Long time, no blog!

Wowie Zowie, I can't believe that I haven't posted on this blog since JULY of last year.  I really love doing this and will try to be a better blogger.  A lot has happened this year some good, some not so much.  I'm not going to try and fill in a whole 3/4 of a year right now, though. 

I have all sorts of quilty goodness going on at the moment and have joined in on a couple of group efforts.

One is a Civil War Legacies quilt-along headed up by my buddy Jeanne.  I do love Civil War quilts (ok I just love ALL quilts), but I don't collect those kinds of fabrics at all.  So I was a little reluctant to participate.  But, since the quilts are smallish and Jeanne is such a good arm twister, I consented to join in the fun.  More on that in another post.

The other one is a Round Robin type of thing here at work.  This is not just for fun but to help promote a book that Martingale is publishing in July.  I'll blog more about that later as well.

The one that is really getting my juices flowing at the moment is the 12 x 12 group.  We were inspired by this group, although we've set ours up a little differently.  Plus, there are only 11 of us in the group.  The way it works is that every six weeks, we are given a theme.  Each of us will have a turn at assigning a theme and then each of has to make a 12" x 12" quilt interpreting that theme.  Lemme tell ya, it's HARD to work that small. It does make it easier to keep to the deadlines, though!  Unfortunately, they have decided to keep the group blog private.  I would have liked for the rest of the world to be able to see what everyone has done (they are amazing!) but they wanted to keep it just among ourselves.  That doesn't mean that I can't post my OWN stuff though!

The first theme was Exuberance!  I knew fairly quickly what I wanted to do for it, but as usual, it was the execution of my grandiose ideas that was the roadblock! 

The inspiration was this photograph, taken on the boat launch at Silver Lake Park last October:

I should mention that this photo was taken by Catherine Eastman.

Now, it just does not get any more "exuberant" than that, does it?  But how to translate it onto a 12" x 12" quilt?  I think I pulled it off.  Here's the finished quilt:

It's a pretty awful picture, sorry 'bout that .  The close-up is better:

I put a penny in the bottom corner so you could get some perspective.  I had to cut out the "Ninja boy" on the far right of the picture.  I was working small enough as it is!  I started with a square of Kona White.  I painted the sky, the water and the concrete boat launch.  Then, I sponged in some green trees.  Then I quilted the sky and put some silvery tulle over the water.  Now, time for the people!  I traced them from the photo and then onto steam-a-seam.  I carefully "built" each kid, taking a few liberties with the dress and hair colors.  The shoes and dress straps (you really can't see them here) are done with a micron pen.  THEN I thread painted the trees, being very careful to get right up next to the people.  There were a few hits and misses (not to mention a few swear words!) involved but I think it turned out kind of nice.  The last dilemma was what to do on the top and bottom.  It was a rectangular picture but I had to make the quilt square.  Thankfully, I found this great black-and-white stripe in my stash. I wish that the full photo was a little better (dratted phone camera) but you get the idea.  All in all, I was pleased!

I'll talk about the second theme (Life!) in my next post.

TTFN
Cornelia