Wednesday, April 22, 2009

This and That

Here are the girls - "Goodtime Girlfriends" to be exact. All done but a label.


Yet more playing for me. I suppose you could call it a "sampler." I experimented with a few blocks that I found on the Blocks Galore website and just fooled around with various triangle configurations. If you look closely, you will see that nothing is measured. I literally made it up as I went so in some cases I had to fudge it. And the ladies weren't perfectly square, either - but I opted to cut on the lines rather than make them square because optically they would appear more square that way.
















This one is called "Crazy Loons" - who can resist that?

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I decided that I didn't have enough time to do what I want to do to finish off the dancers. They will have to wait. That and Kristie and Dorothy have talked me into entering it in a show when it's done.
But I still want to have something for Amy when I head west next month. I've been fascinated with the "Snail's Trail" block and had a couple of pieces of glittery blue stars so I started cutting away. I had some white and some yellow left from Monique's quilt so tried some blue stars with white and blue stars with yellow stars. I also had a lighter blue and lighter yellow so did one little star block to see what it would look like - thinking that I might combine them all into one quilt.



This is what the colours look like. My original idea was to put some of each in one quilt but when I looked at them like this I decided I didn't like that idea. The light blue and yellow is obviously too light for this combo and I felt the yellow just wasn't working for me here. But I really like the blue/white combo.

Then I realized that I had put them together incorrectly! Man - some days. So on the white/blue - I think I had five done to the point shown above - I took off the outside triangles and rearranged them. The block is supposed to look like the block below. Much better! This is a 12 inch block.



So this is what it will sort of look like when it's all stitched together. Yes - two different kinds of blue - no rules, remember? I was thinking of calling it "Milky Way" but now I think maybe "Amy's Comet." I'll keep working on it...

Friday, April 3, 2009

Central Alberta Quilt Show - March 28

Kristie rounded up her quilting proteges and off we went to the Central Alberta Quilt Show in Red Deer Alberta! Woo hoo!

This was my first ever quilt show, so I had no idea what to expect. Kristie said there would be a few vendors and of course the quilts. Well - a few vendors! It took us at least two or three hours to visit them all! I think they invented some towns just to put quilting stores in. I thought I knew of many of the smaller places in the province - apparently there are many I don't know about. Further - there were representatives from Abbotsford to some small place north of Saskatoon!

And then we spent another couple of hours looking at all the great quilts. I think we were there for at least five hours.

Of course we all bought stuff. I didn't take an inventory, but be assured that fabric, patterns, kits and gadgets came home with us! My prized find was a hand made (oak) lap size quilting frame. I haven't tried it out yet, but will be taking it with me to Mom's next week when we go during the Easter break.



So here we are - Dorothy, Kristie and Mary - at the Central Alberta Quilt show.


Kristie and Dorothy.




Here is the machine we all lust for. However, not being independantly wealthy and not intending to become a professional quilter - it will remain an object of fantasy for me. Not for Kristie though - she's still hung up on Jamie Fraser of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series! :)






Now - on to THE QUILTS!


These are just a few - there were MANY! We liked them all. I've posted pix of a few to give a sense of what we saw. Of course my favorite ones tend to be the brighter colours and unusual patterns. If it's a bit quirky - I probably like it.

Orlanda Brown - From Scraps to Diamonds
Here is a close up of the "scraps."



Loretta Anderson - Indian Summer One



Karen Phibbs - French Braid Mountains




Mary Halls - Girlfriend Quilt Sampler

This is something that I would do.




Terry Landman - Cabin Wonders

Normally I find pastels a bit boring, but I quite like this one. The detail is all cross-stitch and hardanger. It is exquisite.





Leona Thorogood - Blue Ice


Debbie Becker Mathie - This Puzzle Spells "Love"

We all thought this is one is very clever. Family names are arranged like a cross-word puzzle or Scrabble game. This is an idea I may steal sometime in the future.


Toni Wilton - Batik Beauty

And it is, too. No surprise that I like this one!





Orlanda Brown - 976 - 1 and a Colour Wheel

Orlanda apparently had 976 scraps that she used in this quilt with one repeat - she arranged the colours based on a colour wheel. Then she made a very elaborate colour wheel label for the back of her quilt - amazing work!






Delores Hill - Bali Cats



Myrna Wagner - Sychronized Swimming


Close up. This is a "stack 'n' whack" quilt. There were a number of them and they were all nice.



This is a close up of a quilt by Wendy Greber - Memories of New Zealand. We liked the shadows - simple but effective. (For my memories of New Zealand, go to my other blog (Amble Rambles) to the very first postings.)


Letty Docherty - Brambleberry Friends



Joanne Comeau - Flower Garden
The circles are totally hand appliqued - lots of work and she did a wonderful job! Apparently it took her two years to complete - with all that hand sewing, I believe it.



Eileen McKee - Jazz Attacked (long arm quilting by Cheryl Whitten)
This is one of my personal favorites - the pix doesn't do it justice - she used 950 crystals in the quilt. Close up is below.




Elizabeth Hanson - Sea to Sky Twisted Bargello
This was one of Kristie's favorites. There were a few bargello quilts on display and we liked 'em all.


Tammy Lutz - Puzzled
This was one of Dorothy's favorite. She liked it so much she bought the pattern!


Valerie Boada - Leanne's Wedding Quilt
This won a prize for something!



Pat Grismer - sorry didn't get the name. Pat was a "featured quilter" - she had quite a few quilts on display. She says she's been quilting for over twenty years.

Pat Grismer - Storm at Sea
I like this one because of the effect of the dark green "curves" that are actually straight line cuts arranged to look like they curve through the quilt.


As I said, this is just a small sample of what was there. We had a lot of fun and no doubt Kristie will be keeping an eye on upcoming shows that we can take in.
Yesterday I had a band of four women in - all from work - to have a quilting bee! OMG! This is really getting out of control!
Our company has an auction to raise money for charity every year - so we put together a quilt top - when the quilt is finished we will donate it for the auction. We plan to do one or two more before the fall when the auction is held. No pix though - too busy working! I'll make a point of having the camera out next time!