Friday, May 22, 2015

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.





Friday, May 1, 2015

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.