Hey, check out the announcement below! Isn’t it wonderful what quilters can do?
Hollis Chatelain Gets Hat Trick — AAQI Gets $17,327.26
Hollis Chatelain earned a “hat trick” and the coveted MVP award for “Hollow,” a 16″ x 16″ thread-painted, machine quilted image of a woman’s face. Chatelain’ss quilt raised $2,570 for the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) in the “Stanley Cup Quilt-Off” online auction which ended November 10th. This is the third year in a row her quilt earned top dollar in the charity auction.
Twelve quilters in two teams competed for bragging rights, the highest selling quilt earning its maker the MVP award in this spirited competition between The Feed Dogs (Alex Anderson, Hollis Chatelain, John Flynn, Becky Goldsmith, Renae Haddadin, and Sue Nickels) and The Rotary Blades (Caryl Bryer Fallert, Pat Holly, Libby Lehman, Judy Mathieson, Mary Sorensen, and Ricky Tims.
The annual celebrity quilt auction was the most successful online auction in AAQI history raising $14,025 for the nonprofit. A Viewer’s Choice component to the “Stanley Cup Quilt-Off” was also offered at the International Quilt Festival in Houston and online. Each $1 donation to the AAQI was counted as one vote, raising an additional $2,277.26 overall. Profits from sales of earrings made with images of each of the 12 auction quilts, brought in $1,025 for a grand total of $17,327.26.
Judy Laquidara of Patchwork Times and Vicki Welsch of Field Trips in Fiber are hosting a 2012 Color Challenge that sounds interesting.
To spark creativity, the challenge is to use the color palletes Vicki creates from photos as inspiration for a project you complete that month. If you haven’t seen Vicki’s color palettes, you really must browse through her blog posts and see how great they are. Check out Judy’s challenge post for all the details. I’m contemplating participation in this challenge and creating AAQI Priority quilts. They are small enough to finish in one month and I’ve felt the need to do more for this wonderful grassroots project for funding research.
I can’t believe it’s the 5th of December already. So many things to do and so little time **sigh**. I haven’t had much time to sew but I managed to get block 48, West Virginia, from the Civil War BOM finished.
I took the Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll blocks off my design wall in order to start arranging them on my big table for when I sew the top together, woo hoo! Since I’m almost done with the appliqued swags, I threw up a few of the Vicksburg blocks to get a feel for the quilt. What do you think? I think I need a bigger design wall!! And my math on the last post must have been the “new” math because there is a total of 12 swags, not 9. I have completed 7 and now have 5 left.
Stash Report – No change from last week 
- Fabric in: 0 yards
- Fabric out: 0 yards
- YTD Fabric in: 168 yards
- YTD Fabric out: 86.75 yards
- Net Fabric In/(Out): 81.25 yards accumulated
Happy Quilting, Cherie
Sometimes I let projects marinate.
Sometimes there’s no specific reason except they don’t have a deadline.
Sometimes it’s because things aren’t working out like they should.
Such as the borders for the Vicksburg free BOM from Dawn Heese on her blog Linen Closet Quilts.
The border segments are longer than the swag applique piece. I finally decided to applique the corner swags starting at the sewing line, leaving the “short” bit at the ends that will meet the middle swag which will be centered. I’ll fill the gap created where the swags come together with an appliqued oval. Here’s left hand swag (picture take on my ironing board that needs recovering) followed by a right hand swag, both of which I’ve finished this week. I have a total of 9 swags to do, so with 4 done I only have 5 left
Happy Quilting, Cherie
I haven’t anything new on my design wall so it is the same as before. Check out the DWM post and see what other quilters have on their wall, floors & tables
I did complete a project this week but true to form, I was finishing it just in time to give it to my SIL and forgot to take a picture! Here’s a picture of the top. I hand quilted it and bound it in black Kona cotton.
I managed to go to The Quilters General store while visiting in Rockford. It was good for the soul and bad for the stash report 
I bought three fat quarters and 2 yards of a Jo Morton piece that was half price.
In the past I’ve raided the scrap basket where everything you can fit in the ziplock bag is $5. Well, I had a wonderful time stuffing my bag and here’s what I got. Well, the perle cotton wasn’t part of it but everything else is Fun, fun, fun!
Stash Report
- Fabric in: 3 yards (2.75 plus some large scrap pieces)
- Fabric out: 3/4 yard (9-patch mini)
- YTD Fabric in: 168 yards
- YTD Fabric out: 86.75 yards
- Net Fabric In/(Out): 81.25 yards accumulated
Happy Quilting, Cherie
It’s Design Wall Monday time and Judy’s DWM post has lots of links you can check out. Here’s my wall……yep same as last week but only because there isn’t room to show all that I’ve done!
I’ve been busy this week and it’s not due to Thanksgiving preparation as we are going out of town I completed sewing together all of the Prickly Pear and string blocks for Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll…..did you catch that…..all 30 Prickly Pear, all 20 string blocks and all setting string blocks are finished!!
Not only that, but I’ve gotten all the pieced border units pieced and ready to iron. After that, I’m ready to start sewing everything together, woo hoo!
This weekend I went to Scrap Club and Sarah completed her Exploding Star quilt. Now the Exploding Star is one of Teajuana Mahone’s patterns and Sarah began her’s before the pattern was even available. Sarah wanted her’s to be a true charm quilt (same shaped pieces, each piece from a different fabric) so she made the light/dark squares out of half square triangles so the entire quilt is completely made of triangles!! After starting, the project languished for several years (6 maybe??) as Sarah didn’t have enough different light fabrics to keep going. After telling this story a bunch of us brought in light squares for her to use and now it’s finished. It was such fun looking to see if we could find any of the fabric we gave her.
Yesterday was rainy and cool and when you’ve set aside your doll sized work-in-process and it looks like this:
This is what happens:
Cats just love quilts, even small ones not hardly big enough for them
I also got the alternate First Saturday block for November finished.
And snagged a couple of nice shirts for re-purposing from the Goodwill.
Lots of things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving and quilting and quilting friends are high on the list.
Stash Report – No Change from previous (I haven’t washed and cut up those shirts yet, so they don’t count )
- Fabric out: 0 yards
- YTD Fabric in: 165 yards
- YTD Fabric out: 86 yards
- Net Fabric In/(Out): 79 yards accumulated
Happy Thanksgiving, Cherie
Another late, late design wall Monday posting for me Be sure to check out Judy’s DWM post to see all the links.
I’ve gotten 27 of the 30 prickly pear blocks completed and about half of the string blocks under construction. I can’t wait to get this top together……it will feel like such an accomplishment!
I also finished the applique on Barbara Brackman’s civil war block 40, Order Number Eleven.
I’ve been hand quilting a small project during my train commute and it’s getting a bit easier, but not much faster 
Stash Report:
- Fabric in: 6 yards (Backing for a First Saturday top and some fabric on sale, both purchased with a gift certificate from the thoughtful people who work for me. I HAD to use it, right?)
- Fabric out: 0 yards
- YTD Fabric in: 165 yards
- YTD Fabric out: 86 yards
- Net Fabric In/(Out): 79 yards accumulated
Happy Quilting, Cherie
Due to computer issues, I’m quite late with my design wall post. On the bright side, probably everyone else has linked up to Judy’s DWM post so check it out here. Lot’s going on on the design wall…..civil war BOW, First Sat blocks and Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll (RRCB) blocks.
I got the main Nov first Sat block finished and the alternate block in progress.
My upstairs sewing spot is busy with RRCB units as the parts are finally coming together
Stash Report:
- Fabric in: 1 yard (Fabric from Italy that Lily brought me & I missed on my previous reports)
- Fabric out: 0 yards
- YTD Fabric in: 159 yards
- YTD Fabric out: 86 yards
- Net Fabric In/(Out): 73 yards accumulated
Happy Quilting, Cherie
The quilt show is over and the AAQI Priority quilts are now waiting for the temporary quilt registration goddess to register them Aren’t these Priority quilts wonderful? A great big thank you to Kathleen, Lois, Deb, Leah, Darlene, Janis, Caroline, Suzanne and Vivienne. For news about the Alheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative, you can follow the AAQI blog. There are Priority quilt for sale here and from the 1st to the 10th of each month, Priority quilts are auctioned here. Check them out
I had a great time at the Shipshewana Threads of Mine quilt retreat. There were somewhere around 56 quilters but I’m not sure we were ever all in the room at the same time.
I sewed on Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll……I learned that squaring up my HST was well worth the effort because the block units are fitting together just about perfectly. Here are 600 HST ready to be sewed together 5 at a time.
And sewn together with my leader/ender project sitting in front.
Then I started sewing the units into bigger units…..and here they are back at home waiting to be sewn up into completed blocks.
Like this one
I did a little stash enhancement shopping while there but I also de-stashed a bit too
And that brings me to the design wall for this Halloween Monday:
Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll is going to be finished, completely finished by next year’s retreat because I’m going to show that I didn’t waste the whole retreat sewing and sewing for nothing (even though all I had to show for it was bigger block units than when I started, lol). I may never do another Bonnie Hunter quilt again
Stash Report:
- Fabric in: 8.5 yard (Shipshewana purchases )
- Fabric out: 4.5 yards
- YTD Fabric in: 158 yards
- YTD Fabric out: 86 yards
- Net Fabric In/(Out): 72 yards accumulated – just wait until I get the RRCB top together, that will bring down the total!
Happy Quilting, Cherie
