Sunday, February 26, 2017

IN WHICH WE FIND SWEET SURRENDER ASSEMBLED AND SQUARED!


Ta-Da!

Well this battle has been won against all odds!  Assembled, squared, and only a little wafflely which I think I can ease in if I carefully baste down each row when making the quilt sandwich.  I have abandoned making triangles for the border.  The pattern did not have the dimensions of the quilt body so I do not know if the above quilt body will coincide with the size of the triangles-I could end up with and inch hanging over or an inch under and why give myself this sort of headache?

After some re-thinking, the border will be made of the background material with the lines going all in the same direction.  The best quilt shop in Kansas City, Quilter's Station, the orginal source of this fabric, has more and has set it aside for me.  We will be in KC this week and I can pick it up.  Once this decision was made, I began constructing the stems and 1/2 edging around the quilt body.  About 10 yards of stems-maybe I overdid it.

The stems are the same colors as the stems on the appliqued diamonds and I will add some leaves and maybe some flowers.

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Have you made a contribution to The National Quilt Museum in Paducah?  This is more important than ever as Congress is about to eliminate the funding for the National Endowment for the Arts which will reduce income for all museums as well as other forms of the arts.  Here is the link for Info on how to donate:
 http://quiltmuseum.org/quilts-for-quilting/

I am donating 2 quilts and some quilt patterns.  Here is my package ready to go:


And here are the quilts I donated:



The left one is made of Kansas Troubles fabric and the second was made about 8 years ago as a BOM.  I hope they have lots of donations and raise some funding.

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I read a funny thing the other day:  

We are having such a nice spring this winter!

That is certainly the case here.  All the optimistic flora and fauna abound.  We have had robins in January.  The squirrels are frolicking about in a suspicious manner. AND daffidols, forsythia, and japonica are all budding and even blooming as well as all the buds on the trees.



 This has been going on since mid-February!  It is pretty eerie!  In the past, the daffodils poked their heads up about the end of March at the earliest and did not bloom until April.  I received some blow-back last week indicating that I did not take climate change seriously. That is not the case!  Probably climate change is the most serious long term problem facing us (there may be more dire ones in the short term).

AND NOW......
YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN

 There are little gardens all around us.  This particular garden grows on a large tree stump in my front yard.  The stump is about 3 feet in diameter and is covered with a
pretty gray "rose" garden.





Only the first photo is from my tree stump garden.  The other photos I googled under "tree stump fungus".  The beauty of fungus.

When we lived on our farm we collected and ate some varieties of fungus-puffballs, morels, oysters and coral.  I believe the above is edible.  But then we lived without electricity, phones, or running water for 5 years also.  Off the grid as they say now.

SO LONG AND HAPPY QUILTING!!

I am linking up with:

Slow Stitching Sunday, Bambi's Blog,
Patchwork Times,  Em's Scrapbag,
Esther's Wow, Let's Bee Social,
Free Motion by the River, Whoop Whoop,
and Off the Wall Friday.           

13 comments:

  1. Your triangle quilt is beautiful, Pam. It seems to me (though I'm probably wrong) that you finished this is record time. You haven't been working on it very long, have you? You're so generous to donate two beautiful quilts. I hope the museum is able to get enough non-government funding continue without too much disruption

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  2. Surrender quilt is more than sweet! Congrats on sticking with it. The background fabric will be a good border choice. Two lovely quilts are a generous donation indeed to the quilt museum. Speaking of Paducah, I think your Sweet Surrender is worthy of being entered into the spring show perhaps next year.

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  3. having followed your posts on this quilt for quite awhile now I can offer a hearty congratulations. We have had the spring in winter here as well and the mushroom / fungas information and photos were very interesting!

    My ex's mom was Italian, the daughter of immigrants, and she and her sisters would often be out digging up dandelions in the early spring, searching for morel mushrooms, etc. I can still taste that bitter sweet mix of dandelions, bacon, and whatever other magic she cooked up in a skillet in early spring :)

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  4. Congratulations on having the center sewn together. She looks lovely. Can't wait to see the applique border you come up with. The designer could have done a much better job with the pattern instructions. I'll get mine sewn together sometime, I'm not loosing any sleep over it anyway. Blessings!

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  5. Great colors and a I think it will be beautiful when it´s finished. I visited Paducah in 2015 for the quilt festival and it was a wonderful quilt museum, I really enjoyed the time there. When we talked to people they were all very surprised when we told them we were coming all the way from Sweden. I would love to go there again some time.

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  6. Your quilt top is gorgeous! It looks like you have a perfect plan for the borders. What a beautiful little garden growing on your tree stump.

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  7. Congratulations on getting it together! Yeah for you! It is such an accomplished beautiful top!

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  8. Your Sweet Surrender is so beautiful...what a job! Imagine all the growing things in February...still icy and mostly white here, but recent rains have helped us think spring at least. Love fungi as well.

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  9. Absolutely beautiful! I am so glad you persevered! I have never seen so much tree fungi alltogether - we have odd bits here and there but nothing like yours. I love them. xx

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  10. Can't wait to see what you're doing with your border ideas! It's so fun to watch a creative person make a quilt from start to finish!

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  11. Sweet Surrender looks great! I know that the pattern has issues, so I admire you for hanging in there. Best choice on not doing the Border. If I do this one I will use the pattern, but will change the pattern from its original design. I think I need to take some time for a Charity project.

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  12. WOW, what a wonderful quilt!
    I belive that your pick of border will make the quilt calm down.
    Can't wait to see this quilt done.

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  13. Look at it! Sweet Surrender is just so pretty. I absolutely love it. And that stump fungus is gorgeous - I would love to have something like that around. :)

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