quilts galore

FYI

2009-11-04T16:11:00.003-06:00

I seem to have abandoned quilts in favor of jewelry, at least temporarily, and in case you're interested, I am blogging doggedly away over here. (I just threw in a quilt picture the other day, though - you know I can't resist for long.)

I did go to the quilt show, but predictably, all I bought was beads. I did look around at the quilts - I was most interested in the Tolkien quilt, which can be seen on the winners page. I also got a parking ticket, which may be why I am a bit grumpy about the whole subject!

I started updating the list of quilt shows while I'm here, but if it doesn't say "2010" on the date don't depend on it. I'm glad to see Houston is back to its proper place in early November next year. October 15th just didn't feel right!

Blog(spot)roll

2009-04-07T16:22:00.005-05:00

I would like to fuss at people for not putting one of those kewl "Follower" widgets on their Blogspot pages, because I've just been adding people like crazy and it does make it easier - except I don't have one either. I added it and then I took it off again, because I have exactly one follower and it looked silly. Of course it makes sense that I have no (well, few) followers since I am not really updating these days! Anyway, if you happen to have wandered over here, you might take a look at my profile and you can hopefully see the whole ton of people I'm following. I went through my delicious craft-blogger list and added everybody with a Blogspot blog who seemed to be blogging at all these days - and an amazing number of them are, considering some of them have been on that list for close to five years, I think. That's aeons in internet time!

Belated quilt show report

2008-12-15T16:32:00.003-06:00

I wrote this more than a month ago and I can't believe I didn't at least link back to it from here:

So, I went to the quilt show. I went zipping through the whole thing - exhibitions, vendors and all - in a little over four hours. (People who haven't been there and don't know how incredibly big this thing is will not appreciate this achievement.) I did not take a single picture - I didn't even take the camera, actually, for the first time in ten years or so. It certainly made things move much faster! I walked up and down every single aisle and at least glanced at every quilt and every vendor. I'm not sure what my aunt was talking about, about the quilts being better than usual - I will have to ask her. I mean, they were good, but I always think they are good. Here is the winners list, with pictures. Sharon Schamber won Best of Show for the second time - that seems to have become a pattern lately, actually. (Two-time winners, I mean.) Her thing is that she does really fabulous machine quilting - which, of course, you can't see at all in that picture. (Here's a detail from her other BoS, though.)

I only bought a couple of things, amazingly, and only one of them was a quilting thing. I bought a pattern (a pattern! I never buy patterns!) for a quilted crown, of all things. It looks like stained glass and it came with the stiff foundation material, along with the pattern, and it was just so cute I couldn't resist. I used to be known as the "Princess of Chat" on a forum I hang out on, and so crowns have a sort of odd significance for me. Besides, crowns are just cool. (Oh look, here are the crowns - mine is the second one from the bottom.) Then I bought a finished pair of polymer clay earrings, and a bunch of pewter beads - just spacers, mostly. That was it.

I didn't notice a lot of new trends at the quilt show, generally, but if I did, I would say that embellishments was one. Every other vendor had beads and fibers and paints and things like that. Oh, and you know what? I saw a surprising number of teenagers there. I hope that's a good sign for the future of quilting, because quilters in the 20-35 range are still awfully rare. It seems like there was a generation skip there, or something. (I'm aware I'm not the first person to notice this!)

Oh, and there was a whole exhibit of political quilts - some very funny ones, too. Somebody did a whole series of quilts about recent elections - so there was one with the Clintons and the Doles, for example. (Bob and Bill were having a chicken fight on their wives' shoulders, no less.)

Oh look, she's alive.

2008-12-15T14:41:00.001-06:00

I'm back, sort of! It's still to be seen if I will keep posting, but I've been meaning to post for ages and let you guys know where I went off to. I've been updating my Livejournal pretty regularly all this time and so if you really want to know the whole story, it's over here. Short version of recent events: hurricane, evacuation, flooded apartment, new apartment, new town. You know, all that sort of fun stuff.

As far as what happened to the pictures, that pre-dates the hurricane and in fact, it was the same thing that happened to several other bloggers that I know of around the same time: some people who exhibited quilts at the International Quilt Festival, but who apparently had never paid any attention to the International Quilt Festival's policy on posting pictures, decided to report us all to Flickr for copyright violations. I don't believe that I was violating copyright but after a couple of rounds of this I made most of my quilt pictures friends-only to stop it from happening again. I have gradually been making more of them public again but it's a slow process and of course it completely messed up this site. I hated to do it but at the time it seemed like the best option. And I meant to post and explain at the time but it was hard to know what to say. And I was angry and anything I said showed it all too clearly.

So anyway, here's a belated catch-up post and if I decide I have something to say about quilts I will post again. I haven't been quilting so far since the move, but most of the fabric and stuff survived the storm so I may yet! I did update the quilt show calendar while I was at it, and I have re-posted some of the pictures, but I think I have to do that manually so I don't know how far I will get.

(Ooh, there's a couple of pretty quilts on this page.)

Happy holidays, y'all!

The Five-Dollar Quilt

2008-05-11T20:57:00.002-05:00

I don't think I ever posted the picture of my mom's "five-dollar" quilt. (I should've gotten this up earlier so you could enjoy it for Mother's Day, but better late than never!)

(Click through to the big version to see Denise Green's beautiful quilting.)

Quilt pieced and embroidered by Billie Standley, from a pattern from Painted Pony & Quilts; quilted by Denise Green and finished by me. (I finished the binding and the sleeve about 12 hours before it was due to be at the quilt show!) This quilt is to be given to my sister, and then there is a sort-of-twin made partly from the same pattern that is mine.

Coventry Stars

2008-04-28T23:15:00.004-05:00

I keep forgetting to go back and check my Mayfest program to see if I can figure out for sure who made this quilt:

("Coventry Stars" is the name of the pattern, but they must've named their version something else, because I couldn't find that in the program when I looked before.)

(Added: the quilt is "Folk Art Funky" by Karen Watts. The pattern, "Coventry Stars", is by Jo Morton.)

I knew the pattern name because my mother had made a quilt using it, too. I initially couldn't find a picture of hers, but I finally unearthed one last night. (I have over 200 pictures of my mom's quilts on Flickr and there are still a significant number that are missing, which is just a little bit mindboggling when you think about it!) So here it is (and once again, click on the picture to see the bigger version):

Very much alike, and yet... not.

(This won't surprise anybody who knows me very well, but really I like the other one better than my mom's. I'm a bright-color person to the core.)

(And... that's funny, I coulda sworn I posted this entry already - but here it is in draft mode. Trying again!)

Mayfest Best of Show - Cathedral Windows

2008-04-27T01:00:00.003-05:00

This is not as visually arresting as some Best of Show winners I've seen, but it's beautiful workmanship.

Redwork

2008-04-24T23:04:00.006-05:00

I haven't gotten the picture of my mom's bluework quilt from the show online yet, but here's the redwork one which was also entered:

Redwork done by Billie Standley and Gloria Marquis; pieced and quilted by Billie Standley from an Alex Anderson kit.

My mom and her friend Gloria went on a bus trip to New England in 2003, and during the trip they did all this embroidery. I was with her when she bought this kit; it may have been in Brenham earlier that year. This has an extremely light batting in it - we were thinking it might be Thermore.

Quilt shows!

2008-04-21T20:54:00.002-05:00

Updated list:
Apr 23-26: AQS Quilt Show & Contest, Paducah, KY
May 1-4: Denver National Quilt Festival, Denver, CO
June 19-21: NQA Quilt Show, Columbus, OH
July 12: Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show, Sisters, OR
July 24-27: Quilt Odyssey, Hershey, PA
July 25-27: International Quilt Festival (new summer edition), Long Beach, CA
Aug 20-23: AQS Quilt Expo, Nashville, TN
Sept 4-7: Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza, Harrisburg, PA
Sept 18-21: World Quilt and Textile on Tour (whatever that is!), Manchester, NH
Oct 8-11: AQS Quilt Expo, Des Moines, IA
Oct 16-19: Pacific International Quilt Festival, Santa Clara, CA
Oct 30-Nov 2: International Quilt Festival, Houston, TX
Nov 13-16: Greater Chicago Quilt Expo, Schaumberg, IL
Jan 15-18, 2009: Road to California, Ontario, CA
Feb 26-Mar 1, 2009: Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival, Hampton, VA
April 2-5, 2009: Quilters' Heritage Celebration, Lancaster, PA

Annnnd I have to pimp my own quilt guild's show: Lakeview Quilters' Guild's Mayfest, which is this weekend in the major metropolitan area of Alvin, Texas (south of Houston). Hours and directions and stuff here. C'mon by, it's usually a very, very good show for its size.

Friday five

2008-04-18T19:11:00.004-05:00

(As posted on calicocats)

1. What is your favorite color? I like practically all colors, and the answer to this tends to vary according to when you ask me, but I have been very drawn to green lately. So let's go with green.
2. What is your less favorite color? Beige.
3. What is you favorite color combo? I love blue and green.
4. What is your less favorite color combo? I'm sorry to have to say this, but I loathe red, white and blue unless you vary the colors somewhat.
5. Show us a picture of your favorite colorful quilt (yours or someone's else):
Well, this has to be one of them:

Made by Sonia Brown, who I think may have a book out with this in it.

(I have already caught a bit of flack for saying I didn't like red, white and blue. Maybe "loathe" was a bad word choice! What do y'all think? Am I the only person who has OD'd on red, white and blue?)

Bluework

2008-04-11T14:07:00.002-05:00

Detail of bluework quilt, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

My mom's quilt - quilted by Denise Green.

Tulips and Vase

2008-04-07T18:21:00.003-05:00

Made by Irene Kahmann; from the exhibit "Hands All Around XXI" at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

Field of Flowers

2008-03-31T06:42:00.001-05:00

Made by Julie Hirota of California; entered in the category Innovative Applique, Small at the 2005 International Quilt Festival.

Fancy Iris

2008-03-26T20:17:00.001-05:00

Quilt above made by Doris Teixeira of Brazil; entered in the category Art-Naturescapes at the 2005 International Quilt Festival.

Buttercup

2008-03-18T21:46:00.003-05:00

Made by Holly Knott of Marcellus New York; shown in the judged show (category: Art-Pictorial) at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

Signs

2008-03-18T21:45:00.003-05:00

Hmm, well, flickr's "blog this" feature doesn't seem to be working today!! So let's try this manually.

Made by John Flynn. From the 2004 Dallas Quilt Celebration.

Happy green day, or something like that

2008-03-17T18:40:00.001-05:00

Here's a couple more quilts with a lot of green in them for your St. Patrick's Day edification:

Quilt above, "Rhubarb", made by by Karen Hampton of Indiana; entered in the category Art-Abstract, Small at the 2005 International Quilt Festival.

Quilt above, "Nebraska's Rising Sun", made by Sandi McMillan and Laura Franchini of Albion, Nebraska; winner of 1st prize in the category Two Person at IQF 2006.

-----------------------------

I went to the one-day version of the quilt retreat a couple of weeks ago - that is, other people stayed longer, but I just went for the one day. I was really glad I went at least for that long, because instead of taking those same blocks I've been stalled on, I took the not-quite-finished quilt of my mother's that I've been meaning to put the binding on for ages. I got that all cut and pressed and sewn on, and now I'm doing the hand-sewing on it, and it should be finished soon. (I'm usually quite good about doing the hand-sewing once I get to that point.) And then I got finished with that around lunchtime, and I spent the rest of the day cutting pink fabric. Remember that pink quilt I've been saying I'm going to make? Well, it's no longer a pile of uncut fabric; now I have a pile of squares instead, which should eventually become a pile of triangles. We'll see how long it takes me to get to that point.

I wish I'd stayed longer at the retreat, really, because a lot of people were there that I hadn't seen in ages and I didn't feel like I got to talk to all of them for very long. (Oh, and also? You ought to see what Cynthia England is working on. It's a long way from being finished, but what she has finished is absolutely gorgeous.)

Ooh, a contest!

2008-03-17T07:11:00.000-05:00

Dana of Old Red Barn Co is giving away a quilt. A really cute quilt, too, made with Denyse Schmidt's Katie Jump Rope fabric. You have until Wednesday to enter, I believe, so go put your name in!

Green

2008-03-15T16:53:00.001-05:00

It's sort of funny that I'm not a huge fan of St. Patrick's Day, because I love green. Of course the green color associated with St. Patrick's Day is, well, bland - that plain old kelly green, you only ever see that one exact shade, for the most part. Bland and boring. The greens I like are the million variations of nature, sort of like the quilt above.

(Unfinished quilt above made by me and unofficially named "Monochromatic #1" - based on designs in the book "Spectacular Scraps.")

I haven't been doing much quilting lately, partly because I've been spending all my time making jewelry instead. And - surprise! - this has included an awful lot of greens.

(This pair is made with lampworked beads from Erica, incidentally.)

I have a lovely pile of green Czech beads of various shades and finishes - I should take a picture cause they're gorgeous. I just happened to throw a few together and they looked so good I just kept adding more, and the more I added the more beautiful they got. I suspect that that encapsulates my whole attitude toward color, right there.

Fabric rhapsody

2008-03-13T15:23:00.003-05:00

Yike! How has it been 10 days since I updated? There has been some actual quilting going on in the interim, too, and clearly I just need to make myself sit down and write about it, don't I?

Well, anyway, that will have to wait a bit (although I promise to work on it today) - meanwhile I just wanted to point out a great sale - Ricky Tims' hand-dyed fabric is half-price - $12.50, for the ones I looked at, instead of $25/yard. And he's changing his formula, not discontinuing the fabric, so we don't even have to be sad about the reason for this! I splurged on a yard of this stuff at full price, back when I took a class from him a few years ago, and it's lovely fabric. So go! shop!

Strata Garden

2008-03-03T22:01:00.002-06:00

Strata Garden, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Scott Murkin of North Carolina; winner of third prize in the category Mixed Technique in the judged show at the 2007 Houston International Quilt Festival.

The Calico Cat brought home a picture of a (very) different quilt by this same guy from the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Show a couple of weeks ago - this one. Man, oh, man. (I like the one above better, though.)

Breeze from the Stage

2008-03-03T17:44:00.002-06:00

Breeze from the Stage, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Miwako Miyamoto; from the exhibit "Culture of my Country" at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

Churn Dash

2008-03-03T10:13:00.001-06:00

Maker unknown. But isn't it cute?

Peace

2008-02-29T07:07:00.001-06:00

I'm on a green kick!

Quilt above made by Suzanne Marshall; from the Faculty Showcase at the 2006 Houston International Quilt Festival.

Web of Life

2008-02-27T21:19:00.002-06:00

Web of Life, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Made by Ann Horton of California; entered in the judged show (category: Computer-Aided Machine Embroidery) at the 2007 Houston International Quilt Festival.