Monday, March 29, 2010

Quilt Show Part 2

Here are the rest of the quilt photos from the Quilter's Anonymous quilt show in Monroe, WA.



Key Lime Pie by Wendy Stone



This was done in a class with Sandy Bonsib, using her pattern. I just love the colors in this one. . . fresh and juicy!


Paws on the Road to Innovation by Leona Broers


This was one of the guild's challenge quilts. They had to use a particular fabric, and also had to re-work a traditional block pattern. I believe the challenge fabric is the red-orange in the upper right block.


Purple Passion by Linda Ostroff




This center panel is wool applique.



Convergence Quilt by Julie Robbins



Giant Poppy by Michaelinda Kaestner


There were a lot of silks in this one. . . it just glowed.



Still Open to Discussion: Shark Teeth, Dinosaur Backs or Electric Storm by Elaine Colvin



I love the title of this quilt!




Super Nova by Kathi DeJong



Christy's Bandana Agenda by Alayne Pettyjohn




Do you ever go to a quilt show, and find that you're drawn to all the quilts by one particular person? That happens often to me, now that I'm making a point of noticing the names of the artists.



This quilt show had A LOT of chicken quilts. They even had a special section for most of them. Let me know by leaving a comment if you'd like to see the chicken quilts. . . I can do another post with them if enough people are interested. Personally,I liked the chicken quilts. They had a lot of whimsical humor in them. And I really like whimsical.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Quilt Show Part 1

As promised in my last post, here are the photos from the quilt show I attended last week. Actually, this is just Part 1. There were too many pix to put them all in one post. This installment I'm featuring all the Liberated-type quilts.

I went to Monroe, WA for the Quilter's Anonymous quilt show. It was a big show with lots of drop-dead gorgeous quilts. I didn't take any photos of those quilts . . . . I knew I couldn't do them justice with my less-than-professional photo taking skills. I still tend to cut off the tops or the sides of the quilts, and I can't always get a good angle with all the people in the way. So please excuse my poor photos, and I hope you'll still enjoy the quilts anyway!


Corduroy House Medallion by Dorothy LeBoeuf 41" x 40"

This quilt was made at the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat with Gwen Marston in Sept. 2009. Dorothy chose corduroy for this for texture because she couldn't use any print fabrics. It did have a wonderful texture. I hope you can tell from the photos.

This was all machine-pieced and machine quilted.




Georgia Tulips by LeeAnn Decker




Each block of this quilt is quilted in a different pattern. What fun!



This block's quilting was my favorite! I love the string tulips too.





Half-Log Cabin in Vintage Fabrics by Dorothy LeBoeuf

For some reason, I didn't get all of this quilt in the photo, and now I'm kicking myself!


Look at these great fabrics. Dorothy said these were from a friend's 40-year stash!




The back of the quilt, with more vintage fabrics.



Hawaiian Zig Zag by Dorothy LeBoeuf

This was made with thrift store Hawaiian shirts. I love the colors in this one, especially that little zing of orange!



This was an improvisational piece that was in the quilts for sale. I didn't see the maker's name, unfortunately. I like the buttons on this one.




A wonky block tablerunner, that was also in the quilts for sale. The label was done so low I couldn't even see how much they were asking for this.
That's it for now. I'll post more photos soon.

Monday, March 22, 2010

A Virtual Retreat

Did you know that last Saturday, apart from being the first day of Spring, was International Quilt Day? What did you do to celebrate?


I had a very busy, quilt-y weekend for my celebration. On Friday I went to a Quilt Show with two friends. It was a beautiful show, and I'll be sharing some pictures in a future post.


Saturday the Liberated Quilters Yahoo Group had a Virtual Quilt Retreat. I retreated with them for the first time. I wasn't sure quite what to expect from a virtual retreat. I cleared my schedule, cleaned the quilt studio (that was a big deal!) and was ready to go. I warned DH that I wouldn't be available that day.


I decided that my Liberated Amish Challenge was the perfect project to work on for the retreat. On Saturday morning I had 8 9-Patches that I started with. By 2 pm, I had another 8 done! That's where I was in the picture up above.


I wasn't too thrilled with the 9-patches I had already done. They weren't wonky enough. So I got wonkier. I even tried an insert (bottom right block). Not too sure that the contrast is all that good on this one, but I'm not letting myself re-do any of these. None of these blocks have been trimmed to their final size yet. I needed to see what sizes they came out before I got too carried away with trimming.


I worked all day Saturday, with meal breaks, until about 10 pm that night. Sunday I got off to a slow start, but again, worked all day. By the time Sunday night rolled around, I had 34 9-patches done! DH was a real trooper....he made all the meals on Sunday so that I could get more sewing in. He's a great guy! I love that he's so supportive of my quilting.

I discovered an easy way to be wonky....just get confused and sew the rows back together wrong. That block still met the size requirements so I left it. One block didn't make the grade, and I ripped that one and re-sewed it. I started running out of fabric, and so started cutting the squares with scissors. The first two blocks I made that way worked great. The next 3....not so good. Two got put into the Parts Department and one got extra fabric sewn to it to be the right size. Can you find it in the above photo? I got pretty wonky by the end of the retreat, and I'm really happy with my blocks.


I finally couldn't stand waiting to see how they would look. I trimmed 4 blocks to their finished size and sewed a big block together. I like it! Just for reference, here's my Amish inspiration quilt.


I have 14 more 9-patches to make, and then I can start putting this quilt together. I'm hoping I won't lose too much momentum this week and that I can get them all done. That would be great!


I found two funny cat videos to share with you. This one shows a cat with a static cling problem, and this one shows a cat that's got a great dunk. I love a funny cat video....hope you do too.


One more thing to share.....


The Silly BooDilly is sharing some of her latest pincushions, that are related to her Work Quilts she's made lately. Go take a look....her stitching is beautiful and quite inspiring.

Saturday, March 06, 2010

Is It Spring Yet?

Bunny is hoping it is! I've pulled out a little quilt that was on the very bottom of my box of little quilts. I haven't seen it in 3 years! It looks so Spring-like to me.

I stencilled this quilt to match the plaid fabric in it. I fell in love with this plaid when it was used in some quilts on display in my LQS many years ago. I only bought a yard of it, and have used it a couple of times. I even have a few scraps left of it. Anyway, I did a demo on stencilling and needed something to show that was finished. I hand-quilted this one. Unfortunately, this is soooo pastel that it doesn't photograph really well.


Stencilled Baskets 20 inches by 25 inches

Here's an overall photo of it. Not quite true colors, I'm afraid. It's hard to get good photos in this house, and we even had sunshine today! The sun washed the colors out even more. *sigh* The first photo is probably closest to true color, because I took that one outside.


A closeup of the stencilling.

I've been doing some sewing lately, but nothing I can show yet. Some of it is a secret and some of it is not finished enough to show.

One project I'm working on, I was hoping to use some scraps. This kind of snowballed on me, and I ended up spending all last Sunday sorting 3 boxes of scraps and then getting the quilt studio back together after I made a huge mess finding the boxes of scraps. Here's what the family room looked like in the middle of it:


All the stuff on the coffee table was sorted by color, and the stuff on the sofa was other catagories.


I got rid of 3 boxes in the quilt studio, and gained 3 bins! This all needs to be ironed and cut up into Quiltville's Bonnie's Scrap User System. This looks like a LOT of ironing and cutting! But I think, until I get it all done, I can find scraps easier.

Do I have too many scraps?? Some of these are relatively recent and some are old friends and I'm saving every little scrap because I love it so much. Mind you, this is about 25 years worth of quilting scraps. I guess I really have to admit that I'm a fabricholic! And I need to make more scrap quilts!

So, tell me, how many scraps do you have? And what do you do with them? Come on, 'fess up!



Papa Bin, Mama Bin and Baby Bin! hee hee!