The Monster in the Closet

So, the big four: "Princeton-Plainsboro", "Briner's Picnic", "Ramblin' Rose" and my old stack and whack top that got pulled apart to be a pile of blocks again, are starting to look like the monster in the closet did by the time I was 14.

You know that feeling? When you were a teenager, and you could remember that you USED to think there was a monster in the closet, but you no longer feared opening the door? That's how I feel about the big four, and the big six before that. Honestly, looking back, I think having so many UFOs kept me from being able to make any progress ANYWHERE in my quilting life. I have seldom worked this hard on a goal, but it's been totally worth it. I knocked off "Blush and Bashful" and hired out "Tropical Storm" to get it finished. "Princeton-Plainsboro" has binding, and "Rambling Rose" blocks are pieced, and I'm working on the final border this week. "Briner's Picnic" will be easily quilted and bound, in fact, I might get it sandwiched next week.

Of course, I now have "Mystery in the Mountains" to finish, as well as the Piecemaker's 2008 exchange quilt, but I really am starting to see that the monster was not something to be feared. It is entirely possible that by March I will be HUNTING to the bottom of that closet for other UFOs that need to be attacked.

Our Neighborhood

The Piecemakers went together to the Bulloch Hall Quilt Show. This annual event held in a historic mansion in Roswell, GA is a great excuse to take our crowd on the road. One bit of excitement for us is that several of the Piecemakers submitted their house quilts to the show and they were displayed as a collection. Here you can see what some of my friends did with their house blocks. (Most impressive to me is that they FINISHED theirs in time for this show!)



Nancy H. made the quilt above. The Atlanta papers came out to Bulloch Hall to take pictures of the show and chose to put Nancy's quilt on the front page of one of it's sections. This quilt also won a ribbon at the ECQG show.



Gail made her blocks into a collection of placemats.

Princeton Plainsboro

If you understand the title of this post, you know what I'm doing on Tuesday nights. (Thank goodness the writer's strike is over.)

I've named my house quilt "Princeton Plainsboro". It's a play on words that came to me when I was putting the blocks together with the sashing. It might only be a working title, but we'll see.


These blocks were part of the Piecemaker's exchange in 2007. I had just finished the applique borders for Betty's house quilt when I started working on this one. I wanted my quilt to be as large as hers (mine is 12 blocks, hers was 16) so I knew I'd need bigger sashing and borders.



For whatever reason this time I decided to graph out my design rather than using EQ. It was fun to play with different markers.

Ultimately I chose star sashing, which in retrospect might overshadow the houses, what do you think? I still like the quilt, but it's not the effect I thought I would get.



I put plain borders on it, planning to applique the same vine and flowers design I had done on Betty's quilt, but I've decided that won't work for my design. So I'm going to have to take these borders off and do something else. Maybe piano keys? Maybe some kind of block border. I've spent hours on EQ5 trying to find something I'll really like. Nothing that really jumps out at me yet.



I'm like that. Especially with borders. It takes me a long time to solve a problem and then suddenly I'll get an idea and it all goes pretty quickly from there, or the project dies and it goes into the UFO pile. LOL. I like this quilt too much to let the patient die. If I can't find a proper treatment, I guess I'll have to take it to a specialist... paging Dr. House.

The Bluebird of Happiness

The Piecemakers has a member whose house burned down this past year. It was a terrible thing and we all wanted to do something special for her. Some of us had already made house block quilts for our 2007 exchange and so we decided to each make more blocks and put together a special quilt for Betty.



We set it all together during a bee meeting and then I got it to put on some applique borders. I knew what I really wanted to do was black borders with bright flowers, but the group sent me white fabric. I struggled with it for weeks before finally going back and saying "I'd like to use black." Asking for what you want is a good thing. The final touch was the bluebird of happiness flying in to bring good tidings to Betty.



I hope that bird makes it's way into all our lives this year.