Common Threads Quilt Show - the final installment

 

This is a miniature Baltimore album quilt, hand appliqued and hand quilted by Trudy Carpenter.  It won Viewer's Choice for miniature quilts.  Her work is beautiful!

This is an amazing quilt made by Mary Ann Moore.  The pictures in the blocks are all done with tiny crosshatching.  Siriporn Hollar did the quilting, that's Siriporn standing next to the quilt.

I wish I had a better close up.  This quilt won Viewer's Choice for large quilts.

Cosmic Kaffe Fassett Circles made and quilted by Karen Armstrong.  The pattern is Dot to Dot by Nancy Mahoney.

Midori Melton made the next quilt, Interlocking Stars, from a pattern she found on the Fons and Porter website.  Quilted by Kim Hull.

I really like this one: Thistlecreek Crossing made and quilted by Karen Tombaugh for her granddaughter.  It's a Judy Niemeyer pattern.

This is the back, so it's a reversible quilt!

Chocolate and Blueberries made by Cheryl Nordstedt and quilted by Wanda Hiebert.  The pattern is by Toby Lischko

This is A Little Bit Tipsy, the quilt I donated to our Mini quilt auction.

This is the Prairie Quilt Guild Opportunity Quilt with it's lucky new owner, Eva Peterson.  I have been babysitting this quilt all year and it was hard to let it go!  It found a good home with a quilter who really appreciates it.

These are the tomatoes that I brought home from the local Farmer's Market.  They are so good that I eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Common Threads Quilt Show, Part 3

This is Kansas on My Mind, a Shop Hop quilt from 2011 - the bright fabric in the border was the official shop hop fabric.  This quilt was made by employees of Gramma's Calico Cupboard and quilted by Siriporn Hollar.  (I like that it has feet!)

Another one beautifully quilted by Siriporn.  This is Grandma's Hankies by Diana Miller.  It was made for her Grandmother's 100th birthday.

Another with a Grandmother theme:  this is My Grandma Cope's Kitchen by Judy Beaman, quilted by Eula Long.  The pattern is Grandma's Kitchen by Lori Holt.

My Stars by Nonie England.  Kim Hull did a great job of quilting this - it really adds another dimension to the quilt.

Another quilted by Kim: Radiant Sunshine and Shadow by Diana Martin.  This is from the book of the same name by Helen Frost and Catherine Skow.

Kim did a lot of quilting as you can see on the back of the quilt-

 

I think I have another blogs worth of quilts for tomorrow.

Common Threads Quilt Show, Part 2

More quilts from the show: 

 This crazy quilt is called Piecemaker and is made by Carmen Sue Gard.  Her work is amazing - several years ago one of her crazy quilts won Best of Show at our show.

Sharon Smith made the next quilt, Tree Huggers.  Her design was inspired by the border fabric. Sharon designs and quilts her own work.

This is Ragamuffin Kids by Shirley Crawford.

Siriporn Hollar did the quilting.

Another of Sharon Smith's whimsical creations, Slow and Steady.  She says this one will hang in the room of her first great grandchild.

This is Dancing Dollies, a Fig Tree Design pattern made by Susan Webert.

It was quilted by Debra Freese and I love the way she made feather 'wings' for the dollies!

                                                                         



                                                                                                           and still more to come...

Common Threads Quilt Show, Part 1

My guild, Prairie Quilt Guild in Wichita, puts on a big quilt show every two years. The 2012 show just ended last weekend and it was a great success.  We hung over 600 quilts (with about 160 judged) and had many vendors.  Although it seemed to me that attendance was down, probably due to the economy, it was a wonderful show.

I took pictures of many of the quilts that caught my eye and will show them on my blog over the next few days.

This is Flowers of Mayo by my friend Tammy Gross.  It was quilted by another friend, talented longarmer Siriporn Hollar.  The pattern is by Michelle Hill

This paper pieced beauty is made by Betty Enright and quilted by Debra Freese.  The pattern is Conestoga Star from Fons and Porter magazine.

This is Fireworks!! pieced and quilted by Jenny Hutson.  You can see she won a Best in Category ribbon for this quilt.

This is Rocky Road to Kansas made by Mayleen Vinson in celebration of the 150th birthday of the state of Kansas.  She was inspired by an antique quilt in the book Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches by Carole Semple.

You may recognize this quilt - it is Storm at Sea - Bay View which I quilted for Sheri Schoenebeck and it won Best of Show!

More quilts to come.

It's been a long break!

I have never taken this long between blog posts before!  I have been busy, not so much with quilting but with taking care of Peter and trying to keep up with everything else.  I have decided to take a break from customer quilting, I have one more quilt that I am committed to do this summer. 

I started this blog to showcase the quilts I quilted for my customers so I'm not sure what I will have to post from now on!  My quilt guild's show was last week and I have lots of pictures to post from there.  Hopefully after that I can find enough quilty news to keep blogging.  I intend to work on my own quilts too.

The quilt at the top of the post belongs to my friend Betty.  She really wanted to finish it in time for our quilt show but had health issues with her husband so got it done shortly before the deadline for judged quilts.  I quilted like a maniac, staying up late at night to finish it for her.  She picked it up Sunday morning and stayed up until 3 am finishing the binding!  I took it in for judging on Monday morning.  It didn't win a ribbon, but it is a pretty quilt!  I like her choice of black rather than red for the embroidery.

This quilt was made by Renee for son's wedding - in Hawaii!  I think the colors are gorgeous and very fitting for a Hawaiian wedding.  This is a huge quilt and it took forever between my shortened quilting schedule, the quilt show and my machine misbehaving.  I didn't finish it in time for the wedding, but they should receive it well before their first anniversary!

Last year at MQS I won an award for my miniature quilt and the award was a $1000 gift certificate for thread from Wonderfil Thread.  I wasn't familiar with their thread, so spent half of it at the show and figured I would order more of what I liked.  Wonderfil is a Canadian company, so I decided to wait and spend the rest this year at MQS to avoid shipping costs.  I wasn't able to attend this year after all, so went ahead and ordered online during the show.  There was no expiration date on the gift certificate, but I figured as long as I used it within a year, all should be well. 

But... it wasn't.  They said the gift certificate had expired and charged my credit card for over $500 in thread!  After three weeks, many emails and phone calls, they agreed to honor the gift certificate.  I really appreciate that decision!  I do love their thread and ordered all kinds of fun stuff, from 100 weight polyester to 12 weight cotton.  Here's a picture of $500 worth of thread!  Thank you Wonderfil.

As I said, I wasn't able to attend MQS this year but did order a CD from Marilyn Karper - her pictures are wonderful!  When I saw the three winners of the Miniature category, my blood pressure rose.  All three were wholecloths!  When the rules came out last fall I noticed that the description of the miniature category had been changed to eliminate wholecloths.  I contacted the person in charge of the judged show and she confirmed that wholecloths were not allowed.  So what happened?  I emailed her and she told me the judges had told her that all the other shows allowed wholecloths so she said it was okay!  I was frankly pissed - I really try to follow the rules carefully and had not entered a wholecloth for that reason. The judges are suppose to follow the rules too!  Grrrrr... I'm still cranky.

I'll be posting pictures from the Common Threads Show over the next few days. 


 

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.