Quilts from MQX

I had a wonderful time at MQX on Friday. It was not crowded and the quilts were beautiful.  My friend, Diane and I bought lots of thread and were really inspired by the quilts.

Here are some of the highlights!

This was best in Show.  I love a girl who loves some bling!  It is called Red Letter Daze by Janet Stone of Kansas.  Each block is pieced and bound separately and appliqued to the background. This is the 7th in a series. 

This is a detail of one of the blocks. 

This one is by Kathy Sperino of Finishing Lines.  She is the gal who quilted my Quilt of Valor last year and we chat through our blogs and email from time to time.  She is a Red Sox fan so lots of commiserating of late.  Check out her blog and the latest commissioned work she did. It is spectacular.

This one is called Ribbons of Hope.

I also got an up close and personal look at Debra's quilt that she did last year with her friends, Rian and Deb called Stay the Course. 

This next one received three ribbons. Of note, one was Best Use of Thread (6000 yards of it!) and ladies, we better watch out!  it was done by a MAN! Yep, it is spectacular. It is called White Tail Morning by Dustin Farrell of PA.

Here is a detail of the thread painting.  He made 36 thread changes with 130 hours to create it.
I can't imagine at any point in my quilting life that I would I sit down and think, "Yep, I'm going to make this!!"

This one is  Call of Africa by a local gal, Mary Franc of Bethel CT. This is a big one!
On my quilting front, I am up to date on the CW blocks. Got my shams ready for quilting even though the quilt they go with has been put away until the fall. I'll get them quilted and completed so we have them for next year. I have pulled a quilt from the CRYPT and will load it this week. After all the gorgeous quilts I saw at MQX, I am pumped up to get  back to quilting. I have to get one done pretty quick to send to my great niece for her birthday. She will be 3 and is in need of a big girl quilt to replace the baby one I sent on her first birthday.

Then I will be moving on to my paint chip challenge due for the guild's picnic in June. Stay tuned. This should be a doozy.

Time to get back on track

Well, basketball is over. My girls went as far as I thought they would. Just a couple of games short but next season will be fabulous.  Congrats to the Texas Aggies! They deserved to win. They are a scrappy team ( and who doesn't like scrappy!!) with a super coach. The Uconn men won it all,coming from out of nowhere,which was great to watch.


And now  PLAY BALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

 The Bo Sox are off to an interesting start.  Our first win (9-4) over the Yankees was fun to watch. Our last loss to the Rays (18-4) not soo much.  But both of my boys, Jacoby and Dustin, are back from their injuries of last season and are doing awesome. 

And now for quilting!  Well, I asked for charms, and boy was I charmed!!! I received packages, from Amy, Paula,  Julie, Debra and Christine  . I now have enough for my three quilts and probably one or two more!! Thanks ladies for your generosity.  Quilters are the best kind of people.  Debra also sent me one of her "practice" pieces she had done from her new longarm.  I don't know about you but I think her "practice" quilting is pretty darn good. I almost hate to cut it up.  I'm going to make mastectomy pillows out it for my guild's community project.

Well, I'm off to package up my pincushion for the swap. I'm sending mine to a lovely lady in Germany!

I'm going to the Machine Quilters Expo quilt show in Providence on Friday so I'll have some pics of quilts on Sunday.  They won't be mine, but there will be quiltiness over here.

Til then,  Quilt til you Wilt!

I Love New York

I spent Friday and Saturday in NYC with three of my quilting buddies.  We checked in early on Friday and headed for the garment district.  It can be a little overwhelming but we browsed through many shops,  including Mood, filled with lace, fabric and baubles.  I picked up some lovely trim to use on my paintchip challenge quilt which is my next project.

We ended our day at The City Quilter which has expanded their store. I found lots of great fabrics for my paintchip challenge as well as other stuff. After a long day of shopping, we hit the bar for martinis and then had dinner at Shula's Steakhouse. Sadly, we are not the party animals of old. We were in our jammies by 9 watching basketball.

Saturday morning we were quickly out the door to the Empire Quilters quilt show.  Hit the line about 10 minutes before the doors opened and started our busy day.

The quilts were lovely.  There was something for everyone. Of course, being a New York quilt guild, they had an Urban theme.  Here are is one of the lovely NYC quilts.

 The Verrazano Bridge

This quilt and the next are tributes to Vermeer's "A Girl with a Pearl Earring".  The first one was done in silks. The second in African fabrics.

 I really liked how this quilter extended the image into the border with 1 inch squares. 

This one is for the Calico Cat.. What part of MEOW don't you understand??

And this one is for Libby.  Girlfriend, these yo-yos were about an inch big!!

Check out Empire Quilters' website later this week for pictures of all the quilts. It's definitely worth a look!

What was especially great at this show were the VENDORS!!  There were at least three booths with Japanese fabric and one exclusively with kimono fabric.  I picked up a panel with butterflies that is fantastic. There was African fabric, Batiks, a vendor with European fabrics. It was quite a smorgasbord!  My poor little credit card was smoking at the end of the day!!

Our last stop was The Crumb Shop.  Yes, ladies, a shop that specializes in cupcakes!!! I picked up a six pack for my hubby.  It was really just to divert his attention from the credit card receipts!!  My favorite was the Irish Creme.

Lastly, and certainly not least, thanks to all who offered to send me charms!  You guys are really generous.  This lovely package was waiting for me from Paula the Quilter when I got home from NYC.

Thanks Paula!!  Well, I probably won't be posting til next week. Basketball and the final four are coming up this weekend.  Go UConn!

Are you charming? I hope so!

Well, it's March Madness time again! My DH and I have been parked in front of the TV all weekend and will be for the next couple of weeks watching UConn try to win another National Championship.  Knowing that I will have some time to do mindless stuff, I have started cutting fabric for a new project.  I found an easy pattern for using nickel squares and thought it would be a great way to use up my novelty fabrics.  I pulled all my kiddie fabric and started cutting charms.  I hope to make three twin size quilts ( one for my great-niece, Bella, one for my nephew, Aiden and one for charity). 

Despite cutting for a few hours, I am woefully short on charms.  This quilt calls for 88 charms for each quilt. I would like not to use repeats and sewwwww, I am asking if there is any one out there who would like to donate or swap charms with me.  If you do, please email me and we can swap snail mail addys and I can get this project underway.

I've also joined another swap, cause you know I love me a swap!  This one is a pincushion swap through Hilde and Hilde. If you are interested, click on over. Sign ups are until April 3rd.

In other news,  my west coast-east coast-west coast quilting buddy, Libby, is headed back to the West Coast. She passed by me on Saturday and we got together for some coffee, catchup and hugs.  Of course, Driving Miss Daisy was with her.  Although we got together far less than we should have, it was so great having her close by and I will miss her.  But now, I have a West Coast hookup which I intend to use and she and I will be roaming Rosie's quilt shop in the near future.  Last text I got from her she was in Oklahoma.  Gonna miss you girlfriend!!!

This Friday, I am headed to the Big Apple for Empire Quilters quilt show.  I've never been to this one and I'm pretty excited.  I'll be traveling with 3 other gals and we have decided to stay overnight in Times Square and check out the city a bit.  A trip to Mood is already on the agenda.  I'll have pics on my return from the show. 

Til then, Quilt til you wilt!

HAPPY ST. PADDY'S DAY FROM MCIRISH ANNIE

Couldn't let this day go by without posting as it is my  #2 favorite holiday of the whole year!  So, here are a couple of  my wee Irish quilts. 

Enjoy! 

Please go over to the Quilting Gallery and vote for my shamrock quilt starting today!!!  I could win a wee prize if I get the most votes!

 Bealtaine go bhfuil tú i gcónaí pingin i do phóca, cara le do thaobh agus fabraic i do stash.


 
Copy this over to Google Translate to find out my wish for all of you.

This and that - back from retreat

I am back from retreat and unfortunately have no pictures as Picasa ate my pictures before I imported them. Stupid Picasa!!!!

At any rate, I worked on several different projects.  Here's the rundown:

1. made binding for Bella's quilt;
2. made 9 patch blocks for Debra's American Cancer Society auction quilt;
3. made my wool pillow for our guild's Victorian tea (got pics of that);
4. worked diligently on my dryer sheet blocks which will soon be a quilt top. I'm going to call it Bounce since all the blocks have Bounce fabric sheets as foundations; and
5. made more mastectomy pillows which I will make til i run out of fiber fill which should be soon.
 Here's my pillow.

It was a great location with super accomodations, fabulous quilters and I can't wait to go again next year!

Since I've been back, I have made another of the Brackman CW blocks, Birds in the Air. Ta Da!




On Saturday I went to a workshop with Elin Waterston of Art Quilt Workbook fame.  We got to experiment with textile paints on fabric and Shiva Paintsticks.  It was interesting in that I realized I liked the stenciling and over painting on fabric but wasn't a big shiva paintstick fan other than for accenting.  I had a picture of Elin but STUPID PICASA  ate her too.   I hate technology and computers and cameras today! 


I also made hearts to send to New Zealand which I read about over at Quilting Gallery. Here is the link for the Hearts for Christchurch if you are interested. I had a few cross stitched heart blocks from years ago which I stay stitched and bound .  They are on their way to New Zealand  to cheer someone I hope.

Well, back to the Brackman blocks.

First, I want to apologize to Barbara Brackman.

Barbara, I'm not mad at you anymore. I still like you and thank you for keeping quilt history alive.

There, I feel much better now and I finished the Richmond block and the Cotton Boll with few problems.

Sorry these are a little blurry, not the blocks, the picture~

After finishing the blocks, I decided to pull out some felted wool for a pillow I am making for our guild's Spring Tea.

Three hours later, I had gone through several bins of UFOs , reorganized things, found five tops that are ready for quilting and found this....

Not the bed, the quilt top~

I had bought this top without the borders a million years ago at a yard sale. I have been inspired by Debra , her new machine and all the practicing she is doing and thought this would be a good practice piece for me. I haven't given my Sunny a good workout in a long time. So I have added the borders, pulled some ancient fabric and pieced the back and this will be loaded for quilting in the near future.

Oh, and I did pull the felted wool for the pillow. See it sitting on the top of this enormous, yet not completed, pile of stuff!

I am headed for a quilt retreat on the Cape. I pulled a couple of Oldies but Goodies from the archives and will work on them as well as the wool pillow. And I will be bringing these awesome mags to peruse for inspiration and new ideas. As many of you may know, Borders bookstores have filed for bankruptcy/reorganization. They are closing some of their stores and one near to us is closing and liquidating their inventory. Magazines were 40% off!!! So, I grabbed a bunch.

Lastly, I just received this in the mail. Paula, The Quilter spoke about having your blog entries made into a book some time ago. With my Five Year Blogiversary coming up in May, I decided to do the same. So this is Year One of Quilt til you Wilt in print. It's cool to see your posts in print with pictures. I can't believe it's almost five years!

I'll report back with my (keep your fingers crossed) completed retreat projects next week.

Til then,

Quilt til you wilt!!!!!!!!!!

Tearing it up over Texas Tears

BARBARA BRACKMAN!!! Do you see my fist???? I am shaking it at you !!

When I found the Civil War Block website, I should have just stuck to reading the wonderful history and pictures you provided.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, I had to start making the blocks. What's one little old block a week?? I looked at this as an opportunity to improve my piecing and well, I am a sucker for CW repro fabric. Well, at first, I was nervous but after a couple of weeks, I was staying on schedule and I had not had any real problems.

I had NO trouble with Kansas Troubles. Though I expected it with all these little pieces and the others went together fairly easily.

BUT TEXAS TEARS!!! I had met my match.

I have learned over the last 6 weeks to wait til a couple of the other gals participating have done the block and then I go check to see if there are any pitfalls to avoid. There are soo many awesome piecers out there that I figure I'd leave it to the experts ( like Lillian) to iron out the kinks, so to speak.

So I started Texas Tears last Sunday. By the time I was done with the first block I was tearing up. I had cut the inner block down to 5 1/2 as suggested but when I was done the block measured 8" instead of 8 1/2'. Hmmmm...

But not to be deterred, I recut the block and started Round two.

Really Barbara , 1 7/16ths !!

On the second round, I cut the strip 1 1/2" and did not cut the block down but squared it up and used a scant 1/4 inch. When I was done, I was ready to tear out MY scant 1/4 inch of hair! (BTW, yep, my hair is growing back!!) Although this time it measured 8 1/2, I realized I was going to lose my points all around once I put the blocks together. But I decided that two shots was all this northern girl was gonna take at Texas Tears.

So here it is Texas Tears ala Annie.

After that tearful adventure, I was happy to move on to the Log Cabin. Thank you Abe! I needed an easy block after Texas.

I love a good swap!

I love quilting swaps! I've signed up for mini quilt swaps, charm square swaps, postcard swaps-I'm a sucker for a swap. So when the Quilting Gallery had a Mug Rug swap, I decided to join in. I thought the concept was cute and handy for me and my DH since we love a nice cuppa and cookies while watching TV. Plus I had some super cute novelty fabric which has been kicking around for years and was perfect for this swap. For those unfamiliar with mug rugs, they are like quilted coasters but longer about 10 x 6, just big enough to put your coffee mug on plus some space for a couple of cookies.


I received my swap partner's name and decided last Saturday to spend the afternoon making mug rugs. IDEALLY, you are talking about a couple of FQs worth of fabric and some batting for pair of mug rugs which was the swap and I figured I'd whip up a couple of extras for myself. A nice little project, maybe a couple of hours.


However, HERE'S THE REALITY !!!

ROUND ONE:

My initial idea was to make two blocks framed side by side. This fabric was too dark so I ditched it.

ROUND TWO:

I liked this combo! The red and white check gives it a diner feel~but of course I cut the novelty fabric too small and the frame too wide and the two block idea was dropped. The red and white check was overwhelming the novelty print. This ended up in the Orphan Block bin.

ROUND THREE:

This next size worked out great! But it had been a week since I had read the requirements of the swap and I went ahead and zigzagged the edges which was a no-no. The edges had to be bound or enclosed. So I decided to try to add bias tape all around. A DISASTER!! Did not like the finished look of that. So I took it off and decided the zig zagged mug rugs would live with me.

ROUND FOUR:

Finally, after approximately SIX hours, here is the finished mug rug ( there are two) which will go to my partner who lives in Florida this weekend with some added goodies.

Oh, and here is the pile of scrap from making FOUR mug rugs.

It seemed so simple! LOL~