More journal quilts

Two small pieces above by Linda Schmidt. From the Journal Quilt exhibit at IQF Houston 2006.

More journal quilts. I took so many of these pictures I don't even remember them all - a week or so ago I sat and read a whole article in Quilting Arts about the one on the left and how it was made, without even realizing I had ever seen it before. (Before you all go running to look, I don't think it was the latest issue. It might've been from last spring.)

Journal quilts

Journal quilt - Della Alice Cruz, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Piece above by Della Alice Cruz. Shown at IQF Houston 2006.

(There's another one of this series here.)



Karey Bresenhan has written a book about the Journal Quilt Project (Creative Quilting: The Journal Quilt Project). I haven't seen it yet, but I love the project. I don't know if I could do a quilt a month myself - even a small one - but clearly other people manage it, and they always come up with some neat things. (The book is in the New section in my store - see link below - but I'll try to put up a direct link later.)

The Amazon store

Amazon has really made their little online "aStores" nice, now - and very easy to set up, which is important for the html-phobic like me - so I made one. To tell you the truth, I'm less interested in sales per se as I am in having a way to put up a little book library with my favorites. That part really makes me happy. On the other hand, if you're going to buy one of these books from Amazon anyway, it'd be nice if you bought them through my store! I will put a link on the sidebar later, but for now here's the link:

The Quilts Galore Store

Maybe I should have an incentive - like, if I have a fair amount of sales, I promise to take more pictures at the quilt show this year! (I don't know how many that would be, because I already take an obscene amount, but oh well.)

Deep Sea Shimmer

Deep Sea Shimmer, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Piece above made by Norma Schlager; from the exhibit "Small Wonders VIII" at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

Stormy Weather

Stormy Weather, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Suzanne Riggio, Wisconsin. From the 2004 International Quilt Festival.


This is in honor of the stormy weather we've had (from one tropical storm) and what we may be going to get (from the hurricane currently headed in our direction). Although presumably that's not quite the kind of storm the woman from Wisconsin intended to portray!

Are You Human?

Are You Human?, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Mary Fisher (from her special exhibit). From IQF 2003.

I thought of putting this one up because I found a link somewhere to Mary Fisher's website. There's some neat stuff in her fiberart gallery. Definitely worth a look.

Fabric-buying frenzy

I got the new Hancock's of Paducah catalog, and as usual, it was chock-full of gorgeous fabric, and I really fell in love with this one:



I don't really know why, because it doesn't really go with anything I've got planned for the immediate future, but I did. And they had four pages in the front of the catalog for this line, so they're really pushing it.

So I went to order it on the website and - can you see this coming? - it was out of stock. Now on the one hand this is aggravating. Why do they bother to print up this beautiful catalog and then not order enough of the fabric? It may have been something out of their control, like the fabric was late arriving from the manufacturer, I don't know. But still. Practically everything I looked at was out of stock. I ordered $80 worth of half-yards of fabric, and about three of them were in stock. Most of it said it would be back in stock sometime in September or October. I decided it would be fun to have all this fabric arriving in bits and pieces for the next several months. I still think it's a funny way to do business, but they've got me hooked just the same. You've just got to be in no hurry to actually make the quilt!


Note: I would give you the Hancock's link, but I think everything is still out of stock there, it's just too frustrating. I'm sure you will be able to find this fabric around, though. (Hmm. Moda's website says this line doesn't come out until September, anyway. That could explain it. But in that case HoP's website and catalog ought to have made that clearer.)

Patriotic star

Mom - patriotic star, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Billie Standley.

My mom made so many quilts that I'll never really have a real count of all of them. This one, for example, is long-gone - I think it may have been another community service quilt, but I'm not sure about that, either. I remember now seeing it at the time she made it, but I had completely forgotten its existence until I came across this picture in her stuff. I am not really particularly big on patriotic-themed stuff, but this one is cute. For one thing, I like that border fabric more than I like a lot of flag fabric. And that huge red star really pops.

Mom - double X

Mom - double X, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I'm not sure if "double X' is the right name for this pattern but I'm pretty sure it's what my mom was calling it. And y'know, I never thought I liked the pattern but it looks pretty good here!

Threads

I got a newsletter from Quilters Threads (which is what's left of the late, lamented Web of Thread, under new ownership) and it said, among other things, that Sulky and Superior Threads both had newsletters you can subscribe to. That had never occurred to me. You'd think it would have, wouldn't you, considering the way I adored Web of Thread and everything. Also, YLI has something that they call a newsletter, but, interestingly, if you go to their website, you find that it is actually a blog! (Which is fine, too. Maybe they think calling it a blog will keep some of their less web-savvy users from reading it, do you think?)

I have definite opinions about thread, and I have been meaning to write an entry about it for a while now, and I just hadn't gotten around to it up to now. Of course my #1 opinion can be easily summed up in one sentence, and it's this: Coats & Clarks thread really sucks!! I shudder every time I hear somebody say they use it. It just sheds too much. I hate it.

I tried to convince my mom to stop using Coats & Clarks a year or two ago, and she said, yeah, you're right, and we actually gave away all her C&C thread (somebody probably got a bag full of it at the guild auction last year) and we were going to use only the good stuff from there on out - and a month or so later I came over one Saturday and she had bought some more Coats & Clarks! She forgot all about it. Although actually, I think that story says more about my mom in the last year or so of her life than it does about anything else. And maybe about how people tend to buy what they've always bought. (I didn't say a word to her about it after that. I decided given how things stood, it wasn't all that terribly important in the grand scheme of things.)

As far as what I actually do use, I have always used a lot of Mettler - you do have to watch out for polyester vs cotton with Mettler/Metrosene, or at least I do, because I tend to forget which is which! (Metrosene is the polyester one, I just double-checked to make sure. But the spools look very similar.) I am not really firmly in the anti-polyester camp, in general, but I do like to be aware of what I'm using. I try to buy cotton, but I don't necessarily throw away a spool of polyester if I have it! I have also used Gutermann a good bit and it is fine. (And they also make both polyester & cotton versions, as I recall.)

I have gotten where I mostly piece with neutrals. I don't particularly try to match the fabric, especially when I am working on a quilt that's multicolored (which practically all of my quilts are). I usually just use a lighter or darker neutral, whatever seems to blend well. When I pieced my all-green quilt I had a spool of a medium green (sort of a lime color) that I used and it worked well. But I bought a set of neutral colors from Connecting Threads and that's what I've mostly been using for the past year or so. They have their own brand of thread, and I have no idea who makes it for them, but the quality seems good.

As far as quilting thread, I have quilted my last couple of quilts with Sulky Blendables and they came out very well. I also have a spool of green King Tut that I will try out whenever I finally get around to finishing the green quilt! The two seem very similar. Before that, my mom and I both got on a big kick of quilting with rayon. We used various brands - Sulky, Madeira, Robison-Anton, even Coats & Clarks from time to time. Rayon looks really pretty on the quilt and it's nice to work with. I stopped doing this lately only because I wanted to try out the variegated cottons, not because I decided I didn't like rayon. I will probably stick with the variegated ones for a while, though, I like them a lot.

Yellow Cityscape

Yellow Cityscape, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Amy Robertson of Massachusetts. From the exhibit Tactile Architecture at IQF 2005.

Louisiana Street

Louisiana Street, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Thelma McGough; from the exhibit "Tactile Architecture" at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

(Note that this is not a street in Louisiana, as one tends to assume from the name, but rather Louisiana Street in downtown Houston.)

Posting the picture of the Eckmeier quilt a couple of entries back made me think about how much I always enjoy the Tactile Architecture exhibit at quilt festival, so here are some more pieces from it.

Dim Lights

Dim Lights, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Harumi Iida; from the exhibit "Tactile Architecture" at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.