It's that crazy quilt show time of year!

I haven't had any quilts to post for a long time now - I am still trying to finish up a long term project which I can't show pictures of for a while.  But I do have a picture of my friend Sheri to post.  Her Storm at Sea quilt that I quilted for her won a third place ribbon at the AQS show in Paducah! I posted about it here. She had all kinds of problems with bleeding when she blocked it so this is definitely a happy ending!

Also exciting: I'm the chair of my guild's Opportunity Quilt committee which I posted about here. I entered it in Paducah and it won a first place ribbon in the Group Quilt category!  I'm so proud of it even though the only thing I stitched on it is the label.  It was hand appliqued by about 30 members of Prairie Quilt Guild and beautifully longarm quilted by Siriporn Hollar.  This should help us sell a few more tickets!

And even more ribbons:  my quilts came home from MQX this week and my miniature wholecloth, Itty Bitty Boutis won a second place ribbon in the Small Wholecloth category.  Unfortunately (for me!), they eliminated the Miniature category. 

 Ann's quilt came home with a teachers ribbon from Renae Haddadin - wow! Thanks
Renae!!

It's that crazy quilt show time of year!

The Good, the Bad and all the rest!

Still moving slow here - things have changed since my husband Peter was diagnosed with lung cancer.  We spend so much time driving to appointments or waiting in doctor's offices that it seems to suck up most of the time in every day.  Thankfully, he is holding up well through all his treatments.  We are also lucky to have many wonderful neighbors and quilting friends that have given us support and offered their help. But this has all slowed down my quilting news!

Last week we drove to Lawrence, Kansas, where I was the speaker for the Kaw Valley Quilt Guild.  They are a fun and friendly group and we enjoyed our stay there. Of course I also had to visit to Sarah's, a legendary quilt shop in Lawrence and bring home a few goodies.

We stayed in a wonderful bed and breakfast - here is Peter resting up. I couldn't resist taking a picture from this weird perspective.  At least his shoes aren't ON the bed.

I visited my friend Siriporn in her studio last weekend.  She somehow fits two 14 foot tables in there: one Gammill and one Innova.  It probably helps that she is an itty bitty little person.

Here she is inside her Innova. 

When we were in Dallas a few weeks ago I made sure we had a chance to go to IKEA.   I bought the perfect little light for my machine.  Peter attached it to my Innova with nylon cable ties and it has made such a difference in my ability to see what I am doing!  Right now I am working on a dark quilt and it would have been much harder without the new light.  This light is available from IKEA online too.

Some good news:  My Tree of Life - with Bugs won an award at the AQS show in Lancaster!

Dallas Quilt Celebration

It's been a while - too much happening, both good and bad.  I don't have any customer quilts to post because I'm working on a long term project that I can't show for a while.  But we did drive down to the Dallas Quilt Celebration last weekend so I have some quilt pictures to share.

I was impressed with the show and can't believe the Dallas Guild puts it on every year!  It's a big show with lots of vendors and some very nice quilts - and it is not a juried show.  Here are some of my favorites:

I love this cat quilt - You Talkin' ta Me?  by Tonya Littman.  That cat looks like a real character.

This is Wrought Iron and Roses by Janette Huff.  Some very nice quilting on this one, done on DSM.

Blue Diamonds, by Lynn McCartney.  I like the way the motifs are quilted in a contrasting color, surrounded by thread that matches the background.

I especially like the border from Folk Art in Bloom by Richard Larson.

This quilt was inspired by a book with the same name: An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles by Mary Shepherd.  I gave the book to Peter years ago and always thought it had a quilt in it.  Somebody beat
me to it!

I think this was my favorite quilt of all: Everyday in Blossoms by Eun Yeon Yoo.  Really beautiful hand workmanship, from the crazy quilted center to the doll dress blocks which were so tiny -and smocked and embroidered.

My quilt Indian Summer won a ribbon too - probably it's last since it is about at the end of it's shelf life as a show quilt.

I had more good news today: my quilt Tree of Life - with Bugs won a ribbon at the AQS show in Lancaster.  Here is a link to the winners.

More wool applique

This might look familiar if you saw my previous post.  This is Charlotte's version of the same wool applique quilt.  When she saw Susan's quilt finished she decided she wanted hers done too. 

Charlotte used a fairly bulky wool for the sashing, it makes the feathers look alomost sculptured.  I used a cotton batting.

Margaret brought me this quilt.  She is an experienced hand quilter and had never had a quilt machine quilted before, in fact, she had never seen a long arm quilting machine.  She was so
interested to see it and watch me use it. 

Margaret wanted a piano key border and we decided on an overall pattern of feathers for the center of this big quilt.

Several quilts finished

Susan finished this wool applique quilt several years ago (wrought in 2005 according to the quilt) and I just finished the quilting on it.  The background fabric is flannel, which I have never quilted on before.  It worked real well, I used a nice fat hairy cotton thread (King Tut) which showed up well but left tons of lint all over the bobbin and bobbin area.

We considered using wool batting, usually my first choice, but ended up with cotton.  The wool applique was bulky enough that it had it's own built-in poof and didn't really need the higher loft.

This is Linda's quilt.  She didn't want real heavy quilting but did want feathers in the wide
sashing.
 
 

I stuck with the sunflower theme throughout the quilt.

The Kansas Longarm group met yesterday.  Evelyn did a program on quilting unusual fabrics, like Minkee, satin and silk.  Here she models the special vest she made to wear while she works - it has lots of pockets to keep all  her tools in.

Siriporn brought a quilt made from silk ties to show:

And Kim showed her quilt which will be entered in MQS this spring:



 

Leslie's American Jane quilt

This is Leslie's cute-as-bug quilt from an American Jane pattern.  She likes lots of quilting and wanted it to be mostly traditional. 

She says that the border just about did her in- it's made up of a zillion tiny 4-patches.

 

Leslie brought her grandaughter Shay, (or Shea?) and they posed in front of the quilt for me.

The other day when I went out to open the studio (it's in a seperate building behind our house), the lock acted stuck so I twisted it hard and it exploded!  The center core of the lock fell out and all these little springs and pieces of metal burst out and scared the dickens out of me!  Then we couldn't get IN the studio and all of Peter's tools were inside.  He managed to get it open and then made an emergency trip to buy a new lock and got it installed later that afternoon.  Have you ever seen the inside of a lock?

 

Sparky the hummingbird

Ann started this little appliqued hummingbird in a class with David Taylor.  I took the class too, and learned a lot, but my project is still unfinished.  Ann's turned out really well - she added the flowers to his pattern. I told her the hummer's name is Sparky.

She told me she wanted the fabric at the bottom to look like a rock wall, and the fabric on the right to look like a trellis.  That was fun to do.

I was concerned about finding something to do in all that blue sky area, I wanted to give the impression of movement. Luckily, Ann liked what I came up with!



My small group met at my house this week and we decided we would all work on a table runner with Kelly showing us how to make it.  She had made a bunch of them at Christmas and we had all admired them.  Here is everyone at work in my studio.  Kelly said it looked like a sweatshop.