President's Challenge

Last night was our monthly guild meeting and it was finally time to reveal all the President's Challenge entries!

To refresh your memory: in November, participants received a piece of red fabric that was to be incorporated into a small quilt (up to 100" circumference in any shape), primarily constructed of log cabin blocks (traditional, wonky, variations).

Last night, all guild members had a chance to vote for their favourite quilts in the following categories:

Best traditional design
Best contemporary design
Best choice of colour
Viewer's choice

In June, we will find out the winners!

I thought it'd be fun to have our own online vote, so why don't you copy the categories into the comment form and let me know what your favourites are! I'll put a number above each quilt to make it easier!

(***EDITED: Traditional vs contemporary --> this was explained to me at the guild meeting as traditional means straight/right angle edges as opposed to contemporary variations of log cabins (wonky/wavy)... the terms refer to the log cabin blocks in the quilts more so than the overall quilt.***)

Here are the entries:

#1:

#2:

#3:

#4:

#5:

#6:

#7:

#8:

#9:

#10:

#11:

#12:

#13:

#14:

#15:

#16:

#17:

I'm so curious to see what you vote for compared to the guild's results! I'll post on that next month!

And of course, I was thrilled to see all the different entries - they were so varied, though I was surprised at several entries that also did a "log cabin in a landscape" scene :)

Updates

Thought it was time for a miscellaneous update post...

Raffle Quilt
First off, if any of you are interested, tickets for my quilt guild's (Kindred Spirit Quilt Guild of Charlottetown, PEI) raffle quilt are now on sale for 2$ each or 3 for 5$ (or 30 for 50$ as I like to advertise *grins*).


If any of you are really interested in this quilt (it's King sized, about 8.5 feet square, is my estimate - I'm standing there holding one corner, my arm is up above my head and you still have the overhang past the stage. A long-arm quilter is quilting it right now, and detailed photos of individual blocks are in this post), we can figure out how I could get you some tickets - if you're outside my general travel route, shipping would be an additional cost.

Everyone is also invited to our Guild Quilt Show, held Sep 24-26 in Charlottetown (quilt will be raffled off at the show)! PEI is a beautiful place that time of year... maybe worth a visit???


President's Challenge
Next Wednesday is the day of the President's Challenge at the quilt guild, it's amazing how long excitement will last! ;) I'm planning on taking lots of pictures of the other entries!


Spring Quilt
What else have I been up to? Well, I've been quilting on the spring quilt - came up with a design for the white sashing - between that and the loops on the blue-green leave squares, there's enough quilting on this quilt to hold it together ;) Ready for binding!


Free As A Bird Quilt
I'm ITCHING to keep working on the Free As A Bird Quilt...


However, I have run out of grey fabric for reasons that will be revealed later ;) Remember, this quilt will not look like this in the end!
It's driving me crazy to not have enough fabric to keep going when I really want to be working on this quilt! I'm trying to match the shade of grey right now, as the original store (Fabricville/land of all places!) doesn't have that grey anymore... I'm going to try the Nova Scotia Fabricville next month, hopefully they still have this solid stocked, it's usually one of those staples, but the manager of the local store is as always a pain in the butt with vague answers like "Maybe we get it in again, maybe not, we're not sure". It's a solid grey fabric, it's like having butter and sugar and flour in the house :)
The little patch below is the only grey carried at my local Fabricville these days, and I tried another fabric store and they barely had ANY solids, that was a bit embarrassing, I thought ;)


Sunrise Wallhanging
And lastly, the curved piecing wall hanging embellishments...


I'm really not that happy with the beads, apart from the red ones. I'm thinking of taking the others off and adding some quilting instead! It's on the back burner...


Speaking about the back, mwahaha, here's the back of the wall hanging - all you see are the seams holding down the bias binding, the zigzagging is done on the muslin foundation on the front.


I have also been helping a friend with a quilt she's making, but it's secret because I don't know if the quilt's recipient is reading this blog...

That's what's keeping me busy, and you???

President's Challenge

Last December, I entered my quilt guild's President's Challenge. For 4$, all participants received a mysterious paper bag - inside were instructions and a fat quarter of red dotted fabric.

The instructions were to construct a quilt (100" maximum circumference, so 20"x30" or 25"x25" etc, or smaller) made primarily of log-cabin blocks, whether traditionally pieced or wonky/contemporary, and the red fabric had to be clearly visible on the front.

With that in mind, I racked my brain about what I could do. I didn't want to just make a simple block, because I'm a very lazy log-cabin piecer... I hate the ironing after every seam, so I skip that step and just finger-press. The result is that my blocks come out not quite with 90 degree angles and straight lines. So I decided to come up with something that works with my, let's call them "relaxed", log cabin blocks. Well, I got pretty elaborate as you can see below:


What you see here is the quintessential Canadian landscape: Log cabins around a lake in the woods with a clear sky above (and at night that sky is filled with stars and a moon :).

The log cabins are traditional log cabins and the red fabric in the center is the paper-bag fabric. Since log cabins are often wonky, I figured my crooked seams would be okay here...

In the center of the pond, which is also pieced log-cabin style are two fish swimming around - wouldn't be a proper fishin' pond otherwise!

The trees are truly wonky log cabins and I just added random strips of green fabric around at different angles.

And then I played with some stars - I couldn't figure out any way to make those log cabins so they're not :) The tiniest star is pieced from 1.5" squares for the HSTs, I think that's the tiniest block I've made in my life :) The moon is appliqued (rough edge).

The quilting is quite elaborate too:


There are stars in the sky and different tree species:


Waves on the pond:


There's grass on the lawn, and the log cabins are truly built of wood:


Ready to go to the guild jury at May's monthly meeting :) I'm so curious to see what everyone else did!