Surface Design Group Challenge

WARNING: Lots of Quilting Details below. If you're not a quilter, just look at the pictures and skip most of the writing.

I belong to a local Surface Design Group and last year our challenge was to pick a random paint chip from a bag and make an 8 1/2" x 11" piece based on or featuring this color. We could pick two and of course I did.

The first color I picked was called "Blackberry Harvest" a very dark purple.

The second color was called "Tutti Frutti" a very pink pink.

I immediately knew that I'd dye up the fabric I needed and do a value gradation with it.

I did that back in the summer, and then I had to let the fabric age (not really, but it sounds good.) The pieces were due on January 20th and I was cutting and making the two pieces on January 19th.

Here's what I came up with.

This first one is called "Tutti Frutti Bubbles"

I cut strips from the gradation fabrics (very pale pink to a very dark pink and about 7 or 8 shades in between). I pieced them together and then sliced them up in the other directions, shifted the strips and pieced those together to get one inch square checker board grid. I was going to sew circles all over it to make something that resembled bubbles, but it was very boring looking and also not wide enough, it was suppose to be 8 1/2" wide, but all I has was 7 inches and anything I tried to come up with just looked like it was slapped on to make it wider, an afterthought. So I did something very daring for me, I drew circles on my checkered board and cut out the circles of various sizes. Then I attached those to a darker boarder with applique zig zag. I was then much happier with that result. I gave it a whimsy type quilting stitch (on the advice from my friend Sarah Ann Smith who says stippling can be boring, great advice Sarah!) It worked for this piece do not do the stippling! I may add beeds eventually when I get more time. But the overall effect was to make the view think of a Tutti Frutti Bubblegum or Ice Cream, a sort of Soda Shop type feel.

Here's the second piece, "Frozen Blackberry Harvest" The name comes from the fact that while I was working on this piece the day before it was due the temperture here in the south was rapidly dropping and it was snowing all day (nothing was sticking.) A southern treat I learned from my husband is to pick blackberries in the summer, wash them up and add a little sugar and then freeze them. Then later sometime, they are taken out of the freezer and milk is added. The concoction is stirred together to make a frozen blackberry treat, a sort of ice cream stuff.

This was fused pieced in a Melody Johnson style. Fusible web is first applied to the whole piece of fabric and the paper is removed. (Wonder Under is the best for this process.) Then I cut up the fabric into curved pieces and overlapped them just a little to keep them together. This is all fused to the batting. I used all seven of my gradations values for this piece.

So I got the pieces done and turned in! Yeah for me!!! We're scanning each person's piece and printing them out to each have a book of the whole challenge project.

Next year we're doing a different challenge, this time the piece is something that relates to the theme, "Farfetched" and we're suppose to make one 5x7 piece for each person in the group. If I plan on getting this done my July 31st. Now that's "Farfetched!"

Yikes It's Been a While!

Wow! It's been a while since I posted anything here. Sorry, but it's been busy around here. I didn't promise to be regular about it anyway.

One of the activities that's taken a very high priority is the opportunity to take care of my granddaughter every once in a while. She's walking and talking and lots of fun. She's only 13 months old, but she amazes me each time I see her with her new discoveries.

Everytime she sees me she signs "dog" She loves to go feed my dog, a Springer Spaniel.

So here she is busy at work, our future CEO of some big company shuffling and sorting papers.

Faith is very please with her work for the day. She gets paid with cheese bits or grapefruit slices, not a bad rate!

I know that's plenty of grandchild pictures for one post, but it's been a while and just be thankful I haven't posted play by play pictures of Christmas.

BBQ Contest a Success!

This past week-end we competed in one of the most respected and larger BBQ contest in North Carolina. Teams from as far away as Pennslyvania, Florida, Virginia, Alabama as well as North and South Carolina were there. In fact there were 63 teams all together at the Hog Happnin' in Shelby, NC. We love cooking at this contest because it's for a great cause and some of our family members live right there.

So the results (which can be seen at the Hog Happnin' website) are - drum roll! We, the "At Ease Moonlighters" won 7th place in the Chicken category and 10th place in the Ribs category. And out of 63 teams, we were 4th overall! That overall ranking is our highest so far!

He are a few pictures of the team and spectators in action:

Don, the Pitmaster, and Jonathan, the "Roady" as he called himself preparing some meat for the cookers early Friday afternoon.

After getting our meat onto the cookers for the competition it was time to entertain a few of our friends and family who were willing to come out on a chilly Fall day to show their support and enjoy some food. We had Ribs, Early Autum stew, Dutch Oven Potatoes, and an assortment of desserts. (Sorry forgot to get pictures of the food.)

Here's Faith insisting that she walk with her Mom, Rachel's help. And the good news is that Faith loves Barbeque!

Here's Faith's dad, Jason helping to put the finishing touches on our ribs that we were serving up Friday night.

The real action is Saturday morning. Here's our Roady's wife, Beth pitching in to prepare the garnish in our turn in trays. This is a very important job since one of the criteria that judges look for is appearance.

Here Don and Matt, one of our fans, and my brother, check the meat on the cooker to see how it's coming.

One of my responsibilities is to be sure the entries are put in the trays and everything looks just right for the judges.

Here is Elise administering wet paper towels to keep our finger prints off the boxes! A very important job when it comes to crunch time, because we only have a 10 minute window to get each entry turned in or we're disqualified.

Here's Beth after she turned in her sauce entry, our last entry of the day! She's speaking for us all! We're always relieved to see that last entry turned in on time. Sauce is an extra auxillary category and for the past two years we've let Beth mix up a concoction of her own. This year her entry came in 10th out of 41 entries! Way to Go Beth a top 10 finish and in the top 25%. We just hopes she can remember what she did for next year!