Disregarding a day of illness and learning about other (non-threatening) medical conditions, I've been spending time on organizing the Library Quilt Show. This is the 3rd year that the guild has displayed quilts at our local library, but we do it differently than one would do at a quilt "show." The building is not designed to display a number of quilts on racks as is usually done at a quilt show. There are concerns over security of the quilts as well handling of them by the public (by this, I mean children--and adults--with chocolatey fingers) 😀 that we simply don't want to deal with. So we display smaller quilts, one or two at a time in a secure area. I've made up a description of each quilt and it's "story" that's displayed beside the quilt, and we also pull a number of related books from the shelves to include in the display. Because we only show one or two quilts at a time, this means that each of the 3 of us on the committee have to stop by once a week to change out the display quilt. We also have a "bed turning" on one of the Saturdays in April and we accept quilts of any size for this.
So working on this project has consumed much of my time this week. I have also been in the sewing room a bit, working on this child's quilt that I began several years ago.
When Lily was a little girl I sewed her a dress and pinafore using this lavender fabric with fairies on it. I used this fabric for the plain blocks which don't really show up very well in the photo above, and pulled colors from the fabric for the alternate, pieced blocks. I'm not 100% satisfied with how the colors work in this little quilt, but they work pretty well when you actually see it.
I found this pastel lavender/aqua print for the backing, and I have enough of it to make a second child's quilt as well.
And I'll use this dark purple for the binding.
So far I've finished the straight line quilting and will be getting some purple thread tomorrow to begin working on the FMG in the blocks.
I've also been making great progress on the embroidery blocks for my A Year in the Garden quilt. The June block below is a bit more pastel and pinker than what shows in the photo, and those flowers are made of thousands (I swear!) of lazy daisy stitches. So painstaking, but I really love the effect.
July's blocks was a bit simpler, mostly back stitching.
I finished August this morning and added some embellishment that Jennifer didn't include in her design. I've noticed that she rarely uses any French knots, one of my favorite stitches, so I added some in the clusters of flowers at the bottom of the design. I like how they turned out.
I've also been preparing projects to take with me on retreat later this week. I'll be at retreat from Friday morning through Sunday afternoon. Can't wait! I'm so ready to get out and relax with some wonderful women and some wonderful quilting projects. Tomorrow I'm going to Eau Claire to run a few errands and pick up a few things I need before Friday.
And one last thing: The temps have been in the 40's pretty consistently this week so a lot of our snow has melted but at a slow rate and we're not having any flooding in my part of the state. There's still about a foot of snow on the ground and I can't see any of my flower beds yet, but I know the daffys and crocuses are tucked in, just waiting for the sun. And this is the perfect weather for the maple syrup harvesters so hopefully there will be a bumper crop of liquid yumminess this year.
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