Dan's Ramblings

Dan here ~

Thursday evening, in the studio. It is a tad too chilly for a fire. It’s a good evening to cuddle up under a few quilts. 

Today I spent some time and cut up more of a blowdown that blew a large oak tree into the Mud Pond. I got what I could last winter off the ice. With the water level low now I put my new waders on yesterday and removed a bunch more from the pond. Today I worked on the 12’ or so that was on the land. After managing to cut it up I had to split it once with a maul and splitting wedge so this old man could even lift it. It is all up by the shed and split and stacked. A nice little round wood pile, all hard wood. 

Yesterday I removed two loads of leaves from the beach and that brought my load total to 91. I guess any more that get removed will be removed with the wheelbarrow. After finishing those two loads I decided that I better remove the bucket from the tractor and mount the blower. There was a minor degree of swearing, no more than usual though. The piece that goes between the tractor and the blower weighs about 50 pounds. Now I am still able to lift 50 pounds, but it is very awkward to lift this 50 pounds and get it in the right spot and hanging correctly. I think I figured it out this time, it is always a crap shoot to see if I can get it on and working. Well it’s mounted and ready for snow. It seems to work, you got it, time will tell.

The show quilt I am telling about is called CERTIFIABLE, it was an interesting composition of mostly Flying Geese. This was drawn on the computer, then fabrics chosen and I launched into making Flying Geese. The name could mean that since I had already used Insanity I guess I’m still Certifiable. The block with its plethora of pieces is set on point with more flying geese in the sashing strips. It was well received when shown and is a quite stunning quilt especially after Carol worked her magic with the quilting.

It received First Place at Machine Quilter's Showcase, First Place at Maine Quilts and Second Place at Vermont Quilt Festival.

From Carol ~ this was the first quilt I quilted after I traded my Gammill longarm for my Innova (Lena).  

Lena arrived in late February, this quilt needed to be finished to be displayed at Machine Quilter's Expo in April.  I had many 4:00 mornings down in the quilting studio trying to get as much quilting done as I could before the shop opened at 10:00. 

As you can see, there is LOTS of quilting on this one ~ feathers, straight lines, curved crosshatching, pebbles, flying geese in the border surrounded by more pebbles.  This one took me 95 hours to quilt.  Yikes! Told Dan he had to stop making such large quilts!

 

Judges comments ~ excellent piecing technique, excellent quilting design that is beautifully executed, excellent binding, consider more variety in fabric and value in future work, quilting motifs complement the design, quilting excellent but would benefit from a different thread color choice.

In the studio I finished #33 for 2025. As I told you last time it is centered around 4” blocks. I sewed four 4” blocks together, placed a corner beam in the four corners and then filled in the rest of the block. The stripes pointing into the corners took me a minute to figure out. In each block four of the stripe blocks were cut as 2-1/2”x3-1/2” and the other four as 3-1/2”x 2-1/2”. Sounds like the same thing but it allowed me to have the stripes “point” into the corners. It was fun, it used up the 2”x 3-1/2” rectangles I’ve had forever. No idea where they came from though. #34 is almost complete as well, I’ll talk about it next time.

We have been seeing critters under the bird feeders lately. The opossum and the skunk come around most nights. But some nights we are treated to a beautiful grey fox arriving for a snack of seeds.

I don’t think this weekend will bring snow but at least I guess I’m ready. Stay safe and stay warm. Springs coming.