WPT Quilt Expo

Boy do my feet hurt!  I signed up to be a volunteer docent at last weekend's WPT/Nancy's Notions Quilt Expo.  WOW!!  What an experience!  (Note to future self:  Volunteer for two days of docent and one day of a sit-down job...)

I saw something different every time I looked.  You NEED three days to see everything and then I don't think you see everything.

In no particular order...

The roots of this tree are zippers!!

I met this quilter, a lovely person, I took her photo next to her quilt with her camera.

A ROY G BIV Challenge... 20 inch blocks of a fabulous nature...

I like this philosophy.

More exhibit quilts

apologies for the fuzzy pic, this one won a ribbon.

I'll post more tomorrow.  There were 366 quilts in the juried exhibit, and about 500 more in other areas.

Quilt on...

New Project

Like I really needed to start something new, what with my big box of UFOs, but that has never stopped me before!  I may have said this once or twice, but I'm a process person.  UFOs don't really bother me.  I need to get that fixed...

"I wish she would stop blaming us for those abandoned projects..".

 

Our church guild had a request from one of our members for some quilts for a ranch she supports in the Dakotas.   It's a place for kids with problems to go and work on their issues.  My friend Suzi did a fabulous girls quilt and I'm working on the one for a boy. 

I made a pillow case to match the girl's quilt.

We dug through the stash for something masculine.  Our problem with the church stash has always been that we have too many floral fabrics and we always need solids and geometrics from our stashes at home or we have to go shopping.

 

Someone gave us a bunch of panels.. you can't see it in this picture but the bottom fabric is a wolf in snow with some dried grass and branches in the foreground, and some mountains in the background. 



 

We thought this larger panel (36x42) would make a good beginning.  We also pulled out the navy dot and a big piece of navy with a small gold stripe that may have been a bed sheet at one time.   I rummaged around in my home resource center and found a few more things that would work, then took a little trip to the local quilt shop (oh no!!).

I sat down with my drawing paper and sketched out a plan.  My apologies to the wolf, I didn't do him justice...


my extremely rough sketch... and the headache material at the bottom  :-(

The quilt has to be a certain size, and trying to make the math come out gave me a headache, but I have a plan that's workable.  I'll wait until the components are made, and cut the inner and outer borders the sizes needed to make it work out of the piece with the stripes.

Here are my go-with fabrics from stash and store, except for the stripe.  I don't know how I missed getting a picture of that one. 

Navy, silvery grey, gray with some blue splashes, a grey/tan/blue geometric print, a great linear grey piece, and for just a bit of accent some tan that matches the branches and kind of looks like marble.

Picking up on the shape within border of the panel, I'm working on some flying geese.

I love this print!!  The LQS pulled this one from hiding among the bolts of fabric.

You really have to love those quilt shop ladies!  They always have an idea for you... and this one was just the perfect fabric to go with the panel.  The shapes are right and the colors coordinated beautifully.

Now I have to get busy!! 

Sew on...

It's Friday!!

You know you're getting older when what you look forward to on the weekend is a nice nap on the couch!

I don't miss the days of wondering what I was doing on a Friday or Saturday night because other people had a date and I didn't.  Because my gosh that was a LOOONNNNGGG time ago, and my memory isn't that good.

Tonight we're back to doing my normal Friday Night Sewing Circle.  We missed two weeks because my aunt went to Ireland.  Yeah, the one where they have Dublin... and leprechauns and Irish Stew and all that.

I asked her to bring back the pot of gold and the rainbow it's under, but no such luck.

Here are a few of the things I did in her absence:

Ate lunch across the bridge project in Elm Grove.  Patched Works (LQS) is on the other side.

...with my youngest Granddaughter, Miss A.

We went to the Quilt Museum in Cedarburg. 

I made a pillow case to match a quilt my friend Suzi made.

I quilted - yeah, me! -- a table runner I started that was on the five year plan.

sewed a kit of the Wisconsin Row By Row from Quilt-agious...

and made a wallet for my quilt shop rewards cards from a kit from Schoolhouse Night at our last guild meeting.

So I've been a busy girl.

Sew on...

Paying for Vacations...

I'm still alive but my fingers are worn out from actual work.  Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to post a few of the pictures of my recent sewing.  Yes, I actually did some while on vacation. 

But you know what they say about when you go on vacation, right??  You pay before you go, and you pay when you come back.

And am I paying!!!  AUUGGHHH!!

Sew on...

Gray Hair...

When my mother was alive she used to joke about her children giving her gray hair. 

She had eight children but she never did have a LOT of gray hair.  She had one small patch of gray that kind of blossomed up near where she parted it.  Her hair was a medium brown, and it got a little lighter in summer, because she spent a lot of time outdoors.

Her mom had salt and pepper hair, that is, that lovely dark brown almost black, and streaks of white throughout.  Think Clooney or Dempsey...

So when my aunt said to me, you DO have gray hair, in a very surprised tone of voice while we were sitting on the patio one day, I wasn't surprised at all, except that she had just noticed it.  Maybe it was the sunshine we were sitting in.

I love the color gray.  Well, it isn't really one color, is it?

 Pantone says not... they have a whole group of grays, everything from darkest charcoal to the lightest shade of off-white.

 

 

One of those paint companies has this lovely assortment, from neutral to blue-toned to pink tinted.

 



 

Gray in nature is everywhere.  Consider granite and marble.  I love gray marble countertops.  Some day I might have that in my kitchen.  SOME day...

 

But back to my hair.  When one of the grands was small we were discussing haircolor and she said that I had "sparkly ones".

I like sparkle... I can live with sparkly hair.  There are lots of beautiful people with sparkly hair.  It's not really gray, it's more like silver.  Yeah, silver, that's better!

I don't know who Liz is, maybe I should, but I'm with her...

 

Sew on...