I'm In

Remember this little quilt, "Tahitian Tradition: Ti Fai Fai"? It was my 2010 Hoffman Challenge. I love this quilt. It came home in October, the day of the Road to CA extended deadline. I couldn't help myself. I entered it.

My pictures were terrible, but apparently they were good enough. For the first time in what? Four years? I've broken through the Road barrier and I'm back in. wow. The quilt is hand appliqued, hand quilted, hand beaded. I have to say that it's one of my favorites, even though I've spent little time in its company.

ring, ring. oops. They need me to move some cars so they can get the cement truck in, to pour concrete. That means I need to track down keys. It's always something, and today it's a LOT of somethings. Gotta run. Happy Thanksgiving, if I don't check in before tomorrow!!

Rocky Mountain Quilt Festival

Did you miss me? As you may have guessed, I went silent because I was out of town. No sense announcing to the world that my baby (20) would be home alone... ;)

Our destination? First, Albuquerque, NM, for the AABP Conference. For those of you out of the loop, that's the American Association of Bovine Practitioners. It's cows, cows, cows, and more cows. We were there for two days.

We flew from Albuquerque to Denver, CO, then drove to Loveland. Our destination? The Rocky Mountain Quilt Festival. This is where they debut the entire Hoffman Challenge traveling collection, and I thought it would be fun to see it again in its entirety.

My husband came with me on the first day, and took a gander at the quilts. I'm usually not much of a picture taker at quilt shows, but I thought it would be fun to share the entries of some of the people that I know read this blog.

Right up front we came to this quilt, by Sharon L. Schlotzhauer of Colorado Springs, CO:

She won a first place with her quilt, "Little Wild Flowers," in the Mixed Technique category.

As we wandered down the aisle, this quilt caught my eye. Chard? Is it chard? It's "Asian Jade."

Imagine my surprise when I read the tag and saw that it was made by Kay Pennington, of Bakersfield, CA. I know her! Kay, I love your quilt!!

Directly below Kay's quilt was...Kay's quilt! I had seen "Geometry in Bloom" on Kay-from-Indiana's blog, which you can visit here...

I turned 90 degrees, and bumped into Kristin's quilt! Kristin Eilers is a local quilter from Lemoore. I know her! Her quilt is called "Tide Pool's Edge."

It took some looking, but we finally rounded the corner and found my little quilt. When we took the picture, people thought my quilt was the lady. No, it's the little quilt with turtles hanging below the lady...

Pete seemed to like looking at the quilts, but he really perked up when he found the cows...

On Saturday, we visited Estes Park, CO, and entered the Rocky Mountain National Park. On Sunday, I was back at the quilt show, to do my shopping. Here's my quilt loot:

I've purchased hand-dyed silk velvet, a "velvet beading pad," and little orange fish beads from the Bead Ranch; a cone of So Fine from the Hobbs vendor, Sulky thread from Sulky, snowflake buttons from Jillions of Buttons, and some photo transfer paper from the Kaleidoscope people.

Although I bought other things, (I forgot to include the clothesline from Vogie, for making baskets), there wasn't much that called my name. Maybe that's because I'd found New Mexico Bead and Fetish in Albuquerque.

As you can see, I found several versions and sizes of heishi. There are fish, hummingbird and bear fetish (es?) in the bag, a bag of heart-shaped abalone buttons, a bag of silver-plated round beads, a string of white mystery (glass? stone?) beads, and a string of very nice shells. I don't have plans for them yet, but they all looked like they will be very useful.

And that's about it for RMQF. I have tons of pictures of other things, but I think I'll save them for another day. Hope you enjoyed the show!

Going Traveling...

Well, the 2010 Hoffman traveling collection is listed online. Scanning, scanning, scanning...aha! There it is: Tahitian Tradition: Ti Fai Fai. whew! Made the cut.

Congratulations to my friends Kristin, Kay P. and Sharon, whose names are also on the list.

Sharon won first place in the Mixed division, no surprise there. :)

I'm sure I missed names, but congratulations go to everyone who successfully completed the challenge. It's never easy, and hopefully your resulting quilt is one that pleases you.

Now I should seriously consider working on my guild challenge. October will be here sooner than I think!!

Almost Ready to Ship...

"Tahitian Tradition: Ti Fai Fai"
Suzanne Kistler 2010

My quilt is finished. It is blocked and square and labeled. All that is left is to put on a sleeve. The white "dots' around the binding are shells. The speckles on the turtles are beads. The starfish in the center is porcelain. The quilt is made entirely by hand, with the exception of attaching the binding. Hand appliqued, hand quilted, hand beaded.

If you click on the picture, it should enlarge a bit, but the photograph does not do it justice. I LOVE this quilt, and have to say that I am happier with it than I've been with a finished quilt in a long, long time. I'm not even sick of it, which says a lot!!!

Wish me luck, I'll be sending it off before the week's end...

How Do You Photograph

beads?

I've been busy beading. Two turtles down, two to go.


They really are pretty...

In person, they sparkle like crazy...

Okay, break's over. Time to attack Turtle #3. The clock is ticking, TICK TICK TICK!!!

Congratulations, Netherlands!!

I got up this morning, completely oblivious to the fact that the World Cup competition had resumed. Luckily it was an early morning wake-up (5:45am), so that by the time I realized what day it was, I'd only missed 3 minutes of the Brazil/Netherlands game.

Brazil started out strong, but eventually disintegrated. Yay, Netherlands, for holding it together.

And yay, World Cup, for giving me an excuse to do handwork at 7am!!

I haven't finished with the beads, but I was ready to try adding shells.

Shells have frustrated me for too long. I can't get a needle through them, and Nymo is too flimsy to push through on its own. What is the answer? It's "fire wire." I bought it yesterday, at a Lapidary store. (Fancy name for a rock & bead shop.)

It's a slow process, but one that I find to be very rewarding. I use a needle to get the fire wire (a transparent fishing line that will hold up to abrasion) through the fabric, then I take the needle off and manually string the shell, then put the needle back on and work it through the fabric, and then repeat. I can fit about 27 shells along one side of the binding. Twenty seven have been applied, only 81 left to go. Big smile.

One of these days I'll have more than a peek for you, but that day is still a few weeks away.

Too Much Fun...

Call me crazy, but I absolutely LOVE this!!!

Admit it. I'm making you jealous, right?

Who would have thought that sewing beads onto fabric would be something I'd actually WANT to be doing? Not me. Not in a million years. I can't believe how many years I denied myself the pleasure.

No denials today, I'm going to be spending more time with my sparkly little pretties...

A Recipe for Happiness

Three hours a day of this:

Plus a quilt, needle and thread eventually leads to this:

Another hour brings us to this:

And by the end of the day we have this:

All of the quilting is done, it is bound and ready for beadwork. I do hope that it turns out the way I envision it, because if it does, I will love this project even more.

Is that even possible?

peep peep peep

By now you all know Charlie. If he were to have a nickname, it would be something like Charlie the Lethargic or Charlie-Sleeps-a-lot or The King of Z's. The only things he excels at are sleeping and eating.

The only things he's ever caught have been a lizard's tail and june bugs (lying on their backs, wiggling their feet in the air.)

Charlie can be relied upon to do nothing involving an expenditure of energy...until this week.

On Tuesday, he came running into the backyard with a "pom pom" in his mouth. When I asked him what it was, he meowed, and the pom pom unfolded into a duckling that ran away as fast as his little webbed feet could carry him.

He ran around the side of the house and under the fence.

By the time Charlie made it over the fence and I made it through the house to the front, the duckling was nowhere to be seen. Charlie was panting. Seriously. Have you ever seen a cat pant? He was whooped.

I could hear the duckling, and spotted it across the street at the neighbor's house. It then ran across the other street, to another neighbor's house. I felt it was safer there than here, so I brought Charlie into the house and marveled at his lack of killer instinct. Lucky duck!!

Last night, as we were eating dinner, Charlie appeared at the sliding door. Again, he had a "pom pom" in his mouth. This time, when he released it, I caught it.

There was no way I was going to let that cat eat this little duck.

The duck slept in the bathroom overnight, and this morning I took him across town to the SPCA. They have someone who picks up waterfowl for relocation quite frequently. Good. Lucky Duck's chances just increased 100-fold, since Charlie seems to know where he lives.

When I returned from my duck-saving excursion I walked into my Studio and saw my Hoffman sitting on the sewing table. I love the way the lack of lighting highlights the quilting. I wasn't going to show you the quilt until it was finished, but now I can't help myself.

This is one quarter of the quilt, which measures approximately 30" square. I have about 5 more hours of quilting to do, then binding. When that's done, "Let the beading commence!"

This n That

Our youngest son came home for the summer, bearing gifts. cough, cough. He's been sick for weeks (months?), but hasn't had the time to get to the doctor. It's been a bit of a concern, but he's been going to work (internship), and seems to be plugging along.

Apparently he's contagious. cough, cough.

Guess who caught it? cough, choke. Time to lie low and finish my Hoffman.

I've finished much of this quilting...

And have moved along to this quilting:

Funny thing, I hadn't planned to quilt this part, so the quilting is taking longer than anticipated. Or maybe I'm just dragging a bit.

To break things up, I can look outside at our happy new front yard.

You may remember the massive overhaul we did during the winter, since I blogged about it here. (There were a few other posts as well. For an overview click the "front yard redo" label on the sidebar.) Now that Spring has sprung and so has summer, there's something to see. Our neighbors are VERY happy with the transformation...(click on the picture for a close-up).

Quilt Faster!

I'm continuing the hand quilting on my Hoffman Challenge. Here is another peek at what I'm up to. Instead of marking with a pencil or chalk, I've cut custom templates from freezer paper. Hopefully I'll be done in a week.

It all depends upon whether or not the fingertips hold out.

Use them during the day, treat with Bag Balm at night. I've decided that I need to leave time for beading, so I need to push faster on the quilting.

I'll keep you posted.

No Pictures Today

It's not that I haven't taken them, I most certainly have.

Unfortunately my son has borrowed and apparently misplaced the cord to my card reader. Ergo, my pictures remain trapped in my card, inside my camera. boo hoo hoo.

Don't worry, you're not missing out on much.

I've made a few more quilted cards. One should be delivered tomorrow, so if I find the cord I can share the picture tomorrow without spoiling the surprise. :)

I've chosen the background for the NotMyCat applique. Thank you to those of you who have expressed your condolences. I am still in a bit of shock. I know this because I keep looking for him when I go out back. He really should be there. I ask myself, "Did you really expect him to live a dozen years?" hmmm. I suppose I did. Most of our cats have, unless they've contracted feline leukemia. Our current crop has been vaccinated, and Malcolm is pushing age 10. I guess I do expect them to always be here.

I've also been taking advantage of the World Cup. Call me an oddity, but I LOVE watching soccer. I even love watching soccer on TV. I love it so much that I'm watching it on Univision (Spanish language TV) when I don't speak any Spanish. I do understand, "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLL!!!" probably because I'm yelling the same thing as the announcer when someone actually scores.

Watching the World Cup is my legitimate excuse for hand-quilting during the middle of the day. I'm working on my Hoffman Challenge, and I'm hoping to finish it in the next few weeks. I showed it to my Art Group yesterday for the first time, and judging by the increase in noise (there are a dozen of us), I think it was well received. I was talking, so I didn't hear the words that they said. I do think this falls in the top 3 of the 8 entries I've made since 2003. I hope the Hoffman people like it too . :)

And I guess that's about it. Sorry to only give you words today. I have some more puttering to do in the Studio before I head out to hunt for the cord with fresh eyes. Happy Quilting!!

Today's List...with pictures

7:30-9am Work on applique for 2010 Hoffman Challenge.

9:30am - Head to Thimble Towne for thread to continue quilting Ruth McDowell project. React to news that Mettler and Sulky are being closed out of inventory by buying more thread than planned.

10am - return home. And discover a big fat nail in my tire. Get back in the car and get that fixed.

noon - finally get to work on quilting water. Blogger is not impressed, ergo flips my photo.

4pm Turn quilt over, to see if the back looks okay. yay. It looks okay.

5pm - rain stops, take time to smell the roses. And get a belly laugh from the Bird of Paradise that most definitely reminds me of a surprised bunny rabbit.

Now it's time to cook dinner. And this evening? At 8pm? Pick up Hoffman Challenge and get back to work.

Tomorrow? More of the same, only - hopefully - without the nail in the tire!!

Another Foggy Day in Paradise...

I don't need to add anything, do I? Except to say that the Foggy Day Cow quilt was finished and delivered to its new owner, and the weather cooperated perfectly. Can you see her eyes smiling?

Now that this is finished, what's next? How about some 2010 Hoffman Challenge? It's on the wall and I'm thinking...