The finished quilt actually came out the way I imagined it when I drafted it on graph paper.  That's a first!

AND, I won my first ribbon ever!  And it's blue!  Some of the other quilts were amazing, and I was surprised to win.  I think that the guild was surprised, too, since I'm pretty new there.  I wish I could post photos of the other quilts, but I can't do that without permission.

A friend - yes, she is a true friend - told me that some of the other quilts were more beautiful but than mine used the fabric in a unique way, which is probably why I won.  See, I said that she was true...and also truthful.

The finished top looked like this:

Then I had to figure out how to quilt it.  I am so fortunate to have a used longarm: a Handiquilter 16.  I'm pretty inexperienced with it, so I knew that there would be many opportunities to destroy the quilt.  I loaded some old pillowcases onto the frame and tried out lots of patterns.  I was able to do a decent woodgrain pattern, so I used that on the gray shelf pieces.

I took a longarm quilting class with Dawn Cavanaugh at the AQS show in Lancaster in March and asked her advice on how to quilt the white background.  I was so afraid that I would draw the eye away from the pots or that I would make a mistake that stood out.  She suggested trying to make the white look like whitewashed adobe with up-and-down lines that curved into each other and left some empty spaces.  I was able to do it, and I like the way it turned out.

The ivy leaves gave me fits!  First, I searched Google images for real leaves and drawings of leaves.  I'm pretty sure that I mixed up two kinds of ivy on one plant - five pointed leaves and three pointed leaves.  Mother Nature is not happy with me.  I use the applique technique of putting the sticky side of the freezer paper toward the back of the piece and pressing the edges to it.  This green fabric is not a batik, and it raveled like crazy.  I threw more than one leaf out.  I do like the way the leaves look as I sew them across the pot and down across the shelf.

I chose two shades of gray with a white center for the Attic Windows background blocks so that the pots would really pop.  This is the first and simplest pot in place.  It's hand appliqued on using the freezer paper method.  I use the freezer paper inside the piece and cut a slit in the back of the background to pull the paper out.

Working with a basic Attic Windows background and photos and sketches of modern and historical Mexican pottery, I used a big sheet of graph paper to plan my shelf of pots.  I realized that it was looking like a tic-tac-toe board: pot, pot, pot.  I decided that adding a rosebud in a vase in one space and a pot with hanging ivy that would drape through several shelves would soften the look.  The next step would be to fussy cut the pottery fabric and chose colors for the shelves.

My guild is having a fabric challenge.  This is the fabric we received at the end of January.  It is Michael Miller Silk Road Stripe Multi.  There are three categories in the competition:  a quilt, a garment, or anything else that fits through the door.  The more I looked at the fabric, the more it reminded me of pots, specifically Mexican pots....fussy-cut Mexican pots.  My daughter, the archaeologist who studies ancient Mexican pots was all too happy to e-mail me drawings, black-and-white photos, and photocopies of pages from old tomes about Aztec and Mayan pottery.  I was off.