Happy Thanksgiving to all

Featured Artist at Gallery 113!

I wanted to let you all know that next month I will be sharing the Featured Artist spotlight at Gallery 113, here in Woodinville, with another artist, Karin Strauss Quinn. The show opening is Saturday, December 6, from 6 to 9pm, and you can come meet us and other gallery members. Along with my quilts, I will also have other items like quilted postcards, hand dyed silk scarves and jewelry. Yes, I have been working on the display, and should have taken a picture of the scarves, and I'll try to do that asap so I can add it to this post

Urban Scraps - a preview

Here's a sneak peek of a new project. In between working on Donnie's quilt and other things, I've been planning a scrappy looking quilt that has it's roots in the Urban Couture fabric from Moda. As soon as my local shop received their jelly rolls and 10" square fabric packs (I think they call them layer cakes?), I went down and purchased one of each. After doing some math and playing around in EQ, I was able to come up with something I liked, although I didn't take the time to count the number of pieces I would be able to cut from each piece and color them exactly. Since then, some bolts of coordinating fabric arrived, and of course I ran down to make sure I could get fabric for the borders before it dissapeared. Hopefully when it is finished I will be just as happy, if not happier with the real thing.

Donnie's quilt - update

I've finally finished quilting Donnie's quilt, and thought you'd like to see how I decided to quilt the blocks. Although I must admit that it isn't my best quilting, and it took longer than it should have, it's just because it's been difficult for me to work on since she passed away. In a way, I guess no matter how difficult it was, it has also been therapeutic for me to work on it, so I'm glad I kept going. I am planning to send it off to my dad asap, so the edges are trimmed, and later today I'll start binding it.

Class Reminder

Don't forget, next Friday is my Artistic Freemotion class at Gathering Fabric in Woodinville. Come learn to free-motion quilt with me! A large collection of quilting motifs and fill patterns will be demonstrated, followed by your working on practice quilt sandwiches to begin or expand your free-motion quilting styles. If you wish, you may also start a free-motion stitch sampler to use for ideas when you are working on quilts in the future. I'd love to teach you how to quilt so you can finish your quilts yourself!

Here's one of my samplers from class:

Annie's Frog Quilt

Annie is a dear lady who is mentor to a whole group of us art quilters. She does so much to help all of us that it was nice to have a chance to make a little art quilt for her. It's a small quilt, only about the size of a piece of notebook paper.

Houston Quilt Festival - classes

On Thursday, I took Katrina Walker's Layering Silk Fabrics & Fibers for Textural Effects, and have fallen in love with felting (I'm really glad I had already purchased the felting attachment for my Bernina, as it's going to get lots of exercise now! She demonstrated how to use the fabrics and fibers and let us go to town creating our own designs.

Friday was a busy day, with three classes. The morning started off with Exploring Stitch-Resisted Shibori with Glennis Dolce. Boy, did I learn a lot! I've always been intrigued with shibori, and have played a bit with a few styles, but never got the hang of using stitches as a resist. Now there are more tools in my toolbox for further exploration on my own.

In the afternoon it was Silk Sensations with Marlene Glickman. What can I say, more dye on my fingers, and some beautiful silks that I can say I dyed myself. The most interesting part of this class was seeing how the different silk fabrics came out when dyed in the same bag. My little silk flowers didn't show up on the backgrounds, so I tried using markers to color another piece, but I think I'll just have to dye a new background for them.

By the time the evening class rolled around, I was tired, considered just going back to the hotel to crash, but went anyway. The class was "A Reversible Silk Purse - With Vintage Overtones", and Gay Gerlack was the teacher. I must have forgotten to check her website to see what her style was, so I was kind of expecting something different, but it turned out ok anyways. We were each able to choose a little reversible purse to embellish, and inside was a practice square. I chose to try out the silkscreen on the square before the purse, but did screen the reverse side of the purse with the same design. If you look closely, you can see the painted embellishment on the printed panel.

Saturday morning was my last class. Yep, another silk class, and another opportunity to get dye on my fingers. This class was Dyeing in the Third Dimension - Shibori Techniques with Carol Lane-Saber, and was another excellent class! I've always been intrigued by the tiny wrapped shibori that the Japanese make, and had tried it once on my own, but couldn't get the hang of how to tie the fabric, not to mention how to see what I was doing, once the fabric started scrunching up. Carol provided us with the technique, and I spent most of this class wrapping small areas of the fabric, and guessing at their placement. I can see I'm going to be revisiting this technique, with and without marking the design before starting to tie the fabric.

All I can say is that I wish I could have stayed longer and some of the classes I loved could have been longer. Although at the same time, if they were longer, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to learn so much from so many great instructors, so now I just hope to be able to return again.

Houston Quilt Festival - classes

My first class was Quilt Design Exploration with Jean Wells Keenan, and it was a fun and interesting class!I was the last student to arrive in class, so the colors here aren't what I would have chosen if I would have arrived earlier - I guess it was the early birds that got the fabric strips. The wavy striped piece was my main accomplishment in the morning, and the crazy log cabin blocks were made in the afternoon. I really like the blocks that have more complex centers, and am thinking about cutting the boring, more regular log cabins to make more centers and then I can make them into complex blocks too. I'll have to look through my stash for solid fabrics, or maybe I'll just take all the blocks with me to shop for border fabric, and see what I can find to work with these, then I will be able to decide on a setting for them.

Houston Quilt Festival - more shopping!

I was surprised to find this slightly glittery roving in Londa's Creative Threads booth.

These stencils were found in the June Colburn Designs booth. Yes, they're expensive, but they're ready to go (all I need to do is cut them apart), and they will last a long time, as long as I take care of them.

Now here's a group of purchases that all came from different booths. The tiny purple and magenta things are pompon making tools that are a Clover product, although I can't remember where I purchased them. I couldn't resist the sheep pin, as I have a lamb for my logo, and had a stuffed lamb when I was little. Here again, I'm not sure the booth it came from, only that their other products were shawls, shawl kits, and things that go with them.

The ginko bead kit came from the i-bead booth, I don't even need to look for my receipt, as I've purchased from them by mail and at other shows. Whenever I need a tiny bit of this and that color of beads for one of their designs, I'd rather buy a kit from them if they have it.

When I was at the show, I wore a rayon duster as a light jacket most of the time, as it is so comfortable, and I always get compliments! These are all rayon batik fabrics that I plan to make knee-length dusters from - that way, I'll be able to coordinate them better with my other clothing. The two on the left were found at the DYEnamic Fabrics & Designs booth, while the one on the right was found at the Indonesian Batiks booth. They're all beautiful, and I can't wait to get them sewn up!

This is a gorgeous piece of hand dyed shibori fabric from Shibori Girl Studios. She has such beautiful ribbons, scarves and shawl sized pieces too, and I had the pleasure of taking a class with her too! (I'll post about the classes later.)

Houston Quilt Festival - shopping!

Shopping opportunities were abundant, the problem for me was limited shopping and looking at quilts time between all the classes that I was taking. Of course there are so many great shops that are represented there, it is really easy to go over budget in a short amount of time! Quilter's Threads is an online shop that carries some of my patterns as well as many other things. About a year ago they started offering online classes, of which I am also an occasional teacher, and this year had their first booth at quilt market. You can find a picture of the booth in an earlier post. Back to shopping - There were wonderful threads and fibers, along with all her other products, and I fell in love with the hand dyed threads, and fibers, and can't wait to work with my purchases.

Another shop I couldn't resist was the Artfabric booth, and purchased some lovely packages of silk fabric and threads, as well as a beautiful silk scarf (although I don't think I'll cut into the scarf any time soon - I'll wear it for a while first).

The Great Yarn Company was another place I had to stop and make a purchase. The Noro sock yarn is destined to become a lacy shawl someday, while the Kaffe Fasset colored Regia sock yarn will either be socks or maybe something else, as I haven't really decided yet.

After taking Katrina Walker's layering silks class, I was on the hunt for more fibers and tools, and the ones above were found in the FeltCrafts booth.

All these needle felting products are made by Clover, but were purchased in a variety of booths - wherever I could find them! Many stores carry the Clover products, so it's usually quite easy to find them either locally, or online.

Of course I did make a few more purchases, but alas blogger will only let me upload 5 pictures in one post, so I'll save some for later.

Houston Quilt Festival - some of the winners

Below are some of the pictures I took at International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX. There were so many beautiful quilts at the show, so many that I'm glad I wasn't a judge, as it had to have been a very difficult job. I wish they would have had a CD of the entire show, and this year they had two CDs but not one of Quilts: A World of Beauty show - bummer. (My camera kept running the battery down, so I don't have as many as I would have liked.) At any rate, here are a few with notes so you know who created them, and what they won. I'll post more as time permits, and in case you didn't know, you can also go to the Quilts, Inc. website to see official pictures of all the winners (once you enter their website, click on the ruby slippers).

Three Guinea Fowl by Pamela Allen is such a fun quilt. I think the hen bodies are velvet,

and if we would have been able to touch them, they would have probably been touched to the point of being worn and aged by the end of the show. It won an honorable mention in the Art - Whimsical category.

Sharon Schamber's quilt Spirit of Mother Earth, won Best of Show, and is such a gorgeous, detail oriented quilt, and I know I had taken more photos of it, one with her in it, but my old pocket camera must have eaten it, as this is the only one I have.

Twilight by Rita Steffenson, what can I say, but another gorgeous quilt. She has so much threadwork on this quilt to give the flowers dimension and make it explode off the dark background, it is just awesome! It won the Fairfield Master Awardfor Contemporary Artistry.

Sonja Grasvik's embellished quilt is called Praise Ye Now Our Gardens Green, and won first place in the embellished category. I recognized her name, as she is from Seattle, WA, which is not that far from where I live, but had never met her. It was nice to meet her in person, and we were able to have a good chat before it got busy. Maybe I'll be able to take a class from her sometime.

Seasonal Sisters by Gail Thomas, Annette M. Hendricks, and Helen Godden is another gorgeous quilt by this trio. I do have pictures of the quilt by itself, but wanted to post one with them in it. It amazes me how they are able to work on the same quilt when they live so far apart. It won the World of Beauty award.

That's it for now, as I need to unpack so that I can show you more.

Houston Quilt Festival - Janet's Influence

I saw so many quilts and wish I could have stayed for all of Quilt Festival, so that I might have had time to see all of them. At least I was able to see lots of wonderful quilts, shop, and take lots of classes (of course I never imagined that I would get into almost all those that I had asked for).

It was so exciting to hunt for it in the Quilts: A World of Beauty show at Festival, but I finally found it, and had a few people take pictures of me with it. Unfortunately, I had to choose between a better photo of me, or a better photo of the quilt, and decided this one was the one that I would post. I am very thankful that others were so helpful (part of the problem was that it was hung on a side wall, which were not lit as well as those on the walls parallel to the aisles).

Houston Quilt Festival - Quilter's Threads booth

Diane, owner of Quilter's Threads in her booth before it got busy at Preview Night. If you look closely, behind her and to the left are patterns from my company, and at the upper right is one of the Let's Eat placemats, and part of the Heavenly Hearts quilts. (I'm really happy they made it, as they had never been marked as delivered by the USPS!) Each time I passed the booth there were others to meet, so I was able to meet Beth Wheeler and Lori Marquette during my other visits.

Of course I had to shop while I was there and will post pictures of all my purchases and class projects in later posts.