This was a special contest for quilt blocks that will be made into a quilt for a drawing at the fair next year. The block had to follow the theme, "No Place Like Home...Town's of Kansas."
I had a crazy time trying to come up with an idea for my block. I went through books, magazines, and web sites with no inspiration at all. I wanted to go out of the box and not do a basic house block. I really wanted to go bright with the colors.
I was about to give up, when I opened the July 2012 issue of American Quilter magazine. Deborah Gordon created a foundation paper pieced baby quilt called, "Baby Bunting" that looked beautiful and reminded me of a sunset. Kansas sunsets are so beautiful. I knew that was what I wanted to do.
I knew curves would be a good challenge for the judging, but I wanted to do patchwork also. I pulled out the graph paper and designed silhouette of the roof tops for the bottom of the block with 2 1/2" squares and half square triangles.
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| Sun on Kansas Horizon quilt block |
(Just noticed every paragraph starts with I. lol) This one was about to too. I'll work on my writing skills..................................................
The half square triangles were made with this technique. I love it!! There is a chart to help with the starting size of the squares in that link. It is very handy!
The rays of the sun were made with charms from
that I participated in earlier in the year. The rest of the block was a variety of batiks from my stash.
It's so funny how picky you can be when you are going to be judged. I sewed and ripped and sewed and ripped and sewed and ripped again. If I spent this much time on each block every time, I may only be able to make one quilt in my lifetime.
The support I received from my husband and daughter were incredible. When I was ready to give up the idea of doing this, they encouraged me. I thought it was a crazy idea to do this when I only found out about the contest a couple of days before the block was due, but my husband knew I could do it. I'm so lucky to have them in my life.
The ladies accepting the entries made me feel so good. The first words were, "Oh my, how pretty." I was good with that and was on top of the world. They even invited me to join their quilt group.
Overall, this was such a great experience. Even without winning, I would have been a winner. But winning is cool. lol My prize? 50 bucks...oh yeah!!!
Now I'm ready to get out of my comfort zone again. Maybe I'll enter 2 projects next year.
My husband also had an entry at the fair. I want to share it because he is so talented. Check out more of his work here.
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| Gone Fishing Metal Art |
Now to clean up my sewing room,
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