Thursday, April 30, 2015

Paducah 2015 recap

Sign outside the Rotary Club's
vintage quilt exhibit. QuiltWeek 2015.
The quilt-gang had a marvelous time in Paducah at AQS QuiltWeek 2015. We missed the rain, the weather was cool and pleasant and the eye candy was stupendous. Here is a quick recap of our 3-day excursion.

The first stop was the "Hexed" exhibit and vendor mall sponsored by the Rotary Club. Mary Kerr (of "Quilt as Desired" exhibit fame) curated this exhibit and we made sure to arrive in time for the quilt walk. For those unfamiliar, a quilt walk is walking through the exhibit and viewing the quilts with narration by Mary, the curator. Many of the quilts in this exhibit were from Mary's extensive collection and some were on loan.

Mary has also written a book to accompany the exhibit entitled, "Recycled Hexie Quilts, Using Vintage Hexagons in Today's Quilts".

Mary Kerr, curator, explains the use of both wool and cotton fabrics
in this circa 1860s hexagon quilt.
"Grandmother's Flower Garden," circa 1930
After lunch we headed to the Yeiser Art Center, a non-profit visual arts organization, gallery and gift shop.
Outside the Yeiser Art Center, downtown Paducah, KY.
Throughout the year, various art exhibits are on display at this gallery. The Art Center focuses on a fiber art exhibit (more than just quilts) in April to coordinate with QuiltWeek.

Here are my quilting buddies in downtown Paducah. The 4 Musketeers??
In addition to the juried quilts at the AQS show, there were several special quilt exhibits. Among them was "Wicked," the Cherrywood Fabrics Challenge, an "Inspired by Libby [Lehman]" benefit quilt project coordinated by Clara Lawrence, and the amazing quilted pieces in the "Red, White and Quilted" exhibit.

A big "Congratulations" goes to my friend, Miriam Coffey and her sister, Emily, for their first place win in the Modern Quilt category for their quilt entitled, "For Tanya."
Left: Miriam in her trendy, vintage style dress featuring Headliner by Blank Quilting.
Right: "For Tanya," First Place winner, Modern Quilt category, by Emily and Miriam Coffey.
Back at the cottage, the evenings included a Show and Tell of the day's fabulous finds around the dinner table.
Nightly Show and Tell after the dishes are cleared from dinner.
Packed and ready to load up on the last day, here are (some of) our souvenirs. Ideas for projects are spinning in our heads.
Packed and ready for the trip home.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

T-shirt packed. Paducah bound.

My friend Stephanie at Red Barn Custom Quilts has these cool T-shirts in her shop. I came home with this one. Yellow is my color and "Fabric" is my bid'ness.
"You Can't Buy Happiness but You Can Buy FABRIC."
T-shirt
She's got some other funky-quilty ones, too… "Come to the Dark Side," "Addicted to Quilting," "Quilting Chick," "Behind every Quilter is a Huge pile of fabric" and others...
Quilty Tees at Red Barn Custom Quilts.
My new T-shirt is packed and ready to go to Paducah with me. Maybe I'll see you at the show.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Annual Easter egg antics

We had our annual Easter egg coloring adventure and had fun, as usual. This year we experimented with brown as well as white eggs. 
The annual egg dyeing event.
The tradition of the baseball egg continued.
The baseball egg.
Rubber band resists are always a hit at our house. We got more adventurous this year with multiple bands and also introduced some wavy lines.
Preparing the resist

Letting the egg drip dry before removing the rubber bands.

Resist dyed egg.
We found some metallic and Gel FX colors in the Crayola box of 96. These colors produced a richer, more prominent color on the eggs and were easier to see when mark-making.
Gel and metallic crayons worked very well.
Free-motion quilting designs are my favorites to do. You can't get enough drawing practice, I always say.
Free-motion quilting patterns on eggs.
These are the outcomes with the rubber band resists. A few of them started as brown eggs. Some incorporated crayon drawings as well as the resists. The color palette was warmer and earthy because of the brown eggs.
Resist dyed eggs.
We lost 5 eggs due to cracks... which went directly into the makings of egg salad. The rest made this pretty display.
25 colored eggs.
Here are several that are packed in a Easter basket, ready to go to mom's house.
Easter basket for mom.
Did you do any egg dying this year?

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Fabric-and-paper pinwheels

Nothing says Happy Easter and Happy Spring like pinwheels and posies! 
Paper and fabric pinwheels in small pots of violets
say "Happy Easter" or "Happy Spring."
Hop over to Sew Many Ways for a great tutorial on these quick little paper-n-fabric pinwheels. I made up a few for gifts using bits of various fabrics from the lines I carry—Peppered CottonsSumatra batiks and quilting cottons by Blank Quilting Corp and StudioE Fabrics.

The materials are minimal: fabric scraps (shot cottons, batiks, quilters cottons), 20# bond paper (I used this grape color), plastic drinking straws, cutting tools (scissors or rotary cutter), tapestry needle and embroidery floss.
Supplies for pinwheels.
The how-to at Sew Many Ways is very clear and easy to follow. She uses a colorful scrapbook paper print for her pinwheels, but I decided to use fusible web (Wonder Under) to fuse the fabrics to paper.

My pinwheels were based on a 4" square (which fit nicely into these little potted violets), so I got 4 wheels out of one sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper. Instead of hot glue, I ran a needle with 6-strand embroidery floss (put a big knot in the tail) through the corners of the fabric-fused paper and then through the center mark to the back. Pull the floss snug. Then push the needle through the plastic drinking straw. Knot to secure. A drop of seam sealant (Fray Check) secures both knots.
Peppered Cotton striped pinwheel.
Sometimes a little paper-n-fabric crafty project brightens the day.
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