QuiltCon 2016

QuiltCon, the Modern Quilt Guild quilt show and conference, was in Pasadena, CA a few weeks ago.  My sister and I, and many members of our local Modern Quilt Guild, took advantage of the nearby event and classes.  I showed the photos from my class with Heather Jones, Improv Half Log Cabin, on my last post.  There is much about the Modern Quilt movement to admire, one of which is the inspiration modern quilt designers and quilters draw from traditional sources.  That section of the quilt show was most attractive to me and nearly all my photo taking occurred in the Modern Traditionalism area.  Here are a few of my favorites, and why.  All photos were taken at QuiltCon 2016.  Each photo below the quilt has the artist name and backstory.

Blue Spiderwebs:  The freeform spiderwebs were fun and I loved the black around the webs separating them from that deep luscious blue background.

Focal Point:  The offset setting and multiple prints mixed with a few solids was eye-catching.  This was not a large quilt, perhaps 40-45" square.  The spiral quilting was so well done and is something I must try sometime. 

Handcrafted Triangles:  All those deep saturated colors were completely juicy and beautiful to look at.  I've done some improvisational piecing and it can be fun.   It can also be frustrating when you cut off points when you didn't mean to! 

Octagon Shimmer:  I thought this quilt, which was large in size, had such a sophisticated look with the grays and muted solids throughout.  The small improv triangles gave a quirky touch.  The quilting was gorgeous too.

Picnic Petals:  Another large size quilt with a wonderful mix of solids and prints.  I liked the overlay look with some colored solid backgrounds and lots of white. 

Forest Abstraction:   These animals were so sweet and charming.  I'm not sure how she did the final application onto the backgrounds, but they were full of life and joy.

Melon Wedding Ring:  This was my absolute favorite of the Modern Traditional group.  Again, the deeply saturated colors felt very rich and captivating.  The quilting was beautiful and I liked the different background print choices.  Completely unboring!

 My sister and I didn't get to spend too much time in the vendor section, but I must say the fabric company booths were so inviting,with samples and things to make and stitch, places to sit and chat with other quilters, and plenty of inspiration, as well as freebie buttons, pins, and giveaways.  It was a completely different vibe from any other quilt show vendor floor.  I wished we had had more time to spend there.  QuiltCon East is in Savannah, GA next year.  I'd encourage anyone who loves fabric, thread, and design to see the show and take classes.  I'm hoping QuiltCon returns to Southern California again in the not too distant future. 

My iPhone took a swim a couple of weeks after this event and one thing the restoration from backup to my replacement phone taught me is that I need to upload photos and videos regularly to my PC.  Do it now, people!

Keeping Busy

Besides increasing to full time at one job, I've been training two people at my other job, took on the secretary board position for my guild, and got a recent surprise to spend time with--our second grandson arrived 2.5 weeks early and crashed his brother's 2nd birthday. We happily welcome Hunter Grant!

He's been doing well and big brother likes to hold him and talk to him. So cute!   We never expected a shared birthday to happen this way, least of all their parents!

I'm finishing curtains for Hunter's room and am getting started on a quilt for him. Mama picked a black and white theme. I found an easy pattern on Pinterest she liked. It's called Adam's Rib, from Fons and Porter Easy Quilts magazine, Summer 2013. 

Two sizes of squares and a couple of rectangles. The monkey fabric is for the backing, mostly, though I bought a little extra for blocks too. 

Besides the new little man to visit, life has been really busy and good. I have been sewing  some and took a class at QuiltCon last month. These blocks will be the basis of a Round Robin row by row in our guild that starts tomorrow. 

This was Heather Jones' Improv Half Log Cabin. My blocks are the smaller red, light gray and teal on the far left. It was a fun class. The loot MQG members was

pretty great too.  

My sister Kathy and I had a good  time and saw lots of exquisite work. The show and vendors had a totally different vibe from the Road to California show that we attended earlier, though we enjoyed both. There's nothing like spending time with other people who share your interests!  I'll post some pics from both shows soon. And now, back to those curtains for Baby Hunter...

Back with a Finish

Hi, folks!  That was an unexpectedly long break...it has been a very busy start to 2016 and I can't see that ending soon.  There was no regular sewing time happening due to starting full time hours at  job #1, training a replacement at job #2, starting my position as Secretary of our Modern Quilt Guild, going to Road to California, spending time with our grandson, moving our youngest from our house to her own place across town, attending my nephew's wedding in Mammoth, and a "Sprinkle" for our expectant older daughter when we got back. Life has been pretty nuts, but the happy kind!

I have a finish to share, as in queen sized.  This quilt started with a bunch of gifted 9.5" bullseye raw edged blocks from Mary of Quilt Hollow.  I made more blocks and a small quilt top with some borders, but the project expanded greatly when my brother needed a bigger quilt for his new bachelor pad.  There was MATH, there was internet searching for additional appropriate border fabric, more bullseye blocks made and quartered and added, backing and batting bought.  Finally, in January I handed off the quilt to the quilter and got it back a month later. Binding was quickly made and applied and even a label got put on.  Here is Bullseye Quartered, a real quilt at last. 

Our tall neighbor and my husband held up the beast for some late afternoon photos.  The layout is my own design.  I favor diagonal lines and the quartered blocks were fun to play with.  This finished at over 100" in length with slightly less width :)

Truer colors in this closeup.  Lots of scraps and odd pieces were used up in this quilt.  It felt good to clear out some older stash.  See the yummy cables and swirls. Custom quilting by Georganna Hawley.

Delicious from the back, too.  I like a pieced back, but sometimes a wide single fabric backing is the best choice to show off quilting.  My local fabric store had this extra wide fabric so no waiting for ordering and shipping, another bonus.  

 Georganna's squiggles, swirls and cables enhanced the traditional prints and colors so well.

 

Mini the cat took the first nap on the quilt as it lay over the couch after being washed (poor nighttime lit photo).  The raw edges have fuzzed and crinkled and look wonderful.  Can't wait to see this on the bed. Oh, it's good to have a finish!  Next finish will be the Timber quilt--the top is complete and the backing in progress. 

Design Wall Monday

Man, it's been a busy month already!  But I do have some sewing to share again. First up, the UFO challenge project I selected from my many UFOs to finish for guild.  This started with a monthly challenge of fluorescent color.  The orange is surely bright but not really fluorescent, but I really like the way its turning out. 

 This is Metro Twist, from Sew Kind of Wonderful and the Quick Curve Ruler.

It takes a bit of rewiring your brain every time you play with the ruler, but it isn't hard.  I cut a bunch of parts for the blocks.  I found that I did not have enough of the orange for the pictured quilt, but decided I must have planned to make a wall hanging for just that reason.  Notes, people!  Make notes!

Also for guild, we are making dog and cat beds for a rescue organization.  Good thing most animals are colorblind because these are made of totally random fabrics!  They are about 16x20" finished.  The rescue place was recently flooded out and will be grateful to get these next month.  I'll quilt and bind it this week.  

I've joined the scrap challenge at SoScrappy.  Blue is the January color, which is hardest for me since I use very little blue in my quilts, generally.  I decided to make Churn Dash blocks in two sizes.  This is a 9" block and I'll make 4 1/2" ones too.   I just love Churn Dash!

Finally, I finished a long overdue Christmas gift that needs to get delivered this week.

Simple 6" 9 patches and some setting triangles and sashing.  I again used a holly leaf for the small squares, so easy to do.

There was a lot of burying threads but I felt the simple design needed simple quilting. 

The backing is some leftover from my Christmas Quilt.  I actually hand stitched this binding, which I rarely do these days.  I do enjoy handwork and have plans to pull out the wool applique for another old quilt UFO to work on.  

See more design walls on Judy's Patchwork Times. 

Continuing Timber Tale

The Timber Quilt (Alison Glass pattern), now several months past due for a wedded couple, remains in pieces, but much bigger pieces!

There were four of the narrow angled strip sections, two of which were mirror image.  After constantly realigning the first group on my cutting mat, I finally got smart and used a visual aid. 

Ah, much easier!  The finished size of the section was the outer limit of the tape, so it was easier to see where the strips were to go.  The layout was complicated by this being a rectangle rather than a square.  There are a couple of squidgy areas I will have to be careful to enclose in the seam allowance so as not to leave a hole. 

Here are the completed four corner sections laid out with the center section.  Next, neutral colored sashing will be added along with outer borders in Silver Kona.  I'm making the quilt a little bigger than the pattern calls for, but not as big as the optional 15" border.  So some MATH will be required.  Therein lies the current stalling... It was my intention to get this quilt top together over my Christmas holiday, but sadly I did very little sewing.  Time to get back to it.

I pulled out my four patches and cut a bunch of corner triangles, as I thought I could use them as leader enders while sewing the Timber strips.  But that didn't work out because of the uneven length of the strips.  My sister stopped by while I was counting out how many hundred four patches I have (there are about 300 in this photo).  She almost had a stroke, as small squares affect her deeply :)  I have yet to decide how I will put these together once the triangles are all added.  Originally I was going to set them like the Go Four It quilt by Edyta Sitar for American Patchwork & Quilting, but I have seen some other layouts I like too.  A long term project can be a good thing.

2015 and Christmas Wrap Up

Happy New Year!

As per usual, I'm a little late to the Wrap Up game.  2015 was a very busy year in both work and personal life hours and it sure contributed to less sewing/quilting/stitching.  I did not make many large quilts but there were a lot of smaller projects completed. On the whole, there were a lot of things I kept or finished for myself--I know, right?  I also made a TeePee for my grandson's first birthday.  He loves it.

There were also a lot of starts and stops on multiple projects, not shown here!  My final finish of the year is the little tree runner, which I gave to my new friend and manicurist. 

 

 These improv trees were left over from last year's guild challenge where I picked two crayons (mine were old gold and green) .  I sashed them with this pinecone print. 

 

I had fun doing some straight line quilting with a little detail within the trees.  

Christmas was hectic, in that DH's 96 year old mother was taken to the ER by ambulance on Christmas Eve with abdominal cramps and difficulty breathing.  She checked out fine, except for high blood pressure, and we took her home, but our Christmas Eve gathering with our kids got pushed back a bit.  Grandson Cove, 22 months, was revved up but adorably so.

Very serious as he starts in on a big gift from his Uncle Nick.

 

 He removed every single bit of wrapping paper before checking out his gift.

 

 A basketball hoop!

 Cove had a great time inside this large gift bag, in which we kept throwing tissue and wrapping paper and he would pop up and down.  I caught his Mama and Auntie's reactions.

He wasn't quite sure about Santa at the Mall, but at least he didn't cry!

This Santa at the tree lot absolutely dwarfed the little guy.  

And his parents reported that he said about this extra large tree, "Take home".  

We feel very lucky to get to see our kids and grandson often and look forward to the next grandson arriving in March!

And finally, some changes for my followers who use Google Friend Connect, per Blogger Buzz:

In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

Design Wall Monday--a finish to share

A bit late, but I do have a finish to celebrate for DWM!  I finally got all the quilting done on the Christmas Quilt and it is ready to snuggle under on the couch.

I had to bump up the contrast to get the border to show as green and not black due to the nighttime shot, but here is the throw fresh off the sewing machine. 

 The back is pieced to keep the script print right side up :) 

Although initially I didn't think I really liked it, I persevered with the circles in the pieced blocks and most of them got a holly leaf detail in the center.  This was a very easy free motion design to do.  I felt the circles made the quilting a bit more modern.
.

I repeated the holly leaves but added berries in the border, and used green thread to keep the focus on the center blocks and not interrupt the dark green dotted print.  Desiring to use the green dot for the binding as well but having limited amount, the dreaded MATH dragon raised its head.

I had little of this red candy cane print that I used for the cornerstones and figured I had just enough of it to use on the corners.  I cut 12 inch sections of the red print at 2.5"wide and ironed them in half lengthwise like the other binding pieces.  I folded the red print binding segments in half and aligned the folded edge with the raw edge of my quilt top and pinned it in place.  Then I sewed the green dot  binding pieces to the free ends of the red print using a straight seam instead of a diagonal, measuring and cutting the green print binding only to proper length.

You can see in this picture where I joined the red print to the green print binding.  This procedure I did one at a time as I approached the corners while attaching the binding to the quilt sandwich.  I had to make a couple of straight joins in the green dot binding but they are really invisible.

This worked out perfectly and each corner detail measured the same.  It is so great when an idea and a sketch come together just the way one planned!  Unfortunately, when I washed the quilt for the first time, despite using a color catcher cloth, some of the red and green prints in the blocks ran--obviously a sign of not having been prewashed. My practice is to always wash all my fabrics before cutting and sewing, and certainly for any blocks that I might swap.  I'm sure more of this will wash out in subsequent laundering--this is a quilt for me and I'm not particularly concerned.  These blocks have been waiting to become a quilt for about 8 years.  So happy they are a real quilt finally.

See more design walls on Judy's Patchwork Times.