Horse Show Ribbons Quilt

Yesterday I was nosing around the internet and came across a woman's site who is a clutter organizer. This was one of her suggestions for eliminating the piles and boxes of horse show ribbons you might have laying around if you or your children show horses. I definitely suffer from this clutter syndrome as a result of 2 daughters spending 24 years of showing from lead line at 4 years old to Preliminary Adult and Schooling Hunters at 27. We have about 10 strings of ribbons in 4 different rooms and 4 valance rods lined with ribbons which are only reds, blues, reserve champion, champion and year end awards. The yellow white pink and green ones have long since disappeared. As of August, both my daughters will have their own houses so I think I'll try to make one of these quilts for each of them and they can display their awards in their own houses and stop collecting dust in mine!

Bubble Gum and Licorice takes shape

One of my favorite color combos lately is hot pink and black so I decided to make a quilt using these colors. I have been collecting fat quarters in bright pink, white on black and black on white for a while. I played with various geometric designs with my EQ5 program but couldn't get excited about any of the designs. When my guild had its show a few weeks ago, I liked the idea of a quilt made by Sherry Cowley. She pieced various widths of horizontal strips and put a narrow ruffle on top of the seams across the quilt. Hers was done in very muted colors but I thought the design would be good for the high contrast of pink, black and white. Here are some of the strips I pieced this past week.

The ruffles between the strips will be white on black fabrics and I'm thinking of trying to couch hot pink cording along the stiching lines in the center of the ruffles.

Kindergarten Pumpkin Picking Trip

Last Thursday, 4 kindergarten classes from Seth Boyden Elementary in Maplewood came to our farm for their annual pumpking picking field trip. This is the second year we have done this for the kids and it is more fun every year. Here I am waving hi to the kids as the buses arrive. I tried not give it away but the kids kept asking if I was Miss Brady's Mother.

Farmer Brady helps the kids onto the hay wagon before they depart on the haunted hayride around our training track for the horses.

A zombie on the haunted hayride played by Kelly's fiance Braun. His mask flipped up to expose his brain, a real crowd pleaser!

My two daughters who definitely got my teaching gene. Colleen on the left teaches English and coaches tennis at Hanover Park High School and Kelly is the kindergarten teacher.

Here the kids are waiting to go from picking pumpkins in our faux pumpkin patch to the next activity station.

Jack-o-lantern sack races. Sorry, I couldn't make the picture any bigger.

Carrying their pumpkins to class as they arrived back at school. We are already planning for next year's trip. My nephew Tommy who dresses like a werewolf is planning on constructing a hut to "live in" on the haunted hayride. The only sad thing is that we probably will never get another day as nice as this one was - 70 degrees, bright sunshine and no wind late in October.

Common Thread's Quilter's Fall Quilt Airing

On Saturday October 10th, my quilt guild had a show in the outdoor pavillion at the Long Valley Presbyterian Church. Even though I see many of these quilts at our meetings during Show and Tell, I am always blown away by the volume and quality of the quilts we produce. Here are just some of the amazing quilts that were hanging. If I left someone's out, I'm sorry. There were just so many amazing quilts.






This masterpiece below is a Baltimore Album quilt made by Gloria Dighton. It won 1st place in the Viewer's Choice voting. Scroll down to see more of her amazing work.



This quilt is called "Summer Dreams." It was made by our current President Theresa Caldwell

This was made as a wedding gift by Linda Appell.

These were two of the One Block Wonder quilts that were made from a workshop our guild did in March of '08. The pastel one is by Maryann Carberry and the black one below was done by Sandy Wachta. Ididn't get a picture of mine at the show but it's on my blog in the entry from July 31st.

These are two more examples of Gloria Dighton's awesome work. The picture doesn't do justice to the beautiful colors of this Storm at Sea quilt. The one below is called "Go Navy, Beat Army."

This is Kathleen Mitchell's design using Eric Carle's Brown Bear fabric. She also made this for a kindergarten class except her son is a student where mine was made for my daughter who is the teacher! Mine is on my blog enty for Oct. 13.

This was a section of small quilts that mostly had a Halloween theme.

This stained glass quilt of dragon flies was done by Maryanne Carberry.

This is Leana's quilt titled "Gaia's Serentity." It tied for 2nd place in the Viewer's Choice. We all admired her use of colors and fabric selection. It inspired me to break out of my tendancy to pick matchy matchy fabrics and have everything symmetrical and balanced.

These purple cathedral windows were done by Loretta Tapp. Cathedral windows have always intimidated me!

This black and white panel titled "lytham Windmill" was done in a round robin by Pat Smith, Sandy Wachta, Kathleen Mitchell and Lynn Kanen. It also tied for 2nd place in Viewer's Choice.

This quilt is called "4H Farm Life 1956." It was made by Ellen Pankuch for her sister while she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Happily, she is now cancer free!

Naturally I loved this horse themed quilt by Sandy Wachta.

These are the challenge quilts for this year. The theme was "A Season for Change." Each quilt encorporated one color from Mark Lipinski's Elements line of blender fabrics. Mark is a member of our guild but he was unable to be at the show this year because he was in Houston at Quilt Market with his new exciting product ventures. The challenge was won by Amy Buehler for her quilted leaves, the last quilt on the right.

These were the quilts that various members made for charity.

Here we all are at the end of a windy but wonderful day!

Brown Bear almost there!

Here is the completed top Of the Brown Bear quilt for Kelly's kindergarten class. She is holding it up but refused to be photographed. I also made her a flannel board story set from the fabric that had large pictures of all the animals all over it. I hope the kids can see that the corner blocks are supposed to be bear's paws. I'm not sure a six year old would make that connection but I think they're an important design element. I'm not going to go crazy with the quilting at this point. Maybe I'll embellish it a little more after she is done using it. It will be making its debut on Thursday for the culmination of her bear themed week.

On-Line Quilt Festival II

Amy aka Park City Girl had a wonderful idea last Spring for an on-line quilt festival. I posted my Quilt Maker's Gift quilt for that one and I'm excited to participate and view everyone's quilts once again.

This is a quilt I made last Spring for my daughter's kindergarten class. I loved Eric Carle's books when I taught preschool years ago and I was excited to use his gorgeous fabrics for a quilt. My daughter Kelly gives each child a turn to lay on the quilt at rest time as long as they take their shoes off. It was a very coveted honor in last year's class. This Fall I'm in the process of making another quilt with Eric Carle fabric based on his book Brown Bear, Brown Bear. Hopefully it will be ready for her class Teddy Bear picnic on October 16th.