Quilt shows!

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.

Star swap blocks

This is what I've been working on - this picture was taken a week or so ago when I started auditioning sashing fabrics. I posted this on the calicocats LJ group asking for opinions on the two sashing fabrics I was thinking of using. They mostly said, use the cranberry (the slightly darker one) - but the fact was that I didn't have enough of the cranberry to do the whole thing anyway, so I ended up using the more pink one between the blocks and the cranberry on the outside. I did go to Quilts by the Bay and look, first, and they didn't have anything that would do, and I didn't want to wait to get anything from elsewhere, so I went with what I had. The pink(ish) one is the one I really intended to use in the first place, and obviously I spent some time second-guessing myself, but I think it's going to work fine after all.

Swap blocks made by members of Lakeview Quilters Guild, 2006. (There are three more blocks besides these, and they are destined to become a table runner.)

Angels Watching Over Me

Quilt above made by Billie Standley, from a block of the month by Sue Garman. Shown at Lakeview Quilters Guild's Mayfest quilt show.


I'm never quite sure exactly how all the membership stuff works with The Quilt Show, but if you are a "star member" you can get a free block of the month (no, not the one above; it's a new one) from Sue Garman. If you do applique, it's definitely worth taking a look at - it's very pretty. I was amused by this blog post where they were amazed at how quick Sue got her sample done, because I know Sue in real life, and believe me, that's just how she is. She's possibly the most driven person I know, and that's saying something. But that's probably a good quality in a pattern designer! and her designs are beautiful. (In case you can't get to those posts on Ricky and Alex's site, there's also a picture of the quilt here.)


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


Sometimes I have to show you interesting crafty things even if they're not quilts, and here's a rather unusual example: a knitted dissected frog (from Boing Boing, of all places).

And on a different note - if you're into sewing clothes, Pattern Review has 2007's Best Patterns.

Shades of Captain Nemo

Shades of Captain Nemo, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

I always liked this quilt a lot. I guess other people did too, because it won Viewer's Choice at our guild's quilt show - that must've been in 1998, because it also was at IQF in 1998. Made by Carolyn Allison.

(I couldn't've told you its name if I didn't have it written down somewhere - I always thought of it as the Squid Quilt!)

Que Bee auction quilt

Que Bee auction quilt, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above shown at Lakeview Quilters Guild's Mayfest quilt show. Appliqued by the Lakeview Quilters Guild 'Que Bee, and quilted by Denise Green.

I love the brown background on this.

Wow, a guild report

I haven't been to quilt guild in ages, but I went last night. I wanted to see the speaker, and I also thought it might be easier to go now and get it over with, if you know what I mean. I thought if I avoided it now I might tend more to avoid it later, somehow. But it was alright. Not everybody knows me well enough to immediately make the connection, and I'd already seen a lot of the ones who did at the funeral. I have had this fear - I had it before the funeral, too - that I would burst into tears every time somebody told me about how much they loved my mother and how special she was and stuff, but it mostly turns out that I don't, so that makes it somewhat easier. Thinking about it beforehand made me cry, but when it happens (and it's happened quite a lot - people did really love my mother and she was special) I finally realized that all I have to do is just smile and say "thank you."

So anyway, the speaker was Yvonne Porcella. (I love a lot of her quilts, but oddly, I don't seem to have any pictures of them at all. There's a gallery at the link above, though.) She was an interesting speaker, if maybe not the greatest one I've ever seen. However, she has been quilting forever - 1962! she doesn't look old enough to have been quilting in 1962, even assuming she was pretty young then - and she has some good stories, like how she made a Julia Child tribute quilt, and got to meet her. Also, I think she is the only professional quilter I've ever heard talk who admits to working the way I do! - that is, without a plan or a pattern, although it sounds like she takes it much further than I do, really. I'm glad I went.

Rented Strings

Rented Strings, originally uploaded by Mellicious.

Quilt above made by Jo Lynn O'Neil. Shown at Lakeview Quilters Guild's Mayfest quilt show.

Be sure to click over to the Flickr page and read the blurb about how this quilt came to be. Man, *I* want a month alone with that tub of batiks!!

Important question: Do you guys like the new format with the bigger pictures, or is it just overwhelming? I think I like them, but I am open to majority opinion on this. (It doesn't work right on pictures in landscape format, though - at least, I can't figure out a way to resize the column so that it does, so far. I have been manually going in and resizing the pictures when they're landscape.)

Ann Fahl

Ann Fahl roses

Ann Fahl was the speaker at my guild a while back, and I didn't think I'd ever heard of her. I really liked her quilts, though, and a lot of them looked awfully familiar, and when I looked in my pictures later I found that I had taken pictures of several of her quilts at festival over the years. (Like the water lily below.)

(I love that rose quilt in general, but I also want that border fabric. Bad. Anybody know where I can get it?)