I'm sew excited!!! I ribboned!

I finally took time to enter my quilting and machine knitting into our county fair this year at the encouragement of a friend. Sew glad I did-I entered 13 things and recieved 10 blues, 2 red, 1 white, Grand Champion, 2 Reserve champions and an honorable mention!!  It's been many years since I entered into the fair so I am really happy and wanted to share my good news with all of you. I really didn't know if I would get any ribbons because I apply all my bindings with the machine, the comment was good job on it but that I should sew those little miter corner shut on my bindings :-)
We were on vacation all last week so I didn't get to go to the fair until last night for picking up stuff. I thought I might get to see some of the other work but they had it tore down by the time I got there.

Here are the items with their ribbons...

I pattern tested this tubix quilt for Sue and I got a blue and Reserve champion on it.


This is my Best of Show item, a machine knit sweater-ribbons and a plaque, my first Best of Show ever!!!

The pink sweater is all knit on my knitting machine. The mint is fleece for the body of the sweater and knit sleeves and bands on the machine and then sewn onto the fleece.

I'll be linking up with some of the parties on the left side bar-be sure to check out all the eye candy as there is always a good show each week!

Modern runner

I almost feel like I have been MIA for a couple weeks, well in blog land I have been. But I have been truly busy, not lots of quilting sadly. We are replacing 12 windows so I had to stain and varnish all 12 by myself last week, what a chore-I really hated doing it.

 So this runner was finished before that and I just didn't get it posted. The pattern is from Mountain Peak Creations, what a fun one to piece and quilt.

And this star runner I saw on Deb Tucker's You Tube video-I think she called it Banded Lemoyne Star. I have several longarm rulers that I sometimes forget to use so I dug out my Deloa Jones cable for the border.

And the wild black raspberries are ripe-oh so yummy! I do admit I feel a little like Laura Ingalls Wilder on Little House on the Prairie out pickin' my berries! But they make oh so delicious smoothies :-)
 

And I will leave you with a pic I snapped during a little R & R today while kayaking...

The whole runner

 As I promised yesterday I would post the entire runner pic's today-here they are.  These are mostly all batik, there are a couple backgrounds that are not. The 2 on the left are from A Quilter's Dream pattern called It's Good to be Square. On the left are 2 Disappearing nine patches.

These 3 are from the Scrap Basket Surprise. Instead of the quilt I just used 3 blocks and added my own borders to make table runners. Since I really like making runners I am always looking at a pattern to see if it would work to make it smaller or just use less blocks.

I used Heather Mulder Peterson's new book On the Run again and a pack of Fat Quarters I had sitting around. Now of course I have tons left over to make more runners :-)


If you would like to see the close up of the quilting check out yesterday's post.
Thanks for stopping by!

Quilting feathers

I have been trying to get a whole bunch of table runners quilted that I have pieced earlier this year. These have been quilted for a couple weeks but we have been so busy that I hadn't taken time to get their picture taken.
Amy over at Amy's Free Motion Quilting is talking about and showing feathers this month so I thought that would be a good place to start-my runners with feathers.



These 3 runners all have the same freehand feather quilted with my Nolting longarm.  Judi over at Green Fairy Quilts has a video on how to stitch these out. At first I couldn't get the hang of it, but after some practice at drawing them out, then stitching them, it became fun and easier the more I did them the more I liked them!

Come back tomorrow and I will post the whole runner and also show the same pattern with different quilting on it and different fabrics.

Linking up with Connie and Lorna along with Amy(link above).

And just for fun-here is DH and I kayaking on the 4th of July in our new kayaks!  Our son and daughter in law went with us-so much fun-and he spotted this gorgeous Bald Eagle.

I'm back!

No I haven't fallen off the grid, just incredibly busy and have not gotten much sewing done.
But we did finish our landscape redo last Tuesday and are very happy with the results. We pulled out/dug out old Spirea's, Japenese Yew, hosta's, Stella lilies, layed new landscape fabric down and hauled in 5 ton of rock! Talk about hard work, I am so not used to that kind of physical labor. Plus a month ago I painted the shutters a rusty red along with the front door, it's like our house got a face lift!

Here is a before picture...








And now the after...Of course since I took the pic the Stella lilies are starting to bloom.

 We divided the Stella's and hosta's to reuse, then added a new flowering hydrenga tree. Kept the cascading spirea in place as we did for the 2 dwarf busning bushes. It looks fresh and new and now we can enjoy it. BTW you can see the new color door and shutters in this pic.

Another reason I have not posted was because we were gone for 5 days to Country Fest is Cadott, WI. What a wild place but we sure enjoyed the music, best ones for us Blake Shelton, Braid Paisley, Rodney Atkins, Randy Houser, Carrie Underwood. We did get rained on a few times-actually it poured down but we ran for cover before we personally got soaked. We would liked to have heard more of Gary Allen-it started pouring down after he had been playing for only 15 minutes.

But here is a scrap quilt I am working on little by little in between other things. I am using lightweight interfacing as my foundation and it is working out nicely.


And I made up this little basket-I have been seeing them posted all over the internet and thought I just had to have one too! Sorry I don't remember right now who's tute is was. Super simple though.
Joining in the Linky Parties at Freemotion by the River and Let's Bee Social.

Goodies from the MN Quilt show

I went up to the MN quilt show on Thursday in St. Cloud. Got there just in time for the show to open. Shopped till  3:30-here are some goodies that came home with me.

 then I went to Crafts Direct and shopped some more! And on the way home Friday I went to SR Harris in Brooklyn Park, MN. If you ever get that way you need to go!!  It's a big fabric warehouse type of store with gobs of all kinds of fabrics. I think I am pretty well stocked on my solid fall colors for a bunch more table runners.

And here is the table runner I stitched up since I got home. It's from the pattern shown above that I got at the show. All batiks in the leaves and sashings.











There are always lots of Linky Parties going on each week-I'll be linking up to a few of them :-)

Pattern testing-Tubix

When Sue, who blogs at Quilt Times, asked for volunteers for pattern testing her upcoming pattern Tubix, I jumped right in. I am soooo glad I did!  This was a fun, fast and effective modern quilt pattern. I chose to make mine just a bit smaller by using less blocks, mine measures in at 44 x 50.  It really is very easy so a beginner could do it, but can still hold even a seasoned quilter's attention! Of course being a longarmer I had lots of fun quilting it too.

Be sure to check out Sue's blog and look for her upcoming pattern release!  Thanks, Sue, for letting me be a pattern tester!

Don't cha just love that polka dot binding!

This pattern has those stitch and flip corners and rather than throw them away I just had to use them!!

So I got these bonus half square triangles sewn and trimmed to 1.75" and then realized I could make stars with them and since I had enough fabric of all the other prints why not a little wall quilt :-) this measures in at 18" square. I usually don't make things this small but it was so fun. I decided to use my RnS groove circle board to quilt it. The board didn't have enough circles to do it all so I finished the outer rings with Renae's amazing arcs. 

Here is my RnS template board and special stylus that attaches to my Nolting longarm. So the stylus sits in the groove and makes quick work of following the circle around, lift the stylus and put it in the next groove and continue around. I lock my beginning and ending of each circle with a few very small stitches.

Here you see my whole set up

and here is Renae's amazing arc.








Linking up with the linky's on the left!!  Each day of the week there is always a different linky party, go check them out!

A switch from quilting to knitting

Yesterday I decided I needed a little change from quilting so I made these 3 hats on my bulky Brother knitting machine. Also posting a pic of my knitting machine for those who have never seen one and are curious. I have this one set up with a motor, so I don't have to manually move the carriage every row. Don't get me wrong it doesn't just make the hat by itself, I still have to sit right there and manipulate some stitches, change the yarns, set the pattern, cast on and off etc. It's just easier on the arm/shoulder to have a motor unit attached to it.

I knitted the parts(sleeves, button and rib bands) for these little fleece sweaters a few weeks ago and just yesterday got them sewn up.  I do sew the knitted parts to the fleece with the sewing machine. Then hand stitch the ribbed cuffs and tie in yarn ends.  Next they will get their buttons.  I still need several more knits for the fall craft shows, I only had one fleece sweater left after last year and the hat supply is low also.

I have been machine knitting for 28 years now! Yikes that makes me sound old-well I am getting older, today is my birthday!!  And it is shaping up to be a great weather day, think I will have to take a bike ride this afternoon. Tonight, I am meeting my daughter and her family at Red Lobster, YUM!

The hubbs and I had a great weekend over in Wisc for my great Nephew's wedding. This is the part of my family that attended, some which I had not met or had not seen in several years. It was sooo awesome!!

A mistake can still be used

Last week I was piecing some runners using a new to me block, which is always fun. However, I had some other things on my mind while doing the second table runner and this correct way soon...

became this. The part that is wrong is the red part, see how I didn't lay my flip back triangle right when I sewed it. I had all 3 block parts sewn, pressed and trimmed before I noticed. And I didn't have enough red to remake those parts, so I layed it out to see what it would look like and well it is just a little different so I went ahead and made up the runner and it looks fine-so a happy mistake it ended up being!







And I leave you with this pic of one of my bleeding hearts, I just love these dainty little guys!  Our wild plum trees just finished blossoming-their aroma is sooooo sweet smelling. Our lilac's are blooming as well as our apple tree and crabapple tree, finally spring in MN!!

We enjoyed our Memorial weekend by biking 21 miles on Friday, kayaking 3.5 hrs on Sunday and doing some yard work and painting of shutters in between the fun stuff. The weather was perfect all weekend!






Be sure to check the linky parties on my left side bar for this weeks awesome lineup!!

Ruler work

Linking to Amy's Free Motion-ruler work, I love doing ruler work for the accuracy.  These runners I love to quilt up different designs on so I don't get bored with doing the same thing. Since May is ruler work month over at Amy's blog I thought I would share these with you.

The ruler work on this one is in the center block, I used a swag ruler in 2 sizes to get the flower petals. the skinny black border has a squiggle ruler.

 The ruler work on here is the squiggle ruler again in the black border, and large circle ruler in the main block to form the double football shapes. Then I freehanded the design within the football shape.

WIP Wednesday and Festival...

Deb Tucker has some really fun rulers-these 2 runners are made using her Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star ruler. I ran across her YouTube on this banded Lemoyne star on Sunday and thought I would give it a shot. I love the results. Yes there is some waste and lots of trimming, but the accuracy is wonderful!! My blocks are 12" finished and then I added some borders.  Notice in the finished runner that cute teeny little red border that seperates the green borders-love it!!  My friend, Sandy, showed me how to do it, a little extra effort is soooo worth it IMHO!!  Got yet a third one in the works today-a fall version.














This week this post is linked to Lorna's and Lee's

Don't forget to check out all the inspiraton at Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival-I entered these 2 quilts in small and mini categories, my first entry ever into the Festival!! I posted about them here and here.

Blogger's Quilt Festival-take two!

I have decided to enter another quilt into the Bloggers Quilt Festival taking place over at Amy's!  This quilt will be in the small quilt category as it measures 43x58.  I made it and blogged about it back in February.

This is a pattern called Urban Escape by Jenny at SewKindOfWonderful using her QuickCurve Ruler. I love using this ruler and she has some really awesome patterns.  I just love how this came out, love the colors, love the fabrics I chose and I had so much fun quilting it on my Nolting longarm.  The snow and tobaggon made awesome props for photography even though it was very cold out that day!!

Funny thing is that I never bought all the fabrics at the same time, in fact the print with the ovals I bought like 2 years ago and then added the others in this past year. Amazing I found things that went together!  I used Hobbs 80/20 batting and Glide thread. 

Be sure to go check out all the inspiration that is entered into the festival! And good luck to all participants.  Voting is May 24-29

I have several no reply bloggers leaving me wonderful comments-so if you are one of them please know I appreciate all the kind words. I try to respond to everyone that leaves me a way to contact them. I truly love hearing from everyone and appreciate the sweetness :-)