Redwork Opportunity Quilt

This quilt has won half a dozen or more blue ribbons and has  been appraised at over $2,000.  It could be yours! Made by members of the Little Balkan's Quilt Guild in Pittsburg, KS,  it is a redwork quilt (see inset) which means a Christmas-themed picture is embroidered in red in each block. It is hand quilted. A $1 donation to the Little Balkans Quilt Guild gives you one chance to win the quilt. You can donate as much as you like, increasing your chances to win. What a deal! Let me know how many tickets you'd like to donate. The drawing will be held at the LBQG show over this Labor Day weekend.  Send me an email if you'd like my snail mail address.

Waste Not

The quilting on Dutch Treat #3 (aka Dutch Trade) may be going slow, but I finished another quilt made from the SCRAPS of DT3.  Remember a few months ago I showed what I was doing with the skinny little strips left over from trimming these blocks

Here's where I talked about it

I'm so glad I decided to sew these as I trimmed, because I now have a completed quilt instead of the boxes of trimmings that I have left from DT #1 and #2.  Sitting down and sewing all of them together is going to be a long boring task that may or may not ever happen.

But since I worked on these a few at a time, I now have this

I machine quilted it Thursday and Friday.  Yesterday I decided to add some Broderie Perse applique to three of the corners

It has a wild orange back with some gold detail that doesn't show well in this picture.

None of these are very good pictures and I apologize for that.  This was another quilt on which I used Superior Thread's King Tut "Old Giza".  I absolutely love this color of variegated KT thread and it ends up working well on many of my quilts lately.  Who would think that looking at it on the spool

I had a terrible time thinking of a name for this quilt, until a friend on Facebook suggested "Waste Not".  I think that will be it unless some of you have better suggestion?  Thinking of names may be the hardest part of making quilts. Do you name yours?

Slow Progress

Evenings are now spent quilting Dutch Treat #3 but I don't feel like it is going very quickly.When I did the first two I was able to average a row a week if not more, quilting the whole quilt (plus stopping to applique the borders) in 3 months.  I started quilting this one July 25 and I'm not quite finished with two rows, so we'll see if I can catch up and maintain the pace. 

It's really hard with my camera to get good shots that actually show the quilting.  I'm still not the best hand quilter, but I'm no longer ashamed to show my stitches.  That's improvement!

We've had a dramatic cool down in our temperatures.  Almost feels like fall is in the air.  With schools starting soon I suppose it really is. 

Happy quilting.

I Love The Fair!

(The blue and white on the right are Tom's)
The Grand Champion Quilt ribbon is the purple one..smaller than the Reserve Champion for some reason.

Raggedy and Friends

With temps remaining over 100º over the weekend, it was good to stay inside and get my Raggedy and Friends top quilted.  It feels good to cross another UFO off the list.

This was a free BOM from the Painted Quilt last year.  Thank you Kaaren! 

I didn't do the fancy quilting she did on hers.  Just an overall stipple and a little quilting to add dimension in the embroidered blocks.

This may well be the homliest quilt I've made to date!  LOL.  That isn't a reflection on the pattern..it's cute as can be.  I just don't like my fabric choices for once.


Stay cool everyone.  No end to the heat for us.