Saturday with quilting

The quilt show by the Simi Valley Guild was lots of fun. It was not crowded at all when we were there so I hope it was today and they made loads of sales and had lots of people looking at the wide variety of quilts. My friend Tanya came with me and brought a friend of hers who was also interested in getting back to sewing. I'll just show a couple of pics today and more later.

Here's Tanya pointing out something in a Kaffe Fausset fabrics quilt. This one was big and so interesting with the color and pattern mix!

I loved this little quilt, which was probably about 20x24 and all hand appliqued. The fussy cut urn and all the little birds were just adorable.

We looked at every quilt and gave our votes at the end. It was not a huge show but there were about 200 quilted items in the entire show, I believe, including a display of a Hoffman Challenge of quilted clothing and a guild challenge to remake one of those store mesh reusable totes. It was lots of fun to share looking at quilts with friends and to ooh and aah over all the yummy vendor booths. We also dropped entries into two giveaways and bought a chance or two on an opportunity quilt. We closed the place down at 5pm and headed back down the hill to home. Tanya's friend was a little overwhelmed by the all-quilt afternoon and we dropped her off at her car so we could go back to my house and smoke our quilt crack.

Tanya brought her latest fabric purchases and books and we spent another lovely hour or so talking quilting when we got back to my house. She bought a charm pack of "Gobble Gobble" by Sandy Gervais at the Cotton and Chocolate Quilt Store booth and needed ideas for an easy quilt. I showed her a simple squares-and-sashing pattern that I had gotten from my LQS when I bought these (below) charm squares a few years ago of "Scaredy Cat". However, I never did anything with them because I was disappointed that not one cat existed in the whole pack! In the purple print in the top row you can see the backs of some cats and their tails. But last night I sliced into them with the Tumbler acrylic template I bought a few months ago.


This is a 3" finished tumbler so out of each charm square I was only able to cut one tumbler, with the half pieces out of the scraps. I found it easier to trace around with a pencil and cut out with scissors than to hold down the template and rotary cut around it. I have enough of the scraps left over to do some sort of narrow border or edging.

The black with orange/purple dot fabric in the far lower left of the picture was a fat quarter I got yesterday to see if it would go with my Witches as a border, but it didn't suit so will end up with the Tumbler quilt. It was fun to put the rows together but I haven't decided quite what to do next. Maybe try to make a short table runner by adding triangles cut from the fat quarter and using the leftover charm strips for separator strips? Anyway, I love the colors and prints. Today I spent very little time in my sewing room other than to do some closet and drawer organizing but I'll be heading in there in just a few minutes to play some more.