This Week...

This week... I have worked on appliqueing the hexagons onto a linen background for my Pillow Talk Swap pillow.  Before appliqueing, I layered the linen, fusible fleece and backing and quilted them together in a grid pattern.  I added some hand stitching around a few of the hexagons last night in pink and yellow and plan on using one of the fabrics on the side as a backing.

This week... I learned that if your eight year old wakes you up in the middle of the night saying that she had a bloody nose you shouldn't blearily ask if it has stopped, (yes) and tell her to go back to bed, assuming that she only got blood on the worn old baby blanket she is holding.  Because the next day you will find yourself facing the prospect of scrubbing dried blood out of a new quilt and wondering how she only managed to bleed on the white fabric on the front of the quilt and miss all of the dark fabric on the back.  Thankfully it came out much better than I expected.

This week... I have realized how hard it is to get pictures of large quilts.  The sun, my husband-quilt-holder and non-bloodied quilts never seem to be in the same place at the same time!

This week... I learned that there is a Modern category in the Iowa State Fair!

183 Modern - a quilt using a new design or reinterpreted traditional design, including improvisational piecing, alternative block structures, or emphasis of negative space and asymmetry.

I worked with the Fabric and Threads superintendent this fall to get this category added.  If you live in Iowa and have made a Modern quilt would you please consider entering it?  Please?  I would hate to have asked for a new category and have no entries.

To enter a quilt in the Iowa State Fair:
Go to the Iowa State Fair 2013 Categories/Premium Books Page

1. Read the Fabric and Threads Booklet to see how many things you would like to enter.  Only one entry per category.
2. Fill out an online entry form.  You do not have to know for sure what you are going to enter at this time.  It will simply ask you how many entry tags you would like.  Each tag can be used for any of the Fabric and Threads categories. 
3. Drop off your item on July 27th.
4. Pick up your item on August 19th

I would love to see a bunch of modern styled quilts hanging at the fair!