Decisions, decisions…help me make some!

Good Saturday morning to you!
It is a very, very windy one here – so much that even the morning walk with my dogs will have to wait…So back to something I started last night in my sewing room – going through a pile of WIPs (works in progress – somehow that sounds better than UFOs!), and trying to decide which ones are the best candidates for the upcoming Quilt Show.
Small digression – I belong to a wonderful quilt guild, Amherst Museum Quilters Guild and every two years we have an amazing quilt show, featuring usually over 300 quilts, over a dozen great vendors, boutique and miniature quilt auction. We do many other fun things in our Guild, but Quilt Show is definitely one of the biggest events – it is coming in April (if you live close by or be visiting this area, all the information is on the web site above).
OK – back to my decisions dilemma! Need to decide what I want to enter in the show…(we have a limit of 6 entries per person). So I took all my WIPs out, sorted between definite “NO”s and potential “YES”s, decided to take photos of them all (makes me see them better from a “distance”) and went through photos last night….then I got really tired and sleepy…blah. BUT! as I was falling asleep, one good idea still came – I will blog about it and ask all of you, what do you think? 🙂
So here we go:

Here is one of the quilts inspired by the Nine-patch Pizzazz book by Judy Sisneros. I love using this way of playing with large scale prints. Some good quilting should give this garden a life? A good name for this one escapes me for now…

I love, love LOVE color gradation fabric! Have a shelf-full of them too. This is one of my experiments in using this kind of fabric to make a “fake” Bargello quilt (instead of strip-piecing multiple colors, you just use ONE fabric that already has multiple colors!). This particular fabric with its gradations between greens and rose color reminded me of my rose garden…hence the design. Besides dark green leaves, everything else in this quilt is from that ONE gradation fabric! Started quilting this one already, adding some rose “shadows”..but I think it needs more of …perhaps quilting in green? Three rose color verticals stripes are like a rose trellis, so maybe some leaves and vines to go up the trellis? Name? In the Rose Garden?

Another one in this series. For some reason, the name keeps coming to me for this one – Still Water. Love these colors, but irises need way more texture and some shading, thread painting. Quilting here needs to be really good – calm and elegant…Any thoughts?

This one I like more than Rose one, although I remember that initially the idea for the Rose quilt was way more exciting to me…Funny how things change from ideas to execution? What do you think?

Oh and here is this one….This is one of the most unusual color gradation/print fabric I have ever seen…So tried a piece just to see how it would look. Ray of Sunshine… for a name?
What do you see in this one?
I really can’t decide if it is something or should it end up cut into two sections for two interesting pillows? Or small wall pieces? LOL

And there is this experiment! 🙂
This quilt was started in class with Billy Lauder – idea was to use traditional blocks in non-traditional way. Rail Fence block is my traditional block here – trying to use it in an almost watercolor way…Can you see a landscape here?
I do like this quilt and it’s potential. Need maybe some gentle, silhouette applique to suggest trees, forest…or maybe to do all that just by quilting? Paint the landscape with thread?

Well, here is a blast from the past! I completely forgot this quilt and how I wanted to finish it! And I actually really liked it. It is one of the Ricky Tims’ Convergence quilts made with a really wild piece fabric, some red color gradation fabric and black. I even remember I had a name for it – AMORE! Why? I remember that while I was designing and sewing this one, I watched and listened to Andrea Bocelli’s new CD and live concert (on our PBS station) called Amore – full of romantic, love songs – how apropriate, don’t you think? LOL
Maybe to quilt some hearts flying around?

This is one of my original patterns, designed initially for a class on what to do with large prints. Very simple piecing, but combined with this great sunflower print, in the pieced squares and as applique in the left and top border, it looks way more complicated than it really is.
Slight problem with this one is that, under some lights, blacks in the print and solid fabric look slightly different…not what I was planning on and of course didn’t see it under the light in me sewing room while choosing fabric. 🙁  I could possibly “hide” it all with some good quilting?
Name for this one?

Back to some classics now. Colors in this picture somehow don’t do all the justice to this Lone Star (they do look a bit better in real), but nevertheless this is an example on how you pick fabric you think will look great – I took the border print as a starting point in choosing colors – but at the end…not quite as good as I hoped for. center of the star seems a bit too bright? Inspiration print (border) a bit lost here? SO….quilting something in contrasting color in the center of the star to tone it down? Some good quilting in the navy squares – in navy or in variegated (contrasting) thread?
Give me your brutally honest opinion on this one! 🙂

For the end – here is just a happy,daisy quilt! I do like this one and it was such fun to make!
This quilt is my first attempt to try Woven Quilts – from the same book by Anna Faustino. It is such a fun technique and it works so well with my favorite fabrics – color gradations!
If you didn’t try this one – do it, I highly recommend it!
“Happy-as-a-Daisy” – good name?

OK my friends – any of these good for a quilt show? Which ones would be your 6 choices? Any good names for them? I will credit your ideas, I promise! Opinions, opinions…please! 🙂
Have a wonderful weekend,
Marija