Celebrate Color!

Rachel over at Stitched in Color is hosting Celebrate Color, which consists of contests, tutorials, and lots of pretty pictures that all have to do with the beauty of autumn.

For those of you who do not live in Florida, and think you might want to retire here in a condo with all the other oldies that Florida has...I'm going to give you an insider tip.

Florida does not really have seasons. Let me break it down for you. There's hot, there's manageable hot, and then there's I-think-my-internal-organs-are-melting hot [this is only a slight exaggeration, people]. So I have to live vicariously through people from the north as they talk about being able to buy winter coats and cute boots and knit scarves. I haven't had a winter coat since middle school, I can wear my boots once a year, and I can't knit.

So my Celebrate Color entry for October represents the kind of autumn that I see here in Florida. The days are still in the high 80's or low 90's, but the sunsets get richer and the nighttime gets more thick.

That beautiful picture is from my parents' backyard. My little sister has a very nice Nikon, so she takes all the "official" pictures of my work. The other night we were having a photo session, she she stopped to capture this.

And here is my Joel Dewberry Heirloom quilt that I finished last week! I think it matches the sunset and really reflects what kind of change we see here in the south. I just used a simple disappearing nine patch because the prints are so large and I wanted to showcase them!

 

This was my first time ever FMQ-ing anything other than a loopy/stipple. I drew out the basic design of one of the orange flowers on the teal print [you can sort of see that particular fabric in the above left photo] and then gave it a go. It's certainly not anywhere close to perfect, and I would like to get to a point where its more smooth looking. The picture on the right is of the back, as I used a cream thread on the top and a navy thread on the bottom. So there are only 3 or 4 flowers that can be seen really well on the back. I also straight line quilted around each block, and then did a diagonal stitch in every other block, which were the blocks without the quilted flowers.

The back and binding are Kona Navy. And leftover blocks that got chopped up some more. I love it, even though I had a really hard time picking a solid. I knew I wanted something that would be very striking. It's 5 blocks by 6 blocks, with an unfinished block size of 12.5", so the finished size is approximately 60x72".

Everyone has until October 26 to enter their piece into the appropriate category for October's prizes [I would LOVE some Outfoxed, it looks so cute!]

Good luck, and thanks for the opportunity, Rachel and sponsors!