What else?

On June first the registration opened for the Utah Quilt Guild's Annual Quilt Festival that is being held September 15-19, 2015. Always a fun time! It is a chance for me to hook up with my Salt Lake quilting buddies. The theme this year is Quilt Camp. I designed "Tent City" just for the theme. It is a fun, easy, paper piecing project. Great for those who would like to learn how to paper-piece. I will have some tree designs for the students so that they can customize their quilt.

Tent City

Last night I baked a loaf of bread. It looks so wonderful! Usually the loaf will grow a nose or something, but this one was picture perfect, so I just had to share!

Pretty loaf!

The start of my Cording

I saw someone mention this blog post about making cord out of leftover strips of fabric. It involves twisting the fabric and then back on itself to make a double ply. Since I am trying to get into spinning, this really intrigued me, so I had to try it out. (I have a big bag of thin strips that I use for my clothesline bowls) It works!  I don't have very much done yet, but it really is simple. I can see this cord making my bowls and maybe some coasters or placements.

Close up of the twist

Speaking of spinning, I plied! It turned out well, for a first try. The last time I was at Karen's house for knitting/coffee group she spun and gave me a lesson as she was spinning. Her yarns are fabulous! Check out her yarn shop to see some of her wonderful spins! You will have to look at her sold section, since her yarns are so popular that they sell out quickly.

Plied!

Right now my singles are still very thick and thin. It takes practice to even that out. But sometimes I like the look of the inconsistent thickness. It will knit up an interesting texture.

This is my Off the Wall post for this week. 

Small Town Quilt Show!

The town I live in has an annual Scandinavian Days. This area was settled by Scandinavians. It is a fun, small town celebration. Our little quilt guild puts on a quilt show in conjunction with the festival. I helped to hang the show yesterday. We have close to 50 quilts in the show! (which is about the max the space can accommodate)

Jessica with her Scandinavian quilt

Jessica Ranaelee brought in this wonderful Scandinavian themed quilt that she designed! It is wonderful to young people taking up this wonderful art! This is only the third quilt that she has made! She won the Horseshoe Mountain Quilt Guild's scholarship a couple of years ago. I can't wait to see what she comes up with next!

Cross stitched quilt

We have a lot of wonderful antique quilts this year. The motifs in this quilt were cross stitched.

Setting up the numbers and labels

The Christmas quilt in the foreground is the first quilt that Kate has made in a beginning quilting class taught by Brenda Bailey. It is wonderfully done!

One of our aisles

At the info table

This is my friend, Sherre's quilt. She tested my Emerald Pools pattern for me last summer. She made it for her grandson.

Raffle Quilt

Every year the Horseshoe Mountain Quilt Guild makes a raffle quilt. The proceeds go towards a scholarship at Snow College here in Ephraim. I love that this wonderful group of women put their efforts into such a worthwhile project.

Another aisle

Antique quilt

I believe this is a Pine Burr pattern. The workmanship on this piece is outstanding! It is hand-pieced and hand-quilted with stuffed work.

Close up

Stuffed work

Such tiny squares

This is a vintage trip around the world quilt. The squares are smaller than an inch. All hand pieced!

Fantastic vintage folk art corduroy quilt!

This  quilt is almost entirely made out of corduroy! It has been well used and loved.

Closeup

It has some simple loops machine quilted across the quilt. The quilt had been used so much that the quilting stitches are worn off.

Marcia's antique quilt

My friend, Marcia, has this heirloom handed down from her mother. It is unknown exactly which ancestor made this quilt. It must have been in a trunk for a long time, the colors are still vibrant.

Oops

There is a small clump of threads that got caught behind the background. Would you try to pick it out? or is it part of the quilt's story?

My "Little Brother" quilt

Laurel's sunflower quilt

Our Utah Quilt Guild area Rep, Laurel, brought several quilts up from another group in the area. Laurels Sunflower quilt is wonderful!  I am not sure who made the embroidered quilt beside hers.

Ephraim quilt

Carol made a wonderful quilt that honors our town. There are photo transfers of  vintage photographs of buildings around town. Some still standing, others are long gone.

The show continues until tomorrow at 5pm, so if you are anywhere near Ephraim, Utah this weekend stop by and see the show!

This is my off the wall post for this week.

Sidetracked again

I have a small knitting group that meets every couple of weeks for coffee and chatting. We have been getting together for several years now. Started off with just me and Karen. We found Joy about 2 years ago and she is a good addition to our group. We meet at Karen's house and I bring some of my fresh roasted coffee beans.  Karen and Joy both are spinners. A couple of times Joy brought her wheel and they both spun while I knitted. Although I love handspun yarn, I was NOT going to get into one more craft. Famous last words. So I hit up Karen about letting me use her wheel to spin one skein of yarn. I did some research, read some books, watched some videos. When I saw an old friend in CA in January, she was getting into spinning and suggested I should try a spindle to get the hang of it before trying Karen's wheel. Karen lent me a couple of spindles. I had bought a bit of fiber in CA at Dharma, but didn't want to use the good stuff to practice so I got some clearance stuff from Knit Picks (that is why I have pink) and tried it out. The first time was a disaster, the spindle went all over the place, I had no control over it. So the next knitting group Karen advised me and I used the other spindle. IT WORKED! Okay, I am now hooked. I bought a set of 4 spindles and gave Karen hers back.

I made yarn!

My pink practice fiber

My set up for now

So I have a couple of batts and a roll of fiber. I am still very slow and can't do a lot at a time. But hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will be able to ply. Stay tuned.

Soon to be a bowl

I love making clothesline cord bowls! I had a bunch of scrappy brown strips and so decided to make a big bowl

Starting out

I found that I like my open toe embroidery foot better than my walking foot for this technique. It seems to work better.

Big Base

I had a lot of cord, so this guy is gonna be a big boy.

At the curve

I hold my left hand under the base to tip the bowl while stitching to form the curve.

Big Boy!

Little green brother

Last week I made this little green guy.  I love to use up scraps of fabric in my quilting and sewing projects.

So these two guys are now in my Etsy shop. Now that I am hooked on spinning I want a wheel. So now to save up some $$ from my shop. If you are interested in anything in my shop I have a coupon code good for 10% off anything in the shop BBLOG10. I also am downsizing my studio and have a lot of wonderful, lightly used to new books and patterns for sale. And some of my hand dyed fabrics.

This is my off the wall post for this week.

I am here. Really!

I had thought about writing a blog post last week. But I had nothing to talk about. So rather than spewing nonsense, I kept quiet.  This week I finished another Journal project. I had talked about it last month.  I really did intend to make these weekly. I guess it is not a weekly journal project. But it will be a 52 piece project.

Inspiration photo

I went with this inspiration photo and using one of my hand dyed fabrics I quilted the piece and then added some yarn scraps couched down on top of the quilting. I am happy with the result.

Plaid Sky

My second ever Weekly Journal I titled "So much for out there". I am not sure what exactly I meant by that. At the time this was made (September 2011) I was trying to put myself out there. So something must have glitched.

So much for out there

I had taken a class and failed spiraling.  So this was proof that I could actually spiral!

This is my off the wall post for this week.

Pie Plating in Fountain Green

The ladies of the Pie Plate Pattern company put on an annual Super Spring Retreat. It is held in their small town of Fountain Green, UT. It is about 20 miles Northwest of my home. Always a great time! A very nice, small town retreat.  My friends Lisa and Helen came down to the retreat, so an extra bonus.

It takes 3!

I have never used Mistyfuse and recently there was a special on a hundred yard roll of the stuff. So Lisa and I went in on buying one. Lisa uses it a lot. It took three of us to roll off 50 yards off the roll.

My Mistyfuse

The rolled off bit doesn't look nearly as nice as the factory roll. It will still do its job.

Mistyfuse

So Lisa gave me a quick demo on how to use the fuse.

On the Goddess sheet

You need to use a Goddess sheet because this fusible web doesn't have paper attached.

Action shot

You cover it with the Goddess sheet and press the fusible to melt it.

Ready to cut

Lisa brought her Silhouette machine to cut some leaves for me. I asked for her help with a project and thought her machine would cut out the intricate shapes easily.  Well, it was a good theory anyway.

Beautiful leaves!

Lisa designed a lovely page full of leaves for me! SO excited! Let's see how it works!

failure

Unfortunately, Lisa  forgot to bring the fabric blade for the machine. The paper blade kept picking up the fabric and scrunching it and not cutting through it cleanly.  UGH.  So she will take my fused fabrics home with her and cut them at home with the proper blade. So then I can be impressed with that machine.

Block challenge

Everyone got the fabric to a make a block of their choice. We will vote on our favorite and the winner gets to keep all the blocks.

Lisa in action

Lisa at out table working on her blog post of our adventures.  

This is my off the wall post for this week. Next week I hope to have something to show after having 2 more days to sew like crazy!

Challenge projects.

Bark

I had joined a challenge on the Quiltart list. There were 12 people signed up and only 7 made a piece for the challenge by the due date. Disappointing. The challenge was "Patterns in Nature".  I had taken a photograph of a eucalyptus tree for my inspiration. I cut the sections free hand and then added a layer of tulle to hold it down while I quilted it using my trusty walking foot. You can see the rest of the challenge pieces on Sue Kaufman's blog.

New Canyon Lake

Another online challenge group is the A4 group. The latest challenge was in the woods. I made a tent with a forest print for the background. I added a bit of lake and then I added some dragonfly charms since my quilted trees did not show up.

Trees? I can't see no stinking trees!

This is my off the wall post for this week.