Search Results for: Bartering

Bartering: Quilting for Technology

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Nine years ago my neighbor Di and I worked out a barter. I taught her how to make a Lone Star quilt and she built my website. She also got me into blogging!

Well, last Fall she informed me that my website was due for an update and we worked out a new barter. I posted about this when the barter began, and you can read about it by clicking here.

The quilt top is done and I’m thrilled to have brought it to completion. This is one of the blocks the quilt is made from:

and here’s the king sized quilt top ready for Aunt Susie’s Long Arm Quilting!

Jenny didn’t want a pillow tuck, so the border doesn’t go around the top of the quilt. The pieced center just fits her king sized bed and the plain cream colored border/final pieced border drop off the quilt sides. It’s a very bright and cheerful quilt.

Any guesses how many pieces are in it?

1796!!! I think that’s a record for me. What’s the most number of pieces you’ve put in a quilt?

The other half of the barter is coming to fruition this weekend! Di has uploaded my new website and I think it is lovely! Please go to: https://www.chrisquilts.net/ to visit my homepage,

and feel free to navigate around a bit (i.e. click on whatever looks interesting) to see all that it has to offer.

Today Di is completing the uploading of the blog. I think you’re going to like the new format. It’s visually crisp and clean, and should be easy to use. But please be patient if a link doesn’t work – or something doesn’t look quite right yet – we’re still in the final stages of the upload.

Thank you Di, for all your knowledge and hard work. It’s really appreciated.

It certainly is fun to have friends with different talents to share. Have you done a barter with your quilting skills that you’d like to share? If so, please send me an email about it: .

The Toyko Great International Quilt Festival – 2020

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Tokyo boasts the largest quilt show in the world. The show is held in the Tokyo Dome.

The view from our hotel.

It runs for seven days and attracts over 2 million visitors – of which my group comprised 18 ?.

The crowds entering each morning were ushered in quite efficiently.

This is the English version of the cover of the actual show book and we’re still not sure what the German musicians are doing on it!

In this photo of the show from the stadium seats (where we ate lunch from the concession stands: deep fried chicken-on-a-stick and bugles),

you can see the “white” horizontal lines towards the front . These are row after row of vendors, and they ring all 4 sides of the show.

The areas of color in the center were the show quilts, separated by category, and a variety of special exhibits.

Towards the center there was a huge patchwork ball covered by the work of the famous Japanese quilter Keiko Goke.

Her quilts were fascinating and I recognized a few of them from being in the AQS Paducah quilt shows over the years. This one was in the New Quilts From an Old Favorite – Double Wedding Ring contest back in the early 1990s. What fun to see it again!

There is no way I can share every quilt in the show, so I chose a few of my favorites, in no particular order, they simply tickled my fancy (please be aware that the crowds were huge and the lighting in a baseball stadium leaves a lot to be desired). I’ve included a few comments with each photo:

Best of Show
Intense, crazy piecing!
Embroidered sampler center, surrounded by intricate piecing, and bordered with phenomenal appliqué!
Couldn’t you just swim into this one?
What creativity!
Beautiful colors!
Don’t miss the piano keyboards
This one was only about 15″ square and completely thread painted!
Are you ready to be amazed. This may look like a 1/2″ hexagon, grandmothers flower garden quilt,
But it’s really a 1/2″ yo-yo quilt!!! They are tacked onto a background with embroidered leaves around the edges.

And those were only a very few. Then we did the vendors. The most popular items by far were purses and the kits to make them. In one of the booths there were machines set up and my friend Marie and I made our own. They took less than an hour even though the teacher spoke very little English. Too much fun!

The woman stitching next to us also made a purse and wanted to be in the photo ?

There was a “coffee shop” around the edge of the show where we stopped for a mid-morning snack the first day, and a “tea room” for a break on the second.

The spouted bowl without a top held the hot water which we then poured into the teapot filled with tea. Then we turned over the timer so our tea was brewed to perfection. The snack was jellied red bean curd – not quite as yummy as the chocolate I had imagined I was ordering!

The vendors were filled with fabric, garments, kits, machines, etc., and we could have spent the whole trip there, but there was so much more of Japan to see. Next week I’ll touch on a few of the wonderful sites of Japan we enjoyed.

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This isn’t about Japan, but I thought you might find it interesting, I did a post about a bartar I did with my friend Di back in May. She recently interviewed me for a post on her blog about our collaboration and my journey into blogging. Click here if you’d like to read Di’s post.