It's That Time Again

What time is that, you ask? Time for the annual Pathology Quilt Raffle of course. That's right. The University of Michigan Pathology department will be hosting a fabulous quilt raffle. Last year the quilts raised $13,000! The department raised $33,000. That meant that 33 needy patient families we able to receive $1000 each! How great is that?? If you click on the link it will take you to the raffle site. You can print tickets and send them in the mail to me if you are interested in any of the quilts. There are 30 beautiful quilts, so it's like 30 individual raffles! Neat huh? Tickets are $1 each or 6 for $5. Go take a look, it's like a virtual quilt show! (I made #4 along with the CL's)

Go on, you know you want to! = )

Traveling Quilt Raffle and Amy's Quilt

This is the back of Robin's car when loaded up to deliver or get ready for the next venue with all 43 quilts!

This is my car loaded up with all the racks and PVC building stuff for the displays.
Here are Holly and Robin after we loaded both cars in the cold and snow after a great selling day!  PRICELESS!!
I thought you might like to see some of the quilts up close.  Robin made this red, black and white beauty.  It has been wildly popular.  You can just see the edge of the sampler off to the right.  It is a beautiful quilt made by my friends Yuki and Judith (Makes my heart glad since I taught both of them and Robin!)
If you can see the lone star in this photo, Robin made this one too.  Both it and the cherry quilt have been very popular as well.
Here is a great photo of the completed Big Ten quilt.  I am hoping when you click on it you will be able to see LTW's great quilting job.  

This "M" string quilt has been very popular too.  I don't think you can see it but the U of M fight some is quilted into it.  It begins at the top, goes around the right down across the bottom and finishes up on the left side.  I had to look up the words though as I only know the words to the MSU fight song!
I know I had talked about Amy's quilt.  I have become just a little obsessed with it.  Here is my cat inspector keeping my strips warm and "pressed" while I am sewing.  Thanks, Jack.  In addition, you can see the border on the arm of the couch.  I was trying not to repeat any of the colorful fabric in the quilt hence the ziploc bag.  I had to keep it up on the back of the couch so I could build it and see the colors as I went along.
I worked all weekend on this quilt but still had 2 rows of blocks to make and then sew into rows and then sew to the quilt top.  I also had to do all the borders.  I worked for another 5 hours last night and *finally* got the top finished!!  (And in case you are wondering, like my DH did, the strips are NOT supposed to match up!)  I showed the top to him last night and he says to me, "I hate to tell you but did you realize the strips don't match up?"  *sigh*,  Of COURSE I know that, they were not supposed to match!!  I asked LTW if she thought there was such a thing as variegated blue, green and purple thread and she assured me that there was.  She emailed me to tell me that she ordered some!  Won't that be pretty?  I am going to use black (hopefully flannel) on the back.  Maybe just plain black.  
Please let me know what you think of it!

I counted up how many quilts I have finished this year and I have 22 done (counting this one).  I somehow thought it was more, but hey it 's all good.

DD2 has an interview for Study Abroad today so keep her in your prayers.  She is studying for a degree in Fisheries and Wildlife with a minor in Marine Science (difficult in a state without an ocean, just LOTS of fresh water!)  She is hoping to get into the program that will be in the Galapagos islands this summer.  I'll keep you posted!  Well, it is a wet and snowy day here so I am going to go and become part of the traveling quilt show soon so I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving (If you are in the US).  If not then take a  minute to count your blessings and what you are thankful anyway, it never hurts!

Friday and Saturday

I decided to try to make a quilt using the 5 yard quilt pattern and since I really wanted to make a MSU quilt for the raffle (in addition to the U of M one I already did) here is what I came up with.

Let me know what you think of this.  I cut and sewed the "focus" blocks on Thursday night in about an hour and did the cutting and sewing of the rest of the quilt on Friday night and Saturday afternoon.  This one is really quick, folks.  This is the quilt I wanted to use for the challenge.  (Swap on the blog if anyone is interested).  This is the challenge the CL's will be doing in January.

Saturday morning I made my DH take me to the Ghoultide Gathering in Northville, MI.  It was a Halloween Artist Spectacular (their words not mine) .  The stuff was so cool, but there were only 14 booths and everything was very expensive (or maybe I'm just that cheap!)  These paper mache guys were in a secret auction and min starting was $500.  They were made by Scott Smith.  He was there in a booth and his stuff was really really cool!
Here is my DH standing by one of the pumpkin people also made by Scott Smith.  There were several of these around the park.  You can see they are really BIG.  DH is 6 feet tall.
This was chalk ware by Vaillancourt folk art.  Her things were very interesting.  I had a friend that used to live across the street from us and she did similar kinds of work (chalk ware) and I think they were competitors.  My friend's company was Walnut-Ridge Collectables.  
I also got to meet the artist Debra Schoch of Hop Hop Jingle Boo.  She was so nice and her stuff was very very cool.  Her stuff was by far the one I liked the best!
Here is a closer up photo of her work.  Isn't it fabulous?  I loved the cat girl, she is on the right.  Get the photo up closer 

Another Pumpkin Guy!
This artist (Murphy Bears, Pat and Tom Murphy) had the most awesome Halloween pincushions.  I met Pat and she was very nice too.
Each one had such a personality!
I think this one was my favorite!!

Just in case you are wondering, I got permission from each artist to take the photos and post them on my blog.  They were all very kind about it so please respect their copyrights!  I hope they like the photos I took too!

I have lots more to blog about as on Sunday we got together and made the top of the Big Ten quilt.  I will show you more of that when I get a minute.

U of M Quilt Raffle/ BIG TEN Quilt

It's finally done! We finished the top awhile ago and then we got it back from Liz, the LAQ genius. As you can see in every block she did a star pattern to quilt the block but the best part is that in the sashing around each block she wrote (using thread) what they cheer at each school. You might think this an easy task but it was not. I did not know what they cheer at some of the other schools so what to do?? Well I went on my facebook account and randomly selected students from the places we didn't have and asked them, of course! The guy I chose from Northwestern actually emailed me back telling me that his mom was a quilter and that what we were doing was great! (I have to say everyone I contacted did get back to me with whatever the chant was from their school). I thought some of them rather interesting. Like for Penn State they say "We are...Penn State". And Purdue says, "Boiler Up!" and Illinois says, "ILL...INI". Interesting, fun facts to know and tell, hahaha.

Then I threw in a few close ups of the corner stone where we used the logo in a 4 patch and when we didn't have enough for 16 (only 11 schools in the Big Ten) I appliqued the Big Ten logo in the square! I love the way the Big Ten block came out too. I appliqued all the logos in the block. I also did all the center appliques for each block and Iowa and Penn state win the prize for being the most difficult to applique! Note the amazing Liz's BIG TEN quilting in the border of the quilt too. She even drew the football in free hand! I would sure love to hear what you all think of this quilt.

U of M Quilt Raffle

It's that time of year again. Time for the University of Michigan department of Pathology quilt raffle. This year we have 33 quilts donated (only 23 are up on the website as of right now but I'm working on it.) The deadline for submission is Thursday so I know I will be receiving quilts that late. They will have to be photographed and the writeups done and then they can be put on the web so please be patient! If you have not seen our raffle quilts before you are in for a treat. There is certainly something for everyone there. This is the website address

http://www.pathology.med.umich.edu/charity/quilts/quilts.html

Please take a minute to go and look at the quilts. Tickets may be printed from the website but money and tickets need to be mailed to the address provided. Tickets are one for $1.00 or 6 for $5.oo Money goes to help patient families at U of M that the social work dept have determined as being "in need". Last year the quilts raised $11,000 and we were able to help out 11 families with $1000 each. So even if you don't win a quilt, you are a HUGE winner in the eyes of a family that benefits from your donations. We will mail quilts to those that are not here that win so no worries there.

Now what are you waiting for?? oh, yeah, me to finish putting up the rest of the quilts, hee hee hee! It should be done by Friday, ticket sales begin on Monday. No time like the present to start looking now though. Please let me know what you think of the quilts we have up and remember us for next year if you are up for donating to a good cause!

BIG TEN MANIA

The Big Ten Quilt

I am finally catching up with all my pictures!! Last Saturday a small group of women got together at my friend Robin's house to work on the Big Ten quilt top for the pathology raffle. Our goal was to have multiple people help and to finish the top so we could send it home with Liz to quilt. Robin is the woman in charge of the quilt raffle for the University of Michigan (money to benefit patients in need). She and I have been gathering fabric all year toward this end. In theory this sounds like an easy task but in reality it is made more difficult by the fact that several schools don't license their logos for fabric. We had to use scrub pants for Northwestern and Indiana. I found someone selling Ohio State fabric on ebay but the logo was very large so for the actual "Big Ten" block, where I appliqued all the school logos on, we needed a smaller "O" we used boxer short fabric. Penn State also no longer has fabric. So if any of you ever see fabric with any of those schools logos on them please let me know, as we plan to make a Big Ten quilt every year for the raffle. We made one last year but we all made a block and then we gave them to a woman that put the whole thing together. This year we decided to make it like a retreat day. Robin graciously opened her home to all of us. We had great food and great conversation.

Robin hung the top from her second floor balcony so it is a little "light" b/c the sun was coming through the window behind it. At least you can see it.



Here are some close ups of some of the blocks.


I love how this block turned out with the large O's around the appliqued center.

You can see the "cat" in the center of the N. My talented LAQ, Liz is also a talented machine embroiderer and did the cat and then I appliqued the N around the cat.

I like the Illinois block too. Again, Liz embroidered over my appliqued I

I would have taken more, but I wanted them front on and they were too high up for that, so I will post them all once Liz brings it back quilted. Robin and I designed the quilting and now Liz, the amazing, will get to make our vision come to life in the quilt. Here is a photo of some of the women that were there. From left to right Virginia, Robin, Liz (the LAQ), and Judith.

This is the "Boob Line", hahahahaha!!! We were a little punchy at this point!

I am interested as to what you all think of this quilt.