Back to work

I'm finally back to working on customer quilts.  This one I just finished for Jan from my guild, she wanted it done in time to enter in our guild quilt show at the end of June.  Her workmanship on this is amazing - she hand pieced it for accuracy and it sure is accurate!  She wanted lots of quilting and feathers.

I intensified the color in these images to make the details sharper.

The color really looks more like this.

I bought this pattern years ago, it is Vintage Moments by Marsha McCloskey.


I did not make it to MQS after all, I will have to wait until next year when it is in Wichita.  I sent three quilts, all customer quilts since I haven't had time to do my own.  They came home ribbon-less which makes me feel bad for my friends that let me enter their quilts!  I figure every quilt show is a crap shoot - it depends so much on what other quilts are entered, who the judges are and what they had for breakfast!

Bloggers' Quilt Festival Spring 2012 - Red Deco

My contribution to the Bloggers' Quilt Festival is a quilt I no longer own.  I had been studying up on Art Deco for a quilt I was making as a thank you for a friend.  I ended up doing something entirely different for his quilt but I still had all those Art Deco ideas floating around in my head, so I made Red Deco.  It was entirely different than anything I had made before. 

I thought I should add that this quilt is 60 x 72 inches and was quilted on my domestic sewing machine. 

Once it was finished I entered it in several quilt shows including Houston.  I decided to list it for sale there, on a whim really as I had no idea if it would sell.  I remember when I packed it up to send to the show I felt weird about sending it off, not knowing if I would ever see it again.  I asked my husband,"what if someone buys it and uses it as a dog bed!". 

I was surprised and honored to find out that Karey Bresenhan bought Red Deco for the IQA Corporate Collection, so I don't need to worry about it being used as a dog bed! I am proud that is a part of the collection but I miss it too.

Check out all the other quilts at the Bloggers' Quilt Festival.

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: