Trunk Show and Paducah purchases

It has sure been a busy week to come back home to!  I have 2 on call shifts at the hospital, 4 quilting classes to teach and one trunk show to do...plus all those usual things like laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning. I rushed around to get myself organized on Monday,  taught a quilt class at the senior's centre and then drove to Elmira to do a trunk show at the Elmira Needle Sisters in the evening. I took a photo of some of my quilts piled up and ready for their showing. For some of these quilts (the ugly ones!) it's the only time they get unfolded and aired out! Anyway, it was a lot of fun to be at the Elmira guild and I was able to visit with a lot of quilters that I haven't seen for a while.

I have also been struggling this week to learn how to use my Mac computer.  Everything is hard the first few times...especially getting photos to load on my blog.  It is taking me about 3 - 4 times as long to get a blog post finished these days, and I sure am counting on that improving asap because my patience is running a bit thin on this technology challenge!! I will try to load photos of my purchases from Paducah and see how it goes!

On the left is one of my favorite finds...FQ bundles from Back Door Quilts. People always ask "what are you going to make with that"? I have no idea, but I just liked it and I'll probably put it into my next Quiltville mystery.  These fabrics are from the Jo Morton fabric lines.

On the right are some additions to my collection of the "Oh Cherry" Moda line. Again, I have no idea what I am making with these but they make me happy and apparently I want to make a quilt from them, so here they are!

On the left is a collection of odds and ends I found that jumped into my bag...a kit from the Robert Kaufmann collection called "Permission to Play" that I bought at Hancocks because it just glows,  two packs that were 5 FQ's for $5...so who could resist that, and some guitar FQ's because I thought I was making a pillowcase, but I have way too many now to be a pillowcase,  so I'm either making a dozen pillowcases, or a quilt!!!

This is a black and white collection that I bought to split with my friend Marj who asked me to pick up some pieces for her. I guess I am secretly planning to make a black and white quilt also!

And this is my favorite purchase of all...a FQ bundle from Batiks Ecetera. This was one of my favorite booths...alive with colour and a lot of fun things to dream about making.

My other favorite booth was the Cherrywood booth...I could have filled my sewing room to the rafters with the fabrics they make...gorgeous! I just bought 2 "grab bags for crazies" because I liked the idea of getting little pieces of all their fabrics and because I am crazy, so it was perfect for me! 

Oh yah...and somehow 3 of John Flynn kits jumped into my bag...don't know how that happened! These kits are all coordinated batik fabrics and are precut, so it saves 2 steps for you! But I haven't yet sewn one, so I hope it works out well...I'll let you know!

That's it! Well, except for a few little odds and ends that I can't find today. That's enough damage to the credit card, don't you think?!?!

Back from Paducah!

I am back from an amazing, "once in a lifetime" trip to Paducah, Kentucky! It was everything I thought it would be...and more! There were over 400 vendors at the Convention Centre... can you even imagine how much fun and fabric shopping that is??!? It was absolutely mind boggling the amount of shopping that you could do, if you were so inclined! I will show you my fabric purchases another day (when I can take them out of hiding and photograph them!).

Today I will show you a few of the trip highlights, since I know my quilting friends will be checking in on their computers on Monday morning and if there is no blog report, I will hear about it for sure!

We saw beautiful scenery! Everything here in Ontario, Canada is pretty much still in winter hibernation...not much green to be seen. But in Kentucky, everything was green and it was lovely spring weather, which we enjoyed every sunny minute we were there.

There were fascinating people to see everywhere we went...and here is one of them, happy to pose for a photo for the tourists. I saw very creative outfits, quilted clothing of every description,

 funny hats, groups of women with matching t-shirts, etc. I wish I had taken more photos of the people to show you.

Then there was the fantastic entertainment...we had "tea" with Nancy Zieman, enjoyed an evening show with Eleanor Burns, and heard a fantastic concert from Ricky Tims. 

Who knew that this man was such an incredibly gifted musician as well as being an award winning quilter?!??! He has CD's of his original compositions for sale and I will be asking for one from Santa at Christmas time.

And, of course, I enjoyed the entertaining company of quilting friends! Here we are with a group of quilters that we know from home, which we just happened to meet up with, and we  enjoyed a laughter-filled meal together.

What a great trip we had! 

Oh yah, did I mention the incredible, breathtaking quilts we saw?

The AQS show was unlike anything I have ever seen. Exquisitely created quilts, both hand and machine quilted, that are so beautiful that your jaw just hangs open in awe! But I can't show you the quilts of course, because the rules explicitly state that photos of the quilts cannot be posted on the internet, without permission from the AQS and the quilt artist. However, I was just happy that we were able to take photos of these quilts for our own purposes, since the Canadian Juried Quilt Show in Newfoundland last June did not allow any photographs of any of the quilts, which was very disappointing for me. At this show I was able to take photos of my favorite quilts, and close ups of the techniques for me to study and enjoy in the future.

I now have my own little quilt show on my computer, so come on over if you want to see it!!

Paducah

I am packed and ready to leave early in the morning to head south to Paducah, Kentucky! I am hoping to go to the Quilt Museum and to see Ricky Tims, Eleanor Burns, and then have tea with Nancy Zieman. 

And of course, I might buy a Fat Quarter or two!!

How will I ever get any sleep tonight?!?!

I'll make a full report (including a purchase confession) when I return!

First blog post on my new Mac

I have been struggling with my old computer for a while now and hoped that by buying a Mac that my troubles would be behind me. I treated myself to a new laptop, hoping I could do my blogging at the park and surf my favorite quilting blogs while drinking tea on the porch, if ever it is warm enough to sit outside!!! Click here to see my brand new little computer. It is a steep learning curve, but so far so good. I even managed to download some photos, although I need some work on the editing program.

I'll try to show you what I was working on last week. Click here to see all my pieces being assembled. I was working on a challenge with a couple of quilting friends...we challenged ourselves to use the spool fabric and make a mini quilt. So of course I made spool blocks! I sewed 1", 1.5" and 2" blocks trying to decide which ones I liked the best and decided that I liked them all, and would just stack them up. So I call it "Stacked Spools".

Then I got the idea to embroider my favorite words on the top as if the thread was coming off the blue spool. But is was a varigated thread that I used and I think that the word "quilting" disappears where the thread gets too light. I'm not sure what I will do about that yet. 

Here are the mini quilt that my friends made. On the left is Judy's quilt called "Mom's Spools", and it has the cutest little spools of thread sewn down the middle of the quilt. She found these spools in her mother's belongings after she passed away. 

And on the right is Joanne's quilt called "Simple Spools". I hope you will be able to click on the photo to enlarge it and see all the dense quilting on the spools. (Apparently I can't figure out how to enlarge the photos anymore! I'll work on it!) 

This was a fun challenge and we are planning another one in the near future.

Black and White Quilt

I drove to Elmira today to do some hand quilting on the Black and White quilt. You can read more about the block challenge here and see all the submitted blocks here.

I was wondering how they were going to set the blocks together, and this is the creative setting that was chosen. Each block has a thin red border, and then is set with a black sashing on 2 sides which gives a neat 3D effect. And then there is grey sashing between the blocks. There were enough blocks for a large queen size quilt and also a wall hanging for the auction. Around the outside of the quilt is a wider black border that has a cable design - one of my favorite designs for hand quilting.

Here is a photo of me quilting with the some of the Mennonite ladies. They gave me the honour of quilting my own block! I was really excited about that until I started quilting and realized that it was very hard to quilt because of all of the seams in my paper pieced block! It was a relaxing and fun day and a special treat to be included in the Quilting Bee.

As if that wasn't enough fun, I found out that I won first place in the block challenge, which was "viewer's choice"! I was delighted to win, but was further encouraged by the lovely comments that the voters wrote on their ballots. What a great quilty day it was!

Happy Easter

It is a beautiful, sunny Easter here and the Easter bunny has delivered her chocolate treats. A new Lindt store opened up near us and provided wonderful goodies for the Easter baskets. The children are in a sugar coma, and now the Easter bunny has some time to do some blogging and stitching! That worked out well for her!
Don't you just love a long weekend full of relaxing moments for sewing!?!
I finished up another block from Capricorn Quilts BOM (from last year). I think I still have 4 or 5 more blocks to stitch if I want to make the whole set and if I can find my patterns! I am planning to attend an old fashioned quilting bee on Tuesday and was thinking about that while I was stitching this block. I'm sure my hand quilting stitches will leave a lot to be desired by the experienced quilters, however they have agreed to let me join in for the morning.
Happy Easter! I am hopping off the computer to do more sewing!

Advice

I have been having a terrible time with my computer again. Apparently my PC has been sending my email into the ether for a while now...where does this missing email go? I know...it must be wherever my children's lost socks are! I have decided to buy a Mac to get away from all of this virus nonsense and hope my computer troubles will be behind me. I just have to decide which model to buy - do you prefer a desktop or a laptop? Can you offer me advice?!

And speaking of advice, my sister was "let go" after 18 years of working for Purolator, so I recommended that she use this found time to learn to quilt. She picked out an easy pattern to start with, purchased fabrics with a star theme, and mastered rotary cutting very quickly. Here are the squares she had cut out to start piecing together. Don't you love how she carefully organized all her pieces?!? She sewed up the 4 patches and here she is with her blocks layed out on the floor. Now she is sewing the rows together and so far is really enjoying it...I am hoping she will fall in love with quilting and it will help her to get over this terrible experience of losing her job.

Unpredictable

The weather here is unpredictable. I have to look at the outside thermometer everyday to see which I should put on to walk the dog...winter coat? rain coat? spring coat? no coat?
I was starting to get excited about planting my expanded garden, and thinking about turning over the soil, but when I looked outside this morning, this is what I saw! Look what happened to my daffodils! I guess I am rushing the planting season, eh?
Better stay indoors and sew. I have been putzing around in my sewing room, kind of aimless and not sure what I want to work on. I have cut all these tiny pieces for a mini quilt, but wasn't sure what size of block I want, so I ended up cutting pieces for 3 different sizes - 2", 1 1/2" and 1" blocks!

Any guesses as to what block I am trying to sew?!?

Busy with Birthdays

This was a very busy week for me, with my husband's and my Mom's birthday within 3 days of each other. My husband requested a pillow for use in his Lazy Boy recliner. How could I refuse such a simple request?!? I made up two little 12" pillows so he will hopefully be able to find at least one when he needs it. They are made from the leftover pieces from my Dad's plaid quilt (click here to see it). I did not cut into any yardage to make these pillows...even the flannel backing was made from the pieces of backing leftover from Dad's quilt.

I'm sure I don't know why it gives me such a thrill to know that I used up all those little pieces that other people throw in the garbage?!? I am glad that hubby likes his pillows, and hope he gets lots of use out of them. But when he's not home, guess who loves to cuddle up with them?!?

For her birthday, my Mom wanted a celebration with some of her girlfriends. I didn't sew anything for her, but together with my sisters, we made a dinner party for 16 of her friends, complete with Hors D'Oeuvres, honey ham, scalloped potatoes, salads, etc. and of course a big birthday cake. Here is my very young looking 70 year old Mom holding the fruit arrangement I bought her from Edible Arrangements. It was a pretty, colourful display, and the fruit was delicious.

Birds are back

It was snowing a bit this morning, but that did not deterred the robins from returning over the weekend. We are always so happy to see them and when they appear we start to feel hopeful that the long winter is finally over. Here is a mama robin looking for some worms, and the grass is even starting to turn green from the increasing sun!
For some relaxing sewing since finishing my Double Delight mystery top, I have been working on birds of another kind...flying geese! You can see the beginnings of this project here. I have been working on the half square triangle blocks for about a month. I sewed the HST together and trimmed them all, then layed them on the table and tried to find a mate for each of them. Some of the good matches are on the left of the photo, by the sewing machine ready to be sewn into a flying geese block. The other matches aren't permanent yet...waiting to see if another more suitable match comes along. I have had a lot of fun entertaining myself with thoughts of what makes a good match, what happens if you're too "interesting"/unique and can't find someone similar, should I just pick any similar block, or wait for the "right one" to come along??
Here are my growing piles of finished flying geese blocks that have been suitably matched together. What great fun I have had from Liz's bag of scraps!

A little face lift for Spring

I gave my blog a little face lift tonight...don't know what got into me, maybe it's Spring Fever?!?

I just wanted a change, and made everything match my new little quilt that my friend Judy made for me (the photo at the top of my blog). Judy and I had ourselves a little mini challenge...we each had a Quilt Diva FQ of fabric and we were supposed to make a mini quilt from the fabric. On the left is the centre of my mini.

Judy made a half a dozen quilts and here are her minis! Aren't they wonderful!?! I have my "Kathy quilt" hanging in my quilt studio and enjoy looking at it when I am sewing.

This is the mini I made from my Quilt Diva FQ. It uses the same block as in this quilt and all of these quilts. I machine quilted some feathers in the corners but the fabric is so busy you can't notice the quilting. I will be donating this mini quilt to my quilt guild's mini raffle at the Quilt Show in the fall.

Great news!

My Double Delight quilt top is finished at last! I started cutting and sewing on New Year's Day, so that's only 3 months...not bad! (You can read all about my progress on this quilt top if you missed the saga - click here.)
I had a miserable time sewing on these borders. I sewed two of them on with the fabrics in the wrong order, which was such a stupid mistake caused by rushing to be finished and not checking my work before sewing. And then it took me almost 2 hours to unsew that mistake. But I persevered and was amazed at my determination to finish the borders, versus my old tendency to work on something else and kick the border problem to the UFO pile! And you know what else? I have already purchased a large backing and the batting, so this one will maybe be finished in record time!

Bad News/Good News

First, the good news...I have finished sewing my Double Delight blocks together and here is the quilt top so far!! I was really impressed with how the rows fit together, all the seams locking perfectly, and the whole quilt top was truly a delight to sew.

Now the bad news....since my creative self changed my version of the Double Delight design (without my permission!) to make the 9 patch blocks on the edges, I had at least 10 of the Rolling Star blocks left over. And since they took forever to make, I figured I had to find a way to include them in the quilt. I thought I might sew them into the backing, or make another smaller quilt.

But no...I just couldn't let go of the idea of sewing them into the border somehow. So I spent all of my sewing time on the weekend (I am not kidding...it took me hours!!) changing 4 of the Rolling Star blocks into star blocks -without the rolling part!! But because of the way the blocks were constructed I had to pry open the ends of 16 seams on each block and then re-sew the two sides of each star point! Stupid idea! But once I started and realized how long it would take, I couldn't convince myself to stop! So I finished reconstructing 4 of these blocks for cornerstones on the borders.

Then I had to figure out the fabrics for the borders and tried a thousand (perhaps a slight exaggeration) combinations. Finally I decided on my favorite borders and started cutting only to discover...you guessed it, that I didn't have enough of the teal fabric left for an inside border! More bad news! I flopped around and moaned and complained for a while, and thought about starting over on the whole border idea or skipping the borders altogether, but I was already too far into the cutting of the teal and the floral fabrics to start over without wasting fabric. And it is no longer an option to skip over to the quilt store and pick out some new fabric...I am a committed Stashbuster with a serious fabric storage problem and I am not buying anymore (until I go to Paducah and then I am totally having a fabric buying binge!).

So instead of 2 borders (teal and then brown floral) I cut the teal in half to have enough to go all the way around the quilt, and then had to add a 3rd border of raspberry to make up the measurement...UGH! Here is a photo of my original border idea.

Now I am not a border person...it's usually the time when a UFO suddenly appears because I get frustrated or don't have enough fabric left, or I get bored. But not this time because I am forcing myself to finish these borders if it kills me! Tune in tomorrow to see if I have good news or bad news to report!!

National Quilt Day

Yesterday was "National Quilt Day" in the US... I think it should be an international celebration with the whole world having a day off work to enjoy quilting! However, the next best thing is having a whole Saturday to enjoy quilting activities, wherever you live.

In the morning the mini quilters came over and brought the quilts they finished last month, which was the Wheel of Mystery pattern. (You can see my first one here and my heart version here.) The variation and creativity in these quilts just makes my heart sing! Each one is a little treasure! I love it when the quilters pull their projects out of their bags and we get to see all their finished quilts. If I loaded the photos correctly you should be able to click on the photos to enlarge them so you can see more details, including unique quilting designs, fancy stitching, and button and bead embellishments.

This photo shows the beautiful projects from Tuesday's group, and the two quilts on the right are made from the same charm pack, but look so different!

In tomorrow's post I will show you what I worked on in the afternoon of National Quilt Day.

Black & White block challenge

I forgot to post the results for the Black and White block challenge. You can see the block I made for the challenge here. This is a photo of the blocks that were submitted. The wide variety of techniques was amazing and I enjoyed looking at each one and trying to figure out how it was made. If you live in the St. Jacobs area, don't forget to go over to Riverworks and vote for your favorite block...you only have until Saturday!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This is a shamrock design that I saw 2 years ago when surfing the web. I haven't been able to track down the original wallhanging to give credit to the quilter that posted the photo...anybody recognize it so I can give proper credit??
I made it in a mini size and it is hanging on my front door today....Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Quiltville Finish!

I am so thrilled to announce that I have finished my Orange Crush quilt!
You can read about the creation of this quilt by reading the blogposts I have made since April 1st 2008 - click here. I enjoyed finishing the free motion "C" design I quilted in the light squares of the 4 patch chains. But I sure laboured through the quilting of the orange blocks (and the half blocks on the edges). I made a list of the number of blocks to quilt, and ticked off the blocks on the list as I quilted them, so that I could see my progress. That seemed to take a long time. Then, to get more momentum going for myself, I sewed and pressed the binding and set it in the middle of the table wrapped around a roll of paper towel, so I could see that I was so close to being able to sew the binding on.
This encouraged me to finish the free motion swirly "C" designs in both borders. I like this photo because you can see that I really was using up all my green scraps to finish the border of the quilt.
And here it is...not a good photograph because a) it was a sunny and windy day and b) it is a big quilt (72" x 86") and my 6' tall son had to stand on a chair to hold it for me. You can see the bottom left corner really well. It is a really wonderful feeling of accomplishment to finish this year long quilt project and to know that the whole quilt top was made from stash fabric! Thanks again to Bonnie for organizing this mystery (one of my favorite quilting activities) and for giving us a great quilt design!

Retreat Projects Report #4

I think I am almost done posting about my quilting retreat projects! This is the new quilt kit I cut out to start sewing at retreat (it's no fun to just work on UFO's!!).
These fabrics are old (5+ years percolating) batiks from my stash. I just love the look of all these pieces cut out and ready to start sewing for a quilt...no mistakes made yet, no realization that your colours choices are horrendous, or that you don't like the pattern!! Just hours of happy sewing ahead and the potential for a great quilt!
I wanted to use the pattern called "Buzz Saw" that I saw posted on the Happy Valley Quilter blog almost 2 years ago. I printed out the fabric cutting info but not the sewing instructions thinking a)I was saving paper and computer ink and 2) I'm sure I can figure it out. So when I pulled out the project to work on at retreat, I couldn't figure it out!!
I asked one of our retreaters who went home to sleep if she could check on her computer when she went home. The next day she reported that the block looked right, and we figured out that I had cut all the light rectangles in error...no where for them to go in the block. So this is the Buzz Saw block and I had cut enough for 20 blocks. Since coming back from retreat I have sewn the blocks together and am thinking about using the mistakenly cut rectangles for an inner border. I think it needs another border after that...any suggestions?!?!

Retreat projects report #3

One of the projects I have been working on for almost a year is the Quiltville Orange Crush mystery. I already have 15 blog postings on this quilt, and that's more than enough! But here is a photo to prove that I took this baby to retreat and did more quilting on it. Jackie took this picture of me and if you are wondering why I tied my scarf on my head, it is because I almost machine quilted it into the Orange Crush!! Perhaps most people would have just removed the pesky scarf...don't know why I didn't think of that?!?!
I finished the 'C' loops that I free motioned in the light chains. Then went back to working on the orange blocks, which I really wanted to put some quilting in, but couldn't get the thread to stop shredding. At retreat I tried a 100 needle and it worked wonderfully! So I am back to enjoying the quilting, am about half way finished the orange blocks, and feel like the end is in sight for this project!

Retreat projects report #2

One of my goals for quilt retreat was to piece a block for a black and white block challenge at Reichards. All participants were given a square of black fabric and were asked to make a 9" block. The blocks collected will be assembled into a quilt that will be auctioned at the Mennonite Relief Sale in May, with all the money raised going to relief efforts around the world.
Before the retreat I had printed out one of my favorite paper piecing patterns in Electric Quilt in a 3" size. I figured out the white and black placements and wrote the information on the back of the papers. At retreat I spent a lot of time fussy cutting the centre fabrics for each block, and cutting the wavy fabric so it would go the right direction to form a diamond shape in the block.
And here is the finished product. I was happy with how it turned out, but unhappy with the amount of time it took to construct!! Winners of the block challenge (which are decided by viewer's choice) can win various cash amounts, and I promised the retreaters that if they voted for my block and I won, I would use the winnings to bring treats (ie. fabric!) to quilt retreat next year!! I have seen some of the blocks submitted and the variety of the results are just amazing. I will post a photo of the quilt when it is finished.