Newsy Week

This week has been a wild, but exhilarating ride! It began with the Monday arrival of emails from QuiltCon/MQG letting entrants know whether or not their quilts were accepted to QuiltCon 2023, in Atlanta. I had entered four quilts; three were accepted!

2089 quilts were entered

481 quilts were accepted

If you're attending QuiltCon, you'll see these three quilts hanging there. If you aren't attending, here they are now!

My most favorite quilt is Log Jam, a 68" X 70" quilt that gave me the most angst as I made it. It was accepted into the QC "Log Cabin Challenge" category, and is a quilt I made by my I'll-figure-it-out-as-I-go method. 

My second favorite quilt is Harborage, 50" X 44", made during Instagram #30daysofimprovqal (QAL is quilt a-long) with Shannon @shannonfraserdesigns and @broadclothstudio This is the first time I've attempted to enter a quilt in the improv category (I've been told it has the most entries), and with my I-don't-quite-get-it relationship with making improv, this is a very pleasant surprise acceptance. It has a combo of machine and big stitch quilting.

At nearly the last moment, I decided to enter Elemental a 66½ X 80" quilt made for our Central Florida MGQ "Inspired by Architecture Challenge" at the beginning of 2022. My design is based on elemental architectural aspects of the Miami (Florida) Children's Hospital. It will appear at QuiltCon with other minimalist quilts. It's machine quilted with several weights of quilting thread.

 

The quilt that wasn't accepted is Glad Heart; Happy Face, the Alison Glass Stitch Club Kantha Sew Along quilt that I hand stitched... and stitched, and stitched (more than 30,000 stitches) through late spring and summer. This was my first-ever entry in the hand stitching category, but I get why it wasn't accepted. The quilt design isn't very modern. 

And in one more way, I played a small part - making one 12" X 12" quilt block - for a QuiltCon-accepted quilt that's the brainchild of Patty @elmstreetquilts.

She invited me, along with six other quilt makers, to make blocks for a Rube Goldberg quilt. I didn't know who Rube Goldberg was until I found a couple YouTube videos that physically demonstrate his cause-and-effect machines. Here's a good YouTube example. 

This is the "action" block I made using fabrics Patty mailed me. To understand what you're seeing, visualize a ball dropping into the block from the middle left side, rolling along the track and spinning the wheel of thread spools that push the ball upward and over the thimble, before it free-falls onto the track and into the next quilt block at the lower right.  

Patty assembled, quilted, finished, and entered it - accepted in the group quilt category at QuiltCon. Great work, Patty! I'm honored to be part of this amazing quilt and can't wait to see it in person! 

Now it's time to begin making three quilt labels and three sleeves, all of which are entirely hand-sewn to the quilt backs. Then, these quilts must be in Austin by January 11, at the latest. Yes, we're to ship them there because it's where they'll be judged before going to Atlanta.

It's been easy to have a joyful and happy heart (a topic of discussion in virtual Bible study using the book The Wonder of Advent), because of these acceptances, and because on Wednesday we headed to Orlando and The Florida Mall to buy a new MacBook Pro computer at the Apple store. After having used the last MacBook Pro for seven years, and finding that the speakers were rattling and causing feedback during Zoom calls (eliminated only by wearing AirPods), we were due for an upgrade. New features on this MacBook are great, including the fact that I can directly upload pictures from Photos to my blog! (Previously, I had to export photos to a desktop file as PDFs, and then upload them to Blogger.) Yay for small pleasures!

Since the weekend, I made eight Travel Trays to give as Christmas gifts. In case you aren't familiar with them, they're 7" X 9" fabric trays meant for traveling flat in a suitcase. When you arrive at your hotel or destination, snap together the four corners of the tray and use it as a place to keep keys, rings, jewelry, wristwatch, prescription pills, and such. I use one at home all the time for morning pills, as well as another one when I travel.  

If you'd like to make your own Travel Tray, I've written free instructions that you can find on my blog site under "Tutorials," or go directly to the download here.

By the way, the tray with the peace symbol on it is for my Peace, Love and Ukulele Club leader. Last year, from the same Spoonflower fabric I made her a ukulele pillow. 

Book Recommendation

The Night Hawks is the 14th book in the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. Again, I appreciated being able to listen to this one, as most books have been e-books. Only two more in the series.

Once again Ruth is at the center of an investigation when a body - actually two bodies! - is found along the ocean. One is a man from the Bronze Age; the other is a young man, recently released from prison.

Ruth has left Cambridge and her relationship with the American, Frank, and has returned to live in her salt marsh house with daughter Kate, and their pompous cat, Flint. This puts her into more frequent proximity to Nelson, who's investigating not only the bodies found along the ocean, but an apparent murder/suicide at a remote property called Black Dog Farm. It's more than coincidental that all the bodies were found by a group of metal detectorists called the Night Hawks. 

Ruth, now head of the Archeology department at North Norfolk College, is working alongside her replacement who is insinuating himself into Ruth's life, and gives her reasons to be suspicious of his motives. 

Linda's score: 4.2/5.0