Blogger's Quilt Festival 2014 - Large Quilt Category

I'm feeling blessed to actually be in Houston right now! Just finished International Quilt Market and am now attending Quilt Festival.

I had big surprises this week, including a red and white quilt that is in the Ruby Jubilee Exhibit for Festival was also used as the cover for AQS Spring 2015 Catalogue. Did you get yours in the mail?  I quilted it! WOW!!!!! What a surprise and true honor.


ok...down to business. You're here because you're hopping through this online festival and I don't want to disappoint.

















I'm sharing 'Our Honeymoon Quilt'. Yes...it all started while on our honeymoon in 2009 in Hawaii. No, I wasn't bored, really....and my husband was very supportive to let me stop in at quilt shops along our journey, but sometimes sitting on a cruise ship you need something creative to do ;-) ....so I saw this Storm at Sea design with 3 hearts and thought that was fun, but surely I could make it a bit more interesting.





Turtles are a motif used in many Hawaiian fabrics, so by incorporating a turtle into the Storm at Sea design (upper right hand corner) strictly by coloring the pieces accordingly then adding Hawaiian prints into the border that included turtles it started coming together. To be honest, the piecing of this didn't start until 2012 and a recent quilt show in Spokane "My Heart Belongs to Quilting" as the theme, motivated me to get it out and finish it up. The borders became a huge part of the design when my husband asked if it would be at least 7' tall so that it could tuck under his feet while sitting in our double recliner.

The first border is a cotton sateen ombre fabric. Some of the same fabric is used in the center piecing as well. Then a triple border set creates the next visual border with Hawaiian prints which were printed on the diagonal not at a 45 degree angle, so made it a bit tricky to get them cut and set this way, fussy cut on point squares that are filigree hearts and a final black/white border. I put on an extra wide binding to help give a dark red visual without adding another border. I had thought I would applique a turtle and baby from Toni Whitney's designs, but alas my husband liked it like this so, that's how I finished it up.

It's now ready for a good cuddle on the couch.

"Our Honeymoon Quilt"
87" x 96"
Long-arm Machine Quilted, Hand guided "Heart Strings" pantograph, White Aurifil thread, 50 wt.
Bleached 80/20 batting

Thanks for stopping by! To nominate this quilt for Viewer's Choice, grab the address link from your browser and go here to paste it: http://amyscreativeside.com/2014/10/24/bloggers-quilt-festival-viewers-choice/

Here is a link back to the Large Category in Amy's Creative Side - Quilt Blogger's Festival.

Birds in the Air

Birds in the Air is featured in the new Red, White and Quilted book by Linda Baxter Lasco published by the American Quilter's Society (AQS) starting on page 52.

I did not make this quilt, but I got to quilt it! Excited that it was also submitted and selected to be included in the Ruby Jubilee Exhibit that will be happening in Houston Oct. 29-Nov. 2 2014. Hope you'll be coming to International Quilt Festival and can see it in person. I plan to be there preview night (Wednesday) and on Thursday. Maybe I'll even get to see you!

I wrote a blog post about the quilting process of 'Birds in the Air' a few weeks ago. I hope you'll check it out.

Check out more Show It! quilts.

Double Nine Patch

This is not my quilt, but I quilted it and am very proud of the result.

The pattern can be found in the new Red, White and Quilted book by American Quilter's Society by Linda Baxter Lasco.

This one can be found on the inside front and back cover and the pattern and details of quilting are on page 20.

Here is a detailed shot while it was still on my quilting table.

I did an entire blog post about it detailing the quilting on this Double Nine Patch. I hope you'll take a moment to read through it.

See more Show It! quilts.

INMQ 2014 Challenge, Storm at Sea Honeymoon Quilt and the WSQ Spokane show

Here we are again at the annual Inland Northwest Machine Quilter's Challenge. This year it was a simple enough piecing with lots of negative space to have fun.

After being in Scotland for a couple of weeks this summer, plaid kept coming to mind based on the piecing design. A few additional ideas came to life after taking the Cindy Needham class this summer in Spokane.

Thanks to Bottom Line and So Fine! threads, here it is. I failed to get an overall shot of the quilt upon completion of binding (a quick ship it timing issue) so I'll post one of those after the show.

Backside:

It will be at the Spokane show, October 17-19, 2014. I hope you can come out and enjoy!

I've also put these pieces in the show that I've blogged about in the past. The theme this year is "My Heart Belongs to Quilting".

Mi Amore 
This will also be offered as a class in January 2015 in Grand Coulee.

Zig Zag Love --on theme again and made this year as part of the Red and White Challenges. Hope you'll check them out and vote! 10/14-24.
















Recent challenge pieces for Piece 'n Pal Quilt Guild - Republic.
Red Starry Night  (15"x15")                     

Also in the Red and White Challenges voting linkup. Hope you'll check them out and vote! 10/14-24.











Sunshine Makes the Roses Grow (15"x15") Another Piece 'n Pals 2014 Challenge Piece






















Harvest Time - motivated by WWVQuilt Festival's "A Wrinkle in Time" theme (later realizing that was a book and this might only marginally work for the theme challenge....I did come up with another design - Tesseract Prism but wasn't sure I would pull off the concept in time so didn't submit an entry to the WSQ show).





























and my latest ...a UFO of over 5.5 years ....this Storm at Sea design turned into 3 hearts and some turtles. The storm part has no correlation, seriously, but in EQ7 there is a Storm at Sea design that has 3 hearts, and while on our honeymoon (2009) I saw it and thought I'd play with it a little bit, adding the turtle by shading various pieces of the 'storm-at-sea' design. We saw turtles while in Hawaii on our honeymoon. May 2012 Storm at Sea as a design was taught at the Krazy Horse Quilt Show pre-class. So, I got out my design and started the cutting and piecing and continued working on it while my husband took a part-time job in California. In 2013 Toni Whitney taught the Pendleton show pre-class...but alas I couldn't make it. After teaching my own fusible applique class recently using Toni Whitney designs, I decided to incorporate her turtle pattern into the quilt as an applique in the border. I'm very pleased to have gotten this put together finally and include it in the show. I put in the entry before the center was even pieced together but knew the theme of this year's show should motivate me to get it done. I think I was crazy...but here it is! Whew! "Our Honeymoon Quilt"


I didn't even get a full picture of it because it was finished in the middle of the night and delivered to the messenger before dawn so it could get into the dropoff location for the show in time.

Ah well...hope you can come to the show and check them all out. Friday and Saturday includes voting opportunities.

Update: I was able to get this full photo at the show.

Red and White Show It! # 2

Show It! You Made It! You Designed It!

SewCalGal's year of Red and White Challenges has inspired a couple of quilts for me this year.

Zig Zag Love was the first one.

Here is the second one:

 

Red Starry Night resulted from the Republic quilt guild (Piece 'n Pals) challenge to use 4 specific blocks: Churn Dash, Star, Log Cabin and House; each 6" finished and the total piece had to be between 14.5" and 15.5" square.

It received Judges' Choice for the challenge entries.

See more Red and White Show It! entries

Red and White - Show it! You Made It! You Designed It!

Show It! You Made It! You Designed It!

SewCalGal's year of Red and White Challenges has inspired a couple of quilts for me this year.

Here is my first one:

Zig Zag Love was designed for a charity group and then used as a practice top to experiment with various quilting ideas before doing two red and white quilts requested by author Linda Baxter Lasco for her new book Red, White and Quilted.

Just as the sun was rising I took this photo to get great shadowing so that you can see the quilting.

And the second:

Red Starry Night resulted from the Republic quilt guild (Piece 'n Pals) challenge to use 4 specific blocks: Churn Dash, Star, Log Cabin and House; each 6" finished and the total piece had to be between 14.5" and 15.5" square.

It received Judges' Choice for the challenge entries.

See more Red and White Show It! entries

Simple Sewendipity: Boston Top and Blog Hop...

Happened to log into my flickr account tonight and was reminded of the Quilts for Boston bits that I made last year. The group had a lot of finished quilts in it, so thought I'd go through them and see if I could identify how my 'bits' had been used.



It was interesting that they just asked that things be a certain 'length' ...the width didn't matter, so I had a few bits of relevant colors and just stitched them together and sent them in.



I blogged about the contributions that I sent in for the Quilts for Boston back in April 2013.



Here was what I sent:

Stephanie at Simple Sewendipity received a bag of blocks and she created an "L" with my bits.

And the entire quilt top:

Here is her entire blog post about it.



Simple Sewendipity: Boston Top and Blog Hop...: About a month ago at the Quilts for Boston sew-in at gather here , I ended up focusing on making quilt backs instead of assembling a top.  ...



See the 'LOVE' down the middle?



Here is the finished quilt, WPD17, shown in the flickr group "Quilts for Boston" made through the efforts of the Boston Modern Quilt Guild.







Blessings to the recipient and all those involved in the process of creating this offer of comfort.

Sewn: It All Started A Year (Or Three) Ago...

Sewn: It All Started A Year (Or Three) Ago...: This is me today at the AQS Quilt Show in Des Moines --- by a poster featuring the edge of my* quilt!    How in the world did that happe...





Sharing this blog post from my co-author of our upcoming book. Hope you'll enjoy learning more about this journey.

Flyover - EQ / Island Batik Design Challenge using a Boondoggle Ruler too

I have been intrigued with Bella Nonna's Boondoggle ruler for a while and have worked on developing several patterns with it, but when I saw this design challenge with EQ and Island Batik....I knew that I had to share.

The boondoggle ruler is effectively a diamond shaped ruler that isn't on a particular angle that we are used to using, so it provides a bit of a challenge to cut if you don't have the actual ruler. It also provides half lines in both directions for doing partials. To design with it, I was able to create a shape in EQ7 using the Variable Point Layout so that it is exactly what the ruler will get you.

My initial concepts had the point of view from the sky looking down, so the camouflage fabrics were the ground i.e. fields of grain.

As I learned more about the tool and EQ provided the download of fabrics to scale, I got a little bit more detailed about the fabric and its placement.

Scale of the fabric motif has a lot to do with the effectiveness of the quilt.

The scale didn't feel good, so I continued to evolve it.

Here it is with a little bit more detail in the plane and a better ground effect choosing different fabrics:

The flyover version, from the ground looking up on a clear sky day, is quite striking so this is my actual entry:

 

'Flyover' is 75.5" x 58" and uses both the large and small Boondoggle Rulers as a template for cutting out all blocks.

 

Sneak peaks of the other designs using Island Batik Quilted in Honor Fabrics:

 

'Under a Camo Net'

'In Memory' or 'On a Wing and a Prayer'

'Boondoggle Flag':

 

 

See other design entries in the EQ / Island Batik Challenge.