American Quilt Study Charleston

There was just so much to see and do during this year's American Quilt Study in Charleston...

                                                                 Chintz circa 1820...
it was great but I am still recovering energy!

In addition to the great paper presentations, show and tell, vendors and auction I took a seminar on the color Cheddar,

 toured the Quilt Exhibit at the Charleston museum (wonderful!), and took part in a round-table on string-quilts!

Add that to lots of walking around seeing the Charleston sites and eating way too much good food...it made for a great seminar!

I did bring home a couple of quilt tops, a quilt, and lots of books.  It is a great opportunity to get quilt history and textile books...the only one I missed was one on Chintz...have to go back and get it on Amazon.

I brought home Carpenter's wheel top from the auction.  It has a great collection of browns, pinks and indigo.

The live auction was a lot of fun and the proceeds go to support the American Quilt Study Group.

This is part of a turn of the century Ocean Wave that I picked up in the vendor mall.  This is my third O.W. so I guess you could call that a collection!  It all fits in with a program I do on quilt collecting...like how I rationalize that one!

What to do...

Do you ever find yourself looking at a quilt and saying to yourself, "I should like this quilt but I don't."

That is what has happened to me with this string star quilt that I bought a few months ago.  It is string...I love strings.  It has a lot of red...I love red.  So why isn't this working for me?

I think it is the red in the string pieces doesn't work with the red in the outside...makes the star look too fractured for me.  (trust me it looks better in photos than in real life...)

The stars in the corners don't have any solid red pieces and I like those a lot.

I could applique some vintage fabrics over the solid reds in the stars.  Could be a lot of work.  Or I could take out the corner stars and half square setting pieces and replace them with a different solid - orange or yellow perhaps?  Less work than the applique and it would give me four stars I really like to put together into a wall-hanging or some pillows.  Third option is to do nothing and either wait and see if I like it better next time I pull it out of the closet or to sell it to someone who can decide what they want to do with it....

Meanwhile Dobby doesn't understand what all the fuss is about...

A start or a finish....

Only a few more weeks and it will really feel like autumn...can't wait!  I have a stack of wool projects just waiting for the weather to turn...

At the show last month up in Columbia I found a new wool project designer..

it was only her second or third show.  She had her daughter and granddaughter working in her booth!  I've read through her pattern and at first glance looks well written.  

I bought this "worm of wool" from Shakerwood Woolens to add some fun colors to the projects.  These pieces are only 2 inch square but enough for a spark.  She has added some clear colors to her line and I really like them.  Sometimes wool can be a bit too muddy for my eye.

In the meantime I am trying to finish up a few Halloween projects for this year.

This is a little string pieced bag that still needs straps...should get on that today.  Also I have the tumbler quilt that only needs two more rows...surely I can finish that!

Of course it would be easier and faster to finish if I got off the computer and onto the sewing machine!  Have a great weekend everyone.  I'm off the finish something!

Getting organaized

The next two months look like they will be very busy so I am trying to use this week to get organized!

First I'm getting ready for the AQSG Seminar in Charleston.  I have one bag packed with things for the silent auction, another with some "show and tell" for the string quilt round-table/study, another bag with an example of Cheddar and some vintage cheddar fabric for the Cheddar study session, and finally a bag with some wine and treats for the room...yes, I know I still need to pack clothes!

I'm also trying to get ahead of the curve on my guild's quilt show next month...I made a spreadsheet.  If I just follow that I should be fine.  It includes everything from date to turn in the registration form to if the quilt has it's sleeve, label,

and labeled pillowcase...I bought a stack of pillowcases at a yard sale many years ago and just use them for storing quilts and for carrying them to the show...This pillowcase has gone to three shows!

I am only having four items judged.  I have five for the Bonnie Hunter Inspired Quilt Display...looks like we will have about 25 quilts made from Bonnie's patterns!  I also finished one for the guild crayon challenge.  Phew...oh ya, and I donated to the silent auction.  The only thing I haven't done is something for the Guild's Member's Table...hand-made items made by guild members are sold at the table.  Not sure if I'll have the time or energy for that one!

Things have been slow lately...had a bad re-occurrence of optic neuritis.  It is a symptom of the MS...a painful symptom.  Makes it difficult to drive and the pain sort of wipes me out.  It is slowly getting better so I am hopeful I can avoid any medical intervention (that usually involved steroids which are just yuck...)  Thankfully my show quilts were all at the final stages...just needed bind, label or a case...but I will need to ration energy and events the next couple of weeks!  So as long as I just stick to that spreadsheet....

Will ever finish binding?

Right now I feel as if the answer to the question if I will ever finish all the quilt binding I have piled up is "no!"

After making what felt like miles of scrappy gray binding for my jumping 9-patch I decided that combining scrappy binding with a piano key border is just piling seams on seams...too bulky and too messy.  So I went back to the fabric piles and pulled a blue, teal and green fabric with coffee themes sayings on it.  The print is tiny and gives the first impression of being stripes...like it.  So now I think I may name this quilt the "Caffeine Jitters!"

Next in line is my "Ribbon Candy" aka Smith Mountain.  This was quilted by Joyce Greer of "One Loose Thread."This is another pieced border so I think I'll stay away from scrappy binding...unless of course I have some large pieces to pull from.

Maybe some scrappy blue... again? !

So where are all these bright color choices coming from?  My most recent antique quilt acquisitions all seem to be along this line too...

I got this to earlier this month...love the fabrics and the varied solids.  Looks like it could come right out of a Kona Cotton ad!

The squares finish up at 1-1/2

and it is entirely hand pieced..

Moving ahead on all fronts..

Progress on two fronts...picked up the guild's next donation quilt up from the guild member who quilted it (Judy Rich.)  She did a great job!

Also started auditioning fabrics to bind my dancing 9-patch.

 Right now I think I'll go with the a gray but don't be surprised if I change my mind.  Seems I've used up almost all of the gray in my stash and I don't want to go out and get more so...

Anyways, I also got a big box of the Country Registrar in the mail!

 The North and South Carolina edition has a new publisher.

They are really focusing on quilting and crafts.  Like what they did with it.  Lots of shows advertised in this edition...including my guild's show!

Putting on a quilt show is a huge undertaking!  The weeks ahead I start having those university/college nightmares...like the one where you show up for class only to find out it is a final exam that you knew nothing about.  Well, add to that you hang a quilt show and nobody shows up but you!

Don't want to think about that!  Instead here is my final finish on this little-bit wall hanging.  I finished the binding last night.  It is a bit of an optical illusion as it is square...really I measured it twice and checked it using a template!  

Halloween finish and then some...

Yes that is right...two finishes this month!  Amazing...

This was started in a guild workshop.  It was an interesting technique but decided to only make a couch throw from the blocks.  It did give me a chance to use some Halloween fabrics though!

Also, got an Ebay quilt in the mail.  It is a fun pattern (Variation on the Rainbow Quilt) and I really like the green!

My "taste" in vintage quilts has really changed in the past couple of years...I was an "only pre-1900" collector but now I'm open to anything as long as I like it!

This was one of my earliest 20th century purchases...

I bought it because it was about to be used as a tablecloth at a gun-show and because the quilting is just wonderful!

(this may be a record...a full post with no pet photos?!)  

Bermuda Sea-glass quilt finished!

This morning I took the last stitch in the binding of my Bermuda Sea-glass quilt!  Phew...this is a King size quilt (note self: wait another year or two before making another King size quilt!)

Now I only have to sew on the sleeve and label.  My DH gave me permission to put "his" quilt in the show in October.  (hope the new racks are big enough!)

This was a nod to the Modern quilt movement.  I used white, solids, and a very geometric pattern.  The block pattern (quarter log cabin) is based on an antique quilt but the blocks are larger and have a different orientation. I really like the secondary design (Shoo fly) made by the half square triangles and the cornerstones.   I only purchased the backing and a half yard more of the aqua solid speci

It continues to rain daily here...have noticed lots of moths that I hadn't seen before.

This one is a sort of brick color with large "eye" spots on the wings.  I was told it may be an Owl moth. Very pretty!  We also has some Lunar moths and a very large purple one that I haven't found the name for yet...

Just a bit of stitching

I feel like I am making progress...just not sure on what!  So it  felt good to take a few minutes and make this block for V (15 Minutes of Play) who is putting them together for a good cause.

The past few days I've tried 15 minutes of quilting each day and have been able to get a few more UFO's quilted.  Now I am having to make miles and miles of binding.  Zikes!

Also, I sewed the last tumble in my leader and ender project.

Today I pressed them and started putting the rows together.  I may even have this done for Halloween!  This will go into my pile of projects for me to experiment my own quilting...like I needed more test subjects!

Weather here is either rain or wicked humidity...I'm ready for autumn!

A little bit of machine quilting

I took a look at my pile of UFO's and decided that unless I either won the lottery and quilted them "by check" or re-learned to machine quilt they would never be finished.

Since the first is highly unlikely I sat myself down this week and started my lessons all over again...

I think the new table is helping a lot.  My arms and shoulders were not nearly as tired after an hour of "play" than they have been in the past.  I am taking it slow...just one new stitch a day for 15 or 20 minutes.  First I did some plain cross hatching then I tried the wavy channel stitch on some "left-over" table-runners and small quilts. (by left-over I mean I sewed together what was left-over on my cutting mat after I finished a quilt...the purple batiks was a Quilt of Valor for a sailor and the blues was from the Bermuda Seaglass quilt.)

I still love the look of hand-quilting but not all (or even most!) quilts need or deserve to be hand quilted.  So just maybe a few minutes at the machine each day will make a dent in my pile (50 +) of tops hidden in the back of my closet!

Also find machine quilting a great way to hide in the sewing room while the rug cleaners work in the other rooms!  Love when the rugs are clean but hate the process of having them cleaned...sigh.  All the furniture is moved in to the rooms with the hardwood floor which means everything is what they call down-here-in-the- south "cattywompus."  It will be weeks before everything is where I can find it again!