Saturday, April 29, 2017

Sew Savvy Retreat


Yesterday I spent the whole day at Hi Fashion's Sew Savvy retreat!  They offer this a couple of times a year for Sew Savvy members and it fills up fast so you have to sign up quick.  It was SO nice to have the whole day to work on projects, uninterrupted, with friends, old and new.  Kind of like an old fashioned quilting bee!  Great fun.


This quilt is one that Janet was working on. She inherited the blocks, passed down from a grandmother or great grandmother and they were made in the 1880's.  I was amazed at the beautiful condition they were in.  She has added some Civil War reproduction fabrics to complete the quilt top and you can't even tell which is the new since the old is in such great condition.

This is the great space we had to sew, with a lot of room and a lot of light.  Hi Fashion provides lunch at these retreats and yesterday it was catered by Lorraine's son who has a food truck here in town and caters.  His specialty is BBQ so I had a delicious pulled pork sandwich with his spicy potato salad - YUM!!

His business is Colorado Q and you can find out more about it here:
https://www.facebook.com/ColoradoQ/
Sharon was one of my table mates and she was working on this beautiful quilt.  I think she said it's a Buggy Barn pattern.  Beautiful fabrics!  It was really fun to see what everyone was working on, catch up with old friends and meet some new friends.  I had a great day!  In the evening I went to a retirement party with my hubby and had the most delicious piece of cake I think I've ever tasted.  I was told it was made by Sweet Kiwi.  I am going to have to check more into it!  Here's a link to what I've found so far:
Have a great day!!


Thursday, April 27, 2017

Lori's Hexies

My friend Lori said I could share some pictures of quilts she's working on.  She has been bit by the English Paper Piecing bug!

Here is what she has to say:
"I saw the Millifiori quilts at Houston and got interested in English Paper Piecing. The rosette is all pieced hexagons and is about 36". There's no way I'd ever get the whole quilt done, so I finished it with batting and backing, need to quilt it, and then am going to quilt the gray background separately and then appliqué the rosette on the background."
 "The other block 'quiltlets'- are English Paper Pieced by hand, I'm doing some big stitch quilting and then they'll all be ladder stitched together. These are both projects from Katjasquiltshoppe.com, she has the book 'The New Hexagon'. 
The quiltlets are probably 8". There are 52 different pieced hexagons in her book, I'm just going to do each on a different color. It's all on katjaquiltshoppe.com, one of her quilt alongs. They don't have binding. The batting and backing are both cut larger than the actual pieced part, you fold the backing over the batting and then appliqué the pieced section on top. That way it's finished, so you can make as many or as few of these as you want."
"The woven piece is something I saw at the modern quilt guild. It's traditional triaxial weaving, but someone's come out with a little plastic tool that makes it easier to pull the strips through. It's called a Welty Needle. You make a woven piece on iron on interfacing, and then use it, I made a notebook cover out of the first piece that I made. Just like so much, something that's been around for a long time and is 'new' again ;-)"

"The red is a machine appliqué class I'm taking at the Castle Rock Quilt shop, two more rows to go..."

I am always inspired by my friends' work, especially Lori, she does such beautiful work - it always looks so professional! This inspires me to get out my Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses quilt and finish it!

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Machine Appliqué


A friend of mine, who knows I do not like to machine appliqué, asked me what I am machine appliquéing so I'm sharing some pictures.  The top one is that mystery block of the month I'm doing from My Girlfriend's Quilt Shoppe (from the Countdown to Christmas box I participated in). Little did I know when I pieced the pots together that I'd have to appliqué flowers in them!  And the flowers were all pre-cut with the AccuQuilt Go, so no chance of hand appliquéing like I did with the doll heads.  Sigh....
The bottom picture is my Circle of Friends quilt top that I'm working on with my miniature quilt group, the Little Bits.  Since we each made our own little selves, these also had to be fusible and therefore machine appliquéd.  I've been putting this off for months, so in order to make myself finish it I decided I couldn't start anything new until I finished it up.  It's been in my way all that time, moving it from one place to the next over and over. Do you have any projects like that?  The good news is I finished stitching around every little piece today (I did the flowers yesterday), so the worst is over!  Now I can design a border and get it quilted and finished.  Yeah!!

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Red and White All Over!


And here are the rest of the Red and White quilts!

For Polly
Pieced by Strippers
Quilted by Carole Lifferth




Red and White - Modern Block Swap
Pieced by Piecemakers
Quilted by Konda Luckau



Red YoYo Mania
Pieced by Nancy Hillman Roberts
Quilted by Maridy Palmer






Queen of Quilts
Pieced by Peggy Overson
Quilted by Cindy Gardner


Winter Wonderland
Pieced by Jean Stewart
Quilted by Jennifer Ashton






Star of Chamblie
Pieced by Karen Martin
Quilted by Lou Ann Benda





Mom's Butterfly
Pieced by Marsha L. Chappell
Quilted by Becky Adams


That's it for the Ruby Jubilee quilts that I was able to see at the museum.  In September at Quilt Fest, the entire show will be red and white quilts!

I'm heading to my sewing room now to work on some ..... ah!  Machine Appliqué!  That is not my thing - so hopefully I get it done quickly :)


Monday, April 24, 2017

More Red and White!


Today and tomorrow I am going to share the rest of my red and white quilt photos from the Ruby Jubilee Quilt Show at the Brigham City Art Museum.  My friend Eddy said she saw the Ruby Jubilee show a couple of weeks ago at the Dixie Quilt Show in St. George - so it's making its way around the state of Utah!


Braided Irish Chain
Pieced and quilted by Melissa Corry


Red Work with Friends
Pieced by Ilene Ott
Quilted by Linda Elkin




YoYo Hearts
Pieced and quilted by Piecemakers


Toille de ABCs Here
Pieced by Liz Teerlink
Quilted by Kim Peterson


Ruby Jubilee
Pieced by Mary Evans
Quilted by Charice Hunt


Cherry Jubilee
Pieced by Syracuse Quilt Guild
Quilted by Marsha Ashby


Ruby Jubilee, Ruby Slippers
Holiday Quilt Show and Auction


Ella's Ruby Jubilee
Pieced and quilted by Maxine J. Oakeson


Sunday, April 23, 2017

Family Time

I have been visiting family again the last few days and my daughter Michelle gave me an early Mother's Day gift.  It's a GAME called Patchwork! (As you know our family loves games!)

The description of the game reads:
So many pieces of cloth and patches of leather lying around - time to make a beautiful quilt out of them! This requires significant effort and time though and a steady supply of buttons.  The player who picks the best patches and combines them most skillfully into a patchwork quilt wins the game.

I am excited to try out this new game!  Anyone want to play??


I got to see Miss Cutie Pie, who is really into hats lately :)

And she likes to "shake her tail" which looks like she's doing the Hoola dance!

Saw the sign below and loved it.  Have a great day!


Wednesday, April 19, 2017

The Original Dear Jane

A friend of a friend was able to see the original Dear Jane quilt last Fall at the Bennington Museum in Vermont.  Because of its fragility they only bring it out for about a month every year.  My friend shared these pictures with me.
What I found fascinating is that Jane Stickle entered this quilt in the Bennington County Agricultural Fair in 1863 and won a prize for "Best Patched Quilt" and her prize money was $2.00!  Little did they know at the time that her quilt would inspire thousands of quilters throughout the world.
https://benningtonmuseum.org/portfolio-items/1863-jane-stickle-quilt/



Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Gifts

My daughters went to my niece's bridal shower last weekend and shared this picture of a picnic quilt that my sister-in-law Cathie made!(This is her daughter) It looks so cute - what a fun picnic!

A friend of ours came over for Easter and shared this quilt that his grandmother made for his and his wife's wedding in the 1970's.  His grandmother, Bertha Johnson, hand pieced and hand quilted this quilt at the age of 92! These are the type of people you want to gift a quilt to - this quilt is in immaculate condition and it's close to 50 years old! Happy Quilting!!  :)


Monday, April 17, 2017

Two Finishes


First of all - I could not resist sharing this picture of our little sweetie that my daughter sent yesterday.  Happy Easter indeed!  What a smile!
As I got busy cleaning my sewing room on Saturday I decided it was finally time to finish these two miniature quilts.  Usually when I get to the quilting phase I worry that I'm going to ruin it somehow with my quilting.  With both of these little quilts, I really didn't like them much until I quilted them and now I love them! So for perhaps the first time I feel like my quilting made an improvement on the project :)

This one is 10.5 inches x 11.5 inches.  The center is all English paper pieced (small half inch diamonds) that I started years ago.  The border I just added on recently and it's wool appliqué, with hand embroidery (stems). I put a tiny flange of pink fabric between the brown binding and the cream background.




This one is about 11inches by 15 inches.  It's a Primitive Gatherings pattern (actually it was a kit).  The flowers are all wool appliqué on a cotton background and they got so puckered up when I pieced them together that I came real close to tossing the little thing in the garbage.  I'm glad I didn't because the quilting "fixed" the puckers and I really like the finished product! The half square triangles in the border finish at 1/2 inch.

It feels very nice to finish something!  I have about three more UFO's I want to finish up before I can start something new.  At least my sewing room is tidy and I feel like going in there again :)

Happy Sewing!!


Sunday, April 16, 2017

Happy Easter!!


I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter Sunday!  It's a beautiful day here!

Megan said my granddaughter was not at all afraid of the Easter Bunny.  My husband thought he looked a little scary but she went right to him :)  What a sweetie!





In honor of Easter I'm sharing some pictures my brother took on a recent trip to Rome, Italy of age old tapestries depicting the life of Christ.  The artistry in these tapestries never ceases to amaze me.  If he hadn't told me they were tapestries I probably would have guessed them to be paintings.
Enjoy!