End of Summer, and Exciting News!

With my kids back in school, (finally, as they started a week ago) I'm hoping that I can get back into the blogging routine again.  I guess when your kids suddenly aren't kids anymore, you quickly realize how short of a time you have left with them in the nest, and I really want to make the most of it.  We had a really nice summer. We even managed a final camping trip in and around the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness Area, which is about 1 1/2 hours away from us.  Other than a few bow hunters, many of whom waited 15-20 years to get an elk tag here, we were the only people we saw there.

But!  I also got some exciting news.  I finally took the leap and applied for a Modern Quilt special exhibit at MQXWest that is coming up in Portland, OR, in October, and both of my quilts were accepted!  My Modern Granny and my Medical Technologist Quilt will both be there.  It's a non jurried event, which is perfect for me.  I'm hoping to at least make it to the show, and perhaps take a class. The whole process has been a learning one for me, and gives me a whole new appreciation of those quilters who do this regularly.

Finally, I recently hit the half way point on my City Sampler Quilt Along.  Here's the first 50 blocks!  By the time this quilt is finished I wouldn't even want to guess how many hours it'll have in it.  I'm hoping to make a quilt for our bed (queen, maybe King).

Modern Granny Quilted!!

Quilting is a long process.  I don't blame you if you're getting a bit bored seeing pictures of this quilt, because, I'm getting a bit bored posting about it, but I'm beyond thrilled at how it is turning out.  I just finished quilting it this morning!!  I LOVE it!  Yes, it took forever, but the time I spent creating, sewing and quilting this is showing!!  It's a "keeper" for sure!!

I even had my machine start complaining.  Late yesterday afternoon, the motor started hesitating, and as I felt the beginning of panic, I decided to give the machine a break and watch the baseball play-off.  Well, I'm happy to report that the baseball therapy helped!  I also made sure that all of the pedal cable connections were well secure.  My table is flimsy, and vibrates so much that I've had feet come unscrewed just from the vibrations.  Maybe this is what happened?  Maybe it just needed a rest?  I don't know, but it gave me no problems this morning.

Lucky me too, I have exactly enough of the red batik fabric left to make the binding.  It's all cut and ready to sew, press and attach.

Believe it or not, the "matrix" design was the most challenging for this quilt.  I don't think I'll ever quilt it on such a large scale again.  I couldn't resist throwing in occasional "@" symbols in the pebbling, because this is after all, a "modern granny"!

Modern Granny Quilt Top Finished!

I was able to finish up my Modern Granny Quilt Top last night, and was able to take a picture after dinner (or do you say supper? LOL).  I LOVE the longer days we're getting into.

As I've mentioned before, I made the granny squares from a charm square swap we had at our local quilt store.  There were only 40 squares total, so I added a few other fabrics from my stash to barely finish the 10 granny squares.  After deciding I wanted a bigger quilt, I dug out more stash fabric and bought the rest of the black.  The local store no longer had the original black (a Moda Grunge), but had something else pretty close... a Moda marble black I believe.

Also, as mentioned, the yellow was supposed to be at a totally different angle, but a major cutting error forced me to modify a bit.  It's not perfect, but hey, it's DONE!  I already have the fabric for the back selected (more stash fabric), and hope to get that sewn up very soon!