Quiltcon Pix #1

I'm back home!  I had a wonderful time at QUILTCON and my head is full of lots of ideas and information.
 I have so many pix to share! This first category of quilts was my favorite and (to me) the most interesting!   There were well over 50 quilts in the Charitable Challenge.  Modern Quilt Guilds from all over North American and some from overseas responded to the challenge to make a Charitable quilt (to be donated to the Charity of their choice) of an original Modern design using this limited palette.
One was more spectacular than the next! The juxtaposition of so many large quilts from such a wide spread number of groups all focused on the same basic challenge was fascinating!  It was an interesting visual commentary on both the talent and charity of quilters in general.
Here is a sampling of about half of what I saw.  In most cases for the sake of Brevity I have included only the name of the group and the title.   But I did take pix of all the descriptions so if you see one you'd like to know more about just leave me a comment and I'll send you the info.  These were almost all bed sized.

                                         Well... I guess I have to start with my home town favorite
                                                   South Bay Area MQG  "Orange Smile"

I include this quilt next because as I was taking a picture of this quilt when a woman came up and asked if I had worked on it?  She had made a block for it and she had never met any of the other contributors 'cause it had all been arranged online.  She had come all the way from Alaska for the show!

Here's the full description.

Central Virginia MQG, no title

Inland Northwest Modern Quilters, "Stillwater and Cottonwood" 

This next pic is just a section of what was a completely pieced muslin background with lots of improv. stitching.

Kansas City MQG, "Just One More Stitch" 

Wichita MQG, "Just a Little Wind" 

Central Iowa MQG, "Pickle Party" 

Cambridge MQG, "Radiant Nine Patch" 

Sydney (Australia) MQG, "Under the Milky Way Tonight"

New Jersey, " Star Power"

Houston MQG, "Houston Strong - Bright Days Ahead" 

Silicon ValleyMQG, "Orchard Through Time" 

Eastern Peacers, "Gather Round" 

North Bay, "Tipsy Stars" 

Chicago MQG,"Chicago Star Remix" 

Southern Connecticut MQG, "What is a Modern Quilt?" 

"Hang Five" a small quilt group of Central FloridaMQG, "Florida Waves" 

Capital District MQG, " #Churndash goes #Hashtag" 

Description below.... 

Pittsburgh MQG, " Greek Confetti" 

South Sound MQG, no title

Brisbane MQG, "Capricornia Sunrise" 

(one of my favorites!)

Los Angeles MQG, " Pickle Platter" 

Ottawa MQG, " Modern Geometry" 

SewIMQs, " Mountains of Hope" 

Madison MQG,  no title 

Calgary MQG, " Fireworks" 

Rochester MQG, " Make it Modern" 

Temecula MQG, description below 

Sew Euro Modern, description below 

You can see taken together it was a Stunning display!

Have a great week!

cheers, CW

More Boats!

Christine H. from the UK sent me this picture recently to share yet another application of the boat block!  In the original quilt the blocks were set with no sashing and a half block drop.  Christine set her's as a quarter block drop.  I think this setting works really well.  It makes the space around the boats more interesting!  Christine is donating this quilt to Project Linus!  Thanks for sharing your pic of this lovely quilt, Christine!

I will be posting pix of Quiltcon.  but I'm having difficulty getting the photos downloaded from my iphone to my computer.  Grrrr!  Anybody have that problem?

Well I'll get my IT (my son) right on that and get back to you.

Have a great weekend!

cheers, CW

Experiment with quilt patterns

When I'm working on a big quilt top sometimes I make a small version of the top to experiment with the quilting.  The big top isn't finished yet but the basic idea looks like this only bigger with lots more squares and colors.

I saw somewhere on the internet (sorry I don't remember where) a quilt that had been quilted with this kind of pattern.  So I thought I'd try it out on my sample quilt. 

The good thing about this kind of straight line pattern is that it can all be done using the channel lock on my long arm.  A channel lock blocks the long arm from rolling back and forth so it only moves from left to right across the top in a straight line.  It's really easy, but it does require turning the quilt and re-pinning  it on the frame in order to get straight lines in both axis.  And it takes a bit of fussing to get the straight lines going parallel.  But once that's done it's a breeze!

This was a small quilt 36" x 48".  I might be singing a different tune when I try this trick with a big quilt, say 90" x 90".

We shall see....

Have I great Week!

I know I will I'm off to QuiltCon!!

Yippee!

Cheers, CW

First Fiinshes of the year!!

Well, there not quite finished.  Both these quilts need to be bound but I can't do that right now 'cause both my sewing machines that have walking feet are in the shop!  They managed to break down  in rapid succession in one afternoon!  The nerve!  Fortunately I have several back-up sewing machines so the sewing goes on!  Just no bindings....

That's part of the reason I have gotten these two quilts quilted.  When I get tired of sewing I'll go to pin another top on the Longarm,  kind of like an intermission;  something brainless I can do while waiting for the muse to reboot.  And then of course once a top is on the frame...it must be quilted!

Any who this first quilt was made with Orphan blocks given to me by a fellow guild member as thank you blocks after my first year as BOM coordinator.   I think these must have been left overs from a much earlier BOM winner, 'cause some of them were signed and dated.   It was easy enough to sew them together and add borders.  voila!  Another bunch of blocks rescued from orphan block oblivion!  It will make a great donation quilt!

I kind of regret using the dark thread in the light ares.  It shows all the boo boos.  I was being lazy, not wanting to take the time to change threads. 

Six of these printed sceens came along with the blocks and they helped to fill in the bottom and top borders. 

You can see how the dark thread looks so much better in the dark background. 

I used a lovely soft flannel for the backing.  I got it at the guild flea market,  it's hard to beat yardage at $4.00/ pound! 

Next up is a baby quilt I made for a good friends daughter who just had a baby.  I ordered this fat quarter bundle from Craftsy with this new baby in mind.  

I keep baby quilt designs real simple.

No point in spending hours and hours piecing some elaborate design. My hope is the baby quilts I make will be loved and used 'til they are all used up!

I used a fun easy all over doodle for the body of the quilt 

And free hand straight lines for the border.  Probably should have used a ruler....

but I think it will be OK with the recipient. 

That's all for now.  Have a Great week!

Cheers, CW

Managing (or not) my UFO's

Trolling around blog land I've seen a lot of good ideas about how to manage one's UFO's.  'Finish 'um up' challenges seem to be very popular this year (or maybe I'm just finally taking notice, lol).  In any case I thought I'd share my strategy in case there are people like me who shy away from getting to committed but still want to make Some progress on their pile of UFO's!

Because I am a visual type thinker I keep a folder on my desk top titled "Finish 'um up" and in this folder are pictures of (not all, but) a fair number of projects that I Think I would like to work on in the next year or so.  One reason this works better for me is because as I mentioned I am more of a visual thinker and I find when I write a list I tend to just ignore it or forget about it altogether so it really does not serve as a very effective reminder.  I do this with grocery lists too.  I dutifully write things I need from the store with the best of intentions and then promptly forget the list at home! 

Anyway, this pictorial reminder helps me stay more less on track and while it is true that I start more projects than I finish  I do finish a fair number of quilty projects over the course of a year!  You can see that these pictures are clustered into 5 groups (the lower left are just some random pix).

-in the upper left is/ are photos of quilts that just need bindings to be finished.  Usually when they get to this stage they get bound and move on, thus the single photo.

-the next group are tops that need quilting.  That's not all the tops I have, just the ones I want to finish in the foreseeable future.

-Next to that group are centers that are done but need borders.

- Then the Largest group...  Projects in various stages of piecing (PVSP).  I probably won't get to all of these this year, but these are the projects I want to keep in sight so's I might move them along.

-The bottom right are just ideas for projects. I don't really count them as UFO's  I just want to think about them.

When I'm casting about for something to do I can go to this folder and quickly scan my pix and decide what I want to do next.

It's very satisfying to move the little pix from one group to the next and then drag them to the trash icon when they are done!

How many UFO's do I have?  I have no idea!  How many projects do I finish each year?  It varies, but it's usually enough to make me feel like I haven't just been twiddling my thumbs!

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Have a great weekend!

cheers, CW