Coffee Time!

When the challenge came out on Sunday I was at our Prairie Strippers Quilt Retreat so I didn't  give the challenge much thought until Monday morning. I knew it was going to be a busy week because I was going to be gone over the long weekend, my plan was to make something quick and easy! I decided I wanted to make a mug rug until I looked up mug rugs and saw they were almost the size of a placemat, I didn't want to make anything large so I decided to make coasters. Once I got started I Thought it would be fun to make a set for both my daughters who have birthdays in February and March, so instead of making one simple mug rug...I made 8 coasters! Apparently I wasn't thinking clearly! LOL

I found some charm squares I thought were fun for the backs and just dug through my scrap stash to find bright colored fabrics, then did some random cutting and sewing, quilted them and put a small binding on them. Pretty basic & simple but bright & colorful which is what the challenge was all about...COLOR!!!
The coasters took a couple of hours to put together and the binding took about 3 nights! I really dislike binding. So they are done & now I'm on vacation :)

Project Quilting Challenge 8.3

This week we used texture as our inspiration for Challenge #3. A rotten head cold slowed me down & I almost backed out this week, but I had a vision and I wanted to see it through! Here is my finished wallhanging. It is 20 x 24. I used batik scraps that I thought had a textured look to them, I tried to find fabrics that mimicked the cliffs, the flow of the river & the sunlight in the trees. After I GLUED the pieces down I very loosely attempted to thread paint more texture to the design. I added sequins to represent fairy lights and made little prayer flags and sewed them so they looked like they were blowing in the wind. My inspiration was the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival and the textures of a summer day on the St. Vrain. 

It's still icy cold here this week & it snowed again today. I am ready for hot summer days! Working on a fun batik quilt next door & hoping to get it finished up tomorrow. Cami & Mr. Tumnus were hanging out by the basement door today begging for handouts! It was so ugly out today but at the end of the day when I was heading home, the sun setting on the wind swept prairie was amazing! 

Oh my word! Another snow day! I honestly don't know how much more snow we can take...I guess we will find out.

A plow was on our road this morning, I'm sure to try and knock back some of the larger cuts before the wind blows again. I was so excited yesterday when I drove to work and saw where someone? The state? The tribe? Or the county? Had cut through the big banks along the highway and cleared it enough to be able to see incoming traffic at the stop sign. It made my day!

I got up this morning and got ready for work only to find out school will be released at 12:30 which means I combed my hair for nothing! LOL

Now I'm puttering around cleaning up the kitchen after making a pan of blondies and putting supper in the crock pot. I will head next door and spend the rest of the day quilting without feeling rushed!

Between trudging through the snow, the 2 Project Quilting Challenges & keeping the goats fed, I really have not gotten a lot done this month. The no electricity & the huge piles of snow made it hard to get Quilting done next door. I feel like the whole month has been a dark hole!

Last week I did finish a baby gift for one of my After School Program teachers, she had showed me a quilt she liked and wanted for her new baby to be, so I attempted to find fabrics that were similiar and make one for her. She loved it so I am pleased! I don't know why I don't have a better picture of it? This is before I quilted it, I backed it with a super soft Minkee that had little stars embossed on it.

This weekend the sun was out and I needed to get some quilting done so I spent both Saturday and Sunday next door and quilted this Binding Star that was made by one of my quilt guild

 friends. The red was not as crazy neon as my pictures look! I quilted it using a grey thread and just enjoyed meandering along for two days.

I love the piece she chose for the back! 

So my goals for January are to get all the customer quilts that need done DONE! Then figure out this blog layout! I can't handle the randomness of it! My goal for today is now finish sweeping the kitchen, water the goats & head next door before the wind starts blowing! 

Carolina Lily Challenge- Lily's of the Valley

Another Project Quilting challenge is complete! Whew! This one was a bit more challenging. The challenge was to create something that related to the Carolina Lily...which is apparently a real flower and a quilt block!
When I was researching both of them, the first thing I thought of when I saw the real Lily was a lantern...a little fairy lantern...

The Carolina Lily

The day the challenge was released we were just celebrating Christmas with some of our kids & grand kids, so it was a pretty wild & crazy time. 

I didn't put a lot of thought into the challenge other than to look up the Carolina Lily & the quilt block. One thing I did find was that the block itself is used a lot on barn quilts so I thought maybe I would do something with a barn...but after a weekend of grand kids, Christmas celebrations, sledding, goat hugging & reading about the old Norse fairies & trolls, the song "White Coral Bells" got stuck in my head & I decided I needed to go with the Fairy Lantern! 

Yogi Hugs are the best hugs! 

Goat Love ❤️

Project Quilting Season 8

I thought it would be fun to try something different this year & so I joined an online Quilting Challenge. The challenge is called Project Quilting & this is the 8th season it has been held. The first challenge this season is called 'Eight is Great' and the goal was to create something that represented the number 8.
This is my creation, I called it "The Gate of Ishtar"

It is a wall hanging that is 20 X 28 inches. I used appliqué,  paper piecing & fabric inks to create my design.
When I first read the challenge, I thought of Odins 8 legged horse, then I looked out the window at the immense piles of snow surrounding the house and I decided I needed to find something 8 related that was a bit warmer!

I found an article about the Goddess Ishtar, the Goddess of Love & War. She was the Morning & the Evening Star, her symbol is the lion & an 8 pointed star. The 8th Gate to the inner city of ancient Babylon is Ishtars Gate, this was the main entrance to the city. I decided I wanted to create a morning star and an evening star, and of course give them 8 points. Somehow I also wanted to tie in the concept of the Gate.

I don't like to do paper piecing, but I decided if I was going to do a challenge, I should probably try to
challenge myself! After digging through totes of fabric & deciding which colors I wanted to use, I
drew up a couple of star patterns and spent two days trying to figure out how to piece them together right. I challenged myself, and I remember why I hate paper piecing!

My fabric stash mess, my final fabric choices & my finished stars. I chose the colors green & what I had on hand to pass for the color magenta, both colors represent harmony & balance, which 8 also represents harmony and balance. I wanted the smaller  evening star to look like it was in the evening sky, and the larger morning star to be bright like a sunrise. I wasn't happy with my second green color in the morning star, but I was not going to do a repeat of the paper piecing! 

Then in my research for interesting facts about the number 8 I read that the Pythagoreans considered 8 to be the "little holy number" and I decided I needed to add a little shrine to my quilt. I really didn't want it to be a shrine to Ishtar so in my shrine I inked a little figure 8 on its side, which is also the symbol for infinity. 

I wasn't sure how I was going to tie this all together & not end up with a queen sized quilt! 

I decided to make an evening sky & painted the image of a crescent moon next to the stars. I then added appliqué vines and flowers to make it seem like you were looking at the sky through an ancient garden gate. I bound the quilt with the same fabric I used to make the vines. I used a number of different threads to quilt it on my long arm machine.  I used a brick like fabric for the backing, and just did random quilting, I  have a small  workshop just down the road from our house &  it was an even bigger challenge to get through the mounds of snow to reach my machine! We live in western South Dakota where we have had way too much snow this past month! 

I really enjoyed thinking outside the box and doing something different. After I finished the wall hanging I looked up images of Ishtars Gate and it was nothing like I imagined an ancient city Gate would look like. The real gate is huge, made of lapis lazuli & covered with golden images of lions and other symbols. But I like my warm little view from the gate & look forward to the next challenge!  I also think maybe 2017 is the year I need to organize my stash chaos!