Blogger's Quilt Festival entry!

September

I am excited to join in the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy at her blog! I meant to get this up yesterday but alas, more internet connection issues. We had a horrible wind storm and I think that might have had something to do with the problems.

This is my entry into the Home Machine Quilted division.  I named it "September" because I made in September.  It is made by a quilt as you go method. I have wanted to try out this technique and so I had a wild couple of extremely wonderful sewing days and this quilt just flew together!  Except for the 1/2 yard of black for the binding, it was "free" from my stash.  Including the batting and backing.  I used strips from my 2-1/2 inch strip scrap bag to piece the blocks.

Check out all the wonderful quilts that have been entered into this category at the festival!

Close up of the quilting

Quilt Show at the Utah Quilt Fest in Midway

My ISP has had a lot of problems since I got back from the Quilt Fest.  So I was not able to get a post up last week about the quilt show.  So I am posting it this week.

Helen with her five year + project.

My friend, Helen, has been working on this Cathedral Window quilt for many years. She started off with a plainer black, didn't like it, so then spearheaded that project with the quilt group for an Auction Quilt for charity. She restarted her own project using a gold embossed black print. The edge triangles are done with a green/gold oriental print. This is a charm quilt, other than the border, all of the squares she used for the windows are different. This was the first time she has entered a quilt in any quilt show. Unfortunately she did not find out until she picked up her quilt that the committee had decided that it did not qualify as a real "quilt" and then moved it out of the judging and into exhibition only. She was very disappointed that it was not judged.  I am appalled that the committee would do this.  It is a traditional pattern done in an updated way.  I sure hope that they refunded her entry fee, since the exhibition only category was no charge.  They had her entry form ahead of the drop off date, they should have said something at that time that they would not accept it for judging. Or even when she turned it in and the chairperson of the event insisted on seeing the quilt, that would have been another good time to graciously say something.  Not a note in the pick up bag. And they wonder why people are reluctant to enter this show.  What do you all think?  Should it have been accepted for judging? And if not, shouldn't she have been told right from the get go that it would not be accepted?

Florence with her "Egyptian quilt"

Florence started this quilt in a week long class with Louisa Smith several years ago. Florence wasn't happy with the quilting that she did and ended up picking out a lot of it and then quilting it again.  It really turned out lovely!

Lisa with her "Penny" quilt

I just love this piece!  Lisa's dog, Penny, was such a sweet girl.  My older daughter used to house/dog sit for them.  It was sad when Penny died.  I think that Lisa did a wonderful tribute to her companion.

Lisa with her medallion quilt

Another wonderful piece by Lisa!  All of that colorwork is machine quilted!  I really think that this should have won the machine quilting award.

Florence and Lisa by their award winning quilts!

My two close friends won First Place and Second place in the same category. Florence's Firebird won the First place ribbon and Lisa's Penny won the Second place ribbon. I am torn, I love both of these pieces, I can't decide which I would give first and which I would give second.  It was nice to get a photograph of two close friends with their quilts in the same shot.

Anna's medallion

Another award winning quilt!  I taught a "Choose your own adventure Medallion" class at a quilt group up in Utah Valley a couple of years ago. Anna had chosen to make a wedding quilt using brown and beige (which the happy couple selected). The photograph doesn't show it very well, but the quilt really sparkles! One of the prints has a metallic sheen to it. This is the fourth quilt from that class that I have seen in shows. I know that at least one other received a ribbon. Each quilt turned out differently, every one chose their own blocks for the center and the outer border and there were also many options to the other rounds, so each project is very different. Well done Anna!

The hotel had a Scarecrow walk featuring various entries from local groups.  Two of my faves.

                          

My classes went well!  Above are some of the student's blocks from the Road to California class! I love how all of the various color schemes look so wonderful it this design!

This is my Off the Wall post for the week.  Check out what everyone else is up to at Nina-Marie's blog.

Fun Times with Good Friends

My good friend Lisa Chin volunteered to hold a mini class for me and a couple of friends on how to screen print and how to cut rubber stamps since we were all going to be at the Utah Quilt Guild Quilt Fest.  She had covered her hotel room with plastic garbage bags to contain the mess!

Lisa's demo print

The "Shroud"

She had brought along a piece of fabric she had previously dyed that did not turn out to be what she wanted, so we could have something to work with.  When she held it up we saw a face in the fabric!  After that, it was then known as the "shroud". We contemplated making a shrine, but chose to play instead.

Me giving it a try

Cool piece done with some sparkly paint

Helen's piece.

Lisa cutting a stamp

Lisa showing how to apply the paint

Anne's stamped fabric

Look what we did!

 Helen did a lovely piece!  My piece is the small skinny one, along with Lisa's demo piece.  Anne was prepared and brought some of her hand dyed fabric to work with.  A good time was had by all!

This is my off the wall post for this week.  Check back, I will have some more posts from the Festival in the next week.

My Family Quilt Blog Hop

I am excited to participate in Cheryl Slebota's  "My Family Quilt Blog Hop"!


 I don't come from a long line of quilters. I am the first in my family to make quilts. I started quilting in about 1994.  My younger daughter, Kim, loves to sew and has also made some quilts over the years.  My older daughter, Vicky, does not do much machine sewing  but does some hand sewing and is a wonderful cross stitcher.  When they would sew clothing together, Vicky would cut out the pieces and then head to the kitchen to bake cookies while Kim stitched the project together.

Vicky made this cross stitched picture for me.

Kim's latest quilt. She designed the blocks.

This is the story of their collaboration quilt.

In 2005 my husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. We were living in Sacramento, CA at the time.  For reasons too long to go into, instead of going to Hawaii (my choice) or Alaska (his choice) we decided to head back to Garden City, UT and have a family party at the lake with all of our friends and family.  There was a wonderful turn out, and we also had some family that happened to be there visiting from Germany.  My brother scored some awesome sausages and we had a wonderful potluck and BBQ.

Our Daughters surprised us with a Memory quilt that they made together.

Our daughters had us come up to the deck to make the presentation.

We were so surprised!

Kim designed the blocks.  Vicky did the photo transfers.

Vicky, me and Kim.  One of my favorite photographs!

The quilting stitches are rather large, but even.

I don't know what photo transfer method was used, but there is some peeling of the images going on. And for a long time I was puzzled by the photographs.  I have them all, I know them all, but the people looked wrong somehow. Well, the images are reversed!

Me and my husband.

Tim (our son) me and Kim

My three adorable children! 

Kim did the piecing of the blocks.  They hit up some of my Salt Lake quilting friends for help and raided their fabric stashes.   Vicky did the hand quilting and the binding.

This is one of my most treasured quilts!  I love that the girls worked together to make it happen. They did a wonderful job selecting special family photographs for the quilt.

This is my story for the "My Family Quilt Blog Hop".  Please check out the other blog posts in this hop, the links and dates are below.


The "My Family Quilt" Blog Hop!
Oct 1. - Sylvia Lewis http://bunchberrystudio.blogspot.com/  .....ME!

Oct 2. - Judi Hurwitt http://approachable-art.blogspot.com/
Oct 3. - Deborah Massie Boschert http://deborahsjournal.blogspot.com/
Oct 4. - Sheila Frampton-Cooper http://zoombaby.com/blog/
Oct 5. - Pokey Bolton http://pokeysponderings.com/
Oct 6. - Frieda Anderson http://www.friestyle.com/
Oct 7. - Lisa Chin http://somethingcleveraboutnothing.blogspot.com
Oct 8. - Cheryl Sleboda http://muppin.com/wordpress/index.php/blog/



I am linking up to Nina-Marie's blog for Off the Wall Friday.

September's gone!

Almost finished!

I was able to get a lot of sewing done this week!  It was great!  I have my quilt as you go project finished, just need to tack down the binding. My hand work pile has some other things that need to be finished ASAP, so this will have to wait a few days.

Ready to sew the sections together

I had this design in my head for a while.  I spent some time yesterday figuring out the cutting and the strip sets that I needed and then got the quilt cut and mostly sewn.  I hope to have it into a top this afternoon.

Close up of the lime green

This is really an eggplant purple

I am loving my home made bread!

Come back tomorrow morning, I was invited to join a blog hop with some wonderful quilters and our theme is My Family Quilts.  I am the first blogger on the list.

This is my Design Wall Monday post.  Check out what everyone else is up to at Judy's blog.

Freezing Friday

First snow of the season!

Last night was cold and rainy.  And snowy up the mountain.  Note the snow line.  We covered our raised vegetable beds, the blue tarp, hoping to get one more harvest from the tomatoes.  Since my flowers in the pots on the patio didn't freeze, I think we escaped the hard freeze.

Last week I posted the results from the Wales group's lime green fabric challenge. I had someone ask how I made my piece.  I took in progress photographs so will share the process here.

Bottom shadow

I sewed the dark blue strip to the leaf print.  I still have a bit of my favorite navy blue Moda Marble fabric.  I love the texture in the print.  It gives more oomph to a design than a flat solid.  Right now working with solids is "in".  My opinion, so feel free to have your own ideas about this, but I don't like to use plain solids unless it is black or white for backgrounds unless I am doing all solids.

Free form cuts

I wanted to have nesting curves, so I free form cut my pieces out.  I should have cut the curves tighter, they smoothed out  more than I wanted for the final version.

Side shadows

I added side shadows to each piece. I used a bias strip thinking that it would work better with the curves.  Eh, didn't really work that way.

Adding in the background

I layered the curved pieces on top of the background and then cut the background with the same curve. Then sewed the two piece, cut the next side and so on.  On issue was that I need to make sure that the lines of the bottom shadows matched.  After I had all 4 pieces sewn into the background, I trimmed the top and bottom and sewed on the border.

Top completed

The finished top.  One thing that I did do, which is unusual for me, I made sure that the background print was facing the same direction in all of the piecing.  The print is directional, but it is very subtle.  Normally I would just whack away at it, but this time I was trying to be more grown up about it.  I wonder if it would look any different if I had used the background in any direction?

Finished piece!

I quilted it using my trusty walking foot.  I am happy with the way it turned out!  I would have like the curves in the pieces to be more curvy, but it was a good learning experience.

Close up of the quilting

This is my Off the Wall post for the week.  Check out what everyone else is up to at Nina-Marie's blog.

And since I have a finished piece I am linking to TGIFF and Link a Finish Friday!


Also, check back on October 1st!  I am participating in a blog hop and it should be a lot of fun!

Monday, Monday

Pulled from the scrapbag

Quilt as you go

Another project

Rain in the sunset

I had the weekend to myself and got very enthused about 2 new ideas for quilts!  I pulled leftover batting and some strips from my 2-1/2" strip bag and started sewing away. At first I was going to make 4 blocks and then that evolved to 12. So I am still sewing away at that.  I had also drawn up a design in EQ and bought some solids for that design.  I do need to tweak the design a bit since I went with more colors.  But yesterday we had a horrible thunderstorm come through town.  It was so bad that I decided to turn off the computers and the sewing machines.  I spent a lovely time knitting.    I did get back in the sewing room later on and almost have the 12 blocks finished with the piecing.  I hope to get them quilted today.  

This is my Design Wall Monday post.  Check out Judy's blog and see what everyone else is up to!

I am still listing more vintage and destash patterns and books in my Etsy store everyday!  Check back and find some great deals on wonderful patterns and books.  Thanks for looking!