A Quilted Village

Yesterday started as usual with some slow stitching, and I stitched up the rest of the hoop for the latest Snow Globes block.

After I moved my hoop, I happened to look out the window to see Sadie hot on the trail of some squirrel.

After that, it was time to head out to the Northwest Quilter's Guild quilt show at our own Portland Expo Center. It was a great show this year...lots of gorgeous quilts.

I went a little crazy taking pictures at the show, and so I'll just show some of my favorites a few at a time each day until I've shown them all. Right inside the front door were the quilts from the guild challenge this year. Here's the explanation of the challenge:

I'm only posting the ones that caught my eye for one reason or another. In each case, I'll first post the name of the quilter and the story behind the quilt, then a picture of the quilt, and in some cases, an image of some detail I liked.

So...who doesn't love a good pair of shoes?

I loved the details in this next one.

Look at the thimble on her finger.

And I loved the simplicity of the faces.

Pretty dimension in this one.

I think I photographed every cat I saw at the show.

Love this one...

This is a pretty way to finish a border.

And look at the jellybean toes. Cute.

This next one was done by blogging friend Claire Alexander. Hi, Claire!

I'll show you more quilts from the main part of the show tomorrow, but first...take a look at this.

Ha! Look at that! 2nd place! I really wasn't expecting that...so exciting!

You really wanted to see that ribbon up close, didn't you?

And I was pleased as punch to meet another blogging friend, Sally Trude there. Sally's quilt won a ribbon too.

Sally's story and the piglet that looks "as if it went through a meat processing plant" was the talk of viewers. I was amused watching several of them try to find the pig in question.

Sally was doing a demo of inset circles, and she had other quilts in the show as well. You can see the rest of Sally's quilts at her blog post right here.

After that, I headed for home and finished up the binding on Santa's Village. It's all finished now.

Here's a close-up of some of the details. I forgot to stitch around one of the windows on the right side there. I can go back and fix it without any problems.

Here's how it looks from the back.

This morning I went to the Farmer's Market with Erik and Mae.

At the farmer's market, I picked up another cherry tomato to replace the one that got eaten recently. This one is in a hanging basket. Hopefully, I'll be hanging it out of reach of whatever made of meal of the last one.

Before heading out, I started some bread dough rising. This will be ready for baking around dinner time tonight.

I'm making it with some starter I poured off when I fed the "mother" last week. Since there was still viable starter left in the jar, I decided to feed it again, and I'll start another loaf later on today.

We're having dinner with Erik and Mae tomorrow for Mother's Day, so I can have a loaf rise over night, and then bake it off tomorrow morning to take with us when we head to their place for dinner. It'll be a little surprise for them.

I barely slept last night, having made the mistake of drinking a glass of Thai iced tea (in other words, caffeinated) at dinner last night. It was after 2:00 a.m. when I got to sleep last night, and then I was up early this morning. A nap is sounding really good right now, and that's where I'm heading next. I'm hoping to get back to the Quiltmaker's Garden quilting today, but it might not happen until tomorrow.