A Quilt Show–In Person At Last!!!

I’ve thought for years that quilt shows should be held simultaneously with woodworking shows, and many of you know exactly why!

Happily, I found that the Catawba Valley Quilters’ Guild in Hickory, NC, holds their show concurrently with Klingspor’s woodworking show! My husband and I attended this past Friday and were so happy to be able to do so.

Here are just a few of the quilts that were on display.

This beautiful quilt was at the door. It had no label, and the nearby greeter knew only that it was “last year’s first place winner”. I loved it!

Here are pics of a few of the blocks (are they still blocks if they’re round?)

Some of the quilt labels had no information on the design source for the quilts, though I recognized some of the patterns. Where information was given about the design source, I’m listing it.

Made by Ann Becker in a class with Margaret Solomon Gunn

“Escher’s Christmas”, made by Teena McRary, based on designs by M. C. Escher

“Garden Jewels” made by Pat Carson and Pam Bowman. The label indicated the pattern is from the book Kaffe Quilts Again

Connected Places” by Dianne Johnston and Julie Wilson

“Fun With Pinwheels” by Libby Sigmon and Rebecca Mullins

Arizona Friends” by Cindy Konarski. Pattern is “Happy Together” by Sew Kind of Wonderful.

“Happy Trails” by Maryann McCormick and Rebecca Mullins. The smallest squares finish 1/2 inch!

“My Mountains” by Gigi Miller

Of course there were many more beautiful quilts, but this gives you some idea. I hope we can all go back to “in person” quilt shows soon!

Summertime Quilt

This quilt was inspired by all the fun text prints I have collected and also by the desire to make something new as a sample for teaching curved piecing.

I used batiks from stash for the colors and I love the combination.  BUT combining batik fabrics, which are lighter weight, with the printed fabrics was a bear!  I do not recommend it.  Ordinarily this block is fairly easy to piece, but this combination made it difficult.  Another doggone learning experience 😀

I did put in a few of my trademark tiny strips of color:

The templates I used are from Back Porch Designs.  I’ve been pleased with them  and think they are reasonably priced.  This is not an affiliate link, but you can find them here if you’re interested. The quilt block used here is a slight modification of a pattern that came with the template.

And here is the back!  Notice the cute “bubble” quilting pattern 🙂

Quilt StatsSummertime

Finished size: 47″ square

Fabric: batiks and text prints, all from stash; backing is a Windham print

Made by: me

Quilted by:  Walker Quilt Co.

Fun with Rickrack

Or ricrac, or rick rack, whatever. I found a lot of spellings when I was trying to decide!

This fun way to piece curves was part of a class I taught this past weekend, and it was so cute in the blocks the students made that I just had to do a tutorial.

We were piecing quarter circles as part of my quilt YOW, which you’ve already seen:

So here is a partially assembled block with one curved seam left to go:curved piecing tutorial

Select rickrack and lay it along the edge of the convex piece.  Probably would work with the concave piece, too, but I haven’t tried that:rickrack curved piecingSew the rickrack down with the usual 1/4 inch seam

Now turn the raw edge and attached rickrack to the back along the 1/4 inch seam and press.  Here’s the front:tutorial use rickrack in quilts

And here’s the back:curved piecing tutorial

Lay the convex piece on top of the concave piece and line up the edges.

Flip over and try to line up the raw edges all along the seam on the back.applique curved blocks

Applique the convex piece to the concave piece by stitching in the ditch.  I used silver metallic thread just for fun, but matching thread works well, of course.  And here’s the finished block.applicurve

Sort of modern-retro.  Go try it!

Fun Teaching Projects

Last Saturday I taught my “secret valentine” pillow at Studio Stitch in Greensboro (NC).  Here are a few pictures of the finished pillow covers with their proud makers.

I’ll be teaching Yow again this spring, this time at A Stitch in Time in Franklin, NC.  The class is scheduled for Friday, April 6.  This is a lively quilt, and I teach three different ways to piece a curve perfectly.

What have you been up to?

YOW! I’m teaching curved piecing!

To be exact, YOW is the name of the quilt, not my reaction to teaching a curved piecing class 🙂

curved piecing

YOW is the class I’ll be teaching at Studio Stitch in Greensboro

The class is at Studio Stitch in Greensboro (NC), one of my favorite shops. To my surprise, I don’t have a picture of the quilt I’m using as a class sample, so I had to lift this one from the Studio Stitch website. There is no pattern for this quilt; it is just what I did with some really bright batiks and some nice templates from Elisa’s Backporch Designs.

I’m going to teach at least 3 different ways to piece these curves, so most anybody with some sewing experience can find success with at least one of the methods.

I got out some examples of my quilts with curved piecing yesterday to have them for display in class, and I was surprised at how many there are.  Then I found all these pictures of other things I’ve made with curved piecing, so here are a few.

curved piecing

An attempt at improvised New York Beauty blocks

My “cocktail pillow”–to put out when you have people over for cocktails! (As if!)

stack, cut, shuffle block

This block was made with curves cut freehand

This was made for my modern sampler

Quilt Alliance

Cat Circus, my 2015 Quilt Alliance challenge quilt

Metrol Hoops baby quilt

This was made using the Quick Curve ruler.  I don’t love it–but the baby did.

Applique quilt

Radiating Orchid mini-quilt for the Radiant Orchid Challenge, 2014