A Few 2018 NCW Quilt Show Pics

It's always interesting to see which quilts catch our fancy at these shows isn't it? Two people rarely end up with the same favorites that's for sure. I love things like scrappiness, playing with value, hand quilting or threadwork, an antique or vintage vibe, applique work, and words on quilts.

I was really intrigued by the simple yet compelling look to the mini quilt above. Lovely play with color.

This quilt was one of my favorites. Such a happy looking quilt! Really like how the flying geese break up the strings and add energy to the quilt.

Honestly I'm not a huge fan of butterfly quilts, but once in awhile they really do seem pretty amazing. This one had a lovely mix of colors/fabrics. Very gentle looking without disappearing into the woodwork. And lets just put this out there--I love cream as a background color....

Being a country girl, cow quilts tend to amuse me. Love the scrappy look to this one even though its a mass produced pattern and no doubt easier to do than it might first appear.

Antique lone star quilt. Need I say more???

I have a lot of admiration for anyone attempting to do a Hawaiian shaped applique pc. Did that one time {small block} and wowsers, lots of tricky stuff. Love the echo quilting too.

This was gorgeous, all that texture from the perle cotton stitching. Makes me think that I need to step up my game, but seriously? Would I really want to spend that much time on a much larger quilt?

Love bow tie quilts, love plaid, love value play. This was just something that pulled me in almost against my will.

Who doesn't love a good selvage quilt? Did you know that I cut mine as close as possible to the words in order to save precious bits of fabric? Then I throw them away. Ooh, call the selvage strip police....

This was flat out gorgeous. The colors, value play, threadwork--all of it. Probably my fave in the whole show. Really great quilt. I tried years ago to make something similar so I know how hard it is to end up with this kind of glow and warmth. Mine was pitiful compared to this one!

Love this quilt for its antique charm. Really heart melting quilt in my eyes.

Another one of my faves in the entire show. Lots of admiration for the lady who did all that hand quilting on silky fabric! Probably the best tie quilt I've ever seen in person. That blue and aqua combo.was a wonderful base for showing off those ties.

Hope you enjoyed seeing a few of the entries! Sorry about the woman in the lone star quilt pic. That was a vendor booth and never seemed to be lacking customers. If you were hoping to see all the intricate longarmed masterpieces, you came to the wrong blog. I saw plenty of those, but much as I salute the time and effort involved,  they don't tend to 'move' me. There was a few wonderful looking Blackbird Design quilts too that at one time would have had me drooling. Now I'm less satisfied with the kitted up look and don't find as much inspiration there. Of course, if they were done in completely different, maybe surprising color/fabric selections, that would be a different story!

One intriguing element that I meant to take a picture of was a couple quilts that had {scrappy?} bias pieced sashing. I try to walk through the quilt shows one time without taking pictures and just sort of soak in the details. Then I go back and take pictures of things that seem most interesting. Guess it slipped my mind when I walked past the second time. In case you missed it, the quilts that I entered into the show are in a previous post with all the usual blathering on about the experience....

Just Thinking Out Loud

I can't believe I'm staying up late to write this post, but here they are. All five of the quilts that I ended up putting in the NCW Quilt Show. I'll post later next week with pics of other quilts that caught my eye.

Scrappy Tulips

First of all, I went with a quiet but clearer mind this year. No 'comparison is the thief of joy' type of thoughts, 'not gonna nitpick the details', just a solid determination to enjoy. I'm a confident but filled with insecurities sort of gal and quilt shows can be difficult. The reason to do this is because nothing beats going to a quilt show and being inspired. By little ideas or big ones. Wonderful color and out of the box thinking. A saturation of the senses that is almost impossible to get strictly from pictures on the Net {especially when you're dealing with a camera-handicapped person like me!}.

Vintage Red

No ribbons this year which inexplicably made it all so much better. Wacko that I am, it was refreshing to know that none of my quilts stood out over any of the other ones I brought.*sigh  It's hard when people play favorites with our quilts! Scrappy Tulips {the first pic} almost didn't make the cut. The colors don't play nice in some lighting and it worried me. Turns out it was the one that absolutely shown under the lights at the quilt show. Totally melted my heart and I went back and stared at it several times. It looked sort of old timey, but sweet. Really, really sweet and dreamy. Why weren't more people staring at this quilt? lol

Vintage Red was one that I emphatically was not going to enter. Turns out I just couldn't resist seeing how it would look hanging up where I could see it full on. Oh my, did I love turning the corner and seeing that one. Totally vintage vibe going on which just made me smile so big. I totally nailed this idea! And well, I went ahead and looked at some of the other sewing details in others quilts. Uh huh. Maybe my mistakes aren't quite as horrible and blatantly obvious as I thought. Might have to rethink that one.

Quilty 365

I got a little jolt seeing Quilty 365 hanging up for the first time. That quiet looking stitching around every other block is a secret weapon. Can't see it in this pic at all, but all my concern over there not being enough stitching in this quilt were totally put to rest. I really, really loved seeing this one hanging out for others to peruse. I wished so hard it would have been where I could have stood back a long ways and looked at it from different distances. The colors/values do the dance thing. They really do. It wasn't just my imagination or wishful thinking.

Sunburst

I think Sunburst was in the poorest lighting overall. Yes, it's the brand new finish and looks so much better in proper lighting. I'll give it a post all its own next week so you can see how good the Baptist Fan stitching looks and sigh with me over the sweet look to it. Am I on a sweet kick? It seems to be so. There are lurking questions about this quilt, things I might have done different, but overall, it was a good one to umm, not compare to others. Not quite as complex as it appeared all the while I was hand sewing it. Funny how time and 'distance' change our perspectives.

Hills and Valleys

And Hills and Valleys was the other one that I wiffle, waffled about entering into the show. Turns out the lighting was fine for it, just not for me, the picture taker. Mostly I just wanted to look at the texture of this quilt in a hanging up presentation. Great idea as I just stood in front and sort of soaked it all in. Honestly, I'm super happy with this quilt, and yes, it looks tremendously better in person. It's kind of crazy that this quilt was made by me. 5 years ago, this wasn't in my wheelhouse at all--something to feel very good about today as I considered my growth as a quilter.

Don't worry if you're scratching your head over my enthusiasm, I can't see you and won't get my feelings hurt a bit. The thing I learned today is that I am completely, unabashedly making the sort of quilts that make my heart go pitter patter. Sometimes I worry at some of the squirrels that crop up, but a lot of these tangents lead to wonderful surprises and fabulous interpretations--things we might never have explored if we stick to the plan.  Every single time I turned the corner and saw one of my quilts, it was like 'Well, hello old friend'. Makes the effort and anxiety totally worthwhile. It's so good to get validation once in awhile that we do have a style, a look, or even a muse that is personal and custom fitted to us. And you know what?

This year being in the minority with that sort of thing didn't even bother me one little bit. So my quilts are softer, more simplistic, scrappy and naive looking. So what! I enjoyed the entire quilt show! All those sharp looking, fancy machine quilted quilts just got a different part of my attention. Maybe I'm finally reaching adulthood in my quilting journey? Please don't answer that. Thanks to NCW Quilty Guild for being so welcoming! I'll probably be back next year with another stack....

Just Plugging Along

Apparently it's a good time for taking a blogging break, the dog days of summer and all that. I am so tempted, but keep having one more thing I want to blog about first! I feel like I've been working in very 'slow mo'. Homebody that I am, traveling every other weekend starts to feel very emotionally draining. Especially the extra long days of driving where an eight hour drive unexpectedly takes ten or more hours.*ugghh...

Improv. Wheels getting a little hand quilting done...

Why is it that family always has a good reason for filling up our vehicles coming and going. Oh, you'll be in close vicinity, why don't you just go pick up some exercise equipment for me as a favor? And all of a sudden our leisurely trip is taking a detour straight through a traffic packed Portland, Oregon on the way home, instead of being able to skirt the edges like we normally do. That's when I get my hand work bag out and start stitching like a crazy woman. Deep breaths Audrey! Coming from a town of minus 700 people, traffic in places like Portland and Seattle make me a wee bit stressed.

Laundry and other assorted necessary, {but time consuming} chores pile up quickly of late, and of course quilting often gets shoved way onto the back burner at the least provocation. It seems that all the quilting getting accomplished here is with the quilt in the hoop or maybe a little bit of applique. Grab and go kind of stuff. I was so excited and looking forward to working on Improv. Wheels, but now it's feeling a little flat. The time spent with the hoop has been really broken up and something feels weird about the quilt now. Makes me compare it to what having a brown eyed child after having a passel of blue eyed children would feel like. Oh, it's definitely all mine, but still, I'm having to reconnect every single time I pick the hoop back up! It's probably just the normal chaos of winding down the end of summer.  I'll feel better after a good week or two of normal quilting routine.

On a side note, take a look at this gorgeous quilt below! A reader of my blog, Denise St. Sauveur, said that she unofficially followed along with Quilty 365 and then looky, looky what she did with the border! This is the flower block from my Vintage Red quilt just finished up this Summer. Oh my goodness, what a seriously creative streak this gal has. Wish she had a blog to see other work,  'cuz I love this so much!

A quilt made by Denise!

I am, as always, amazed and humbled when someone finds creative inspiration from anything on my blog. It's such a boost to open our email and find a picture like this or a note that says 'thank you' for sharing our quilting journeys in such a public way. Completely made my day. Thank YOU Denise!, for so generously sharing your lovely quilt and allowing me to post a picture showing this wonderful creation with other readers too. It's how we're all inspired, day after day, seeing different quilt ideas merge, blend and grow. I would have never come up with this on my own, but now want to make my own Vintage Red border in a brand new quilt project! Ooh, but there's just never enough time for all the ideas is there?

Hey Grandma! The Perfect Summer Finish

I told you. It's been time for finishing around here. One more quilt crossed off the list and it's already been used just this past weekend! Nothing like my girls having a sleepover for getting these medium sized quilts broken in just a little bit more.

Hey Grandma! a Finish

This quilt is 'Hey Grandma!', one that was inspired by a quilt hanging up at a flea market I went to last summer. It really didn't end up looking much like the original {tho I don't know for sure as I never took a picture!}. Regardless, the strange mixture of colors and fabrics were a direct result of that image in my head. All the lighter blue just happened to slide into the quilt in a sneaky, use-up-fabric-I-already-have sort of way. Amazing how it lightens and brightens and even makes everything seem happier instead of the moody vibe it should have had. There's something happening to my quilting where all choices seem to lead to a 'lighter' rather than 'darker' look these days, no matter what the original fabric pull may indicate....

Loving the odd fabric choices

The design is all my own of course, just another quirky flower in a long series of odd looking flowers. As you can probably tell, I often lean toward the traditional look of making repeat blocks in lots of similar but different looking fabrics. The border is Sujata Shah 'Cultural Infusion Quilts' inspired piecing and is easy peasy, but does require more fabric than I initially intended to use. Really fun to see the wedge spiked border pieces that {now} kind of remind me of a short little flower garden fence. I am so happy with the scrappy, make-do look and feel of it too. A pieced border doesn't have to be meticulously formal looking to wonderfully frame and add to a quilt.

A mix of machine and hand quilting works wonders...

This quilt feels like a fast finish for me, somewhere around one year from start to finish. Sometimes I just have a craving to get a certain quilt in the hoop and this one happened to fall into that category. Or maybe I was strongly avoiding having to make decisions on other quilt tops? That happens around here too, much as I hate to admit to anything so cowardly.*wink

It makes me smile just a little

I have one more quilt ready for binding and then it will probably be awhile until the next true-blue completion. Considering the amount of company, traveling, and other non-quilty distractions, I'm always blown away to see any serious forward progress in the summer.

Just another quirky quilt...

Sometimes I think the time spent in the quilt room or with the hoop must pass in a sort of fog induced haze, of soaking up quilty goodness just as fast as possible! You know, because it never seems like there can be enough time for any of it this time of year. August already???? 

I fully intend to carefully go through all my projects and re prioritize all the quilty lists. Sometime very soon because it's definitely time. Maybe even do a post on the fabric stacks as one of my readers keeps requesting. We'll see. I've got labels to put on for all the quilts entered into the quilt show coming up around the corner {and thread picking and trimming} and guess what? The last of our long weekend of company just left today. In fact, I barely moved the barricade of totes from in front of the quilt room out of the way before I sat down and started typing this post. It looks like we have two weddings to go to between the next three Saturdays which requires {TWO} trips down south to Oregon, from here in Eastern Washington, and lots of efficiency here on the home front to make it all happen without something mucking up the works. Yay! Maybe I'll just go lay down on the floor in the quilt room and take a nap... Why do we bother quilting in the summer time? Maybe we should just try and absorb the colors and textures by osmosis....

6and6in2018 is Getting a Few Results!

The 6and6in2018 for July crept up on me pretty fast. I've been working on my oldest quilt top off an on, trying to get it finished up for this particular linkup. It was part of a series started a very long time ago and one that ended up being monstrously large. So big {105" x 107"} that I never wanted to actually quilt it myself. Do you blame me? What was I thinking?

9-Patch Building Blocks is a finish!

For awhile I planned on having it professionally quilted and then decided it wasn't worth spending that kind of money on. I tentatively decided to hand quilt it and even had a grand stitching plan, special piece of batting bought and everything. Meh.  Still not feeling it and quite honestly, almost gave the quilt top away to a group of ladies I know who make a quilt every year for a fundraiser.

What was holding me back was all the hand work along the edge. That applique border took me forever and was something I felt pretty proud of at the time. It felt so creative!  In hindsight I wish it could have been completed fairly quickly so it could have been one of those celebratory finishes we all love so much. All's well that ends well though as my youngest son really admires the size and simplicity of the design. Yay! It's only been a year and a half since he got a new quilt, but if he likes this one, then I'm a whole year ahead of the gifting-a-quilt-for-graduation thing that I do. Bonus!

It's a big one...

Oh yeah, the details. I finally broken down and decided to sandwich and pin this quilt for machine quilting on my Bernina 740. It has a larger harp than my old machine {the backup these days}, so it seemed doable, at least in abstract. Lets just say that I will probably never, EVER do that again. The machine handled it just fine, no problems there, but the sandwiching, pinning and marking took forever and many more days. Ughh....  Not fun at all.

I used an orange/gold Aurifil thread for stitching and various pieces of green fabrics {pulled from deep down in the stash totes} to make a scrappy binding. It's all done now and washed up in a very loose, drapey feel that my son will love. After he popped a bunch of quilting threads on the last quilt {pushing his feet into it and stretching out like the total dork that he is}, I have given him the big fat lecture on how to properly treat a quilt: Feel free to use it, maul it, snuggle up in and generally wrap up and/or drool on. Wipe your Cheeto fingers on it if you must! but please, please stop with the gross mistreatment!

The basket is my favorite part

And no it wasn't old, sun faded thread or anything like that. It took awhile and much pondering and panicking about other quilts that I've gifted. Would people tell me if their quilts are coming apart at the seams? We finally narrowed it down to the problem child though.*whew! I take care of my threads and don't use garbage for machine quilting so that's that. This new quilt will be a great test quilt to see if he's learned anything or actually even heard a word that his mom said. Hmm... How does this even happen to a quilter? Not sure I'd place any money on this particular bet though and you can be sure he won't be getting a very impressive quilt anytime soon.....

Patchwork Triangles a new quilt top!

The quilt top for Patchwork Triangles is done now too. It was on the 6in6in2018 list as well. Just cut-off triangles in the beginning, but they certainly shaped up into a fun looking quilt top! So glad I challenged myself with these as I always get such a charge out of figuring out something to do with the orphaned bits and pieces. The sharp yellow solid fabric was bought at a quilt show last year just because I couldn't resist. Love seeing it end up in something like this! The top ended up being 62 1/2" x 68 1/2", so a nice sized lap quilt that could be a sweet gift for one of our extended family members some day. Loving the slightly vintage looking vibe of it all and feeling more determined than ever to keep playing with the castoffs.

A good border works wonders

And you've already seen the quilt top pics for the HaHa quilt. So glad that one is finished up and out of my hair for now. I knew it had to be on this list to receive any more attention this year, and yep, that's exactly what happened. I'd look at the list and start to feel guilt pains if I kept pushing it aside. It's so interesting that with some quilts we can't hardly make ourselves quit working on them and others? Wow! Such a slog. Never seriously want to get busy with them, although that doesn't mean we don't like them just as much in the end!

HaHa quilt checked off the list too

I haven't been keeping very good track of new quilts as this list has been more valuable for keeping me on task for finishing. There is never a problem with wanting to start new quilts around here so not gonna worry about that for now!

Washington cherries are the best

My cousin unexpectedly dropped off three boxes of cherries this afternoon. After making a few phone calls and unloading two of them {they needed immediate attention}, I decided to freeze the rest. It doesn't take much time, just have to wash them, pick all the stems off and toss the bad cherries. They don't even have to be totally dry before putting them in freezer Ziplocs and then later in the year they are a great snack for the {bottomless stomach}, youngest son. We ate frozen cherries like candy when we were kids. Junk food? That was for summer picnics and vacation. Linking up with Meredithe and Anne for 6and6in2018-July!