Pendulum...

The past six months I've felt like I was on a pendulum... swinging back and forth, stopping here and there, always landing on the one thing that felt more urgent than anything else I should be doing.

In the spring, it was finding balance between clearing out the gardens and quilting. The gardens won out for a while. The early perennials were already up: the forget-me-nots, the orange poppies, the bachelor's buttons, the pasture daisies, and lots of snowdrops. It was the perfect time to clear away any weeds before the summer plants started to push through. And the lilacs... oh, my. The four shrubs were loaded with blooms, and smelled heavenly.

And then quilting won, because I needed to finish up my show quilts by the end of May. For a solid month, I sat with a quilt on my lap every evening, hand quilting or embroidering or binding. And every nice day, I was looking out the windows, wanting to be outside.

And for that same month, I watched it rain, then shine, then rain. I was grateful for the rain, because quilting had to be the priority. But what I really wanted was to be outside, weeding and edging and pruning, keeping an eye out for the perennials pushing up through the bark into the light. 

So I breathed a huge sigh of relief the day I turned in my quilts. Time to garden!

Somehow we found time for some weekends away: Tri-Cities with cycling friends, Port Angeles for two winery weekends, Whidbey Island for a family wedding. Fun... but getting distracted from the yard and flowers was also frustrating.

Another long weekend of rain gave me a chance to wrap up another project: making a list of a huge pile of household items, clothes, and books (lots of books) headed for Goodwill. I've been clearing out drawers and closets, trying to downsize. And everything has landed in our small studio apartment (out of sight, out of mind).

And then, back to the garden. The newly planted dahlias grew fast, and there's much to learn about growing these flowers. The farm stands and nurseries started putting plants on sale, and a few came home with me to be added to the perennial garden before fall. And the weeding never ends. Never.

And neither do household chores, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking. But we won't go there today.

Quilt room...

I love my guest room. It's nestled in the dormer of my 1923 farmhouse, cozy and comfortable. It's also become the quilt room. Not where I create quilts, but it's where my collection of antique quilts lives. And a bear made from an antique quilt. And a stack of antique yellow suitcases, watched over by a Boyds bear (my whole collection of collectible bears lives in the walk-in closet off the guest room).



It's also where I display the tiny hand-made quilts I love to make from orphan quilt blocks. The blocks either side of the hearts quilt are orphans; the hearts quilt is a panel I bought in the late 1970s. On a visit to me in the Tri-Cities, my sister taught me how to hand quilt, using this panel. My passion for quilting had its roots with her, and I am very grateful.



My ribbon-winning quilt, Field of Flowers, was always destined for the guest room. The colors fit perfectly in this room, with the cream-colored bead-board walls and pale green carpet.

It took Madison exactly five minutes... maybe six... to discover the new addition, and make herself at home.

Quilt show, day one... an amazing day

I showed up early at the school again, eager to walk through the show now that ribbons have been hung. We had a record number of quilts entered this year, I think 169. When my friend, Tabatha arrived with her daughter, I excused myself to go walk through the quilts.

My closest quilt was right around the corner from the bazaar, so I dropped off my bag and grabbed my phone, and walked over to my closest quilt, Counting the Hours. And I stopped dead when I saw the blue first place ribbon hanging on it. I finished this quilt at a retreat last January, and a friend told me I had to put it in the show, that it was perfect for the guild challenge (for scrap-buster quilts). So I did (crossing my fingers). I thought the quilt turned out really well, but knew that Civil War fabrics aren't for everyone. I was hopeful, but I never expected to win. I was in tears.

I snapped a quick photo of the ribbon and quilt, and walked back to my friend with tears in my eyes. She took one look and asked what was wrong, and I showed her the photo. "I won a ribbon," I said. She gave me a big hug, and her daughter walked back with me to take a picture of me and the quilt.



As I headed for my second quilt, I ran into the show organizer. "Did you see it?" she asked, with a big smile on her face. (This quilt ended up in the wrong category, and she made sure it would be judged in the right category. So when it won the category, she was thrilled. She said she wanted to tell me in the worst way, and had to be satisfied with knowing that it all worked out.)

The next closest quilt was supposed to be in the miniature category, which has a 25 x 25-in. maximum size. It ended up a quarter inch too big. Bummer. So instead, I entered it into the challenge category, since it's another scrap-buster quilt. I named this one "Best Friends," because it's made with a classic pattern called the Friendship block. I love everything about this quilt, and I took the time to quilt it by hand (which I really enjoyed). When I walked around the partition, there was my quilt with two ribbons hanging from it:  Second place of the challenge quilts, and third place for hand quilting. By this point, I was getting seriously teary, and incredibly happy.

On to the second gym, and my last two quilts. Best Friends was in plain sight as I walked in, with a ribbon fluttering from it. Oh, my... third place in the small bed quilt category. Of all my quilts, this was the one I thought had a decent chance for a ribbon.

The last quilt is a game board quilt, which I call "Checkers, Anyone?" It was my only entry in the miniature category, and there it hung, with two ribbons. And finally, I burst into tears. This little quilt won third place in the miniature category (which doesn't mean a lot, since there were only three miniatures entered). But it also got first place for hand quilting, and that does mean a lot.

I just stood there with tears running down my face. I was stunned, and incredibly happy. It was an amazing, fantastic, wonderful feeling... and one of the best days, ever.
. . .
Tomorow I'll post photos of some of my favorite quilts from the show.

Quilt show... set-up

Helping set up for my guild's quilt show is always a blast. Everyone is so excited, the atmosphere is almost electric. It doesn't matter that people worked hard yesterday to unload the storage unit and bring everything to the school, then worked all day. Today they came back for more.

Yesterday they set up the standards that the quilts would be hung from, set up tables for vendors and the bazaar and tea room, decorated the tea room tables, unloaded crates of bazaar items, hung signs in all the rooms, and set up for the volunteer/vendor lunch room. And all on a warm summer day

Today I got there at 8:00, ready to pitch in and work all day long. I'm just hoping it doesn't get hot today... the air conditioning won't really work until tomorrow. Today we finished setting up the huge bazaar area, helped the vendors get their booths set up, and hung the quilts. And that's what I was waiting for. This is my fourth quilt show with the guild, and the first time I've entered any of my quilts. I was so excited to see my own quilts hanging with everyone else's. As it turns out, I got to hang each of my quilts... cool!

This block pattern is called Grannie Squares, similar to the well-known crochet pattern translated into millions of afghan blankets in the 1970-80s. I always loved the pattern, and when I found the block pattern online, thought it was perfect for a bundle of strips that I bought years ago. The fabrics were designed by Joanna Figuora of Fig Tree Quilts, and I named my quilt "Field of Flowers."