goodbye june - thank goodness!

so obviously, june was not a good choice for a daily challenge!

ohmygoodness. i knew june was busy, but i did not expect it to be as overwhelming as it turned out to be.

first, on june 16 the VMQG celebrated their birthday!!! we had a yummy cake and lots of other goodies, TONS of door prizes (one for everyone who attended!), Holly put together a fabulous talk and slideshow celebrating our first year, showcasing her own and Sonja's awesome photos, and everyone brought their completed (or partially completed!) Kona Charm Pack Challenge quilts. i was really focused on the items that i made for door prizes, and on trying to get my kona challenge quilts as finished as possible, and on organizing the meeting itself. Anna handled most of the food stuff, but i did up punch, etc and between everything else, i was very happy when the day of the meeting finally arrived, and even happier to sleep away the day after it!


i took my camera to the meeting - i even charged the battery just in case - and then i was way too busy to even take it out of my bag. luckily, Holly took some fabulous photos, and she's graciously given me permission to post them here.


first of all - the cake! ohmygoodness, the cake. who knew it was so hard to find a yummy, personalized cake in vancouver! we wanted the cake to have our logo, and use an icing colour that coordinated, but that turned out to be almost impossible to find for an affordable price. if we'd realized how hard it was going to be, we could have ordered an edible transfer of our logo online, since one bakery wanted to charge $60 for it (google found them for $10!), but we had no idea until it was too late. in the end, Anna found an awesome bakery, Richlea bakery, who did exactly what we wanted, and made us a super yummy cake. unfortunately, they were in Ladner! luckily, on our members, Matt, who owns The Quilted Bear in Ladner, was willing to pick it up for us.



and then we had the other cake! Anna made this super cute fabric cake for us as well!



it was so awesome to see all of the Kona challenge projects - i'm not in this picture - i was so frazzled, i didn't even realize they'd taken it until afterwards!


you should definitely check out more pictures of the Kona challenge projects in the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild flickr group, both the ones that Holly took, and ones that members have posted.



i'm not going to show you both of mine, cause they're not done (is that surprising?!), but Holly took some awesome photos of them in progress. i did two Kona challenges, because i won a second charm pack as a door prize.

one of my quilts is a large square, lap size quilt, and i'm backing it with this awesome vibrant rose printed rayon - it's soooooo soft, it's going to be fabulous to cuddle up with. i'll post of pics of it once i've finished it, because i've added a lot more quilting since the meeting. i'm almost done the quilting, and then i'll just need to put the binding on it.


you can also see a peek at the table full of door prizes between me and the quilt - i'll post the door prizes that i made to donate another day, but there were SO MANY amazing prizes!



but back to the quilts! my second quilt is a baby size quilt, and it uses 42 charms on the front, with the 43rd used to applique the Kona logo on the label on the back. the backing fabric is the same fabric used on the front, Kona grass green, which i'm totally in love with. it'll be the binding too, once i get around to it.


i wasn't really happy with this quilt, but looking at it in a photo, i'm totally changing my mind! it's funny how sometimes you need that different perspective. i like it a lot better now. you might recognize the layout as being the same as the Yellow and Orange Central Park pillow.


i love the back, and even more, i love this picture that Holly took of it!

the label is machine embroidered, as usual, except for the Kona logo, that's a wonderunder applique.


buuuuuttttt, as much as i like how the quilts turned out, the real hit of the evening was the t-shirt that i made to wear!

(i don't know what the hell that look on my face is)

almost every meeting, i get up there for show and tell, ramble on about how i made the quilt, the fabrics, etc, etc, and then end it with "and then i quilted the crap out of it". it's become a guild slogan, along with "i just made it up as i went along!" so i made a quick tshirt, with fabric letters fused on the front. i need to sew them down, but i didn't have time before the meeting. i want to make a silkscreen of it to put on other things - that'd probably be faster than cutting out all those letters was!