Quilt Con 2015

 

Sarah and I traveled together to Austin two weeks ago for QuiltCon 2015. The whole experience was overwhelming in the best possible way. I think I'm still in recovery mode and my inspiration and urge to sew is at an all time high right now.

Because we didn't take any classes, we spent most of our time looking at quilts, attending lectures and buying everything in sight at the vendor booths. Looking back, keeping myself busy in classes probably would have been a great way to channel my creative energy and reduce my shopping haul! Of the lectures, Yoshiko Jinzenji's Simple Quilts, Bill Kerr's Details Matter and Susan Beal's Modern Quilt Documentation lectures were the highlights for me.

It was so nice to meet long time blog friends, Shea, Liz and Krista and to connect with so many other people who share my love of quilting. We also had fun catching up with our guild members for meals and drinks each night. For someone who would rather be home binge watching TV shows with Jon or listening to an audiobook and crafting away, I was exhausted after being out and about so much!

Unfortunately we didn't get out and tour much of Austin, but we did catch a few food trucks, the infamous Gourdough's donuts, Hill Country Weavers, Home Slice (home of the Mr. Roger's mural), and the adorable sewing shop, Stitch Lab.

Sarah and I with our hilarious Aussie friend, Melanie. We met on the first night in our hotel lobby and became instant friends. (Melanie is holding Happypotamus The Happy Hippo)

You'll have to trust me that the donuts were more tasty than they were photogenic.

 

Here are a my favorite quilts from the juried show. You can see my full album here.

 

Refresh by Anna Boenish

Bird's Eye View by Nathalie Bearden

 

Arne by Rossie Hutchinson

   

Coral Reef by Marla Varner

   

Do Good Stitches-Sunset Stripes 

   

Facets by Liz Harvatine

  Flyaway by Heather Jones

   

Full Bloom by Latifah Saafir

  Fuzhou Fujian by Patricia Lutteral

   

Grand Pineapple-Dichotomy by Alison Lee

   

Improv Double Wedding Ring by Natalie Sabik

 

Letting Go by Andrew Steinbrecher

  Mahjong by Leslie Schmidt

   

Paint Chip by Sarah Lowry 

   

Phased Circles by Michelle Wilkie

   

Pickle Jars by Jamie Gonce

   

Rocket88 by Latifah Saafir

  Spirography by Matt Macomber

    Steps by Carrie Strine

   

Welcome to Colorful Colorado by Katie Larson

   

The Knit Stitch by Dorie Schwarz

 

Smithereens by Emily Cier

   

Somewhat Herringbone by Dorie Schwarz

   

The New New by Amy Anderson

   

Tidy Towns-Irish Houses by Andrew Steinbrecher

   

Tiki Dilema by Jodi Robinson

   

Primary by Elsa Albury

  Lite Brite by Maria Shell

   

Las Ventanas by Kristin Shields

   

Knit Snippet by Lotje Meijknecht

   

Balancing Act by Amanda Hohnstreiter
 
Half SquareTriangles by Tara Faughnan

  iQuilt by Kathy York (winner of best in show)


Akhaten by Shannon Page

...

Modern Quilt Guild chapters were invited to design and make quilts with a predetermined color scheme using an alternate grid. Here are some of my favorites from the charity quilts. I wish these had been labeled with guild names and participants!

Dana, from the Detroit Area Modern Quilt Guild created this pattern and divided the sewing up between several members. I helped by piecing the backing and making a few blocks. Dana worked so hard to coordinate this and I love the design she created! The quilt was quilted by our guild's resident longarmer, Barb.

Quilt 1 from the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild - designed by Jenna

Quilt 2 from the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild - pattern by Debbie of Esch House Quilts

Pyramids, by the Edmonton, Alberta MGQ. Designed by Stacey Lee O'Malley

I loved the giant pebble quilting on this one. I'm going to try this sometime.

I love these pieced x's and also want to give this a try.

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Half Moon Bay Quilt

My little sister, who I still think of as being 8, celebrated a birthday a few weeks ago. A week before her birthday, I came up with the crazy idea to make her a quilt.

I had the entire quilt cut out on Friday and then came down with a nasty head/chest cold, which took me out for the week. I ended up cranking this out on the following Friday night and Saturday morning. I had just enough time to take a few pictures of it before heading out to our family birthday dinner.

 

 Earlier this year, I participated in an Echino Layer Cake swap and ended up with 27 different 10" squares of newer prints. The set I received has a lot of fun prints, including some of the linen blend and sateen fabrics. I combined these with some coordinating prints from my stash.  The Half Moon Bay pattern from Quilt Dad's Beyond Neutral book was the perfect way to highlight these larger scale prints and the background teal pulled everything together in the loudest way. I quilted this with my standard stippling and backed it with a super soft flannel.

My sister loved the quilt and my dad tried to steal it minutes later, so I'd classify it as a hit. 

Posted as part of the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side

WIP Wednesday: Road Trip Case & Hexie Quilt

An A2MQG guild mate, Amy of Blotch and Thrum, showed off her Road Trip Case at one of our recent meetings and it inspired me to make one for myself. I pulled together an assortment of Cotton + Steel prints for my bag and stayed up a little too late finishing this. So late that I made a lot of groggy, sleep-deprived mistakes. Luckily, the pattern is well-written and forgiving and I still managed to come out with a great finished product.

I've been slowly pulled over to the dark side of English Paper Piecing, thanks to my friend Sarah, and I finally decided to go big or go home. I pulled together a palette of low volume prints, gold, turquoise and navy fabrics and hope to make a lap sized quilt of three ring hexie flowers. This is definitely going to be a long-term project as it will require around 1500 hexagons (check out this great EPP quilt size calculator).

 

I'm linking up to Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday feature with this post.

Plucktember Project Bags

My husband likes to joke that every time I cast on a new knitting project, I always make an accompanying bag. He's right. Project bags are so much fun to make and it's so nice to have a favorite piece of fabric on display whenever I work on my knitting.

A few weeks ago I put together two large drawstring bags. These are around 13"x13" and hold up to six skeins of yarn (and the accompanying sweater and needles). While I love the outside fabric, I love the purple peppered cotton lining even more. Can that chambray be any prettier?




Since it's the second annual Plucktember knit along this September, I'm spending most of my crafting time knitting the Gnarled Oak Cardigan from Coastal Knits. I'm using Plucky Primo Worsted in the Modern Vintage color. This yarn is an absolute dream to knit with and the color is so vibrant. We'll be in Oregon for a week at the end of the month, so I hope to spend some of our vacation finishing this up.

A quilt for our new little neighbor

 

Last summer new neighbors, who just so happen to share many of the same interests as Jon and me, moved in. I never in a million years dreamed that someone who is almost as crazy about knitting and quilting as I am would move in next door. It boggles my mind! It's so much fun to have impromptu craft nights in each other's home after a long day at work.

 

They're expecting their first son later this fall, so I made him a baby quilt for his new nursery. The quilt is 34"x52" and is made up of 70 log cabin blocks on point. I shrunk this pattern down to size and pulled together a palette of fabrics that should hopefully match the nursery.

  

Koko had to get comfy with the quilt before I could wrap it up for the shower. She's looking forward to having a new playmate next door. She loves staring at babies!

I quilted this with dense stippling and I'm so impressed with the crinkle factor of the cotton batting I used.




The quilt is bound and backed with some fun alphabet fabric. The librarian in me loves using text prints for babies.

WIP Wednesday: Robot Patchwork

On Sunday afternoon, I had a cutting extravaganza and cut out fabric for several new quilts. Cutting is one of my favorite parts about quilting and I always enjoy turning a stack of potential fabric into a pieces for a new quilt.

I've got several projects in the queue, but for now I'm focusing my attention on making a patchwork quilt for our guild's charity project this year. My inspiration for this quilt was a fun navy robot fabric that I found in my deep stash. I pulled an assortment of coordinating orange, red, yellow and navy stash fabrics and cut each fat quarter into six 6.5"x6.5" squares. The final quilt will be 9 squares (54") by 13 squares (78") to make a larger quilt for an older boy. I've got a coordinating flannel that I'll be using for the backing and I hope to turn this into a cozy and comforting patchwork quilt. 

 I'm linking up to Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday feature with this post.

Cross Stitching Away or my fondness for Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery patterns

Lately, I've been on a cross stitching kick. True to Rebekah form, I found a new hobby I enjoy, collected lots of thread and patterns, and started several new pieces at once. Luckily I was able to finish up my first large scale piece earlier this summer. The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's Cherry Blossom Sampler was a ton of fun to put together. I spent many warm summer afternoons listening to audio books and stitching away on our back patio. The finished piece was framed at a great, friendly local frame shop that does quality work and I'm now hooked on custom framing.

Right now I have three pieces in progress: Stitchrovia's Vegetable Sampler, Satsuma Street's Pretty Little Tokyo, and The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's Halloween Town Club mystery stitch along. I'm eagerly awaiting the final clue reveal a week from Thursday so I can finish this up and have it framed in time for Halloween. I changed and rearranged elements of the third clue and adjusted the color of the house and door, but everything else follows the main pattern. I'm not really a Halloween fan, but the kawaii designs and pretty colors sucked me into this pattern!