Shindig 2017

I should have posted these a few weeks ago, but we got busy moving out of our house and back in (the floors were refinished).

The Mountain Jam Circle quilting collaborative did it again - cut the pieces out together, then Alice and Ann pieced the chain blocks and put them together in four big chunks with the setting triangles and blocks.  I pieced the Carolina Lily and put the top together.

And then I quilted it.  Alice and Ann got it back to put the binding and label on it.  You can click on these photos to see them a little larger or I have a closer photo below.

The quilting did not take very long - I used a stencil for the baskets and Lisa Calle's Pro-line rulers for all the verticle parallel lines in the setting triangles as well as the lily block.

As always, we hope the Folk Heritage Committee sells a lot of tickets!  They still have photos of last year's quilt on their website - but as soon as it is finished, this one will replace it.

Love the cables!

I like cables in quilting, but they are difficult to do well by machine.  On the other hand, cables look wonderful in knitting and are not hard at all.

This sweater was finished at least 6 weeks ago - just didn't photograph and then when I did, I didn't post the pictures. 

This sweater was made from the top down, without any seams - first time I've done one of those.  It has a small applied I-cord to finish the neck, sleeve, and lower hem - first time I've used that technique on anything but my plaid afghan.   There were three varieties of cables, and the way they moved around on the front kept the knitting very interesting.  The pattern, Siesta, by Carol Feller, was free!

The yarn came from Diane's inventory after she closed her big business in Oregon.  I spent a little and got a lot of yarn for my money.  I have projects lined up now that will take me through the next couple of years.


Here's a fun photo only one of my friends seemed to notice on Facebook, combining a quilt and a knit: 

It was the last night of the Shindig when they finally gave the quilt to a ticket buyer from Maryland. Alice is the one behind the quilt and Ann is standing next to her.  Ann's husband Russ took the photo.  We have to plan next year's quilt now - no hand piecing this time!

Shindig 2015 Raffle Quilt - nearly done

You saw my blocks for the Mountain Jam Circle's 2015 quilt to benefit Shindig on the Green here.  Somehow I separated the mention that Ann and Alice were making blocks, so you might think only one of them did.  In fact, Ann made so many we had more than enough to make an extra quilt.  But that's another story.

Alice and Ann did all the sewing to set the blocks together into a top - I didn't get a photo of that, but I've had the top for several weeks now and finally finished the quilting.  I tried taking photos outside, but it was too close to noon and the quilting didn't show.

I'm posting this next one so you can see the quilting design in the corners.

I like this shot that shows some of the variety of reds and background fabrics - 

 

This photo shows the backing fabric - the quilting doesn't show there at all.  But it shows nicely on the front.

I really enjoyed quilting this. I was going to do "simple feathered wreaths" but the more I looked at dividing up the space, the more I started filling with more designs.  It's still relatively simple.

Shindig 2015

The Mountain Jam Circle (Alice, Ann and I) have started on a quilt to benefit the Shindig on the Green again this year.  After discussing a red and white nine-patch with Alice at last winter's Folk Heritage celebration banquet, they let me be in charge of the design. I trolled the web, sent them photos to ponder, and we settled on a plan for a scrappy traditional unequal nine-patch.  Ann got her blocks done the day after we exchanged fabrics (Thursday) I just finished my share of the blocks.

Alice is also making a set of blocks,  and she's in charge of the plain off-white setting blocks and borders.  We'll have them ready to put together when Alice and Ann go to a quilting retreat in a couple of weeks - I'm hoping to drive out to the retreat location for the day and maybe do a little of the assembly work with them.  I will probably quilt this with traditional feathered wreaths and simple lines connecting the red patches. 

I love quilting a scrappy quilt!  It's so much fun to see all the fabrics and how the varied prints combine.

On Stage at the Shindig

All three of the Mountain Jam Circle members were at the Shindig on the 12th of July so the organizers let us get up on stage to show it off - Norris' camera changed the aqua/teal blues but it still makes a graphic impact on the stage.

The Folk Heritage Committee also invited us to have a "sponsor banner" - but gave us about 2-3 days to submit our design.  We quickly threw a logo together, without really realizing what the size they offered would look like from any distance -

Yeah, I know, you're not even sure where to look.  Here's some help -

Clever Alice came up with the "Stitching traditions together" that is absolutely perfect.  Well, if we do this again, we'll make the letters much larger and not concentrate on our beautiful quilt design so much!

Shindig 2014

Today, the Mountain Jam Circle met with Linda Smathers of the Folk Heritage Committee for the official handover of the 2014 Raffle Quilt.  Linda's expression tells you how happy she was with it, passing on the thanks of other committee members.

Alice hands our donation quilt to Linda Smathers at lunch in Asheville

This is the photo of the quilt we supplied they can use for publicity - obviously not a professional photo shoot, but you get an idea of the Delectable Mountains design -

Alice also provided this closeup that shows the variety of fabrics and the quilting - she did a good job on this photo, but Linda said it still doesn't adequately convey the pretty colors that fade from dark to light, like our mountain vistas.

 

For most people, the Mountain Jam Circle is an anonymous group of nice ladies who have provided the last three raffle quilts.  Of course, in reality we are real people, pictured below hand-sewing the binding edge on the back of the quilt a couple of weeks ago.  This photo, unlike most of what I post here, is actual size and will not get any larger if you click on it so we nice ladies can remain somewhat anonymous.

Delectable Mountains - quilted

I finished my part of the Delectable Mountains quilt on Sunday and handed it over to Ann and Alice for binding yesterday morning.  I snapped a couple of photos before I trimmed the backing off the next day.  I've taken lots of photos in the afternoon light that have not been this dramatic. I expect this happened with the automatic white balance - since the quilt is about half white, the camera let the dark parts be darker than they really were.

 This photo has the more natural looking shadow.

 

The admittedly elaborate quilting I did won't really show for the raffle ticket buyers, but the person who wins will get to see it. We'll get photos of the full quilt for the Folk Heritage Committee to use in their publicity after it is bound.

Never too early ....

.... to start planning for summer. The Mountain Jam Circle quilters met several weeks ago and purchased the fabrics for this year's Shindig on the Green quilt. We are following an Eleanor Burns pattern that requires some assembly before the cutting is completed, but Alice got the first part of the cutting done.  We met for a yummy lunch at her house last week so that I could get some of the remnants to make a block for the center.

This block includes all the fabrics that will appear in the quilt.  I used the basic idea of the block Eleanor Burns used, but made it slightly more complex to incorporate all the shades of blue in what I hope looks like a transparent overlay of a light blue frame on point set over a Missouri Star.  I have found two related blocks "Noon and Light" and a version of "Royal Star"  - but surprisingly, no traditional pattern that is exactly this combination of squares and triangles.

This is a 12 inch block. Alice and Ann will be piecing the rest of a lap sized-quilt around it.  Should be a beauty!

Shindig 2013 - The Quilting is Done

We had snow and wind every day this week, so to get a good photo of the full quilt, I had fellow Mountain Jam Circle quilters Alice and Ann hold it up for me when I passed it back to them for binding this morning.

It is not the most flattering photo of either of the two people-subjects, but it was the best one of the quilt.

Here are some closeups of the quilting I managed to take yesterday laying the quilt out on a sheet on the driveway.

 The sun kept appearing and disappearing so there are different exposures.

I used matching threads and each color was treated the same way throughout -

straight lines in the brown,

 

feathers in the red 

  

 and three different swirly-twirly background fills in the cream areas.

This last photo shows the backing fabric. 

revving up the longarm....

Was December the last time I used my longarm? Well, it's not that I haven't been making things!  Last week, I got the Shindig 2013 Raffle quilt for quilting from Alice and Ann.  The red and white wide backing I ordered arrived the next day.  I took this photo before loading it so I could figure out the quilting design even after I got it mounted on the rails.

 The backing fabric is barely visible in the upper right  of this photo. This should be a straightforward quilting exercise, and I got started today.  This will be raffled during the summer Shindig on the Green concerts, like last year's.

Shindig 2013 - My part of the piecing

It works out I can meet up with fellow Mountain Jam Circle quilters tomorrow, so I got my little bit of the piecing for the Shindig 2013 Raffle Quilt finished.

O.K. this is just a bunch of medium sized triangles pieced into squares and set up in random fashion on the design wall - but it shows the fabrics that will be in the quilt.  Alice and Ann plan to do the bulk of the piecing of the quilt at a retreat in a few weeks. I get to quilt it after that. This looks nothing like the finished quilt, which will be a modern, graphic design, chosen again to look good from a couple of hundred feet away.

Multi-tasking

When I was still working, I pretty much stuck to one quilt project at a time.  I can't say that these days.  Here's my design wall today.

Across the top is my Grandmother's Choice  with the smaller Dixie Diaries block just stuck up there.  The blue and white columns are for four small quilts, and the red and tan squares off to the lower right are my share of the piecing for the next Shindig Raffle quilt.  Add to that:  the design wall doesn't contain anything of the Round Robin I'm working on. I've put almost as much time into that this week as these other four projects.  I had the parts for that one up on the wall, but had to take it down to make room for the blue and white quilts. But I'm not sewing anything on the Round Robin yet. 

I have a lot more space to organize these projects in this house - perhaps that is why I am enjoying them all so much.

small version of the big quilt

Last week, Alice came by with the completed Shindig quilt so we could photograph it for an information sheet that can accompany the quilt when they have it out for ticket sales.  I set it up with the photo stand and special lighting...

 

but taking the photos inside is not ideal.  The flash really obscures the quilting detail.  I took a few closeups

 

but after all that, for the quilting detail, I sent Alice two of the photos I took on the driveway because the sunlight really makes the best of the 3-D aspect of my thread work.

On Monday, Alice, Ann and I met with Linda from the Folk Heritage Committee to hand the quilt over.  Ann surprised me with this pot-holder!  She used the leftover fabric pieces and pieced half-size Sawtooth Star blocks just like the big quilt's, as a commemorative of our cooperative efforts. Maybe in this photo you can see some of the design features of the fabrics.  Both the blue and yellow fabrics are subtle floral prints. The cream has a sort of swirling design.

 

Ann used a thermal-insulated batt for our pot-holders, but I'm not sure I can use it to move hot pans - my potholders tend to look grungy in no time and this quilt-lette deserves a more special place in my life.

The Shindig Quilt continued

I finished the quilting part of the raffle quilt for the Shindig.  Photos were delayed when I dropped the camera  - we're limping along until we can get a new lens. Surprisingly, these came out: we get good light in the afternoon on the lower slope of the driveway.

Here's one of the entire quilt -

 And of course some closeups to see the quilting!

The four stars with white backgrounds got the simpler motif set in a circle, - then there is curved cross-hatching on two scales (1/2 inch and 1/4 inch) with some feathers to fill out the surrounding white area.

The stars on a blue background got the more complicated version of the motif set in the circle.  Then I surrounded the star with  a feathered circle - maybe it's a feathered wreath, but I usually think of a wreath having the feathers on the outside of the ring - or both sides. Here the feathers are just to the inside.  The space between the star points and the feathers has a simple meander.  Outside the circle are 1/4 spaced lines. You can also see the corner and  side triangle motifs in this photo.

This next photo shows a detail of the wide blue border - half circles, feathered like the ones above, with lines spaced at 1/2 inch inside and outside.  The very outer border is scalloped and the scallops are filled with more curved cross-hatching.

I have to include one last shot to show how the designs worked together.

A small glimpse

Quilting the Shindig Raffle quilt is coming along well. I was smarter than usual and am taking photos of what I have done so far. Because I enhanced my paper design plan right on the quilt, as I roll, I will forget what I've done. I usually have to roll the quilt back and forth a lot to remind myself. Photos will be much faster, and more accurate than a drawing.


For example, in this area, I wound up placing my long curves (the ones that have the feathers inside the large triangle) a visual extension of some of the curves in the motif. It does show up nicely from the distance of the photo. I think this will be pretty marching around the stars.

The quilting motif inside the 6 inch circle is a modified portion of a design from a 1930's era Better Homes and Gardens quilting pullout. Our committee of three started with an idea of a traditional quilt, though we took a turn to more contemporary with the fabric choices. Although there is also a contemporary flair to my quilting, I'm using designs based on tradition -- cross hatching, feathers, circles and straight lines. I like to repeat designs. The one shown here also appears in the blue stars in the field of the quilt. I used a more complex version of the same design in the field's white stars. I was able to re-use stencils I made of these two designs for a quilt I worked on for Dorry back in 2009 - see photos of the quilt and motif source at the end of this post.

I thought I might be working on this quilt for up to three weeks, but it's been a lot of fun and the quilt is already approaching 1/4th finished... I just started on Saturday.

Now it's my turn....

Last year, Alice and Ann made the raffle quilt for the local Folk Heritage Committee and Shindig on the Green. The Shindig is an Asheville tradition since 1967. Every Saturday night in the summer, "along about sundown," local bluegrass and old-time musicians along with traditional clogging groups perform in free outdoor concerts. The Folk Heritage Committee also puts on the annual Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, an indoor concert with some of our favorite local acts, which dates back to 1928.

I was very honored that Alice and Ann asked me to help with the fundraiser quilt this year. We have since met several times to come up with a concept, discuss designs, and cut out the fabrics they purchased. Alice and Ann did a wonderful job precisely piecing the stars and setting blocks, and put the center of the quilt together. I have just finished putting on the two borders (the pieced blue and yellow inner border, and the solid blue outer one) and am getting ready to start quilting this queen sized quilt.


We hope the traditional stars, bright colors, and queen size of our quilt will help the committee sell more raffle tickets than ever. Now I have to decide on my quilting plan and get on it!