Bloggers' Quilt Festival for Fall

It's time for Fall Bloggers' Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side. I was honored to have been a featured quilter on Amy's website last month. 

The quilt I'm sharing for the Fall Festival is my most recent finished quilt, Lemon Pie.

I used a Piece O' Cake Designs pattern featured in Fon's & Porter's quilt magazine.  The pattern called for fusible web and machine stitching for the applique.  Through experimentation, I settled on a small zigzag stitch to finish off the applique. It was a bit of a struggle but a good learning experience.  I have since learned that The Bottom Line thread by Superior Threads is the perfect thread for machine applique.  How I wish I knew about this thread before this project.

I had a lot of fun with the quilting.

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The Bloggers' Quilt Festival is a great opportunity to see lots of inspiring quilts and meet new quilters.  Thanks to all for visiting my blog.

I'm back from PIQF

My husband's Halloween musical show is poised to open next Thursday, so it's been a flurry of activity in my household.  Despite the madness, I managed to fit in the the Pacific International Quilt Festival (PIQF) with my sister for a few days last weekend.


Here's a couple of awe-inspiring quilts:

This one was designed/drafted on paper and quilted on a domestic Bernina.  The back was equally spectacular.

The quilt above is by Gloria Loughman.  My sister and I wanted to take a class by Ms. Loughman, but it filled up right away.  Instead, we enrolled in a half day hand-quilting class taught by
Jean Brown and a full day landscape quilting class with by Kathy McNeil.

We didn't have a huge amount of time to see the show and shop (awesome vendors) but we tried our best!  You can find more pictures from the show on my flick under quilt shows.

Above is the class sample of the quilt we were making in class.  My sister and her friend and I took up a table at the back of the room - we had heaps of fabric which we were freely sharing amongst ourselves and snips of paper and fabric littering the carpet and pretty much what we accomplished by class end were the rock formations/cliffs in the mid and foreground.  Too bad I didn't think to stop and snap a picture of us working, but we were trying to get as much done during class time as we could.  I came away from the class armed with the techniques to finish the quilt and another WIP to add to the pile.

It wasn't all work and no play.

I'm 2nd from the left and my sister is in the middle.

When I have more time, I'll write in more detail about some of the things I learned in my two classes and a few tools I purchased (new quilting hoop, etc.).

While the Babylock is in the shop

Had to switch gears, pulling out the featherweight this weekend to piece some FWS blocks.

I managed to put together 4 blocks.

After debating about it for a while, I decided to not share Block #33 - Farmer's Puzzle here.  It looks way too much like a Swastika for my comfort.  I'm going to take it apart and turn some of the pieces around and will post at a later time.  However, you can see the block photographed with all of the blocks.

Looks like it might not be too early to start thinking about sashing colors.  Any ideas are welcome.


We enjoyed more warm temps and clear days through the weekend but now it's started to rain.  I love working in my quilting room (aka, the bedroom!) on a nice sunny afternoon.  I was able to grab a couple of hours unexpectedly on Saturday while my daughter worked at a fundraiser car wash for the school band.  I had volunteered to help out, but they had more than enough adults to supervise.  I somehow found a few more hours on Sunday after taking my daughter and a friend to the mall (I followed at a discrete distance as they shopped at Hot Topic, etc.)!


Here's my sewing companion ....

And my fabric storing system - I resisted the urge to straighten things up for the picture.