Friday, June 18, 2010

Quilt show

Quilt show! Quilt show!

I am proud to announce the unveiling of Utsunomiya's Crazy Lady Quilters 2010 Mini-Round Robin quilts. We seven quilters are thrilled to finally get a look at the mini-Round Robin quilts that have been passed around, consulted over, agonized about, stitched in, (ripped out), and loved through and through for the past 19 months. Yes. Nineteen months! How that ever happened I don't know and we blithely guessed that this had taken us about a year until I went back to the first entries of this blog and realized we started our Mini-Round Robin in November of 2008. Horrified! Well, I guess we aren't particularly speedy quilters but all in all we are proud of our results. (And remember how I despaired over some of these?)


Mrs. Takami's quilt. She is our one member that was never able to attend our Thursday meetings. She ended up working on quilts and passing them along without ever asking for suggestions or getting advice. And she never missed a deadline!


This is Mrs. Furui's quilt. Obviously all of us know she likes blue and has a musical bent. The musical notes appliqued and embroidered on this was done by our one very un-confident member and I think her idea is inspiring!


This is Mrs. Yamaguchi's quilt and I think everyone picked up the colors pretty well. The painstakingly appliqued little coffee cup was an especial hit with her.


This is Mrs. Harada's quilt. It was interesting how the blocks at the bottom sort of directed this quilt because it looked so much like a fence... but that wasn't what the block creator had imagined. I, of course, think the embroidered cat that someone put in (it wasn't me!) MAKES the quilt!


This is Mrs. Takagishi's quilt and again, the simple polka dot block in the center set the quilt's theme and lots of circles got added to this quilt. The wavy binding especially thrilled the member who had put in the pink border but hadn't gotten around to quilting it. Well, if she'd quilted the border it couldn't have been cut into like this.


This is Mrs. Ochiai's quilt. It was quite a surprise to everyone and a couple people said "where are the borders?" Well, we made the rules (apply a border) and we are allowed to break them. The border is there... just doubled on one side...



AND THIS IS MY QUILT!!!!!

I cried! Do I ever love the colors in this! And look at those kitties! And look at what they are looking at! Green pastures and a fluffy sheep and Psalm 23!

As the story goes, our non-confident member (whom we all love dearly!!!) got to her part and couldn't do, didn't have time, didn't know how to do the embroidery. But this friend is very good at directing and so she brought the quilt to Mrs. Furui LAST MONDAY and said things like,

"That space is too blank. The cats need to be looking at something."

So Mrs. Furui put in a sheep.

"There needs to be something above that. Psalm 23 would be a good verse to put there."

So Mrs. Furui probably went without sleep to embroider the verse. The two of them make a great team! This is SOOO wonderful! I put it up in my living room as soon as I got home and I gaze at all the love stitched in every time I walk by.

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