The Polka Dot Debutante

This next one was started in my Encapsulated class at Quilt Camp. I really like how she changed it from my original pattern. Linda's was also very inventive but my camera died before I could get a picture.

Each one of us can set our own parameters for our challenge. I decided to do 5 journal size pieces each representing a fundamental influence in my life. I also want to use a new technique in each piece. So in order to wrap my head around this, I'm really not thinking about magenta at all, just about light, medium and dark. And I'm trying not to be too literal, which is a tendency. So here is my first piece:

Usually I'm so careful about drawing out my designs on graph paper when I am working on a new quilt. I really admire women who just start make parts, put them up on the design wall, and somehow make everything fit together, but I tend to be more of a planner. Quilt designs fit together like a puzzle and so the pieces need to be the right size. It just makes sense to me to check your math before you start cutting out fabric. Right?

Well the one time I decide to just fly by the seat of my pants, I get a reminder of the importance of math in quilting. I wanted to try something fun with the leftover rectangles from the Sushi Rolls quilt. I just love that Bow Wow Chow Mien fabric and was itching to use those cute little rectangles. I decided to add colored triangles in the corners so I would get these diagonally lines of color. Well it worked just fine until I started sewing the rows together. Here's what I got.

Got those great lines of colored triangles but the sides of the piece don't line up at all. Turns out I should have checked to make sure that the length of the rectangle was twice the width. But I didn't. :( So now I'm going to have to whack off the sides in order to straighten it out. Then it will look like this.

Last weekend I went out to LaGrande, OR to teach the Round Division class to the Quilt Questers guild. Vivienne and I drove out Friday afternoon and spent the night with Mike and Earlene Lamb. They live in this wonderful house that is shaped like an octagon and has a gorgeous view of the valley.

We had a wonderful dinner with Mike, Earlene, Regina and Jeri. Good food, conversation and laughter.
The next day was the class. There were 19 students and everyone brought very different fabrics. We spent lots of time in the morning going through everyone's pile and refining their two complementary fabric groups. By the end of the day, some great blocks were up on the wall. Here are a few samples.

And finally, many thanks to Earlene for hosting Vivienne and I. We both had a wonderful time with you and the guild and hope to come back next year. Happy Sewing!

I don't know if I've written about Cover to Cover here yet and so for the uninformed: Cover to Cover is a group of quilters who all read the same book and then each member makes a quilt in response to the book. There are 12 members in our group and it's fun and challenging. The quilts are always very different with each member finding inspiration from different aspects of the book. We read three books a year and complete between one to three quilts.

Every year in the spring, the United Methodist Women from the First United Methodist Church holds a fundraiser with Cover to Cover as the featured artists. We hang all the quilts that are made in response to one of the books we've read.

Here we are hanging the quilts.

The United Methodist Women's group reads the book themselves and puts on a wonderful luncheon which they sell tickets for. This year about 200 people bought tickets. All the money they raise goes to their women and children's mission. At the luncheon, they coordinate the decorations and the food with the theme of the book. This year we hung the quilts made in response to "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd.

Here's what they did with the tables.

Usually several of us Cover to Cover gals attend the luncheon. After everyone finishes eating, we speak to the group about what inspired us in designing our quilts and how we actually constructed them. Here's our group from this year.

Now here's what you really want to see: The quilts!

by Jennifer Lawton

By Susan Bucharest

by Elaine Millar

by Carole Monahan

by Vivienne Moore

by Jeanne Thomas

by Lynda Caitlin

by Me

by Heather Pool

Seeing all the Cover to Cover quilts from one book hanging together at the luncheon really inspired me to get back to work on my Cover to Cover quilts. I've had an idea for 'Broken For You' percolating in my mind and had even drawn a couple of preliminary sketches. So I decided to focus on that idea. Well now that I've started, I don't want to do anything else, even though I've got several things that really must get done. Turns out I can procrastinate with the best.

I've got instructions to write before Sisters, instructions to print out before teaching up in Washington next week, and my daughters' 20th birthday present to work on. And all of this must happen before my surgery on the 29th. Yeehaw!

But here is what I've been doing instead. I'm constructing a fabric mosaic with a theme of growth, rebirth, becoming whole again.

This is the mosaic so far. All the blank areas will be filled in, leaving a space as if it were grout. When the mosaic is finished, I will cut it up and piece in the oval blocks. I also want to add some other textures like ribbon, yarn, netting, etc. And once it's quilted, I will embellish it as well.

These are the oval blocks in progress.

The fabric that the oval blocks are laying on was my inspiration, both for color and theme. It will not be in the body of the quilt but I might use it in the border.

And now I really should get back to work!

I got an amazing surprise yesterday and I'm still in awe of the amazing, awesome, incredible, sly, conniving, wonderful friends that I have. I went over to Fibers In Motion yesterday afternoon to supposedly have coffee with Vivienne and Susan. I walk back into the classroom and suddenly all these other people come jumping out. I was totally overwhelmed just thinking they were there to wish me well on Monday but there was more to come.

Then LuAnn presented me with the most amazing quilt that everyone had made.

Isn't it adorable????? 25 dresses from 25 different women. I am just so blessed. Instead of the usual label on the back, there is this cute pocket with a little book inside listing all the women who made a block along with a personal message from each of them.

I have already hung the quilt up in my bedroom so that I can look at it everyday as I recover from my surgery. Just looking at it lifts me up and makes me strong. There are not enough words to express my gratitude and joy from this incredible gift. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I got the July/August issue of Quilters Newsletter Magazine in the mail yesterday and was so pleased to see the great spread about our Harry Potter quilts. QNM contacted Cover to Cover almost a year ago to see if they could feature our Harry Potter quilts in the magazine and finally, here they are. I think the spread looks great. My only wish is that it could have been bigger and thus include the three quilts that got left out. They were wonderful as well.

I know these pictures are hard to see but mine is the quilt on the lower left corner of the second photo. And three of the other quilts were quilted by me as well. Oh, it's always fun to see your stuff in a magazine. Yeehaw.

Quilter's Affair is having the postcard fundraiser again this year. I didn't think I would be able to get one done due to the surgery but when my friend Kristy was up last week helping out, she assisted me in the construction of my postcards. I was able to get two made, finished and mailed off. This year I wanted to do something simple with flowers. For the first postcard, I dyed a little piece of fabric for the background. On the second poscard, I applied the dye directly to the timtex just to see how different it would look. Then I carved my own stamp and stamped on the leaf shape using some fabric ink. This fabric ink is an older product and after some searching on the web, I don't think it still exists. Too bad, it's easy to use and permanent after being heat set.
Anyway, after printing my leaves, I put tuile over the second postcard to get a more muted affect. Kristy pinned the backing fabric to my long arm for me, and we laid the postcards on top. The backing was such a little piece of fabric that Kristy had to hold it while I quilted the postcards. Luckily they were so small that it only took about ten minutes. I quilted the postcards using some new thread I picked up at quilt market called Art Studio Colors by Ricky Tims. The thread is very shiny which I just love, and the colors are beautiful. They come on spools and they ran well on my long arm after a little adjustment.
I'm happy with the postcards although I think I like last years postcard better. Kristy did the satin stitching around the edges for me and made sure they got into the mail. This is a big thank you to her cause they wouldn't have gotten done without her.

It's been three weeks since my surgery and it's time to get back to work. I spent a full eight hours in the studio both Saturday and yesterday and it's manageable. My back is still not what it was ( and probably won't ever be) and it starts hurting around 3:00. Yesterday I broke down and took a pain pill but I really don't like taking them. I'm stubborn that way.

I've been working on the collage for the "Broken for You" quilt and I'm having fun with it. I've got all the parts glued to the background and I'm auditioning tuiles to put over the top. I'm going to stitch through everything to hold it together, then wash it and dry it to shrink it slightly. Then I'll cut it up and use it like any other fabric. Who knows how it will turn out, but I'm having fun experimenting with it.

At our meeting in May, a group of us in Cover to Cover came up with a challenge that was inspired by the book "The Uncommon Quilter" by Jeanne Williamson. In the book, Jeanne uses all sorts of unusual objects in her small quilts, things like avocado bags and bubble wrap and paper. Her work is fun and interesting and visually appealing. So we decided that we would each do an 11 x 14" piece using whatever found material we liked. And that we had to get it done by the next meeting, which is tomorrow! Nothing like a deadline to make you finish something.
I had an idea right away about what I wanted to do but didn't start until Monday. We had talked about doing the work quickly and trying to be spontaneous and not labor so hard over every little decision. And so that's exactly what I did. We're calling it the Flotsam challenge.

I've also worked a bit more on my mosaic quilt. Got all the oval blocks pieced and pinned on the background. I'm liking it but it needs something and I'm not sure what. Any ideas are welcome!

One more thing. I went to the Portland Art Museum last Friday and saw some wonderful art. One of the current exhibits shows work by the artists who won the Contemporary Northwest Artist Award. There are five artists who won and I was especially enamored by the work of Marie Watts. She has three pieces in the big room you go into directly from the lobby. They are made of leftover wool blankets and are totally fabulous. I've given you the link but the pictures don't do justice to the work. I also went through the exhibit by glass artist Klaus Moje. I'm not usually that turned on by glass but this is unlike anything I've ever seen before. Very fun. Definitely worth a visit to the museum.

At our meeting on Thursday, the four Flotsam challenges were revealed. It was just great. Such an inventive group of work. I really enjoyed doing this and hope to do another one. My challenge was in the last post so here are the other three.

by Elaine Millar. Elaine used lots of papers, from junk mail to paper bags to chocolate candy wrappers. She also did some stamping on her piece.

by Susan Bucharest. Susan used paper, leaves and ribbon from the chocolate shop as well as sheers and other yummy fabrics.

by Heather Poole. Heather painted those plastic pieces that are on loaves of bread and used them as the body of the fish along with a scrap from a quilt as it's tail and a button for the head. She also used ribbons for sea weed.

I'm having a blast in Sisters teaching at Quilters Affair. Today was day two of the Sushi Rolls class and I am just so proud of my students that I want to share some pictures. This is a difficult, two day class filled with lots of cutting and designing on the first day. And then on the second day we have to tackle those dreaded "Y" seams. Everyone was very inventive with their fabrics and got lots up on the wall, and today they all managed to get a few rows sewn. Fabulous. These women were the first to ever take the Sushi Rolls class and I was concerned about how much they would get done, but everyone did great! Here are a few of the pictures.

by Deborah Cagle

by Peggy Kelly

by Anne Matlak

by Ilsa Birmingham

You just can't imagine how wonderful the Sisters Quilt Show is unless you've experienced it for yourself. About 1,000 quilts are hung from the buildings all through the little town of Sisters for one day. They go up around 7:30am and come down around 5:00pm. The sight of all those quilts on a beautiful sunny day is just amazing. And LOTS of people come to see them. Here is the view looking both ways on Cascade Avenue which is the main street through town.

This week I taught the Egg Drop Soup quilt on Tuesday and again on Friday. Here it is hanging in the teachers tent.

Even though I didn't make it myself, I also put the 25 Dresses quilt in the teachers tent. It is just so wonderful that I really wanted to share it.

This is Vivienne's "Memories of Sisters" quilt which she taught this week. It's also a pattern and the Stitchin Post sold tons of them!

I just had to throw in this great picture of my buds. I love my friends and we have such a good time together. To good times.

I've been working on my collage piece for "Broken For You" since I got home from Sisters. A friend made a wonderful suggestion that I think really pulls my ideas together and gives them coherence. I knew it wasn't working but couldn't see what it needed. Now that I've finished the drawing, I am really getting excited about this project again.

This is what I already had:

And now I'm going to add these cracks to it. I really think it will pull it together, and it totally fits with the theme of the book. Yeehaw!

Every new baby needs a quilt, don't you think? I just finished this one the other day for some friends of ours who have a new baby named Kate. She is about 5 weeks old and cute as a button. This pattern is the one of the ones I use in my Value in Action workshop and it was fun playing with the colors. I used strips out of my "parts department" bin and then added in some blacks and whites. I was pleased with the results. Hope little Kate enjoys it.

I have spent the last two weeks doing nothing but work on this quilt top. I pieced it using Ruth McDowell's method which works so well. It's slow going but it really works. And now it is finally done. I finished it on Wednesday afternoon and took it with me to my knitting group yesterday to get everyone's reaction. Which was very gratifying. I've got a great plan for the quilting and will get that done by mid-September so it can go in the Northwest Expo Show here in Portland. I really like how the quilt turned out. Now I need to come up with a good name for it. Any suggestions?

I made new pillows for the guest room bed earlier this summer so of course I need to make a new quilt to go with those lovely pillows. I decided to make the "Olive Rose" pattern by Valori Wells. It lets me showcase that great large print from one of the pillows plus I don't have to think too hard since Val already figured it out! She has the pattern for free at her blog so check it out.

When I start pulling fabrics for a new quilt, I put my focus fabric on the floor and then go through my shelves throwing down everything that even remotely goes with it . This is the first throw with the focus fabric in the middle.

Now it's time for round two. I really look closely at each fabric and decide if it stays or goes. Here is the group after round two.

The next picture shows the fabrics I discarded. Basically I took out all the ones with too much pink, orange or yellow. I also got rid of some stripes and a dark blue. I decided the quilt should be mostly blue with purple and lime highlights.

I finished the Olive Rose top last week and am happy with it. I needed to make it bigger than the pattern so I used some of the leftover fabrics and put them around the border.

I didn't have a lot of fabric left over to piece up for the back and I hate to buy new fabric to put on the back of a quilt. Then I remembered a top I had made about 15 years ago that is the same color palette or close enough. I dug it out and sure enough, the colors work. It wasn't big enough but I had stashed some fabric with it to use as a back and so I pieced that around the top and now it's big enough to be the back. I'm just so pleased with my self! Another old top out of the closet and plus, my new guest room quilt will be reversible. I love it when things like this happen.

You meet the greatest people through quilting and sometimes they become a friend. I met Joyce Lorenzen when I went to speak and teach at her guild back in 2006. I was lucky enough to stay at her home in Bremerton, WA where she has the most amazing studio in her basement. If I'm remembering correctly, she and her husband built it almost entirely by themselves. We had lots of fun playing down there.
Joyce was in the Portland area this weekend and we had a chance to hang out. She brought her completed Yin Yang quilt to show. I really like how it turned out, bright and cheerful, which so reflects Joyce's personality.

I don't like photos of myself at all but I'm going to show some anyway because I had such a good time yesterday. I gave a lecture for the Northwest Quilters guild here in Portland entitled "What's New With Cover to Cover". I love my quilting group and always love an occasion where I get to brag about us and all the amazing work done by our members. I showed quilts from The Secret Life of Bees collection, from the Harry Potter collection, and a few quilts from some of the more recent books. The first two pictures are Harry Potter quilts. The last one is from "Broken for You" by Stephanie Kallos.

"A Healer's Robe" by Heather Poole

"The Flight of Fawkes" by Susan Bucharest.

"I Was Twenty and Stupid" by Lee Fowler

Back in April of 2007, a group of us did a pinwheel exchange. Yesterday I quilted the first quilt that has actually gotten finished. The quilt belongs to Jeanne Thomas and I think it is just charming. I like the setting and the choice of the grey fabric she chose for the setting triangles and border. Great job Jeanne. (excuse the lousy photo, I was in a hurry)

The Northwest Quilting Expo is a the largest quilting show in Portland. It was started about 5 years ago by several shop owners who wanted to cultivate a national level show here in Portland. It has been growing ever since and this year they added prize money to try to bring in more entries. Good move. There were more quilts than ever and I was especially happy because I won a ribbon and a check. Yeehaw!
Within the larger show, there was a special exhibit featuring 20 quilts by Janet Fogg who is a friend. It was amazing to see her body of work all hanging together. She is an incredible artist. There was also a special exhibit featuring quilts from Cover to Cover, a quilting group I belong to.
Best of Show went to Rhonda Beyer who is an amazing long-arm artist. She is so inspiring. The Best of Show quilt was pieced and quilted by Rhonda. She also won one of the traditional custom awards just for her long-arming and both quilts are truly spectacular.
I won second place in the miniature category. Can't remember what I called it. I made it for the book God of Small Things.

Pat Busby, who is also in Cover to Cover, won second place in the Applique category.
I believe she made this quilt for Three Cups of Tea.

Judy Eselius made this quilt for God of Small Things. I quilted it for her. I don't know if you can see the quilting very well in the picture but I love how it turned out.

This is my latest Cover to Cover quilt I made for Broken For You. It is called "I Was Twenty and Stupid" (thanks Liza!) and I am very pleased with it. You can tell from the picture that it needs to be blocked before it hangs in another show.

Vivienne Moore made this quilt for Three Cups of Tea. It's called "The Green Quilt" is about recycling. It's a mobius strip which is the symbol for recycling. Very unique concept and it hung really well.

I am a total Halloween fanatic. I mean, what's not to love?! Great decorations, people give you candy, you can dress up in costumes and there are no presents to buy. It is the greatest holiday.
So to celebrate that fact, I'm going to post a picture every day this month of one of my Halloween quilts or other great Halloween decorations. I will try to give credit where it is due if I can remember.

Today's picture is of an original quilt. I think I made this back in 1995. It's called Trick or Treat.

I know day ten was yesterday but this blogging every day is hard. Sometimes I just space on it. Anyway, I wanted to share a couple of pictures from a class I taught last Saturday. I taught a class on how to make my Honeycomb quilt.

I made this quilt for Cover to Cover when we read the book "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd. I loved the book and wanted to make something folksy in the Gees Bend style. All the fabrics came from my scrap bins. I only used templates to square up the big honeycomb shape at the end. It was a lot of fun to make and I even hand quilted it. It has really big stitches in a thick linen thread that goes with the look of the quilt. I never planned to teach this quilt as a class but LuAnn at Fibers In Motion asked me to. So the women in the class on Saturday were my guinea pigs. I think it went well and the blocks that every one made were great. Here are a couple of pictures.

Melanie's blocks are on the left and Loni's blocks are on the right.

Valri's blocks are on the left and Mary Ann's are on the right.

I just got back from teaching at Ocean Waves Quilt Camp in Tillamook, OR. I had so much fun this year. Quilt Camp has a great vibe thanks to it's founder and leader Jane Wise. She just seems to bring out the best in everyone. And she tells great jokes!
Thursday I spent the day sewing with some friends in Oceanside and then I taught Friday and Saturday. The weather was beautiful and I got in a couple of hikes over the mountain there. (Thanks Carrie and Beth!)
On Friday I taught Animal Chains and we had a blast. Everyone was so enthused and got lots done. It's such a happy quilt. Here are a few pictures and hopefully I got the names right. I tend to remember students by their work not their names. I guess it's an occupational hazard.

By Susan Bray.

By Jenni from Canby

By Shari from Canby

I know these aren't the best photographs but they are from Show and Tell on Saturday night when everyone shows what they made in class. I felt like a proud parent!

Tomorrow I'll put up pictures from Saturday's class.

These pictures are from the Egg Drop Soup class on Saturday. It was really lots of fun. Once the students grasp the technique, they are off and running. We had some great color combinations too. Take a look.

I'm heading out of town again; going to Houston to visit family and go to the big International Quilt Festival. While I'm gone, my wonderful hubby will guest blog for me and post some more Halloween pictures. I'll talk to you again in a week and Happy Halloween.

I really went to Houston to visit with my family. It just so happened that the big quilt show was that same week :). I met up with my sister and my brother, and my mom, none of whom are quilters or really know much about our crazy world. They were so fabulous about going to show and they had a great time. It's always fun to be with people who aren't quilters and watch them be utterly amazed at what a quilt can be these days.

Here's the family:

They had such a good time the first day that they agreed to return with me for day two. There's just no way to see everything in one day. I wish I could take a picture that would capture the enormity of the show, but I think it's impossible. This picture shows about a quarter of the lunch area. It is a sea of women!

I don't like to post pictures of other people's quilts unless I ask first so I'm not going to put a bunch on here. However, I do want to post a picture of a quilt by Susan Shie. There was a section of "political" quilts; appropriate seeing how the show was right before the election. This quilt had all the wonderful messages of hope and change from President elect Barack Obama. I loved it.

Here is a link to the IQA page with pictures of all the winners: http://www.quilts.org/winners.html.

And finally, I couldn't resist taking a picture of these women. (I did ask them first) They were so beautiful.