Quilt Show is Over

Quit show is over - alas, no ribbons to take home for ME, but there sure was an abundance of beautiful quilts. Taking them down (my job, with others) was HOT (no air conditioning), and when beads of perspiration almost started dripping off my face onto the quilts, it was time for me to take a rest. This snowy quilt tried to cool us!

Because our quilts are hung close together, it's hard to get decent photos, but I'll start with one quilt made by a friend Kathy, several years ago. She was a new quilter and made this friendly wintery queen quilt and asked me to hand quilt it! She filled the top with so many charming patterns - what fun to see them all. Zowie - it was huge, and some areas were fused, so there is limited quilting in those parts. I quilted swirling snow, snowflakes, snowmen and other motifs. She said I could come up with my own designs in the many motifs. The last border on the outside is wide and blue, not readily apparent in the photo. I swirled snowflakes, snow, round and round, in "s" curves, etc, looking like blowing snow - what fun! (Snowflakes take a LONG time to quilt!) Frankly, I've forgotten how pleasant hand quilting looks. To see the quilting you may have to enlarge the photo (Control +)




Below is the 2010 Serendipity Quilt (can't use the word Raffle). It's a stunner! Who wouldn't love to win this one?

Below, another winner - a stunning Kaleidoscope (much more complicated than I make them!) and I foolishly don't remember the maker! BAD me.


Below is a Log Cabin version - not mine, but isn't it pretty? You may have seen 2-3 versions of this pattern earlier on my blog. I LOVE it, and apparently, so did the Viewers!

Quilt Show Preps and another K block

If you've never help set up a quilt show, this is how we do ours. I must give credit to others as I did NOT do this work. This is Wednesday evening. I will work at the take-down Sunday and see the entire show then. Can't wait! The awards are Viewer's Choice and we are always surprised (and some of us get a teensy bit hostile!) to see what the Viewer's like best. LOL

This is the gym at a church. What you see are the frames on the floor in the proper position. The binder clips to hold the quilts are already on the frames. The frames will be pulled upright and positioned in the stanchions. In the background is a scaffold on wheels which is rolled from frame to frame, and then the quilts are clipped to the upright rails. I've done the "take-down" only, not the "put-up", but I believe I have it figured out. Over the years, the system has become well orchestrated, almost like choreography.

On the lower part of the walls, there is carpeting, making the space ideal for hanging small quilts. Unfortunately there is no air conditioning. and despite many years of considering options, there are no other spaces as nice/handy as this. We bring a lot of fans.

Next subject, I tried another kaleidoscope strata, deliberately putting an 'in your face' print (that dark rust/white check) in the middle of the strata, knowing an 'in your face' print would take over the block. As you can see, it does.
However, even so, I believe if this whole quilt was together, it would work just fine. My VALUES do not blend well, but hey, I'd cuddle under it!

Reminder

If you comment under "Anonymous" but ask a question, a blog owner is unable to answer your question.

If you look under the owner's profile, there is usually an e-mail address and you can send a message there. I am happy to answer your questions, but need your e-mail address.

Regarding marking the quilt top? I don't do much marking on my quilts - mostly, it's free-form, no stitch regulator. The pattern is embedded in my brain, after having practiced on paper or on a kids Magna-Doodle, a drawing toy. I might mark an implied spine on a large feather structure, or some kind of guide line, and sew leaves and 'things' off that guideline, but there is little marking on my quilts. My thinking is that a 'mark' causes one to stiffen up, and loose the fluidity - kinda like dancing. You can't dance by stepping on given marks on the floor - ya gotta loosen up and flooooowwwww.

Ugly fabrics, great result

In response to "No-reply" questions on my previous post "Lavender Meadows" Kaleidoscope quilt, YES, the hearts/leaves structures are free-form MQ on my domestic sewing machine (DSM). No, no stitch regulator.

I have been thrilled with how successful ALL these Kaleidoscope quilts are turning out, and decided to try out a strata of really unlikely and/or ugly fabrics to see if "ugly" might also work.

Values are arranged from light to dark. (I DID avoid large splashy prints.) They don't look like much when used together, do they?
But once again, I cannot keep from cutting them up in wedges to see the lovely result! This just proves we/I should not stew and fuss over color choices, at least not so it keeps us from actually SEWING something.

NOTE: the fabric/color you put near the middle of the strata (that peachy one) takes on it's own personality in the block, so that factor would be the only suggestion when choosing a fabric, although if you mix all the different strata/wedges up, the result may be different. (Personally, I LOVE the surprise!) I DID use a red filter (a simple high school report cover) to assist with VALUE.

Now, these are my samples for a workshop and I will NOT sew them into a block. 8-)

Friends ask me how I complete so many quilts. There are a number of answers, but mostly, I do NOT stew over my choices, color, values, or even my small errors. My goal is to MAKE a quilt and enjoy the process. Oh yes, it would be wonderful to win ribbons at our small quilt show, and maybe that is a cop-out, but I know my style and my approach, and they don't lean to perfection, but DO lean to having fun along the way. I'm an enthusiastic and joyful quilter and if I can motivate another quilter, THAT motivates me even more. 8-)))

Lavender Meadows - DONE

Did you know that it IS possible, if you have an auto-threader on your machine, to actually thread your machine needle with the BOBBIN thread when using invisible thread in the top? Yes, it can be done (once). I actually had the mental acuity to stop and think, "now how could this mishap be used to advantage?" I could not re-create it though! 8-)))

I've not blocked this quilt, nor washed it yet.

This kaleidoscope quilt (#5 or 6?) was supposed to be a collection of samples for a workshop, but it was impossible not to complete the whole quilt. Guess I'll make another strata set tonight. I am tempted to use really ugly fabric to force myself to leave it as an unfinished SAMPLE, and not a finished project.

The narrow border quilting pattern is my own, and is one of the first ones I learned. It's amazing the variety leaves can take - wide, narrow, long, viney, or heart-y.


Sometimes, when machine quilting, the borders kinda pooch up - don't like that! - so I run a line of invisible stitches along the border, if I am quilting each one as a separate unit.

The quilting pattern for the main part is a kind of Loosey-Goosey feather from PatsyThompsonDesigns.com. The blue border quilting pattern is 3-5 shell shapes. It's easy to 'travel' with this shape.

Clouds, Storms, Rain, Hail, Leaks

Look at this beautiful summer sky! Take time to look UP occasionally. However, we are in a season of unusual rain and many storms - a good thing, but almost every rain storm comes with HAIL in this part of the country! You may have seen the devastating result on my earlier Hosta post. Gardens are definitely subject to total damage, as are crops.

Storms are popping up almost every evening, along with the NOAA weather radio going off, scaring us to death, recurrent checks of the radar on TV, visits outside to see where the storm is headed -- oh my, the busy life of retired Senior Citizens! LOL.

This one produced a lot of wind, rain, hail, and more rain, and uh ohhhhh, "What the daXX blazes is this dripping in the middle of the family room"!!!! OMGosh a leak!!! (I tamed the language down a bit, for those of you with proper manners!

DH rushed outside to the garage to get a ladder (LOTS of horrendous lightning happening, appearing to hit in our back yard, and there he goes waltzing across the yard after the ladder so we can check the attic area)!! It's only a space - one cannot actually walk up there. Naturally, we can't see a thing, even with our handy-dandy-for-emergencies-only-flashlight torch. And while I am being totally sweet and helpful, holding the ladder, and handing him the torch, SOMEONE is NOT being pleasant during the process and it wasn't me! Pretty soon it stops raining and now we'll never find it's source -- Gotta get up on the roof! OMGosh, we're getting too old for that!

(As I'm writing this, our weather alert went off again!)

Well, this is the view after the storm - pretty impressive, right?