Show Time

This morning Mike and I got an early start and headed toward Silverton to drop off the Snow Birds quilt for the Stitches in Bloom quilt show.

The show doesn't start until next week, but today was the drop off day. Next Tuesday morning I'll head over there for a three-day workshop called "Transforming the Traditional". I'm staying at the Oregon Garden Resort for the workshop, then attending the show on Friday morning before heading for home. (Click right here to read about the workshop.) It's a workshop, but it feels a little like a retreat. When I first wrote about this, I was kind of looking forward to it with no small amount of dread. Fortunately, I feel as if I've left that behind, and now I'm just looking forward to a week on my own with no responsibilities other than sewing.

Now that I've built my confidence from entering a quilt in the Oregon State Fair last summer, I'm entering quilts right and left and even planning for upcoming shows. Coincidentally, the Love Me, Love My Cat quilt is entered in the redwork challenge at the Road to California quilt show next week as well.

One of these days I want to attend that show, but with the workshop going on, I wasn't able to this year. My quilt is there by itself...and all the other quilts, of course. I hope someone is taking good care of it.

Since we got an early start, we were home in plenty of time to enjoy the sunshine on the ridge top where we live. It was dark and dreary when we headed down the hill. The cloud cover in the valley is thick. We were almost all the way to the top of the ridge before we cleared the clouds and saw the sun again. I was particularly glad we got home in time for Mike to enjoy the light. He's been down in the valley working all week and has really missed the sun.

This afternoon, I started and mostly finished my January NewFO project called "We're On a Roll". Just now I searched for a link to the pattern, which was a mistake. There are lots of cute patterns on this website, one of which I simply could not resist. See if you can guess why. 

It's called "Cats 'n Jammies". Need I say more?

Anyway...today I started the "We're on a Roll" wall hanging. First I made the background.

Then I added the toilet paper roll appliques. Here they are from top to bottom:

The drawn lines on the image below will be added when I quilt it.

I'm planning to do all the top-stitching and quilting at the same time so that the top-stitching will show on the back. I might even use contrasting thread! Wouldn't that be something?

And here's the whole thing:

And that was as far as I took that today. I'll put it away for now and start on something else. It's ready for top-stitching and quilting now. If I stick to my one quilt per month plan, it won't come up on the calendar until later this summer. I might have to start doing two quilts per month for these smaller quilts so things don't stack up too much.

Next I'm going to work on some blocks. I want to remake the last block of the Hello Moon quilt. Did you see the cute one that Heidi over at Red Letter Quilts made? You'll get a kick out of her blog post explaining her inspiration for this block.

Cute, huh? I asked for Heidi's permission to copy her block, and she graciously gave it. I think I'll make my cow purple. Remember that rhyme about the purple cow? Just now I Googled it to see if I could find out who wrote it. I loved what I found on Wikipedia:

Purple cow initially became famous as a chimerical referent in a short humorous verse by Gelett Burgess :

I never saw a Purple Cow,

I never hope to see one;

But I can tell you, anyhow,

I'd rather see than be one.

Burgess became somewhat exasperated with the success of his poem, of which he was constantly reminded. A few years later, he penned a riposte that became almost as well known as the original. It was titled "Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue" and appeared in The Lark, number 24 (April 1, 1897):

The 1895 issue of The Lark in which Burgess's "Purple Cow" first appeared

Ah, yes, I wrote the "Purple Cow"—

I'm Sorry, now, I wrote it;

But I can tell you Anyhow

I'll Kill you if you Quote it!

However, the original has, in its own small way, become a classic, and parodic versions are common.

Funny, huh? Anyway...my cow will be purple, with my apologies to Mr. Burgess.

Also, I'm going to make my block for this month's Block Lotto, and if I still have the energy for it, I'll make two more blocks for my Yard Art quilt.

And that's it from me today. Not a bad day sewing wise. I'm hoping to get in another productive day tomorrow because next week, it's nada.

How's your weekend going?