he's back!!!!

who you ask? art, aka IBOL guy!!

he's ready for IBOL 2.1.... come check it out on his blog and see how you can help again this year. or for the first time if you missed it last year!

catching up and other bits

i've been trying to catch up on some of my commitments this weekend... blocks for the august QBE swap:


working on QOVs that have been started for a while... one has been in progress since march or so. eek!! the other has been in the actual process for a month, but i started it with my friend a couple months ago when we sat down and sorted through our stash of red fabrics. both of these are paper pieced quilts and one of them is going a lot faster than the other. can you guess which is which? sigh...

friday afternoon after hubby picked me up from work, we headed over to our local library and a couple antique stores in the strip next door. i've lived in my little city for 11 years and never stepped foot in either store. too bad - they're really good stores! both wind around and go from room to room in such odd ways. at first, i figured they were offices originally, but there are closets and pocket doors into rooms that it had to be a strange little apartment complex originally.

in the bottom of one former closet was this gorgeous find:

and she came home with me saturday morning. i just couldn't stop thinking about her and she needed a new home that wasn't at the bottom of an antique store closet.

she is a beautiful singer model 127, born september 25, 1923 in elizabeth, nj. her cords look great and the case came with her. she just needs a free estimate and we'll see what she needs to be up and running again.

look at this metalwork! the detailing speaks to the metalsmith in me SO much!!

modern day machines just don't have the same "oomph" that they once did. instead of being a work of art and functional... they're just plain functional.

she is so pretty. she needs a name, but i haven't figured it out yet. any ideas?

progress....

QOV #11
Originally uploaded by greeneyedsilversmith

after what has seemed forever, i have made progress on a QOV again!!

this one is a collaboration of the ladies from quilt block exchange on flickr and my friend [K]. she and i both participated multiple months with the QBE swap and made some ourselves to go into this QOV top. after we had enough blocks, she started assembling it and i finished it up this friday night. the longarmmer request was put in and now i'm waiting to find out where i ship it off to.

putting on the finish touches was fun. it was more of a distraction from my hubby and the plumbing issue... he comes into the house and says "we need a plumber!!!" never a good thing to hear. seems our spigot for the hose on the side of the house decided to let go, well, not the spigot really, but the actual pipe split and was shooting water. at 7pm on a friday. so of course, that becomes after hours and with a minimum time slot. blah. but it's all good now and we can go back to normal daily routine!!

if you read this post and wonder why my QOV numbers seem to be jumping around...it's not you. it's me. i start QOV tops and this is the order they were started in. not finished unfortunately. and i guess i should say this is QOV #11 for the navy instead of total because i've got 2 more finishes with presentations that aren't counted in that number. i have 6 more to make for a current request of 12. i'm halfway there!!!!!

a group collaborative QOV

some of you may remember previous posts about this particular QOV... it was a collaboration between a large group of women over on facebook, called the "quilt block swap group." our swaps there are an every other month type swap and there's an option for a "6th block" that is set aside for a charity or donation quilt. february's swap was a red/white/blue disappearing 9-patch and i was the recipient of the 6th blocks for a QOV.

i pieced together and machine this particular QOV. for some reason, there was a strong sense of need for me to do more work on the quilt than just make my one 6th block and piece it together. doing the quilting was my way to satisfy that urge.

i sent the QOV to it's intended owner recently. the recipient is active duty army and has been deployed, suffered injuries and is dealing with TBI and PTSD. he needed a quilt. i needed to make him one. i have not met him, nor his wife, but his wife and i are both part of an online enlisted spouse community. i learned of them through our little chats on the forum. no one else could receive this quilt after that... a quilt made from an online community to go to a person from another online community.

while i assumed i would not hear from the recipient or his wife, i secretly hoped i would. there's been no little hint on the forum of the quilt and no messages. and that's ok. but since the quilt was delivered more than a week ago, i guess it's alright to post this blog now. no surprises can be spoiled.

and as always, i wish as easy a recovery for the family as possible. and that the QOV helps just a little if not a lot.

saturday's meeting of the HMQG

saturday was the regularly scheduled meeting/sew-in of the houston branch of the modern quilt guild. i love these meetings. the women (and token male) of this group are absolutely fantastic and there is never a dull moment.

we had our largest meeting ever with 13 members in attendence. we were missing a couple of our "regulars" but this bunch is quickly becoming the normal group to meet. i'd love to meet a few more of those who are signed up on the site.... but i understand some can't make it on the 3rd saturdays. hopefully we'll get to meet you all during other sew-ins!









this picture looks hazy, right? well...that's not my camera, but smoke. there was a wee fire started when our brisket keeping warm in the oven decided to drip and catch fire. our hostess saturday also fed us the yummiest BBQ i've had in a long long time. her hubby was "practicing" for a cookoff and no one complained one bit. :)

i spent my afternoon paper piecing a QOV with my dear friend K. she's helping me work on a few to meet my request of 12 QOVs for the navy. thank you, thank you! this one is going to be gorgeous when it's all together. that's also my hubby and he made more progress on his first quilt ever. snappy got to assemble a few blocks together so it'll start to take shape soon enough.

watching everyone work on such different pieces is amazing. i love the creativity that flows during our meetings. the suggestions, critique and constructive work is something i have missed from my days in school.

here, you can see a few quilts in progress. handquilting in the background and diligent machine quilting in the foreground.

i put out a call-for-scraps in our flickr group and on our soon-to-be-moved forum - scraps to be used in a string quilt for a QOV. when i made "homecoming" i used scraps from all sorts of projects...dresses made for myself or my sister, quilts for family and friends, previous QOVs... all things to bring together a sense of family and friends. i wanted to recreate this with the HMQG string quilt. have scraps from as many members as possible to bring together a community. that community in turn would be a warm and comforting QOV for a sailor. i had just sat down at my sewing machine when one of the members came by with a stack of strips for me. one i hadn't realized she had read my post. then another member would periodically hand me scraps off her current project during the meeting. our hostess, who i knew wanted to contribute, gave me some fat quarters out of her stash at the end of the day. there will be a few blocks made for me as well.

aren't these great ladies?!

we discussed our first guild project/activity as well. we're going to divide into groups for round robins and row robins. snappy even signed up for it!! i'm going to be in the row robin group - i've never done one and i'm excited about it.

well...i guess i need to get back to working. just thought i'd give you all a little update on what i've been doing lately.

waiting for delivery

i sent a quilt out yesterday but i can't discuss it yet... you've seen the beginnings of it, but if i post it now and say where it's going, the surprise could be found.

this is going to drive me a little nuts. i "know" of this person but we've never met. this quilt is going to be one of those completely random acts of kindness and only a few others know what i've done and where it will go. there are some who follow me who "know" this person as well.

more to come in a few days.

look what i found!

i'm long overdue in checking out the QOVF blog.... and on my "catchup" reading today, i found this:

http://qovf.blogspot.com/2010/07/cub-scouts-present-qov.html

how lovely!