Quilt Expo, part 3

More from the Quilter's Expo 2016...

It's Flying Geese... with actual geese!!

Just amazing. More tomorrow!!

Quilt Show Goodness, pt. 2

More from the Quilters Unlimited 43rd Annual Quilt Show, 2016:

There are sparkles all over this one!

"Well, they knew you'd never be back." Lol!!!

Quilt Show Photos!!

I'm going to break these up over a few days. These are photos of some of the quilts from the 43rd Annual Quilt Show at the Dulles Expo (Quilters Unlimited).

Close up:

Quilt Show!

Totally, TOTALLY going to this this year, I've missed it since 2010!!



And, totally unrelated, I snapped this and really need to turn it into a valentine or something:

Let's Pretend!

Quilt progress:


Yes, this is a completely different quilt than the last one I showed you.

NO, I haven't finished the tumbling blocks quilt.

STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT, YOU KNOW I HAVE INCURABLE STARTITIS...

...you can pretend you've seen it before, right?

Starting to Quilt Again

Last month, I discovered a new quilt store in Fairfax: The Quilter's Studio on Main Street. I went a few times, just to look at the pretty, then fell prey to a Moda charm pack, "April Showers":


I managed to lose all my templates in my house (naturally), so I made a 60-degree diamond. Hooray for protractors! More yay that I was actually able to find my protractor!



So, I had a template, so I cut out all the pieces. (All of them.)


Then I started piecing by hand. As I have a hate/hate relationship with my sewing machine, I tend to hand piece and hand quilt unless forced to do otherwise. (Yes, that happens.) I was able to eyeball my seams darned well, thankyouverymuch.



And then the ironing.


Now it's a case of assembling all the blocks into one giant thing. And then figuring out how to attach the batting and backing to something with really weird edges. And then I get to quilt it all...

... or stuff it in the bin with my other two finished quilt tops and hope they somehow transform into quilts on their own.

Yeah, that last option is probably closer to what will actually happen. But maybe not, we'll see!

Imaginary Woodlawn!!

Bonus Weekend Post!!

The knitters get to have Imaginary Rhinebeck; now the stitchers get Imaginary Woodlawn! The lovely folks of Nelly's Needlers (the group that runs the show each year) have posted photos of everything on the 'net!

Go see!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/preservationnation/sets/72157623455198693/

Now I know in advance which pieces I'm hunting down and getting the information on... or, rather, saying "Sarah Leigh, can you find...?"

SmarTrip Scarf, Take II

Let's see. Will have a "less knitting" week on the Monster Yarn Stitch Pattern project, since I got lots of patterns done in time for yesterday.

Had to rethink (and then restart) the SmarTrip Scarf - it's now 120 stitches, k1p1, in the round. I didn't like the way the edges looked, and being doubled up will make it even warmer. It will also now be possible to knit it from one end to the other, with a split-pocket in the center for the neck-part (and Secret Pockets! with Zippers!!). Bought four more skeins of yarn, since it appears I'll be knitting this thing forever - after most of the week, I've gotten six ENTIRE stripes done. Yowza!


Got the "Star" panel of the Hello Kitty scarf done - this one is my design again, but goes nicely with the Hello Kitties and Flower of the original pattern. Really hating the edge of this, too, so got more pink/black yarn (hey, I was buying black & green yarn anyway, and the Caron Supersoft was 2/$5!) and I'm going to do the reverse-negative designs for the "back" of the scarf, and then crochet the whole thing together and fringe it. So, basically, I'm knitting this scarf twice, but it should look good. And it'll be warm, which the single-layer might not have been.




My Pattern
Helped my mom tie a quick quilt for my godbrother (well, her godson - I think we've decided we're godcousins, maybe?). She also whipped up some matching pillow cases and curtains, and we got that in the mail to his new home. We tried to keep it somewhat grownup, since he's twelve, and starting to get sensitive about things that are too babyish.



And, finally, got a hook on the back of my front door, which should help with the Pile of Coats problem that was starting to annoy me (sometime in 2004). Home improvement sometimes takes running into The Perfect Coat-Hook Thing for $4 at Marshall's.


I also finished something last weekend, but I didn't get decent photos, so you'll see that on Monday. Wheee!

A tiny quilted finish - BEFORE the holidays!

... And the end of the finishing spate. This is a tiny little quilt that, while being pieced, fit in the pocket of my jeans. Or the side pocket of my bag. Or what have you. It's scraps left over from another project, hand-pieced with thread left over from various cross-stitch projects. The back and binding were bought special, as was the gold and red sparkly floss for the actual quilting, and thread-wrapping on the back. I really like the way it came out, especially since I was winging it on the quilting! Don't know if I'll ever use it as a chessboard, since I can't find any of my chess pieces just now, but it's a nice little holiday accent - and, oh, FINISHED!!!


front - the chessboard


back - the stylized tree

Other Crafts Tuesday: Quilting!

So, this weekend, in between Waiting for Friends and Driving to See Friends (and amazingly adorable baby), I found myself looking at a shelf I'd forgotten I had. There were projects on it. One of them was a red/gold/green marbled-fabric chessboard, hand pieced, hand quilted. Or, rather, it would be hand-pieced and hand quilted, if I'd ever gotten around to finishing it.

When I had last put it away, I had carefully laid out the pieces, in order (remember, this is sixty-four small squares), and rolled up the paper towels. Since I had various blocks sewn together, more or less, in groups of four or more, I used two sets of towels, marking one "RIGHT" and one "LEFT".


(I even blogged about it, which I'd forgotten.) See, before, I was just carrying around some quilting needles, a small bag of fabric squares, and some embroidery floss left over from other projects that wasn't quite enough to use for anything *but* hand piecing, because it wouldn't last long in a cross-stitch project. (Maybe a TW - sometimes, you just need a few stitches in a particular color.) So, when trying to make sure that Block-of-Six-A didn't have the same colors side-by-side as Block-of-Four-B, I could give myself kittens.

This time, when I unrolled the paper towel, I could see which seams still needed to be done, and as long as I made note of which corner would be "up" and "left" of the seamed set, I was fine. Everything went swimmingly - so, I did a few seams Friday, a few Saturday, a few Sunday, and the FINAL ONE on Monday.


Then I needed to find some batting and something for backing. Now, I know these things are in my house. I even have a pretty good idea *where* they are in my house... they're just completely inaccessible at the moment. For a while, they weren't - I had the batting and such out in the main room, just in case I suddenly needed to quilt something, or stuff, say, a small knitted rabbit. Oh, and some binding. Something shiny and festive. And the gold thread I was going to use to quilt the design on would be nice, too, and the vanishing marking pen for the drawing thereof... all these things, and I can't reach any of them, but I really COULD finish this thing before the end of August! So, what did I do?




I ACTUALLY FOUND IT! I was able to reach, from the doorway of the craft room, both a roll of batting (the kind I actually wanted!) and the cloth I got at the 2008 Quilters' Expo. Of that cloth, there were two bundles of green, and of the "less olive-y" bunch, there were two almost identical pieces, so one of them is the backing - you can see it around the pieced board above. Really, it's a miracle I was able to find ANYTHING when I needed it in my craft room.




Anyway, I commenced the actual quilting, with the help of the right-sized set of Q-Snaps (ALSO FOUND!!!!), and just need to pick up some shiny gold binding on Saturday morning, and I think I'll FINALLY have one of my quilting UFOs off The List!

Almost a Snow Day, Part II

Last night, my mom surprised me with something she'd picked up at a book sale:


Quilts Galore! by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes
I was really, really hoping today would be a Snow Day, so I could stay home and read it - but the Federal government rarely closes down, so it just took an extra two hours to get to work. I was almost an hour late - despite leaving two hours early:


approaching this bus stop, just before 5:30 a.m.
It's a half-hour walk in ice like this!
Luckily, I know the sun will be back soon. Until then, look at this pretty picture of balloons that were trapped in a tree on January 21st, the day after the Inauguration:


Still wish I could've stayed home and read the quilting book.

A break from rabbits and knitting

In the post-rabbit reorganization of my living space and yarn, I actually found the Christmas Chessboard (one of the eight things that might be finished before the end of the year, if I could only find it.) I laid it out on the big table at work Monday morning, to see if I could actually get the squares alternate. I think you'd have to have a pretty good memory to actually play chess on it, to be honest; there's not a clear divvy-up of light and dark squares. Checkers would probably work, because you'd just stay on your diagonals... or it might just end up being A Pretty Thing. Whatever, it's hand-pieced, and it'll be hand-quilted, eventually.


I keep not getting much done on it because every time I pick it up, I have to figure out how the heck it all goes together again. Not this time! With the use of technology (a.k.a. "paper towels from the break room"), I was able to keep everything as it should be. I don't know why this didn't occur to me before; I use a huge felt-covered cardboard tube and muslin to keep my other (much larger) pieced things in order. *Sigh.*


Hopefully, I'll get this thing pieced once and for all so I can get on with the (very simple) quilting!!). Because, heck, it would be nice to finish *something* quilted this year, right?