On my machine right now...

 My friend Charmaine made this wallhanging out of my other friend Reeze's pattern. Reeze has a blog and a pattern company, Morning Glory Designs. You might have also seen this pattern featured in a magazine recently!

 It was a fun pattern to quilt.

 I really like the way it looked once the background was all pushed back. 

 Of course I ran out of bobbin thread 3 little loops from the end of the round....

It is almost uncanny how often this has been happening lately but... then I have been doing an awful lot of quilting lately and that has been great! So I just reloaded and kept on going. So pretty and it gave so many fun quilting spaces in it.

When Quilting Trumps Separation Anxiety

My mom called me from New York where she lived and out of the clear blue sky said, "What if we both meet in Nashville and go to the AQS quilt show? It looks really fun!"
We both went to the website while we were still talking on the phone and started surfing through the pages about the show. There were classes, it was a big show, lots of vendors and the hotel looked amazing. 
I really wanted to say yes but thought I should see my husband's reaction after all I would be leaving our kids (then 6 and 9) with him for several days.  
Confession time....I had never EVER left my kids. So running it by my husband I wasn't asking for permission, I was asking for confidence! They were fine leaving me and they had no problem with me leaving but I was nervous. Going somewhere without them even for an afternoon still felt wrong, like I had left my purse somewhere. 
My husband, who somehow has understood my fundamental NEED for my children since they were babies, assured me that I should go, they would be fine- and so would I.  And I believed him, because I know that he knows me, and I said YES! 
I was going to Nashville.

Back on the phone with my mom... What classes would we take? Should we go to the Grand Ole Opry field trip?  We were able to get into all our chosen classes and reserved our hotel room.
August arrived at the usual time and soon it was time for the show. It was challenging to pack all the supplies for the classes we had registered for in my bag, so much to remember and pack. 

The hotel was the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville and boy was it amazing. It was so big and sprawling you could easily get lost. We had to leave 30 minutes early for our classes for walking time and a little cushion for getting lost at least for the first few days! Everywhere we went to eat had fantastic food. There was shopping, entertainment and we never left the hotel-- nor had we any desire to for our whole 5 day stay.
Most memorable about this trip-
1. Mom winning some nice scissors in a drawing from one of the vendors.
2. Learning my favorite binding method (which I still use on nearly every quilt) from Cathy Wierzbicki who taught her pattern seen at the left here and who was JUST out of the hospital from having her appendix removed! 







3. Learning that not all BRILLIANT quilters are brilliant teachers.


4. DaVine the lady dressed up like a plant who "performed" in the atriums of the hotel and who totally freaked us out a few times because she looked so much like a plant you could be right beside her and not know it!






5. I liked long arming and it wasn't as hard as I had thought it was going to be.

6. You should pack an extra bag when you go to a quilt show because you'll need it to bring home all your purchases.

7. Our favorite classes were technique classes and my favorite was this one for Trapunto by Machine with Paula Reid (who does Alex Anderson's machine quilting we learned) 

 Detail shot:

 I had used my hand dyed fabric for this not knowing you can see the trapunto better on light fabric but I thought it looked more like "me" anyway this way!

8. Meeting Kate, another homeschooling mom, in our very first class and someone we've kept in touch with since!  She's a hoot.

I was happy to see my kids again AND happy I had taken the trip. I could not wait to try all the things I had learned in the classes!  I was really energized and fired up to quilt.

Five Dollar Quilt?

And now back to my personal chronicle of quilting...
Anxious to continue my quilting education and experience I found an honest to goodness quilt shop about 30 minutes away from my house. A friend and I decided to participate in their "$5 Quilt".  
So the promise here is that you pay $5 and they give you just enough of the material for a quilt block and you get a different pattern each month, if you bring the completed block back at the appointed time one month later you are given the next block pattern and materials for it for free.  If however you are even one minute late you have to pay the $5 again. So my $5 quilt ended up costing more like $20 because I missed a couple of meetings...Strike One against the $5 quilt.

The shop I did this with had three colors ways to choose from.  I had decided to do the 30's reproductions color way because I hadn't done anything with them and was itching to try them but, when I got to the store they didn't have a sample made up and they were kind of vague about which fabrics were going to be used and I got nervous and chickened out. I instead signed up for the "medium" color way because they had exactly the fabrics there on bolts and I could see it wouldn't be awful whereas I wasn't entirely sure of the 30's repro's. It seemed safer, beiges, navys, maroons etc... Why oh why did I not go with my first instinct?

Somewhere early on I decided that I really didn't like my color way. My friend, who also signed up, had been brave and gone for the repro's and though she had made a couple of substitutions-overall it was pretty and scrappy easy to play with adding other fabrics as long as they were repro's. Mine however was BO-RING and didn't really lend itself well to changing out fabrics because they were all from the same line.

Strike Two against the $5 quilt.

My mom saw the blocks and said she'd be happy to have the quilt when I was done with it if I really didn't like it.  She liked the fabrics and blocks and so I continued to do the blocks planning to give it to her when it was done.

The $5 Quilt Class ($20 quilt) just gave you the blocks. I then had to buy more fabric from the line, which I didn't like, for the sashing, and backing etc... I could have bought the "finishing kit" the shop offered for $50 but at the last meeting when they displayed the completed quilts in each colorway I still was not thrilled with my colorway and opted to wing-it by myself.

Strike Three against the $5 quilt.
I bought a couple of yards of fabric for the backing which was clearance priced, a yard of two of the darker prints in the line and a yard of the beige background fabric that was featured in every block.
I started laying the blocks out, playing with sashing widths etc... Still didn't like it. Some of the blocks were on point and some were not. UGH. I had never set anything on point but since I didn't like how it looked with the tree laying sideways I decided to try it.
So I auditioned the blocks on point and it sort of looked better.
Okay.
I really didn't like 3 of the blocks, they just didn't look nice with the others, plus in all honesty I had not been pleased with my piecing on two of them so I decided to leave them out. I could do that right.?  Yes I could, I liked how they looked on point better without those three.  
I pulled out my trusty Fons and Porter's Complete Guide to Quilting.  It showed several traditional settings for quilts with blocks on point.
One had an open block in between the pieced ones- a good place to put some really pretty quilting.  I had been drawn to the quilting in quilts more and more and I had decided to plan some opportunties for quilting in my quilts in the future and this seemed perfect!
When I put them down to audition though, the plain blocks seemed too large and empty in the layout. It also intimidated me a bit to have to do something fabulous in them to make up for the emptiness.  I decided to frame them in to make the space a little smaller. This worked really nicely. So much so that I actually liked the quilt a little now-- it was still definitely going to my mom but it was pretty now. 

The setting and layout had made a HUGE difference for me. This was a great lesson and a home run for my quilting experience! Wow that really changed the whole quilt for me.
I decided to hand quilt this quilt because, at the time, I was sure my machine quilting skills were not good enough to fill those empty areas in a way I would be satisfied with. My mom really likes hand quilting and does beautiful work so I thought she'd like it done by hand too.
Here is a detail shots of the block with the quilting design:

I will let you know when and if I EVER get it done.  :-) LOL

Joining a Quilt Guild

Attending your first guild meeting can be intimidating especially if you decide to go alone. You may feel like everyone knows everyone else and you are sticking out like a sore thumb. I can assure you that except for very, very small guilds NO ONE knows everyone else in a guild.  It is great if a new member participates in the monthly activities, goes to a workshop, joins a bee or volunteers to help in the guild. Doing any of those things is a great ice breaker, it gives members new and old a connection and subject to talk about and an opportunity to get to know one another.  But, since by and large it is intimidating to jump in to that sort of thing and people tend to be shy and doubt their skill level it is not the norm for this to happen.
I am a firm believer in the guild members needing to be friendly and welcoming to a new person. The newcomer shouldn't feel like they are auditioning, that burden should fall on the existing members and officers.  At a busy meeting even the most organized of guilds can miss a new person but the object is to have a greeting system in place to keep this from happening as much as possible.
At my first meeting not one person spoke to me, if I had let that first meeting define quilt guilds for me I would never have gone back. I did however go back, determined that I would give it another chance and this time put myself out there as well by talking to people, participating and signing up for things etc... Here is the project for the first workshop I attended:

I joined the guild that night, (in for a penny in for a pound) and as it happened... I was the 100th member so I got a special welcome prize....Everyone knew my name now and I learned some names that night too!
The rest as they say is history...In a few short months I volunteered to be one of the program chairs (the person who books the speaker), that position was followed by a year as membership chair and now the Vice Presidency! Who would have thought? 
As a member I make it a point to remember as many people as I can and "make the connection" with visitors so that they feel welcome and hopefully become active members who both enjoy the guild and contribute to the guild's success. I still remember how my first meeting went and how I nearly didn't come back.
I can't promise everyone's guild experiences will be what mine were of course but, I do think that it is worth giving it a try. 

(fabric designed by Stephanie Brandenburg)

A good guild will feed your creative appetite, inspire you, teach you and challenge you.  If you don't have a guild near you or if your local guild is not what you need it to be I would strongly encourage you to start your own!   There is a lot of information online about starting a guild and chances are you'll very quickly find others just like yourself who are looking for the very same thing.

Deadlines

I know I promised an entry about joining a guild BUT I just couldn't NOT blog today about my deadline. I am teaching two classes at my mother's quilt shop (Quilters Crossing) . It was going to be one, which I finished the sample of over Thanksgiving, like a good girl. 
Then we had customers who really wanted a very beginners class and I have made the Yellow Brick Road pattern by Atkinson Designs many, many times and it makes a great beginner quilt to learn from because of the easy stitching, rotary use, FQ's etc... So  after a little arm twisting (before my coffee in the morning) I said yes I would do it. It isn't that I didn't want to it is just that I KNEW I would have to really push to get the sample done by, tomorrow January 8th.  
The top was done last weekend no problem. I used the Daily Grind coffee themed fabric and I liked how it came out and how I was able to use fussy cuts of the panel for the cornerstones in the border. 

 It is a throw size quilt top.

But then all week I have been super busy... I had a customers quilt to get done, and I worked almost every day at the shop so that left last night and tonight to get this quilted. I basted it last night amidst making dinner, mom taxiing children to dance lessons, checking schoolwork, laundry and taking a walk with my son who needed some time with me. 

Today, I got to work quilting.  Nothing complicated just some swirly shapes all over. I did my normal routine, checked my tension on my little scrap sandwich.

Worked out the bugs and got started. 

When my bobbin ran out I grabbed the next one which I had cleverly wound ahead of time to speed things up and kept going. When my son interrupted me to ask me a question I happened to flip the quilt over as I was answering him and nearly cried. I had been quilting for a good 10 minutes with the new bobbin and it was AWFUL underneath.  The top thread was "eyelashing" all over the back! After pulling out one "mouse worth" of thread. Exhibit A:

I began again-- starting by checking my tension on the test piece again.  UGH.

Going smoothly for a while and when I needed another bobbin I went to fill a couple of them and my reliable Bernina was not winding the bobbin. What the? I tried again and again, wasting a good bit of thread with each attempt. GRRRR....

Finally I ripped the metal bobbin off the winder thingy and looked at it. In studying it I discover that the top of the bobbin was loose like it could be unscrewed from the stem and would spin around free of the bobbin stem and the bottom.  Okay that's a new one and just when I have no time....or patience!

I move on after a few choice words (and throwing that bobbin away).

I get almost done as in--I have one more loop and I am done. Stitch stitch stitch and.... Three inches left and guess what happens? Yes, I run out of bobbin thread.  3". THREE INCHES!  So I take a deep breath and wind another bobbin. Why must things always go wrong when you are tired and stressed with a deadline? Has this happened to you?

At 9:45pm Friday night I have finished the quilting. No, no binding yet.... I may have to live without that for tomorrow's open house at the shop because I am T-I-R-E-D!

Round Robin Wrap up!

Committing to a long term project like this will force you to make sacrifices in your personal creating. At some point you will be inspired to make some super cool thing with fabric you bought for yourself and you will have to discipline yourself to work on your Round Robin instead because you have a deadline and you made the committment.  If you are anything like me you'll have your BEST creative ideas when you CAN'T possibly put them to good use because of a looming deadline.  My advice is to WRITE THEM DOWN. You won't remember later. Do a quick sketch and get back to work!  
This same thing has happened to me when I have signed up for a block exchange, have a customers quilt to work on, or have a gift to make for someone.  
It is like Murphy's law of creating or something....?
Honoring your commitment really does pay off. It was like Christmas revealing everyone's completed tops to them. Worth every second I put off my own projects to work on theirs. It was a thrill for each of us each time a quilt was revealed because we had all had input in each quilt and all contributed something to each one.  Our group was especially successful because everyone was very committed. I don't think anyone was disappointed and that was the result of the group's dedication.
Here is my picture when my completed top was revealed:
 
 I hadn't seen it at all since I handed over the 12" square medallion I made in the Fall.

Everyone had worked so hard on it and it was fully of different techniques and styles! 

 I saw something different or something I hadn't noticed before every time I looked at it.

Here it is hanging in the Round Robin League's quilt show that spring. All quilted and embellished. I added antique buttons in several places and in the very center is a jeweled shoe clip that was my grandmothers. I put feathers on a quilt for the first time when I quilted this. I did them in black because I was worried they wouldn't be very good. Of course they were so good I wished I had used color! Wish I could say THAT every time but alas.... It had some bedazzling on it from the person who did the last round on it and I added some more.
Here are some detail shots:

It is still hanging in our livingroom and I still love to look at it.


The Round Robin experience got me to try techniques I had not tried before, forced me to DESIGN my own patterns and "get out of me box".  I had to think about things in many different ways and there was no giving up option on a project, so I had to find a way to make it work! It has helped me grow as a quilter and I approach my own projects in different ways now. Sometimes things get set aside because they haven't "ripened" yet or I haven't found the "thing" that they need but, amazingly I do eventually find it and finish most projects.  Which is not to say I don't have UFO's( Un-Finished Objects)... I just prefer to think of them as PhD's ( projects half done)! 
I want to thank my fellow Round Robin members for my quilt which as I said I still love and enjoy, for allowing me to blog their quilts and sometimes their pictures and especially Jennifer for having the foresight to take all the pictures as we went through the process and sending them to me for this blog series!
What will your read about next in my quilting journey? Joining a quilt guild...

Round Robin part 5

The last round was different than the others. The quilt was intended to be the owners "retreat" quilt for when she went overnight quilting camps with friends.  It needed to be twin size.  It started out as a 12" block on point of an appliqued purple Iris and had grown to this by the time I received it:

It was nearly at size and because of the scale of the previous designs it would have looked odd to have two small narrow borders at the end when it had the large garden border framed by the narrow pink and purple strips.  The person before me did the two sides with pieced blocks in various colors pulled from the inner "garden" scene created by one of the previous borders. That left me to finish it up with the top and bottom. I considered doing more pieced blocks to complete the round but in the end I decided to try something new- Hand Applique!

Here is the quilt completed with my hand applique flowers on the top and bottom of the quilt:

In this quilt the black on black roses in all the backgrounds really pulls everything together as does the pink and purple framing which appears twice - once around the initial block and again after the garden scene block.