On the cutting table...

I'm learning that typing with a broken baby finger is tough...heck a lot of things are tough!  (washing dished one handed...the worst!)

But I have a deadline to get the kits out to the guild members for our 2018 donation quilt so past couple of days I've been cutting fabric very slowly and carefully!

We are making Kaffe Fasset's Vases and Bowls.  Naively I thought working with a kit would make the process faster and easier then last year when I drafted a pattern and we picked out the fabrics ourselves.  I was wrong.

I have a pile of leftover fabric...which makes me nervous...sort of like when you put together flat-pack furniture and have extra screws and bits left over.  You wonder if the furniture will collapse the first time it is used!

The there are the fabrics that there is no-way you can get all the pieces required cut from it!  I made multiple templates and laid them out on the fabric...not going to work!  Went online and ordered another 1/2 yard.  That is also the challenge - the local quilt shops do not carry much if any Kaffee.  Closest is s 2 hour drive!

I am close to halfway with the kitting...now what to do with all these pretty bits of leftovers?!

Quilter's bingo followup

Amazing what you can find in your quilting files!  When we were trying to come up with an activity for my guild's May meeting I remembered filing away an article from Fons and Porter on "Quilter's Bingo!"

Basically you make 25 patch blocks in 5 colorways and then call the "numbers" as a color and fabric style - like "Yellow Batik."  It was a fun activity and best of all the blocks were then donated and made into quilts for the Ronald McDonald House!  So far the two in the photo are finished and two more are being bound.

And on a side note...I've found a "new to me" author that me and some friends are reading through...

Barbara Cleverly writes mysteries set just following WWI (Yes Downton Abbey years!) set in India, Greece, France, and England.  So far my favorites are from the Joe Sandilands Novels...

On the quilting side...I am doing some planning and puttering in the sewing room today.  I have these vintage basket blocks and am thinking of embroidering family names on them.  Like a family tree except in baskets...

Still pondering...

Pigeon Forge Show

Had a great time up at Pigeon Forge at their annual quilt show.  It was my first time at this show.

Three of us with Cindy Blackberg...

Five quilters from my sewing group went up and stayed in some condos less than a mile from the show.  I was even able to spend some time Bonnie Hunter on her off time (she taught 7 classes in 5 days!  That women is a true super quilter!)

Paula and Bonnie with the Bonnie "cruise quilt!"

As usual I did a lot of damage in the vendor area.  I found a old/new favorite -Lakadaisies (www.lakadaisies.com)  I spent a good part of last night digging through the vintage materials looking for the perfect (or not so perfect!) tablecloth, feed-sacks, and laces so I can start my Christmas quilt!

As usual I stocked up on items that are difficult to find in our area - reproduction fabrics and hand quilting/sewing supplies mainly.

Cindy's railroad crossing quilt

I took the Railroad Crossing hand piecing class with Cindy Blackberg.  Learned I had developed some bad habits with my hand piecing...with I had taken the class before I made the Russian sunflower quilt!  Maybe I would only have twice as many blocks as needed instead of three times!  (maybe that is shy I loved this appliqued sunflower quilt!)

There was more hand quilting at this show than I had seen in a long time.  The quilts themselves were a real mix of truely amazing to just plain fun!

This one of a Middle Eastern street scene was one of the incredible ones...

the maker said she focused on improving how she depicted hands...

I'd say she did well!  (can you tell I loved this quilt!)

The Quilt Appraiser Ribbon (no, I didn't work this show) was given to a quilt made using Bonnie Hunter's Log Cabin Pineapple Pattern.

More on the show later...I still have lots of unpacking and laundry to do!

Quilt Day!

I know I am a few hours early but thought as I am on the computer...

Happy National/International Quilt Day!

Usually my guild gets together and has a sew in but next week we have Karen Stone coming for a trunk show and two workshops!  So we will "celebrate" later...

We also just met on Thursday...one of our guild members shared how she used photos for inspirations for her small applique and embroidery pieces...she does nice work!

I really liked her idea of keeping "doodle-clothes" to test out new stitches and to save them for reference later.

All the photos in this post are from the show and tell...always good!  (Thinking I may make one of these bags tomorrow!)

Bonnie Visit...

My friend Bonnie came by yesterday and helped me with my old Singers.  We got two of the three working well...I have a list of things to get to make them work better.

I am really impressed with how nice the stitches are on this 99K with the hand crank!  It will be fun to use if I can keep Brownie away!  (she seems rather attached to Helen the 99K)

After dinner we looked at some quilts.  (my poor DH lost his chair for watching the news!)

It is fun to see the same or similar patterns done with different fabrics.

What a difference a few decades can make!  These log cabins both have the half-square triangle in the center  and have similar construction but were made about 100 years apart!

Today we went to the quilting bee with the guild were Bonnie and I met.  The gals were glad to see her.  As I worked on the donation quilt I could hear lots of quilt talk across the room...all fun!

Surprise quilt...

Almost every guild meeting someone brings a vintage or antique quilt for me to look at.

This month the owner asked if I would look at a quilt her grandmother made...or maybe her great-grandmother....

I was expecting a 1920's or 30's quilt.  Well, take about 75 years off of that!  (So maybe her great-great-grandmother?)  The handwriting is same in each block but the names are different.  She believes it to be the names of children in a second grade class.  She knows she comes from a long line of school teachers.  The quilt comes from upper state New York. 

There are some beautiful fabrics in this quilt.  The quilting is well done and similar to applique quilts I've seen circa 1850...random shapes and some swirl designs.

The binding is back to front and sewn down with a sewing machine.  (If you had one it was worth showing off!)  Interestingly the machine stitches are larger than the hand quilting stitches...

Three days and holding....

Wow, three days into the New Year and I can report I have stuck to both my quilting and my healthy eating resolutions.  Neither was easy!

                                                           Goldie...now dubbed "guardian of the quilt-top pile"
I went to my Guild meeting today.  Every time I looked up there was another plate of cookies or bowl of fudge being handed around!  On top of that there is another workshop this month that I signed up for before I made my resolutions (workshops are breeding grounds for UFO's.)  Then they announced a mystery quilt program for the guild.  So no cookies or fudge and no mystery quilt...I will do the workshop.  "Two out of three aint bad...."

I have made a couple backs for my tops and I have worked diligently on my Easy Street.  Let's just say Easy Street is not the first thing that comes to mind as I sew these blocks together...

I still like it but Easy Street...really?  Does that look easy to you?  Jus' sayin.....

And this is the guild's 2013 Donation quilt.  Proceeds go to benefit a camp for children with cancer.  It really is much brighter in person.

Photographing the green batik background is really difficult...any hints from real photographers out there?

Guild Meeting

                                                        Show and Tell...blocks from the Carolina Shop Hop...
Twice year the local guild I belong to has Saturday meetings so the day group and the night group can mingle.

It has been a quiet summer so there was lots of business to handle.  I was giving the program that originally was going to be 30 minutes...then 15...then a glance a the clock told me that business had taken over two hours and I stood between the mob...I mean quilters...and lunch so the program was 10 minutes!  Oh well...I had fun making and researching the blocks...

                                                Our most recent donation quilt goes home with it's winner!
We also did an activity for Quilts of Valor.  If a member brought a block then their name went into the hat for a drawing for a "fabulous prize."  (Actually it was a signed copy of Bonnie's latest book and the great news is it went to a quilter, Angie,  who loves Bonnie's work...love it when it works out like that!)

I laid out some of the blocks when I got home...hope to have at least one of the tops together by our November meetings.  I think with some sashing and borders we will have enough to make three!

Guild meeting

Went to my day guild meeting this morning. I hadn't been in a several weeks so it was nice to catch up.

Lots of fun projects (isn't show and tell the best part of every meeting!

Tara did the program. It was a trunk-show of quilts that used the same pattern but made by two different quilters.

It was fun to see how much they varied even if it was a block of the month!

I am still working on my basketweave quilt.

I think I have a name for it - Charleston Basket. South Carolina is knows for their seagrass baskets and a lot of the red fabrics I used in this came from a shop in Charleston.

Back on the techno highway...

Technical problems the past few days have made posting difficult...a visit to the local computer nerds (hey, they have six foot model of the Starship Enterprise proudly hanging from the ceiling!) has the CPU working again. If furniture is an antique after 100 years and cars become antiques after 25 years how old does a computer have to be? Just wondering....
Before the computer went down I did do some damage on Amazon...both the Material Obsession books really fun and a few projects tempt me (like that is hard to do...) What really hit me is the mix of fabrics that they use. I have been trying to stretch myself a bit (this week I mixed batik with repro...the roof didn't come down nor did I get hit by lightning - who knew!)

We had a good guild meeting on Monday...more show and tell than in any meeting in recent history and since that is my favorite part of meetings...whoo hooo!

Here are a few....
The colors in the log cabin below have an almost vintage feel from a distance but up close are a real mix of fabrics (did I spy some Millennium prints!) Very fun!

This was a tiny version of Bonnie Hunter's scrappy Bargello (1 inch strips!)
More later....