February Recap: Part 4 - Quilt Con!!!

 If you saw the icon on my side bar these last few months, you know what was the special event I came down to North Carolina for:  I attended Quilt Con for the first time!  

When we learned last year that it would be coming to my MIL's neck of the woods, she and I immediately made plans to go.  Since my DH and I usually go visit my MIL this time of the year, it was a perfect fit!

If you have ever been to Quilt Con or any of the other big national shows, you know how phenomenal yet overwhelming attending can be.  We had four days of viewing quilts, attending lectures and watching a few live vendor demonstrations, admiring the "attendee fashion show" that flowed past us daily,  shopping the vendor booths and having more than a few "sew-lebrity" sightings!  Click the links for better reports of some of those than I can provide here.

All the "hands on" workshops were sold out by the time we registered so we were were only able to attend lectures including Jacqui Gering's keynote address.  

All of them were great!  David Owen Hastings lecture on Quilt Labels and Christa Watson's lecture on planning your quilt stitching gave me some ideas I hope to try on projects I already have going at home.  The lectures on working "improv" and exploring color had me itching to want to try to structure some time for trying some truly creative (aka no pattern) work.  Although, the reason I rarely do that was also addressed in the lectures: some times it takes a lot of time for inspiration to hit!  However, I also realize that these are projects or sessions I have to approach with no deadlines in order to give myself time to see where whatever I decide to do takes me.  I also learned about a new-to me sashiko-style hand stitching technique from Diana Fitzgerald that I'd like to try as well.  

Even better, we met great people and had great quilty conversations while standing in line waiting for the lecture hall to open for each session.  So if you are afraid of going to these big shows because you have to go by yourself, I say don't be.  We're all there because we love quilting so just turn to the person next to you and strike up a conversation!  You will be surprised to find that you either have a lot in common (happened often) or that you are kindred spirits in the things you've discovered about quilting or about yourself as a quilter.

I had mentioned to DH that I should have brought a notebook down with me to take notes at the lectures.  While making a trip to the local Walmart, he bought us both some, bless his "good quilt husband" heart!  So the other pre-show quilting project that I did was to make a quick Quilt-As-You-Go Note Pad cover the night before our first day at the show.  

Good thing one of the projects I brought down with me was one using scrappy strings!  

Needless to say in a show with aisles and aisles of vendor booths, ya' know there will be haul!  I did come to the show with a list of specific things I was hoping to stock up on.

In the picture above, the Kaffe Fassette and Marsha Derse fabrics on the left that I got from the Villa Rosa Designs booth were just the inspiration I was hoping to find for Pat Sloan's "March Block A Day" project starting this month.  The low volume fabrics on the lower right were pieces I had hoped to pick up for a "Lozenges" project that will be teamed with leftover red and black fabrics from other projects and were purchased from the Web Fabrics booth.  The other bundle of low volume prints (also picked up from Villa Rosa) I am hoping to use as backgrounds for the "Stronger Together" quilt project I spoke about back in Part 1.  

At the top, the denim backed cork is from Sallie Tomato, a vendor I hadn't heard of before and will go towards a "Barbados Bag" project I've long wanted to make from recycled denim.  Ironically, I had been directed to check out their booth after a conversation with a nice saleslady at the Handi Quilter booth who liked the bag of the same style that I was wearing and that I had purchased on Etsy a few years back.  

The Quilt Con pin was one of four show swag items I purchased.  I also picked up a project bag (good for quilting or cross stitch!) and two pairs of MQG socks.  Unfortunately I missed out on the show t-shirt as they sold out and MQG did not get enough additional orders to do another print run.  So if you go to the show and want a shirt, buy that first!!

I picked up Cindy Grisdela's "Adventures in Improv Quilts" book from the C&T Publishing booth.  It is one that had been on my wish list for a long time and with 20% off I decided to go for it since it might add to the lecture concepts I was learning.  But it got better:  I purchased it on Thursday and was told by the woman manning the booth that Cindy herself was going to be in the booth on Saturday so I could have it signed.  Cool!  Well, on Friday we were scheduled to go to the "Evolution of Quilts and Color" lecture to be given by Sarah Bond.  It turned out Ms. Bond couldn't make it and guess who subbed for her that day?  None other than Ms. Grisdela!!  So I not only was able to get the book signed right after the lecture but I got the bonus of getting to hear her speak on the topic of color as she uses it in her improv work as well!

The Quilt Alliance also had a booth at the show as they are based in North Carolina.  Speaking of those lecture hall waiting line conversations:  I had one with a woman who had quilts made by her grandmother.  As I am a big proponent of using labels, we had a long discussion about how she might document the quilts for her family's future generations.  I only wish I had remembered about the QA booth in that moment and could have directed her to visit it for more ideas.  For myself, I picked up one of the label cards they were giving out...

...and this time I didn't wait to get a t-shirt!  

Another thing we learned at the show is that next year's event will be going back to Phoenix, Arizona and they have already decided to return to Raleigh, NC for 2026!  I'm already looking forward to it!! 

Once the four days of the show were done, it was finally time to tackle some of the projects that I brought down with me.  While I didn't get to work on many, I did get some significant work done on two of them --- but that is a story for tomorrow!

A to Z Quilt Challenge: J = Journals

 For the month of April, I have taken up Frédérique's Quilting Patchwork and Applique challenge to blog daily (except Sundays) on a quilt topic related to a letter of the alphabet.  

* * * * * * * * * *

When I started quilting, I learned about documenting my quilts in the very first quilt magazine I read.  There was an article in it that talked about labelling quilts and about maintaining a separate written record of them.  

After reading that first article, I created a blank word processing "Quilt Documentation" template.  For each project started, I record information about the quilt.  This includes:  when I start and finish it, the quilt name, the inspiration for the quilt or the pattern used (and if from a book or magazine, the name, issue and publication year), details about the fabrics and batting used and where they were purchased and, what or who the quilt was made for.   

During the making of the quilt, I will record what efforts went into making it or what was going on in my life or in the world at the time.  I will finish the record with pictures of the quilt and fabric swatches if I have them.  When I am stuck on or discouraged with a current project, it can be encouraging to read back about other projects I have completed.  It usually is a reminder that with a little more time and determination, I can get to the finish!

Once I started creating the documentation files, I pulled out an empty three ring binder to house the finished journal entries.  That was when my Quilt Journal accumulation began!  Later I vowed to make annual scrap quilts and realized that covers for the binders would make interesting scrap quilt projects to help fulfill that vow.  

See the three uncovered binders in the background of the picture?

Well, here they are all covered up!

This year, I need to make covers for two more binders.  I decided yesterday to see if I could get at least one of them made up.  I had to come up with a design that I could make up fairly quickly.  I decided to do a "Jelly Roll Race" style cover which allowed me to dig into my bin of 2-1/2" scrap strips.  

This also gave me an opportunity for some more free motion quilting  practice.  It just so happens that right now, Angela Walters is holding another of her "Free Motion Challenge Quilting Alongs", this time focusing on "Flora and Foliage" motifs.  She demoed the first motif on Wednesday which is the "Woodgrain" filler.  This is a design I've tried in the past but wasn't sure I was getting it right.  Angela's instruction on how to start it off clarified for me perfectly how to do it!

Then with some leftover strip sets for the flaps to hold the binder in the cover, some leftover binding strips to go around the edges and a few hexagons to create a label for the spine, the latest journal cover is done!

One down, one to go!

Do you keep a journal?  Is it for your quilt or craft projects or is it for recording your daily life or thoughts?  Have you ever made a cover for it? 

Linking up with:  

Frédérique and the other Challengers at Quilting Patchwork and Applique.  Bonne journée!

Cynthia for Oh! Scrap at Quilting is More Fun than Housework

Andree and Muv and the Free-Motion Mavericks at Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing

Catching Up On June - Part 4: Last of the 2nd Quarter Finishes

I present to you what will probably be the last of the 2nd Quarter finishes:  the last of the new journal covers!

As noted in the previous post, I used scraps from my Civil War Repro stash to make the "Square Dance" quilt from Lori Smith's book "Fat Quarter Quilting".

Usually, I make these covers free form but the design from this book was already almost perfectly sized to make the cover.  I just had to adjust the design down slightly to add a label area and make it fit the binder it had to go around.   As you can see from all the tabs I have in  this book, I like a lot of the designs in here and also have picked out two other designs for two more future journal covers!  I love Lori's "From My Heart To Your Hands" designs and have a bunch of her "Fit To Frame" patterns (and the frames to put them in) that I hope one day to use to do a series of  them to display in our entry staircase. 

I'm also very happy to have gotten the three binders pledged for the quarter done. 

I'll either be back next with an update on the lap quilts or the Finish-A-Long wrap up post.  In either case, see you soon!

Catching Up On June - Part 2: Two more 2nd Quarter Finishes

As noted in the previous post, this month the 2nd Quarter Finish-A-Long will come to a close so I am pluggin' along trying to get some of the things remaining from my list completed.

I finished this on the last day of May:

It's the companion project to my "Sweet Land of Liberty" quilt (my BQF entry posted here) and they hang in the same room.  The eagle and the star are in wools, the rest of the fabrics are cottons and all of it came from scraps or stash.

"Let Freedom Ring" was a project from the Summer 2013 Primitive Quilts & Projects Magazine.  The original design had embroidery on it, something I was hoping to get back into with this project.  But pressed for time,  I took a shortcut and stitched the words on my sewing machine with a triple straight stitch.  I also eliminated the branch embroidery in favor of adding quilted feather designs using what I had hoped would be a "slightly" contrasting thread, an idea I got from this post on the Ivory Spring blog.  The thread I finally settled on using stitched out much darker than I expected reminding me once again that I really should test my quilting threads on a practice piece before doing the actual quilting.  But once the quilting was done, I was statisfied that this little piece would hang high enough to mute the impact of the stitching a bit and more importantly to me (at least for this project) it was done!

So far this month I've also finished the second of the three journal covers I wanted to make this quarter (the first was posted here). 

It was fun to pull all the bits that went into this one.  The label on the spine was stitched onto some ribbon I had on hand using the monogramming function on my machine and the roses were all that was left from a pack I had bought six years ago to add to the label of one of my other quilts. The front block was one of the class projects from the online Hand Applique course I took back in 2010 from Quilt University (which is sadly no longer in business).

The back is a block I also hand appliqued.  The pattern for it was from this book:

When I make these covers they are a "scrap quilt challenge project" for me and I try to pull as much of the fabrics for them from my scrap bits. The ribbon over the join between the two backgrounds was also in stash and was couched with one of the decorative stitches on my machine.

Once again, it pays to pay attention when setting up a block for applique.  While I am satisfied with the result (these binders sit on shelf most of the time), I was a little disappointed that I didn't render some of the elements of the flower block accurately because I relied on memory and what the pieces looked like when cut with seam allowance rather than taking my cue from the actual picture of the block as I went from step to step.  Another lesson for the future (particularly if I ever decide to do competition quilts!) but in the end I'm more than happy to be able to log another finish.

Even the inside lining and flap fabrics were from project leftovers and the binding was a fat eighth from stash (and is now all gone).  Another thing I've got to watch is that I was afraid to crowd the applique but was then a little too generous with the dimensions and seam allowance of the cover so it is a little big for the binder.  On the last binder I actually made it a little too small and had to scramble to get it to fit that binder.  The good news, is that I have one more that I hope to get done before month's end so will have another opportunity to perfect my method for making these. 

This project also gave me some free motion practice doing echo quilting, a technique I haven't employed before.  I got to use the echo quilting foot that came with my machine and used the guidelines to control the spacing. 

Picture courtesy Janome.com

My thanks to Amy at Amy's Freemotion Quilting Adventures because I didn't know that was what that foot was for until I read it on her blog!  I thought it was just for stitching over bulky seams.  So that's all the finished stuff to date but there will be some more "in progress" posts and hopefully at least one more finish post as the week moves on.

Another 2nd Quarter Finish!

Here's another quick one finished in April for the the 2nd Quarter of the 2014 Finish-A-Long being hosted by Katy at The Littlest Thistle.  It looks like I've hit the top of my 2nd Quarter list with the last finish and am on track on the bottom of the list with this one.  I've got three of these covers to do and was hoping to get one done in each month of the quarter.

What started from these and was inspired by this......

....has become this.....

....the quilting plan.....

...and stacked with the others.

I make these journal covers as part of a personal "Scrap Quilt Challenge".  I try to get them all done from scraps and/or orphan blocks.  I know this one wound up pretty wonky.  I started off just sewing the triangles together without worrying about what size they were with the idea of creating bands of triangles to go around the binder.  As long as they went together relatively well, I sewed them up.  With the section that had the smallest triangles, it was going very slow without getting much additional length so I changed course and threw on larger triangles to finish that band.  Once I got all the bands done, I realized that unless the triangles were the same size, there would be points sacrificed when they got attached to the sashing.  That would be a big issue if this was for display or a contest quilt.  Fortunately, this is something that is only for me and will most often be sitting on a shelf (not to mention that I didn't want to restitch them!).  So I'm more than o.k. with a funky, wonky look and a finished cover.

I also have the cover to be worked on during May started:

This was one of the class blocks I did for my hand applique class back in 2010.  I was cleaning out scraps from previous projects and added that pink scrap to it to become the back of the cover (and the fabric is from the quilt seen in this post).  The plan is to add more applique to the back but no ideas right now about what that will be.  On to the May projects!

Belated Thanks, Long Overdue Updates and a Finish Challenge!

First of all, I'd like to extend a belated thank you to Finn at "Riding the Orphan Train". I had contacted her shortly after starting my blog to contribute an orphan block project to her site which is a forum for people who like to use their leftover or extra blocks. My projects, Quilt Journal Covers, were featured in this post.

As a result of that post, I received a lot of positive comments (thanks, guys!) including one blogger who wanted to know how I made them. Having read blogs for the last year, I realized that this was a "tutorial moment", however, I am too new to blogging to attempt that right now, especially since I don't have production pictures of each step I did to make the covers. But I do have a lot of projects in the works this year and expect to be making another cover (in fact before doing this post I came up with a potential design idea for it), so hopefully in the future I will try to do a tutorial on it.

I also hadn't intended to take this long to update the blog. I've been working steadily on projects and kept telling myself "as soon as I get this next project done, I'll update the blog....". However, as soon as a project was at a completion point (because I've yet to have an actual finish for 2009 but more on that later), I'd find new inspiration for another project. But as I worked on each project I'd find those completion points coming much slower than anticipated. This happened with my most recent project, so I decided that I'd better post with what I've got and update later when I have more.

So, here's what I've been working on: On my sidebar, I've updated my lists as items have moved from HSY to WISP to Flimsie. First up is the finished top for the Dino sports quilt that will be a gift for my cousin's son. The "Girly Pink Spring Quilt" on the Flimise list is for his sister.

The left picture is the top and the right is the label for the back made from leftover fabric. The label is sitting on the flannel fabric I purchased for the backing (I love flannel backs but more on THAT in another upcoming post). The quilt is a Northcott Fabrics kit by Terry Perry and I purchased both the kit and the backing online from the Always Open Quilt Store (they had the best price on the web)! I hope to get this one layered for quilting by the end of the weekend.

Remember the quilt "On the Design Wall" in my last post? Well that top is now finished. I have fabric for the binding and back on order and a design for the back already planned out. Unfortunately, I did not have enough of the fabric I used for the setting triangles for the finishing steps but I think I found a matching batik that will allow me to do the piped binding I have planned. I also have extras of the nine-patch border blocks (in the opposite light-dark-light sequence) that I will use as a border for the label. I made both sets at the same time using Billie Lauder's Nine-Patch construction shortcut which I saw demonstrated on Quilters TV.com last year (the video is not currently airing) and that she writes about in her book "Quick Quilt Tricks". The quilt design is from Alex Anderson's very first book "Quilts For Fabric Lovers".

I've also moved my Crumb Quilt project to the Flimsie list. I still need to attach the borders but because I will be using a pretty beaded barrel trim I found (right picture) for the inner border, I plan to add it and the gorgeous Kaffe Fassett fabric outer border after quilting the center top. Unfortunately to do that, I still need to find a backing fabric.

On the Design Wall:

Blocks Completed To Date for the Brrr! Park Quilt

I have two more blocks to complete and a gazillion triangle squares for the inner borders. This too is from a kit, pattern and fabrics by Minick & Simpson (for Moda Fabrics) and will also have a flannel back. I had planned to have all the blocks done by this week and the top finished and ready for layering but we'll just have to see how the weekend goes. This year has really been the year of the kit for me but that's a topic for yet another post.

With regard to finishing: I've signed up for the "April Spring Finish" challenge that was posted on the Tallgrass Prairie Studio blog by Jacqui. Click on the button on the sidebar to link to the specfic post about the challenge. There will be prizes for finishers. For me, with so many flimsies and basted tops, I'm really hoping to motivate myself to getting at least one project completely finished by the end of April. I've started a little late (I only saw her post this week although the challenge was issued at the beginning of the month) so I'll have to play catch up.

I hope to also participate in the Quilt Bloggers Festival to be hosted by Park City Girl. Amy will collect links to blogs of quilters who want to show their favorite work. Information about the festival, which will run from today until the end of next week can be found here. This would give me a chance to fulfill my promise to show some of my work from last year (and force me to update my blog in the upcoming week!).

So that's all for me for now. Hope to bring more soon(er).