A Month

Wow, hard to believe it's been more than a month since I've last blogged.

It has been a busy month though...

I was lucky enough to go to the Pacific Northwest Quilt Festival (formerly called MQX) in Portland in early October.

I packed like this:

And I got to meet many of my quilting 'internet' friends.  I wasn't very good was horrible at taking photos...I have one of Kay Bell with her quilt, which won two teachers choice ribbons.  Kay has much better photos on her blog

Kay lives in Scotland,  and we 'met' years ago on a yahoo group when we were both quilting with 9" machines on a grace frame.  I was in awe then of what Kay could accomplish on that setup, and to see what she can do with her APQS was great. 

Met with many others, which was lots and lots of fun.

Took some great classes...with Claudia Pfeil, Angela Walters and Jamie Wallen, among others.

Coming home, both bags were full.   I shopped at Fil-tec, Superior Threads, Gadget Girls, bought some books and had class samples to bring home.    (customs is often surprised at how much I can spend on thread)

I almost had a security problem at the airport---I had planned to check both bags, but at check-in, the lady said the smaller bag could go carry on.  Sweet, didn't have to pay for that.  Stopped to browse some shops and have a snack before going through security, and realized that all my toiletries and some scissors etc were in the bag that I was now going to carry on...Ooops.  Quick trip back to the check in counter and they checked that bag as well.  Glad I realized BEFORE going through security.

And then I came home, did a little more work on my Work in Progress, before heading off to a 4 day retreat in Banff with my guild.   

This is what my personal "to be quilted" bin looked like before I went to Banff,

and this was after

I was able to piece 4 tops!  A greatly productive weekend.  I hadn't brought enough projects with me, and had to run to Sugarpine in Canmore on Saturday morning to buy another project.  My girls immediately entered negotiations over who would get the purple one when I came home and showed them the quilts.

And then I  did still more work on my quilt from Kim Brunner's craftsy class, but it took a while, because for some reason I needed a few naps that week.

I got it to the point where I could take it off the frame, and did so, because I had customer quilts that needed doing.  Also, I needed to rethink the background fill.  See below, where I've quilted in the bubbles, or pebbles.  The problem is the scale of the bubbles is the same as the 1/4" lines around the arc'd portion of the star, and so I've lost those lines. 

There are several design flaws here (my own, not Kim Brunners).  One is that I used stash to create the quilt, so I have a busy border, and don't get enough pop from the quilting there...should have quilted it differently, but it was a class, and I wanted to practice what was taught.  Another is that Kim had a white background (where I've got the turquoise) and she used contrasting threads to create the compass stars.  I used a matching thread (which is a GOOD idea when you're learning something new), which is fine, except that when I stitch the backfill, I lose my design.  If I'd had a contrasting thread it would have helped.

But, this quilt was about learning.   And I kept that in mind and didn't pick out quilting when I made errors, and I definitely learned a lot about using templates, so it was very successful in that way.

So, this quilt is still in progress, once I've caught up with my client quilts I'll reload it and finish the fill.

This quilt plus the customer quilt before, and the two after were all very ruler and time intensive quilts.  That means fewer quilts to show and share here. 

And I've really enjoyed the edge-to-edge design I worked on today :)

The other thing that's kept me busy and away from the blog this month is that we have 3 birthdays in my house this month...that's a lot of cake to eat :)