KTAA Annual Exhibition

There were some totally fabulous entries, and the grand winner – who could argue! Shyamala Rao just knocked the socks off everyone with her fabulous quilt.

Mine were much more modest.

Ursa Major was the most fun. I don’t normally like mysteries, but this one gave me a lot of control. Every step had suggestions, and measurements, but you had a lot of latitude within the instructions. Mine shows the great North Star in the center of the quilt, and the Big Bear, endlessly circling the North Star.

Kathi Ewan’s instructions were just fun! I felt so free! I knew the fabrics I wanted to use, and the quilt kind of made itself. Normally, I start out knowing where a quilt is going, but this one, with each step, I rested and reflected before making the next round, and I got more and more excited about the quilt with each step, ending with the silvery little salmon circling on the penultimate border – a bear’s gotta eat!

At one point in the quilt, I tried some low-contrast piecing, the star has two kinds of white. I wasn’t happy, and was going to change to higher contrast when LeAnn Aldulrahim said no, to go with the white on white and try the quilting technique Paramjeet taught us two years ago with the zig-zag stitch. “Hmmm,” I thought, and went home and did it in silver, and oh – what fun. The bear tracks circling the quilt, the 45°angled borders around the center medallion and again at the last border – just fun. I had a great time with this quilt. It’s icing on the cake that it won the Children’s Choice award. I made it for the child within!

Another joyful, childish quilt – The Stars that Dance in Southern France (in their underpants) was started to use up some of the provincial French fabrics I gathered so lovingly for so many years, but found myself thinking I was turning into Gollum with his precious, if all I did was look at them now and then and say “someday . . . ”

My husband added the part about the underpants, and I just let it stand. I thought it was a hoot.

It took third in the Traditional Pieced category. It makes me smile when I look at it.

Last but not least, KaleidoStars is a baby quilt for a new baby on the way, sex unknown, but I loved these Indian batik fabrics we found down in the souks, and couldn’t wait to get my hands going on something that would show them off and let the lines and dots sing and move around the quilt. It’s all about the motion:

They’re all packed away now, except for KaleidoStars, which I need to mail soon, very soon. We are moving back to Qatar at the end of the month, and just today I finished packing up (AAARRGHHH!) the quilt room.

Dad’s Alaska Quilt

I’m glad I made this quilt when I did, althought I doubt my Dad ever used it before he died. He wasn’t really a quilt kind of guy. Whatever. I am glad for me, that I made it for him. It was made with some wonderful batik fabric with bear and moose on them, and I found some perfect batik fabric like Alaska salmon, and added some pine trees left over from one of my very earliest quilts (which I haven’t yet photographed!)

The blocks are bear paw, alternating with this wonderful north woods fabric. Yeh, it’s a little busy. I love it anyway. If I had to do it over again, I would use a plain black as the alternating blocks, but still use the northwoods fabric on the border.

There is one block in there that bugs me. You know how some very good batik fabrics are almost identical front and back? I can see one block that is going the wrong way. Wrong in that in all the other blocks, the animals are facing the same direction, but in one block they are facing the opposite direction. Would you have noticed if I hadn’t pointed it out?

I am gathering my “babies” photos as fast as I can. I have run into the priest for whom I made a quilt, and put a prize-winning entry on the back side, as he loved Paris. I am remembering two other quilts nearby I will attempt to photograph before I leave here. Woo Hoooooo!