Thursday, December 8, 2022

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

13 comments:

  1. Three acceptances- that's fantastic, Linda! Congratulations. It's interesting that the quilts go first to Austin and then to Atlanta. I can see it logistically though, if HQ is not Atlanta- get it all together and judged and then take it to the venue. The Rube quilt is quite fun, too. You're going to be very busy taking pics in four locations at the show! I'll check out your tutorial- thanks for that.

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  2. Congrats on your acceptances - pretty exciting, I know!

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  3. Congratulations times three!!! I'm so happy for you Linda. I especially love the log cabin quilt. I know it was a challenge but your solution for those corners was brilliant. Enjoy the holidays.

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  4. Good on you to have three quilts selected! I absolutely love Log Jam, but they are all beautiful.

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  5. I love those travel trays! And I know exactly who I can make them for, thanks for the inspo!! Congrats on your quiltcon acceptances!

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  6. Congratulations - fantastic news! Thanks for sharing your creations and I look forward to seeing them, in person.

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  7. Congratulations on three quilt acceptances for Quilt-Con. So excited to know that so many visitors to Quilt-Con will get to enjoy your quilting talents and creativity. Will you have any of these quilts listed for sale during Quilt-Con? Not sure if that is an option.

    The travel tray that you shared will be a perfect small project that will be extremely useful. I can also use the tray beside me as I hand stitch quilts. It will be the right size for holding binding clips or small threads, pins too. I suggested this as a project for both of my quilting guilds.

    Your creativity is always inspiring.

    Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

    Sunshine and Smiles,
    Donna Weeks (aka Momma Llama)

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  8. Congratulations on the acceptance of your lovely quilts! And thanks for the travel tray idea. I just downloaded the pattern so I can make a few for stocking stuffers :)

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  9. Awesome, Linda!!! Although I do think your Kantha quilt has a very modern vibe to it, too!!! I'm with you on the new MacBookPro--mine was also 7 years old and showing it's age by moving along very slowly. I'm loving the new, fast version! Ohhh, and what cute little trays!!! Such a great gift idea!!!

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  10. Hi Rachel! You're a noreply-commenter, so I thought I'd acknowledge your comments here. I'm glad you like the Travel Tray pattern, and I hope you have a chance to make lots of them. They're pretty nice gifts, especially when you're going visiting and want to say thanks. And I appreciate your congratulations on my QuiltCon acceptances. I'm still reeling, a bit in disbelieve that three quilts were accepted!

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  11. Hi CC! Like Rachel, you too are a noreply-commenter, so I hope you read my reply to you here. Thank you for your congratulations! I really appreciate everyone's kind words since this news came out. And it seems you're going to QuiltCon too. That's fantastic! If I knew more about you, we could arrange a meet-up. I'll be at all four days of the show, including the Wednesday night awards ceremony. And you?

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  12. Firstly, congratulations on getting three of your quilts accepted to Quiltcon Linda, it is a real achievement to have quilts juried into Quiltcon given that there are so many submitted.
    My favourite is Log Jam, I think it has a lot of movement in it and I would love to see it in real life at Quiltcon (a slim chance at the moment but fingers crossed that I might get to Atlanta).
    I made something similar to your Travel Tray when I travelled to Quiltcon 2020 and found it great for keeping bits and pieces in one spot, mine didn't fold flat so I'm going to try out your tutorial and make another one.

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  13. Congrats on the QuiltCon accepts! The show is going to be so much fun!

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