Thursday, May 19, 2011

It's a deedle-deedle night



Thank you Desley for the book I won!  I know I will enjoy Karen McTavish's Quilting for Show.  It will be exciting to receive a package from Australia - I don't think I ever have before.  Desley shows her beautifully quilted work on her blog Addicted to Quilts, you can see it here






In answer to a question by Desley about my quilt Wild Child, yes the borders are done with trapunto and the color surrounding the trapunto is all thread.  I used Glide thread for the first time and really liked it.  It is a 40 wt. trilobal polyester and the colors really glow.

It has been unseasonably cool this spring but today is more like usual: it's warm, humid and we're under a tornado watch.  We keep a weather radio next to the bed and when it updates it makes an obnoxious sound:  DEEDLE DEEDLE DEEDLE.  Tonight we expect to have what we call a deedle-deedle night with updates coming every time we drop off to sleep. 

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Back from MQS




In past years I have attended MQS to see the quilts, buy stuff and take classes, but this year Peter and I worked as  vendors in the Innova booth. It was a different side of MQS - fun but very tiring.  Definitely hard on the feet! 

I was asked to bring a couple of my quilts to help decorate the booth.  In this picture you can see Ann's quilt on the right.  Lots of people admired your quilt Ann! 

Mary's quilt was hanging aroung the corner - it was also much admired and photographed!  My thanks to Ann and Mary for letting me borrow their quilts.

Peter's birthday always falls during MQS - this year Amy and Joe, our Innova dealers, surprised Peter with a birthday cake.



My quilt Itty Bitty Boutis won a second place ribbon.  Renae Haddadin's quilt Golden Snowflake won first and I really can't complain - her quilt is stunning!





My new quilt Wild Child didn't win a ribbon but doesn't it look pretty hanging at the show?  The lighting was just perfect to show off the trapunto.






There were so many beautiful quilts.  Claudia Pfeil won Best of Show  for The Magical Mermaid's Castle - I loved her mermaids!  She uses thousands of crystals on her quilt; it must weigh a ton.








I had fun meeting Terri Doyle, another quilter that has recently switched to an Innova longarm. Here she is standing next to her blue ribbon winning wholecloth, Secret Garden.






Some of my favorite quilts at the show were made by Janet Stone, who is from Overland Park.  When I asked her if I could put pictures of her quilts on my blog she said I could, as long as I said nice things about them!  That's easy to do since I love her whimsical designs and amazing workmanship.

Her quilt Mutton But Letters won Best of Show in the Just for Me category.





Just look at her 1/4 inch crosshatching in the blocks - the stitches are perfectly even and the lines are straight and accurate.  It's hard to believe she does this on her domestic sewing machine!  That is incredible workmanship!





Here are her other two quilts which both won blue ribbons.  Nouveau Quattro Alfabetico:





and Red Letter Daze:





I had a great time but it is good to be back to my own cat-covered bed.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

May-bees and wallhangings




Ann brought me two little wallhangings: the one above is a Schnibbles pattern.  It is very cute but it looks like way too much piecing for me!






The other is a folk art kind of a thing.





I finished my own quilt for MQS at the very last minute and didn't have time to even get a picture of it - I will have to do that later.  The weather is heating up just in time for the show in Overland Park.


Last week end Peter and I were eating lunch and noticed our neighbor and his kids out in our driveway staring up.  They kept staring up as they moved into our backyard.  When we went outside to see what was going on we could see a cloud of bees swarming out by our fence. They congregated near my garden cart and started landing on it.








We all stood around and watched them for a while and then I went in and looked up beekeepers in the phone book.  I called some guy and asked if he was interested in removing them - he told me one of two things could happen: they might stay there or they might leave.  Oh really!  That was so helpful.  They did end up leaving after about half an hour, off they went over another neighbor's roof.  I hope they found a nice place to live!