Challenges, Stash Report, & Laundry (idiot)

I belong to two quilt guilds and they both ran challenges this past year.  In the spirit of killing two birds with one stone, I combined the projects into one.

• Caledonia was a paint chip challenge, where I drew the orange, lavender and turquoise.  Then I added black and white.  Sadly, at the June meeting I did not win a viewers choice prize.
• Binbrook was a border challenge with a hot mess of weird instructions every month.  The voting on this challenge will happen at the September meeting.

I'm honestly not crazy about the QUILT, but I had fun with the quilting.  That argyle design took f.o.r.e.v.e.r.

I'm really not very good at those wee circles.

I had fun with the back, too!  I used up some smaller pieces that were travel gifts to me from my DB and SIL (who b.t.w. are currently in England celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary, and witnessing the financially devastating Brexit vote.)

The past couple of weeks we have been entertained by COCO Paving who first tore up our road, and are now PAVING our road.  I knew they were paving this morning because all the racket woke me up. Clearly, those guys don't realize just how much beauty sleep I need.
I like to think that I stay on top of my housework with a scheduled list of chores.  I stripped the bed and decided it was a good day to put the summer quilt on the bed.  So, I washed the non-summer quilt and hung it on the solar dryer to dry.  Then I realized that all I could smell in the air was liquid tar.  Sigh,  When I get that quilt out of the cupboard in September I will probably have fond, aromatic memories of road paving.  Idiot.

STASH REPORT
Used this month 8.2 m
Used YTD         37.74 m
Added this month 2.5 m
Added YTD      73.3 m
NET YTD:       +35.56 m

When I was at Quilt Canada last week I attended a lecture/trunk show by Julie Plotniko.  She had lots of ideas for easy, scrappy quilts and got me a bit motivated!  At Scrappy Club on Monday I started a new lap-size-ish quilt for donation.  If I stay motivated maybe the stash report will get down to a red bottom line soon.

Current Events & CQA Quilt Canada Show

Current Events:  I have a new 'ride'.  A black (oooh, mistake!) Honda CRV.   Photo courtesy of Gail, taken on our Red Hat outing last week.  No, I don't have my hat on yet in this pic.  But I DO have my lipstick on.

For the rest of the week I was at Quilt Canada in Toronto.  With the Beach Girls. :-)
Yes, I think we'd had a glass of wine by this time.

Carol Ann gave us all 5 fat quarters as a challenge for October's trip to Tobermory.  So it's her fault my stash report will look bad again this month.

As usual, I took a zillion photos and I won't bore you with them.  These are just three quilts that I found particularly interesting.

I thought this quilt was very creative.

The whole darned thing is made from clothing labels.

This is a really lovely gift of love for her daughter.

Chains and clock bits and all manner of weird & wonderful things.

This one caught my attention because I love samplers.

I love everything about this quilt.

And it was beautifully quilted, too.

We closed off Thursday night with a lecture by my all-time favorite quilter:  Jane Sassaman.

Now, it's back to reality.  Asparagus beetles and laundry.

Baby Quilt (UFO Challenge) & Garden Update

This little cutie was my UFO challenge project for May/June.  And it's all done except for completing the hand stitching on the binding.

I love Flying Geese blocks.  I use the Quilt In A Day ruler(s) by Eleanor Burns to make them.  Four blocks at a time.  What could be better?

It took me two tries and a ruined label to get this to print nicely.  There was much cursing involved.  I ended up zigzagging the label on to a piece of card stock to feed it through the printer.

GARDEN UPDATE
DH got a little carried away with the potatoes this year.  I had to plant the zucchini in the cutting garden, and I think that's where I will be putting the pepper plants and some of the Roma tomatoes, too.  I'm wondering... did he plan that so there would be no room for zucchini???

This is the section that he fenced off for me to keep out the stupid rabbit.  Yes I know it needs weeding.  But you can clearly see the rest of the garden is pretty tidy.  This takes a bit of finessing to get into - I have to undo a couple of zip ties to open up a section so I can slide through.  Then the fencing falls over, which means I do a bit of swearing and have to go back out and pick the fencing up and prop it up and try again.  So ... you know ... I avoid it. :-)

**!@&*  Dammitall.  Asparagus beetles.  I go out and squash them every day.  Later, like 7 pm-ish they are slower and don't fly away as quickly, so that is a better time to do it.

And speaking of squashing...  As I pointed out, there is not a lot of room left in the "proper" garden.  So I decided to commandeer the front flower bed outside of my workroom windows to plant the butternut squash.  I went out Thursday night and dug a few lovely holes and gently plunked the wee plants into them.  Watered with a bit of Fish Emulsion Fertilizer (because you know I like to be all organic-like, eh?).

**!@&*  Dammitall.  I went out Friday morning and THREE OF THE FOUR PLANTS HAD BEEN RIPPED OUT OF THEIR PLANTING HOLES.  Probably a stupid CAT decided there was buried treasure a fish under the squash.  Stupid cat.

Mmm... strawberries almost ready.

See?  Tomatoes!!  These are the plants that were under the red warmer cones I showed you earlier.

It's been crazy windy and pretty dry so the watering must commence.  It's only 6 am and normally the wind is pretty calm at this time of day but stuff is already blowing all over hell.  Now, I'm off to fight with the garden hose...

Plantation Garden Quilt & month end stash report

Quilt name:  Plantation Garden.  Oh my gosh, so pretty.

As you should know by now, I love sampler quilts.  For this one I 'themed' the quilting around daisies & feathers.  The braided cable in the borders turned out fabulously, don't you think?

A cute little daisy vine in the ribbon border.

Daisies were repeated in most of the blocks.  Feathers were placed in the repeated setting blocks - you can just see a couple of corners in the photo below.

More daisies and feathers.

Continuous curves and straight lines were used to add unity throughout.

STASH REPORT
Ooh, the stash report is not looking too good this month.
Used this month:  0 m. Yup - ZERO.

Used YTD:  29.54 m.

Added this month:  .5 m (I went to a quilt show, and as you can see I was really living it up!!)

Added YTD:  70.8 m

NET 2016:  + 41.26 m.

However, you just stay tuned for next month.  I have finished piecing a baby quilt and that will be done before the end of June.  And I have the paint chip/border challenge quilt on the frame right now being quilted.  So that will also be coming off the report.  Granted - these are both small quilts but they will still probably add up to about 10 m.  I hope.