!

Well, we went to the Virginia state Fair today. Both of the quilts I entered won ribbons! The safari quilt got Honorable Mention in the Crib/Small Bed Quilt category.
And the auction quilt got First Place in the Art Quilt/Wall hanging category!
We're tired and happy here at our house!

Brittany's quilt

I'm making some real progress on my niece Brittany's graduation quilt. What? Yeah, so graduation was a few months ago. I know. But in quilting time, I'm doing fine. Early, even!

Here I am working away at the quilting, at the shop with Amy. I had to buy new gloves because I left mine at home.
Here is the back. I love the back, maybe even more than the front! I know, it's a lot of white, but I've really been drawn to this look lately. And Brittany's a responsible kid. She'll take good care of it. You can see my loopy quilting on the right side. This is the biggest quilt I've quilted so far, so I wanted to use my most comfortable fill pattern. The label is near the top right, at the end of one of the strips of blocks. These were the leftovers from the front squares.
And here is the label. I embroidered it myself. I've decided I love embroidering labels. This is the wave of the future for me, I think. The metal you see in the "with" is from a safety pin on the front. It will be gone when I'm done quilting it.Today it was over 90 degrees so I contend that it's still summer.

Safari quilt

This is one of the quilts I'm entering into the state fair. The other is the auction quilt, which you've probably seen before. Tomorrow morning, Amy and I will drive up to deliver them (she's entering a couple quilts as well). This quilt, which I call the Safari Quilt, was made for a friend who was having a baby. We fell out of touch (but have reconnected thanks to Facebook). Anyway, I had it nearly done except for one missing line of quilting and the binding. So it still fits the rules of being finished in the past year. I actually only finished the binding a few days ago! The design is mine. I took the safari pictures and cropped them. The giraffe's head sticks out of the frame because if I had cut a rectangle, a predatory animal would have been in the bottom right corner, looking at its lunch. So I took another giraffe image and appliqued it onto the brown border and green fabric. It was needle turn applique, and those horns are small! That's why there is blue fuzz showing a little. I may need to break out the brown Sharpie before tomorrow morning.
I was really anal about the layout. If you look carefully, you'll see that no predator is looking toward prey. I'm such a softie!

Pretty little wallet

I made a quick shop sample this morning; this pretty little wallet. It isn't fancy, but I like the way the fabric worked out. I centered the motifs. It is the same fabric line as my Birdie Sling. It's a little hard to tell from the angle of this photo, but the sides do curve in. The pattern is a Valori Wells Sewing Card (available, of course, at the shop and featured in the upcoming gift fair). The only downside is that the fusible Velcro isn't sticking as well as I'd like it to. It's very humid here, and I wonder if that's not affecting it. Any ideas?

Another blast from the past

This is the quilt I refer to as "Molly's quilt." I made it in a class that I took while I was pregnant with her. I finished it while we lived here in Virginia. I didn't really intend it to go to her, but I haven't made her a quilt just for her yet. I know, bad mom. Now that she's in school, maybe for Christmas. Or perhaps I should say Winter Solstice. I'm starting to get a little more sensitive about the religion thing. I don't want her to be confused. We're Humanists, you see (which in Virginia is a Big Deal). I'm not anti-Christmas, but I think she's going to start hearing more and more about the religious aspects, and I just want her to understand. We still do the tree and Santa and all of that.Closeup! There are hearts, flowers, wavy lines, loops and straight lines. It's not a twin, but it's the biggest thing I've made.
I have gotten something done in the past few days, but it's just the top and I want to wait until it's quilted to show it off. Stay tuned!

Roll-Up Chalkboard

We have this new chalkboard fabric at the shop. It's great! It works just like a chalkboard, but it's vinyl (I think) so it's flexible. It doesn't have give like fabric, but otherwise you can sew right through it. We also have iron-on vinyl that you can adhere to fabric to make it waterproof. In this case, it's making the fabric chalkproof so it won't get stained. I tested a pattern that we'll have available during our gift fair which is the weekend of September 19th. It has a little pocket on the side for chalk and a cloth to erase.
Eventually it will go to Molly. The good news is that I made it on her first day of school, so it will be a surprise if I give it to her during the holidays. Here's a photo of her when I dropped her off at school. It's her first day of kindergarten, though it's still at the same school (with the same teacher and classroom) that she had last year.