Spring Quilt Festival -- Chicago IL (Part 3)

And still more wonderful quilts....

"Spinning into Spring" by Judith Woodworth, Gerina NE is painted with colored pencils and longarm quilted. Her original design is inspired by Irena Bluhm's book and Renae Haddadin's DVD.

I am seeing more pencil painting and think it is a really interesting addition to the quilting world.

"Spring Revival" by Deborah Kimball, Baie D'Urfe, Quebec, Canada, is hand appliqued and hand quilted with embroidery, sewn beads and a pieced sawtooth border. The workmanship is exquisite and it is made of 100% silk.

"Spring Burning" by Ruth Powers, Carbondale KS is machine pieced and free motion machine quilted on a non-stitch-regulated Bernina machine.

The close-up shows the extensive hand beading.

"View to a Distance" by Ita Ziv, Pardes Hana, Israel; fused scrim and folded fabrics, machine pieced and quilted. This piece took Third Place - Art - Abstract, Small.

Inspiration was a picture taken from the Hubble Space Telescope.

"Three Color Study" by Alice Heckman, Kearney NE; fabric was hand dyed using a color wheel technique and three primary color dyes. Her design source was stated as French Braid Quilt.

I'm fascinated with these quilts; one of my recent purchases was Jane Hardy Miller's French Braid Obsession, which is a sequal to her best selling French Braid Quilts. Have the fabric all laid out, but it's far down on the To Be Made list....

"Crossing Over" by Cookie Warner, Fort Collins CO is machine quilted, fused and machine appliqued.

This quilt received an award: First Place, Art - Naturescape.

"Firestorm" by Carol Ann Sinnreich, Lawton OK is free motion embroidered, machine quilted, hand and machine appliqued. Third Place, Art - Naturescapes

And, again, more to follow.....

Spring Quilt Festival -- Chicago IL (Part 2)

There were just so many spectacular quilts at the show! These are some of the quilts that didn't appear to be in a specific collection:

"The Postcard" by Mary Beth Clark, South Elgin IL. This is fascinating because it is a two-sided quilt! Here's the back:

This quilt is painted, inked, punch needled and embroidered. It was made to celebrate her Church Bee's ten years of quilting retreats.

"My Wholecloth Sampler" by Barbara Raisbeck, Bloomington WI is composed of hand dyed fabrics which were long arm machine quilted. In her artist's statement, Barbara said, "Most wholecloth quilts have a center medalllion and the quilting surrounds the medallion. Instead, I based my quilt on a sampler quilt with blocks and quilted the design within the blocks three times."

"Pomegranates on a Bed of Gold" by Delores A. Kuenning, Moline IL (quilted by Sheri Woods, Bishop Hill IL). This quilt was hand appliqued and machine quilted.

The quilting was so spectacular that I had to get a close-up of it; the applique was done on a mottled pale gold background rather than the usual solid cream or white -- gorgeous!

"Autumn Rainbow" by Debbie Cimaglio, Gurnee IL is machine pieced, long arm quilted and appliqued.

This was inspired by a trip around the world quilt; Debbie decided to use a different layout by the same designer, Kathleen Starr. What was especially interesting about this is that the applique was done using her longarm machine. I have done applique in the embroidery hoop, but hadn't thought about this application on the longarm -- love it!

"Oh, For Henna's Sake" by Michelle Reasoner, Hallettsville TX is machine pieced and machine quilted and was inspired by traditional henna designs. This quilt received a Second Place award in the Embellished category.

I paid special attention to the quilting because Alex has decided to teach curved piecing at the retreat this fall and I will need to comment on different ways to quilt these types of patterns.

The quilting was pretty awesome!

More posts on this show to follow.....

"Why Are You Out of Your Booth?"

This morning started bright and early in that we had the very best of intentions to leave the house almost at the break of day to get to Festival in time to see the quilts before the show opened and we had to be in our respective booths. We actually left the house earlier than planned, but then sort of got sidetracked:

First, I wanted to see the Bernina 830 all set up with the Qbot...



Denise had checked yesterday with Linda Z's Sewing Center in Arlington Heights IL to see if they had that kind of arrangement set up in the store. I probably didn't NEED to see it, but being a visual person.....this 830 was set up on a small 3 ft. dealer demo frame, but I could see how things were hooked up and how the BSR worked with it all.



Someone had worked on the frame and some of the designs had been stitched out....

On our way to the quilts, we stopped in to visit Cheryl Barnes at the Golden Threads booth. Those of you who have either seen my Fluff & Stuff DVD or have taken classes from me where we discussed marking tools may remember my recommending the Golden Threads quilting paper, especially for difficult marking situations where nothing else shows up on the fabric.

Cheryl also has a number of books with patterns utilizing the paper, such as her "Quilting Dot to Dot: Patterns for Today's Machine Quilter". In the book, there are a lot of patterns, including some great holiday ideas; there are also directions for resizing the designs to fit your quilt.

Here are pictures of a couple of the many quilts hanging in the booth.....

Here are Cheryl and Denise in the booth -- they have been working together on designs for the Qbot. They are sold online, through dealers and at quilt shows; the designs included with the Qbot are from Golden Threads.

Then on the way back to my booth, I made a sharp right turn at this stunning quilt displayed on one of the outside walls of a booth selling crystal embellishments for quilts and other fabric arts. I studied the quilt, looking for applique method and admiring the exquisite quilting, and finally determined that it was most likely stenciled. When I asked the proprietor of the booth about the quilt, she said that it was actually a printed vintage tablecloth that she had had machine quilted.

My apologies to all, I was so excited about the quilt that I misplaced the piece of paper where I had written down the name of the embellishment business; I'm going back to the show in the morning and will get this again and this time, try very hard not to lose it!

Have to show you close-ups of this -- it was my find of the day!

Tomorrow we are going to make our best attempt to execute the plan that didn't work today -- leave early, actually see the quilts and get some photos.

Incidentally, the title of this post is due to the fact that something would catch my eye, I would dash out of the booth to see it more closely and someone would catch me red-handed (or -footed, as it were) and say, "And why are you out of your booth?"

It Started Out to Be a Really Good Day!

Hopped out of bed bright and early this morning -- well, of course, because I'm going to a quilt show! So I was ready about 20 minutes early and Denise and I got into our friend Carol's car and first headed to the shop of LitenUp Technologies.

Denise had started this quilt in the second session of AAQ Retreats last fall (the retreat that Alex Anderson and I taught in Livermore CA) and I hadn't seen it finished. Since the quilt was at the shop to be put on the frame for quilting with the Qbot, it was handy for a photo opportunity.

We left the shop and drove into Rosemont, a suburb of Chicago, for the Spring Festival. It is huge! Many, many quilts and vendors. I was pretty busy in the Unique Sewing Furniture booth today, so didn't really get out to "walk the floor" and take notes and photos. The plan is to go in early tomorrow morning to get a good look before things get crazy again.

We left late afternoon to attempt to beat the traffic (I know, but hope springs eternal) and were a little over halfway home when we decided to stop at a Starbucks for what elementary kids call a "nutrition break". We made a right into the shopping center and were almost through our turn when a lady made a left across three lanes of traffic into the same driveway and, unfortunately, broke that rule of physics that states that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

The result required a few phone calls, a police report and a tow truck, but nobody was hurt and we have worked out all the logistics to get us back to the show in the morning. That's the important thing, right?

I'll get in early and get some good photos to share the show with you......

Piecing a Quilt Top Today -- Hooray

Today I "hung out" in the office of LiTenUp Technologies, a company owned by my friends Carol, Shelley and David. LiTenUp manufactures the Quilters Cruise Control as well as the Qbot, which is a computerized quilting system for people who machine quilt on a frame. I got caught up with all the new things they are doing and saw the new pre-cut quilt kits that they design, laser cut and sell under the name 3 Crazy Ladies.



At the end of my last post, I showed a cute picture of Carol's grandson, Steven. Above is the quilt he pieced -- now, let's keep in mind that he just turned 6 years old less than two weeks ago, so he pieced this when he was 5! Carol told me a story about Steven: A little girl came to visit the house and his mom suggested to Steven that maybe she would like to sew or do crafts. Steven said "No, I don't think she would like that -- she's a girl!"

The picture of Steven's quilt was taken on the frame where it is smoothed down onto the batting and ready to be quilted by the Qbot. To find out more information about this quilting system, you can click here to go to their website. There are videos, webinars and all sorts of information on the website -- most of them done by Denise Applegate, who is the resident answer person. In fact, somewhere around the office is a large banner that says "ASK DENISE!"



I looked over the piecing in Steven's quilt and had to take a picture to show you that yes, those corners match! The pieces are all laser cut and Steven just matched up the notches and guided the squares through the machine.

This is Steven's block in a quilt that was made by the children in his classroom and auctioned off to raise funds for his school. Each child made a block, the quilt was pieced by Shelley and some other moms and David quilted it using the Qbot.

Here's a close-up of the border quilting....

Not to be outdone by a 5 year old, I sat down with one of the kits and started matching up notches and sewing. After I pinned every section and did quite a bit of sewing, Carol told me that with the laser cut notches, I didn't need to do any of that pinning. It was one of those "Now you tell me!" moments....

I did manage to take over a whole desktop and computer station, covering it with my blocks....

It just sort of got messier as the day progressed -- now that I know I don't have to use pins, it should go much faster tomorrow!

Getting Ready for the Chicago Quilt Show

Today I made some phone calls to wrap up some last minute details about the Chicago Spring Festival held by Quilts Inc. It will be in the Donald Stephens convention hall in Rosemont, which is next to O'Hare Airport. For information on the show, click here.

I'm pretty excited to be going to this show; I've been to the one in Houston, although not recently, and I was just at the Long Beach show last July, so looking forward to seeing the quilts and vendors here.

Mostly spent the day working, but in the afternoon my hostess Carol and I took a drive to pick up her grandsons from their ceramics class. This is the entrance to Stirling Hall where the boys take their class. There are various arts and crafts classes offered here to both kids and adults through the local parks & recreation department.

I haven't seen the boys since March 2009, so I'm watching the entrance like a hawk to make sure that I get my hugs before they climb in the car.

The daffodils are blooming all around the grounds; great show of color!

The youngest grandson, Steven, arrived first and was allowed in the car after I got a big hug -- it has been so much fun watching them grow up!

Bernina Store & Sew Much More -- Boardman OH

8:30 on a cloudy morning -- loved the style of the exterior, especially the clock that was just a few minutes early.....


The sign to the right of the door lets a visitor know that there is a lot going on here!



As you walk into the store, the fabrics and small quilt display on the left are the first thing you see; then, when you look to the right across the store, you see the machines, books, notions and other things to explore.

This pretty red and white basket quilt hanging up on the wall really caught my eye. The piecing is relatively uncomplicated, but the quilting makes it stunning!

There's the red and white one hanging with other quilts over one of the sewing machine displays.

An announcement about an upcoming class....love the curved piecing.....

The GO cutter was prominently displayed along with a lot of dies for it. I also saw some flyers that were announcing some new dies that are coming out. Way fast way to do a lot of cutting that would otherwise be pretty tedious. I like that they are always coming out with dies to give us a quicker alternative to our rotary cutters.

More quilts and many fabrics, arranged temptingly by color group.....I love stripes and polka dots so just zeroed in on these red ones!

This picture was taken aiming the lens into a cozy little nook decorated with quilts, kits, patterns and fabrics...

And the quilt rack where upcoming class quilts are displayed was very pretty, too.

The Bernina Store & Sew Much More is located at 7081 West Boulevard in Boardman, Ohio; phone, 330-726-9396. Definitely worth a stop if you are in the area.....