President's block

Each year our guild is asked to make quilt blocks to give to our outgoing president, as a way to thank her for her year of service to our organization.  This year, 2018, the request to the members was to make a block, up to 10", of something orange, and perhaps a chicken or cat somewhere on the block.

I know that this particular president has quite a sense of humor, so I designed a humorous cat for the block that I wanted to make for her.

And here it is:

I hope it gives you a smile too!

Special Exhibit - Avian Studies with Wilma Scott

We had another fabulous quilt show at the Clark County Event Center in April 2018.  I entered 16 quilts, which seems like a lot!  Some of them were entered into a special exhibit called "Avian Studies".  Wilma Scott entered 7 of her bird quilts, and I entered 7 of my nest quilts.

Here are the pictures of that special exhibit:

It was fun to have a collaborative exhibit.  Thanks Wilma!

Special Exhibit - Vagabonds Bride Dress Challenge

A special exhibit that I was involved with at the Clark County Quilters annual quilt show was the Vagabonds Bride Dress Challenge.  I wrote a couple of previous posts about the making of the bride dress quilt that I entered.

Our group got together and made a wedding cake and table skirt to go along with our exhibit.  We also put one of the dresses we didn't cut up on a mannequin.  It was quite the display!

Here are the photos from the special exhibit, which was part of the Clark County Quilters annual quilt show in April 2018.

Bride Dress and quilt by Sharry Olmstead

Quilt by Audrey Prothero

quilt by Ada Levins

quilt by Beverly Woodard

quilt by Audrey Prothero

Quilt by Lynn Czaban

quilt by Sharry Olmstead

Quilt by Beverly Woodard

quilt by Val Pellens

Quilt by Val Pellens

quilt by Karan Brooks

quilt by Joanne Adams Roth

Modern Inchie Quilt

I made an Magic Inch quilt in 2017 for the charity arm of our local quilt guild.  It was based on a design by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr.  I wrote a blog about making that quilt earlier.

At that time, I also cut out some red squares and black and white strips for a second quilt.  Since then, however, I decided that I would modernize this design and make it totally improvisational.

So, I cut through some of the red squares and inserted the 1" strips. Then I added some borders and inserted strips in some of the rest of the pieces.  I used 3 different grays for the background and just made up all the blocks.

I placed them on the design wall willy nilly and moved them around until they looked very random.
Sewing this together wasn't that easy, as I had really odd spaces to fill and partial seams to sew.  But I liked the improv nature of making this top.

Here is a picture showing the progress of the piecing:

And here is the completed top.

48" x 58" by Joanne Adams Roth

I hope you can take a step into the unknown and put together a top intuitively.

Once in a Blue Moon - Part Six - FINAL

This is part six of the blogs about making my "Once in a Blue Moon" quilt.

It covers the embroidery and beading.

I picked out embroidery floss that matched the colors of the cats and embroidered the whiskers on the cats.  Where the cat appears to be facing right or left, I lengthened the whiskers on the facing side and shortened them on the back side (of the head of the cat).

Whisker detail

My beads are mostly seed beads and a few crystals that I already had.  I pulled out my drawing of the constellations and added a few of the crystals where I wanted the viewer to be able to identify them.  Then I added beads willy nilly to give the quilt some sparkle.  They are barely noticeable.  Should have done hot fix crystals.

This quilt took quite a bit of time to make and lots of thinking through the process of the LED lights.  That is so good for my brain, and would be for yours too, to try something new.  It keeps the neurons firing and connected so that as I keep aging, I don't loose my capability to think.  (I know that is not even close to any of the technical terms, but you get my drift).

Moon Gazing by Joanne Adams Roth 2017

Step outside your box, push yourself to be a little uncomfortable, try something new, make new friends, see new places, be inspired by art..... it's all good.  Don't you think so too?

Once in a Blue Moon - Part Five

This is part five of the blog series about making "Once in a Blue Moon" quilt with LED battery operated lights.

OK, so I had the quilt done.  I had the extended sleeve with the swimming noodles done.  The final step was to really figure out how the quilt would hang in the show with the hanging devices used by our quilt guild.

We use lanyards with relatively flat curtain rods to hang the quilts from the top pole.  The only thing that goes through the sleeve is the relatively flat curtain rods.  There is a black curtain that hangs off the top cross piece, so the quilts are not hanging against a hard flat wall.  If I was designing the hanging apparatus for my home, I would use a stiff board through the sleeve and staple the extended sleeve to the back of the board.  This would insure that the quilt itself was sticking out from the wall enough so that the battery packs would not distort the top.  So, the key was to somehow replicate this with the noodle and the sleeve.

Gosh, I love having this type of problem to think through.  It really appeals to my engineering brain (did I ever tell you all that I have a mechanical engineering degree?).  On the other hand, the creative side of my brain does NOT let me sleep when there is a design element that needs to be resolved.  So after several nights of not being able to go to sleep and/or waking up and not being able to turn off my brain, I came up just the perfect idea.

I am going to support the quilt with a hanging sleeve that is in sections.  And I'm going to support the extended sleeve with smaller hanging sleeves that will fit in between the ones that the quilt is handing on. Close to loops actually.  I'm going to position the top noodle so that it hangs on the back of it's hanging loops and holds the top of the quilt out from curtain.  Well, that's the idea anyway.  Here's my sketch of the idea.

Once in a Blue Moon - Part Four

This is the 4th part of the blog about making the "Once in a Blue Moon" quilt with battery operated LED lights.

After the quilting was complete and the binding was added, I turned my attention to the mounting device for the battery packs.  When they were merely pinned to the back of the quilt, they bulged out and left the quilt looking pretty lumpy.

I showed the quilt to some of my friends, and they agreed with my husband, that I needed to have a separate piece of material hanging from the top of the quilt that would hold the battery packs.  I tossed their ideas around a bit and came up with a solution using swimming noodles and fabric with a couple of casings sewn in it.  The swimming noodle was cut lengthwise down the middle so that I had two pieces that were similar in depth to the battery packs.

I sewed a casing a the top and slid the noodle inside.  Then I pinned it to the back of the quilt and loosely pinned the second half of the noddle closer to the bottom, making sure that they battery packs would end up being right underneath the second noodle, and near the spot where they come out through the back of the quilt.    This is not a false back, which would have disqualified it from bring judged at our show.  It is merely part of the hanging sleeve, with an extended backside.

Here are some pictures showing the finished extended sleeve.  The quilt will hang on the flat side of the noodle, while this extended sleeve will hang off the rounded part of the noodle, leaving that nice gap between the two.  Well, that's how it supposed to work, anyway.