42nd Annual NQA Show

My friend Joyce and I got up very early Tuesday morning to catch the 6AM flight to Columbus, OH, with a layover at Midway in Chicago.  We arrived on time just fine.  Our bags, well, that's another story.  We were in Columbus at 2:30 PM, but our bags didn't arrive at the hotel until 11:00 PM.  Boy, were we relieved!!

This is the newly renovated room at the Hyatt on High Street next to the convention center where we stayed.

I am sitting at this desk right now writing to you!

This is the first stop in the morning!  Ah, Coffee after a short night!  What could be better?

Here is what we see out the window looking one direction.

Turning a bit, this is the view.  Lovely!  I love downtown!

We helped set up the NQA booth, printed and attached labels on CDs with multiple photos of each quilt in the judged show, stuffed the teacher goody bags among other behind the scenes tasks.

The theme this year is log cabin quilts and there is a separate display of just log cabin quilts as well as log cabin quilts that were entered in the judged show with all the other beautiful quilts.

The NQA logo is projected on the convention center wall next to Exhibit Hall C.

There was a lull at the registration booth for those volunteers manning the booth.

Here is Show Chairperson taking care of one of those last minute things most people aren't even aware of at a big show so that when you come to the show things run as smoothly as possible!

The Preview dinner was lovely.  President Judy Taylor addressed the group.  We also got to see a Master Quilt and it's maker as well as all the other 1st place quilts in the show.

After the dinner I worked in the NQA booth for the rest of the evening while those lucky people attending the preview dinner got to go see the beautiful quilts and visit all those vendors in the vendor area.

A busy, busy day.  We were tired, but what fun to be a part of the behind-the-scenes preparation for the show.  Hope you will be among those attending and that you will stop by the NQA booth to see the goodies there and meet members of the board manning the booth.  There will also be demonstrations by certified teachers.  If you are not an NQA member, stop by and join.  You will be glad you did!

Until next time,

Lois







Back Art

Most of my quilts have one fabric backs, but there are a few that there just wasn't enough fabric in my stash to make the whole back from one piece of yardage so I put simple stripes of a coordinating fabric either lenthwise or widthwise which ever was short.  Sometimes both would be necessary.  On the other hand, my friend Joyce has been putting back art on her quilts for many years.  The last couple of quilts I've made, I've done the same for a couple of reasons.

• It makes a more interesting back.
• The closest fabric or quilt shop is about 30 miles away.  This probably should be number 1!
• I have a LOT of stash fabaric that needs to be used not necessarily on the front of a quilt.

This is the back of Blue Skies and Sunshine from the last post.

Here are a couple of close up views of the pieces inserted in the back.  These are left over units from the front of Blue Skies and Sunshine.

Once in a while -- well once so far -- a fabric just doesn't work in the back.  While making the back art for Jeff's quilt, I noticed one of the seams lucked "puckery" which really bothered me.  It needed to be taken apart and resewn taking care not to stretch either of the fabrics.  Muck to my surprise, the solid black fabric tore as easily as tissue paper.  Unfortunately, I had jused a LOT of the solid black as it had been left from making 34 capes several years ago for a local high school.  Apparently, it wasn't the best fabric or it was just plain old so ALL the black had to be removed from the sections I already had sewn.

See all the other black that has yet to be removed?  It's in the upper left and right corners as well as in the lower left corner and a few places in the middle.  Unsewing is my least favorite thing to do!

There were lots of smaller pieces to be removed too.  Here is a detail of that.  Did I mention that I hate to unsew fabric?

At last all the old was removed.  Remember the 30 miles to a fabric store?  Buying more wasn't an option, so it was back to the stash drawers to see if I had any fabric that would work.  Fortunately, there was a large piece of polished apple black so a trip to the store was not necessary.

Here is most of the back art.  It is too long for the design wall so the bottom is laying on the floor.  It is also as wide as the design board and I cannot get far enough away to photograph the entire back, but you get the idea.  Part of the right side is sort of missing in this photo.

The fabrics used on the back were a lot of fun.  Here are a few detail shots of the fabrics.

Don't you just love these faces?

How about a sea horse or two?

I absolutely love the wolves.  I only had this small strip. I think I bought it to use the fur for applique hair.  I also love the "menswear" tweed looking fabric above it.  Oh, stash backs can be so much fun to design using those "oddball" pieces.

So, that's the back art story on two quilts.  Do you do back art?  Next quilt you do, try it.  It's a lot of fun.  I think the back of Jeff's quilt takes on a decidedly oriental feel even with all the fun fabrics.  He may even like the back better than the front.

Next time I show you Jeff's quilt, it will be quilted.

I'm off to the National Quilting Association show tomorrow.  Hope I'll see you there!

Until next time,

Lois



Quilting Quarterly -- Summer Issue

I was all set to blog about the back art for Jeff's quilt, BUT, this came in the mail yesterday!

If you are a National Quilting Association member, you will recognize this as the cover of the Summer Issue of the Quilting Quarterly, the member magazine.  If you are not a member, please accept my invitation to go to the NQA web site at www.nqaquilts.org to see how to join!

The reason I was so excited to see this particular issue is that inside it is this.

This is my Blue Skies and Sunshine quilt and pattern in this issue of the QQ.  This quilt is based on the traditional Jacob's Ladder block with a 4-patch border in my favorite colors -- Blue and Yellow!  The name came from the fact that every time I worked on this quilt I kept humming the song about blue skies and sunshine which is what we normally have in Arizona!  To me, this is a happy quilt.

Here it is on my bed.  It makes me smile!

It looks nice draped over this old pew, too.  The old pew is from the church I grew up in.  I was lucky enough to get one when the church bought new ones.

This quilt has back art, too.  I'll show you that when I do blog about the back art on Jeff's quilt.

Next week I'll be at the 42nd NQA Quilt Show in Columbus, OH.  If you are going look for me in the Membership Booth or Registration Booth or on Friday morning demonstrating half square triangles in the Medley.  If you are a member, I will also be at the annual meeting.  If you are not a member, we can take care of that, too, since I'm the Member Services Chairperson for the NQA.  Hope to see you there -- I'm so excited I can hardly sit still!

Until next time,
Lois



Sheila's Table Runner

A while back Gary's cousin, Sheila, asked me if I would consider making a table runner for her.  She would supply the pattern and the fabrics.  Once I saw that it was a friendship star which is not a complicated block and that there were only 4 blocks to be made, I readily agreed.  It would be fun to work on fabrics that I might not have chosen since purple was involved and it's a color I rarely use.  It was fun and really didn't take all that long to make.  It's just that I have to use scrap time for quilting since I don't usually have blocks of time to devote to it.

The fabrics arrived and I really liked them, although, I'm still not a fan of purple, these were attractive fabrics.  In fact, I love the yellow!  But then, I do LOVE yellow!

Here is a little closer look at the table runner.  Note the feathers in the yellow.  I LOVE to quilt feathers.  I had a tension problem, though.  Even though I had done a test quilt session for some reason my bottom tension was not cooperative.  (Sorry Sheila!)  I didn't notice when the tension was not correct on the bottom until after I was almost done with the quilting.  I hate when that happens!

Here is an even closer look at the feather quilting.  Did I mention how much I LOVE to quilt feathers?  It's my favorite part of the quilting on this table runner.

As soon as I get the label on the back, I promise, Sheila it will be in the mail to you.  If it were blue and yellow you would be in trouble as I might have decided to keep it.

 Just kidding! 

Well, sort of.

Hope it will look good on your table in your newly remodeled kitchen.  Hope you enjoy lots of meals around it.  Most of all I hope you like it now that it is done!

Here is one last look.

It would look better on my table if the extra leaf wasn't in the table, but when our family gets together it takes at least 3 tables and overflow, so the dining room table always has the extra leaf in.  I was in too big a hurry to photograph the table runner to take it out.  I do like the way my ceramic rooster looks on the table runner.  Hmmm, maybe I need one in BLUE and yellow.  What do you think?  Of course, I do have a blue and yellow pine burr table runner that "lives" on the dining room table in the summer so maybe I don't need another one.  Maybe I'd better just get back to working on the backing for Jeff's quilt so I can get it quilted.

What is your favorite color?

What is your favorite thing to quilt?  Machine or hand?  (This is machine quilted.)

Until next time,
Lois

Got Scraps Top

Finally I have the Got Scraps quilt top finished and have started working on a pieced back for it.  Last week I had a doctor's appointment set for Wednesday, but HE cancelled as he was sick.  Doesn't he know that doctors aren't allowed to be sick?  Since I had stayed home from work for the appointment I had a little more time than usual to work in my studio.  I decided what I wanted to do with the border on Got Scraps and then I finished quilting the table runner that I promised I'd make for Gary's cousin.  The table runner will be the topic of the next blog post.  I haven't had a chance to photograph it yet, but, Sheila, you are going to like it!  Your fabric choices were great!  (Sorry, had to tease her since she hasn't seen it yet.)

I had been in a quandary when I finished the inside part of Got Scraps which is for our son Jeff.  It wasn't quite as big as I thought it should be, but to add another row of blocks each direction was going to make it a bit too long, I thought.  I finally decided on an inner border of electric blue and an outer border of a black fabric with polka dots.  Here is the result.

I think the electric blue is just what the quilt needed.  I'm sure I would not have been happy with the quilt without the border.  It seemed to need one.  What do you think?  My quilts have always talked to me and this one just kept telling me it needed something to stop the design and frame the blocks.  Usually my borders are pieced and more "creative", but this plain Jane border works in this case.

Wait until you see what the back will look like!  I've been digging through the blacks and piecing more of the 4-patches into strips and blocks to use on the back.  No point in having a plain Jane back even though I did find a fabric that there was enough of for a plain back.  My friend, Joyce, NEVER uses plain fabric on the backs of her quilts and the backs could be quilt fronts.  It's also a great way to use up those fabrics that you wonder why you bought.

That's it for now.  Next time I'll share Sheila's table runner before mailing it off to her.  After that maybe the back for Jeff's quilt will be done and I can share that with you.  Stay tuned 'cause rumor has it there will be an extra day this weekend.  Woo Hoo!

Until next time,
Lois

Going In Circles

Have you ever felt you were going in circles?  I do a lot.  It seems that I get up, go to work, come home, make dinner, and go to bed only to get up and start it all over again!  Sometimes it's my mind that goes in circles -- thinking about one thing and then another and back to the first again.  Please tell me that you feel the same way -- I'd hate to think I'm the only one with issues like this!

This study in yellow that I did with an online group a while back must have been done in one of those periods as was the quilt in the previous post.  It seems I was obsessing about circles at that time or at least making quilts using circles..

Our first assignment was to create a design and do it in black and white.  This was done with various paper. I had to get creative to find the values I wanted.  Some were cut from magazines and some were even the inside of envelopes copied in black and white on the copier.

The second assignment was to start with yellow and add black and/or white to it.  Though the example was done using papers, I first mixed yellow acrylic paint with black in varying degrees and white in varying degrees to see what tints and shades were made when mixing the paint. Then the challenge was to find papers of the same color and value that were created with the paint.  This was the result of that assignment.

Our next challenge assignment was to use the colors next to yellow on the color wheel going either direction.  I chose to go toward red so that various values of orange were part of the mixture.  I believe I ended up painting some of these spaces as I could not find paper the right shade of orange or red/orange.

We were next to do the same design using yellow and it's complement -- purple, again using various values in the piece.  I bought a lot of scrap booking paper for this one.  The magazines just didn't seem to use much purple so cutting the shapes from magazines wasn't going to work in this assignment.

The final assignment was to create a small quilt using yellow and our the design we had worked with in the paper mock ups.  Since I LOVE blue and yellow together, this quilt is the result of the yellow challenge.  Apparently many people are afraid to use yellow.  I've used it a lot because well, I already told you I LOVE yellow.  It's been one of my favorite colors for as long as I can remember.  I called this little quilt Mellow Yellow because I think it is a pretty "laid back" quilt even with as much yellow as is in it. You may notice that the binding changed color with the piece on the edge so that it almost disappears. That was a chalenge, too!

What do you think?  Was the study in yellow worth the effort?  Other than the fact I wish I'd had many more papers to choose from, it was really a fun thing to do.  It did take quite a while to complete, but I was happy with the little quilt that resulted.

What is your favorite color?  Have you ever done a study of it to see what happens when you add black or white to it?  You might be surprised.  It is also fun to go what I call through the color wheel mixing two complements.  I've done that with fabric and die and the colors you get can be a surprise.  Try it, you might like it.

Hope you are having a Mellow Yellow day!

Until next time,
Lois

Square Pegs

"Be kind for every one you meet is fighting a hard battle." ....Plato

A few years ago, I created this little quilt with the catalyst "no squares allowed."  This was while I was meeting monthly with art quilters and this was the group catalyst for the month.  Since I'm a pretty conservative person, it occurred to me that there were times in my life where I felt like the "square" that was not allowed.  I'm sure you relate, especially if you think back to Jr. High and High School days.  Depending on the mood for the day, you could be in or out of the "cool" crowd.

As you can see, there is a square almost dead center.  That square is quilted in graduated squares.  The title of the quilt is "Square Pegs Into Round Holes Won't Go".  You might note, too, that the quilt is a 15" x 15" square.  It contains mostly circles and even the quilting is small circles.  However, the backing fabric is....... YEP, it's a small plaid with lots of squares. The background fabric is some that I painted.  All in all, I think it is a fun quilt that makes a subtle point.  Some people get the joke in the quilt and others don't.  It's okay, just look for the "square" in your vicinity and be kind to them.

Some days we are the squares and some days we are the cool circles.  Every day we have to remember that someone else is feeling like the square that doesn't fit that day and make them feel  like a welcome part of the group..

I'm glad you stopped by today.  Do you feel like the square that doesn't fit today or the cool circle?  Either way, you are OK in my book.

Until next time,
Lois