First and foremost, I apologize if someone has posted a comment to my blog and I haven't responded. Blogger is still not forwarding comments to my email address. I have tried to fix it several times without any luck. I shall keep trying.
B-Ribboned, from a kit by Carla Klop of
Kits by Carla,
is finally quilted, bound, labeled, and ready for presentation. Done.
The Maine state coordinator for Quilts of Valor had a booth at our
chapter quilt show in October last year, and she gave me the kit to
make, along with several more panels. A few of our chapter members took
panels to work on also, so I'll have a few more quilts to pass on to
Donna.
I love kits, and this one was nice because it included fabric for the
backing and binding as well. I have to say that the ribbon border was a
bit of a chore but well worth the effort. I quilted it with a pantograph
called Patriot. It's the one I use most often for my Quilts of Valor,
mostly because I haven't yet found another that I like.
This is another QOV I've been working on for awhile, and I'm anxious
to get this one finished up too. It's called In Honor Of, from a pattern I found in the Jan 2013 issue of Fons &
Porter's Love of Quilting by Diane Tomlinson. They run a pattern for a QOV in every issue,
which is one of the reasons I continue to subscribe to the magazine.
This
quilt is made with Stonehenge fabrics by Linda Ludovico. I like these
fabrics and this pattern so much that I bought enough to make two, one to donate and one to keep.
Recently I found a dinosaur panel at Marden's, and I was surprised to see it's also made
by Stonehenge. Last week I found some of the companion fabrics from the same collection at Cotton Cupboard in Bangor,
enough to make a small lap quilt for my granddaughter. She's into
dinosaurs these days, so I want to hurry up and get this made before she
goes out of her dinosaur phase, lol.
I guess most
quilters probably have plenty of UFOs, and I have dozens. I am a sucker for an inviting new project whenever it comes along, which means whatever is current is most likely abandoned. Several years
back I found the One Project a Month program and signed up. In the right
sidebar is a link to that website, and my list of monthly finishes
follows. For me, it hasn't been entirely successful, even though I did
manage to finish 12 quilts last year; but it's still motivational enough
for me to keep at it.
This past week I discovered a
website called
Elm Street Quilts. They have a similar program in place called One Monthly Goal,
and they have sponsors and monthly drawings for prizes. What's not to
love? So I signed up, and I'll give that a try too. More motivation.
There is a new icon in my sidebar that will take you to the page with
information about the challenge.
In keeping with the rules of the challenge, my One Monthly Goal for March is to finish the top of In Honor Of. If I persevere, I might even get it finished. You can visit the Goals folks have submitted for March
here. If you're interested, you can sign up too, but hurry if you plan to do it--the deadline for sign up for the month of March is the 7th.
Lol, I need all the motivation I can get--some of us need it more than others. My quilt chapter is also doing a UFO Challenge this membership year. For those who wanted to participate, we were to choose 10 projects to complete before our second meeting in June. Those who finish all 10 would have their names submitted for a prize drawing. So far I've finished one, so I doubt very much if I'll pull it off. But even if I only get 2 or 3 done, that's still more than I might have got done otherwise. My list of 10 UFOs for the challenge has also been added to the sidebar.
I've been sick with a very bad cold for a week now; but before that, I finished quilting and binding my Ombre Herringbone for NICU, an ongoing charity project for my quilt chapter. The diamonds are strip pieced in the same manner as the Strip Tease quilt I made a long time ago. I actually finished another one of these Strip Tease quilts last year, but I've been wanting to try some variations. This Ombre Herringbone was one of them. I changed the angle of the diamond so that I could chop it in half evenly where the colors changed. 
I used a gradation of four fabrics I hand dyed years ago to make the quilt. During the piecing process, I had to wash a couple of pieces that were already sewn together, and the blue bled. I worried about whether or not the blues would bleed when the quilt was washed; so I washed it in Synthrapol, which is supposed to suspend any excess dye in the wash water. The white pieces on the front came out perfectly white, every one of them; but my flannel backing, which was originally white with blue frogs, is now blue with blue frogs. A backing dyed to match. Couldn't have worked out better if I'd planned it that way, lol. Just wish I knew why that happened. 
Adult bibs for Alzheimer's patients and for use in local assisted living facilities was another project my quilt chapter worked on last month. These are pretty simple to make, and I finished four more of them right before I got sick. 
I also managed to get a couple batches of melt and pour soap made this week before my energy was totally sapped. Dinosaurs for the little girl who likes dinosaurs....
....and succulents. Making soap is just plain fun.
