OMG for July Done

Yikes, I almost forgot to post my OMG finish for July. I actually finished this quilt, In Honor Of, my seventh Quilt of Valor, a week or so ago; but I was ramping up for Maine Quilts, so no time to write a blog post.

To see what others have finished for the month of July, click here. 

This quilt by Diane Tomlinson appeared in Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting magazine, Jan/Feb 13. The original quilt was made with Stonehenge fabrics, and I liked it so much that I bought enough to make two quilts--one to donate and one to keep.The Maine state coordinator for QOVF had a booth at Maine Quilts, so my quilt is already gone.

This one was quilted with a pantograph called Patriot, which is my standby for the quilts of valor. I haven't had much luck finding pantographs to use for these quilts that work for me, but I did come across a new one the other day with stars and crescents that I liked. Soon as I remember where I bookmarked it, I'll buy it!

I finished another top the other day, a very simple pattern called BQ2 from Maple Island Quilts. Now it's in the RTQ queue, behind the last Yankee Puzzle. Just one more.

Today I am working on these blocks from Missouri Star Quilt Co's tutorial called Two Step. I love their tutes and their BLOCK books. One of these days, I'd like to make their line up of "disappearing" quilts. Their newest one is a disappearing crazy eight block, I think, and it looks very interesting.

My summer cactus is finally blooming again. And in the summer! The flowers look almost like a double blossom, very different from the Christmas cactus--which never blooms at Christmas.

The bugs up at the lake have been horrible this summer. They adore me, so yesterday I made a 3-pound batch of Summer Soap scented with Juniper Sage fragrance oil. It's a plain white bar so nothing to see really. One field researcher swears it's the best thing to repel mosquitoes and other bugs. There should still be plenty of bugs around by the end of August when it's cured, so we'll see how well it works then.

One Monthly Goal for July

This Quilt of Valor has been hanging around the sewing room for quite a while. I got it finished and managed to get it loaded on the longarm, and there it sits. It's going to be another hectic month, so I don't want my goal to be too lofty. My goal is simply to finish this quilt. It really should be doable!

To see what goals others have set for themselves for the month of July, click below:

Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal July Link-up

Still haven't finished the Star Crazy quilt. That'll probably be a reboot for OMG in August, after the craziness of quilt show is over.

Happy Fourth of July!

Pizza Box Challenge

The reveal for our quilt chapter's pizza box challenge was a few weeks ago at the last meeting of our membership year. This was my quilt, and I really like it. Every border except the first one was triangles, so I guess that was the theme, lol. I especially like border #2, with the tan background. For me, that makes the quilt.

These are the quilts I worked on during the challenge. Border #1 was my handiwork on this one.

Border #2....








Border #3....

...and Border #4.

If you're interested, you can see the rest of the challenge quilts here. 

I am not a designer, but I got through it. Probably the biggest challenge for quite a few of us was getting a border to fit when either the quilt wasn't square or the length of the sides didn't correlate to a particular block size. The quilt that I appliqued the fans on finished to 22" when I got it, which doesn't divide evenly by anything except 2. What do you do with that? I went with the applique, but during the reveal, I saw some other border ideas that would have worked equally well.

In September we'll begin a new membership year, and this year we're hoping to do a themed row by row challenge. I think that will be easier.