Kansas City blues

As you can see, Kansas City got all of our snow. We keep getting predictions of snow accumulation at home, but we never actually get any. I miss my snow days away from school. *Sigh* Even here, the snow is almost gone. Yesterday was 60 degrees, so only the really deep snow plow drifts are left now.

 

 

I guess this short trip to Kansas City for my husband's conference is one way to get away from work. Unfortunately, I don't get to stay in my sewing room while I'm gone the way I do with snow days at home. But I did get to take a little sewing with me. Just binding, but it's easy to do while away from home.

 

As you can see in the photo below, Kansas City is cloudy and expecting rain today. Some of the other wives are getting together to visit a large flea market style shopping area and have invited me to join them. We leave in an hour and a half, so I think my binding is over for this trip.

 



 

My husband scored tickets to see Pentatonics tonight, so I have a night out to look forward to. Pentatonics is an all vocal group that I really like, so I'm looking forward to a great evening. We may even hit Gates Rib House for dinner! Woo hoo!

 

And because I haven't shown any new projects lately (mainly because I haven't started anything new in a while), I've decided to pull out some old photos of a past project. I haven't shown these before because I no longer have the quilt and only just ran across the photos again.

 

A few years ago I took a class from Dava Carrell. We made a Buckeye Beauty block, but I couldn't help trying something different. Instead of using only one main fabric, I decided to see what would happen if I used two main fabrics - one dark and one light. I was new to quilting and didn't understand the importance of value. What I found out is that different values wouldn't fit into the tradition setting I was supposed to use. But Mom discovered, while we were playing with settings, that they actually made pretty good stars.

 

 

 Purple star

 

 

Green star

 

 

 Separating block made of four patches

 

 

 The final quilt thrown over my chair at work.

 

A closer photo of the squares. As you can see, the green stars really fade into the background.

The backing -  a cute polka dot.

 

While I was taking photos of this quilt at work, one of my co-workers saw it and starting asking me general quilty questions. She asked how much money a quilt like this one would usually cost, so I shot her a casual guess. I didn't realize she meant MY quilt! The next thing I knew, she was handing me a check and expecting me to hand over my quilt!!! Augghhh! I really liked that quilt. I had had no intention of selling it. But she had a new granddaughter whose bedroom just happened to be decorated in those very colors... Sigh. At least I got paid for it.

 

She also offered to pay any price I asked for the quilt below. I don't have good photos of it with me, but here are some casual photos of the completed top.

 

Since I got my first real quilt show ribbon on this quilt (an honorable mention out of 72 quilts!), I'm not willing to part with it. One of these days I'll pull out this quilt and take some better photos of it. It's hard to get good pictures because it's a really generous queen size.

 

I know the colors look really clashy in these photos, but the fan fabric in the center of the blocks really do pull them together. Trust me. My favorite part of this quilt (and the judge's) is the pieced outside border. I threw in whatever leftover fabrics I had lying around. I sewed them together in whatever pattern I liked at the moment as long as they were all 6 1/2". I love the way they "float" in all of that pea green soup colored fabric.

 

Oh my! Look at the time! I need to get ready for my shopping trip with the other wives.

 

Until later,

Debbi