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I hope this isn’t too obnoxious, but AQS sent it to me – and I’m passing it along 😀 !

You may remember a quilt I posted about a few months back, made with Spandex, and named Forty Wonderful Years (click here and here for both of the posts about that quilt). It was made for a Milwaukee Art Quilter’s challenge called “Art Deco”. Eight fiber artists made quilts to fit that theme and we entered them in the American Quilters Society show in Grand Rapids. The show was this past weekend and we took second place!

I thought you might like to see the rest of the winning quilts:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m honored to be a part of this winning group!

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And I’d like to close with a wonderful tip/tutorial from the AQS blog – On-Point! In it they describe a great way to keep organized during a project, using sticky notes.

It’s a worthwhile read and you can see the whole post at:  http://www.quiltviews.com/quilters-best-friend-sticky-advice! Then sign up for their blog to receive all of their great tips.

Enjoy!

A few weeks ago I had the wonderful opportunity to judge the Everygreen Quilt Show in Ashwabenon, WI. They put on a terrific show – with over 300 quilts! We had a great team of judges, and the judging coordinator, Lindi, is very well organized, and a delight to work with.

In fact – everyone at the show was great!

One of the categories I was asked to judge was the guild challenge. This year is was “Sixteen” for the year 2016, and each person had a challenge fabric that needed to be visible in the quilt. The ingenuity and talent of the participants was amazing. They were all such fun to view. But I just had to share the first place quilt. It is called “Sixteen Square Feet”!

and here’s Carol’s description:

Not only does Carol have a delightful sense of humor, but she has the skills to put her thoughts into fabric in an amazing and technically successful way. From the cuffed/creased pants with loafers, to the satin “polish” on the flip-flop wearer – her attention to detail blew me away!

Thanks for letting me share your quilt Carol!

The other fun story from the show concerned the Best of Show winner. At the end of the day of judging, we put our heads together and give the “big” awards: creativity, best workmanship, judges choice and best of show. Then, and only then, do we get dinner 😉 . Lindi took us to a restaurant for a delicious meal. This is where we met Sheri, our lovely hostess for the night. Sheri graciously offered her home to Margaret, Carol and me, and took very good care of us. The next morning we all returned to the show for our judge’s tour and Lindi informed me that she hadn’t realized the night before, but Sherri’s quilt had won Best of Show! What fun it was to find her and give her the good news!

Sheri is a very talented long-arm quilter and she does quilting for hire 🙂 .

I’d like to close this post with the quilt I awarded my “Judges Favorite” ribbon. Kim Frisk made this lovely work of fiber art, called “Wherever the Wind Blows”, from rust dyed fabric she’d created using steel wool. She said the fabric reminded her of a map, and that was her inspiration. The appliquéd ships and pieced mariner’s compass came together in a beautifully balanced and intriguing work.

Kim’s quilt won the show’s creativity award also. I can’t wait to try rust dyeing myself!

It was a great show! Thanks to Lindi and all of the Evergreen Quilters for allowing me to be a part of it!

In the past few weeks I’ve finished two UFO’s – talk about feeling virtuous  😀 ! As I’m writing this blog post, temperatures in Wisconsin are in the high 80’s! It is an odd, but appropriate time to share this quilt and it’s story:

In 2013 the special projects committee at Patched Lives (the traditional quilt guild I belong to) came up with a fun idea for a “round robin” type of challenge.  Here are the rules:

Around the Square Challenge – groups are made up of 6 or 7 participants. A list is made of the members of each group so the projects can be passed around in order.

1. Each participant picks a theme for their project (examples could be: Noah’s ark, snow people, up north, a day at the beach, etc.).

2.  Draw a 4″ grid  8 x 10 on a piece of flat quilt batt – orientation is your choice. 4″ is the finished size of all the squares in the quilt, so pieces will need to have seam allowance added.

3.  Create a block in the chosen theme to cover a 16″ x 16″ square or a 12″ x 20″ rectangle (plus seam allowances). Safety pin in place somewhere on the grid. Once begun, this block may not be moved.

4.  Place in a traveling container along with any fabric or embellishments that can be used in the quilt. A “travel journal” and/or ready-to-sign label may be included also.

5. Projects are passed to the next quilter on the list and they are to make blocks to cover 12 squares on the grid. This could include an 8″ finished block, two 4″ x 8″ blocks, and four 4″ blocks, or other combinations, but no additional block can be as large as the original. These blocks are safety pinned over squares in the grid and may not be moved.

6. The projects are passed until all participants have worked on each one. The traveling containers are then returned to their originators who will add blocks to fill any open squares, and finish the quilt. They may move the blocks around on the grid if desired.

My theme was “I Love Winter” (I really do – when its cold outside I can stay inside and quilt guilt free!). Here’s my main block:

I received a delightful variety of blocks back, with some empty squares. I had fun rearranging them and filling in the spaces. Most of my additions ended up being a light blue, tone-on-tone fabric that gave it all a checkerboard effect. I then added borders, and layered it all with a sweet snowman fabric on the back:

The quilt needed a lot of “in-the-ditch” quilting. This is my least favorite way to quilt, but a few of my friends had mentioned using an “in-the-ditch” foot on my sewing machine. It turns out I had just the foot, and it helped. It isn’t perfect, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked.

The rest of the quilting was done free motion and that was much more fun. Binding was added and now it’s done – in plenty of time for winter!

Here’s the label that traveled with the project, and is signed by all the talented quilters who made it such a wonderful quilt.

Maryjane was kind enough to bring hers to the last guild meeting, and let me take a picture. Her theme was angels – and it is lovely:

Thanks ladies! I love winter, and I love my winter quilt! Admit it – how many of you out there love winter too?

Stay tuned, next week you’ll get a peek at my other recently finished UFO!

This week I’m posting to my blog from a car in the middle of Illinois. What an amazing technological age we live in: I can connect my laptop to the personal “hotspot” on my phone, and be on the internet while driving down the road!

Wendy and I are on our way to Quilt Week in Paducah.

This year we have the wonderful opportunity to decorate the windows of Tribeca restaurant with our quilts, as part of the Quilt Week contest held downtown. If you’re in Paducah, please come by to see them (on the cobblestone alley next to the Yeiser gallery).

And now for this week’s post:

You may remember a post from last year that included some wonderful multi-media art from a church in Wales, WI. I saw those pieces because I was invited to share some of my quilts, and my quilting journey, as part of the morning worship service.

It was a very interesting morning! Each year Jerusalem Presbyterian Church invites an artist to create art as a part of the worship service. Painting a picture in that time frame might be possible, but making a quilt presented some problems. I worked with Pastor Petterson to blend my fiber art process into the service. What we decided would work best was to invite members of the congregation to bring a piece of cotton fabric. These pieces were collected before the service and during the service I sorted them by value, trimmed them to size and laid them into a pattern while Pastor and I compared these processes to what Christ does in the believer’s heart.

The members brought some very interesting pieces (most of them were not quilters 😉 ). But it actually went quite smoothly and it was a lovely time of worship.

This brings me to this week’s post. I was asked to complete this piece of art and after much thinking and prayer, I finally came up with a direction, and the quilt is done!

To begin, I chose to place the cross in the center of the pattern and then use the lighter value squares near the cross, with the value going to the darker fabric on the edges. I then chose a Scripture verse from the Gospel of John and used my new Brother Scan n Cut™ to make the letters (to read a post on this delightful tool go to: https://chrisquilts.net/?p=6614). I fused the letters in place, covered everything with black tulle, and machine quilted around the letters,

with spiral quilting in the background (notice the church block in the lower right, that was cut from a polo shirt).

I’m sorry I didn’t get more “work in progress” pictures, but here’s one of the finished piece:

I plan to present it to Pastor Petterson and the church family in the near future. What a joy to have been a part of this worship project, and to see it come to fruition! It causes me to think of one of my favorite Bible verses – Matthew 5:16 “Let your light so shine before others, that they may see your good works and give glory to our Father in heaven”.

 

 

In my series of posts about my Lunch Bunch quilt, I asked you all to send me a picture of your stack of challenge blocks. These were the three photos I received (thanks ladies – and no names are included so as not to induce guilt)!

I hope this may encourage you to put them together, and I can’t wait to hear all about it  😉 . If you have been meaning to send me a photo of your stack of blocks – there’s still time – just email them to me.

On this same topic of bunches of blocks that are waiting to become a quilt, a few weeks ago I did a class on Repliqué for the Chocolate City Quilters in Burlington, WI. They are a really fun group and they did a great job creating their house blocks. Whenever I teach my Architectural Repliqué class I make a sample house block along with the students. During this class I actually counted them only to reveal that I’ve taught this particular class 70 times!

If a person made that many of the same block, they probably would get a bit wacky with their fabric selections. And I’ve done just that. I have many seasonal themed blocks, and I chose these four as close-up examples:

I thought you might like to see some of my more “interesting” ones up close.

You may have noticed writing on the blocks. Each time I make one I ask the students to sign the block, and then I write the name of the guild, location and date on the paper backing. I think you can tell I’ve really enjoyed making these blocks. I have so many wonderful memories of these classes and students. When I finally put them together I will have one REALLY BIG Autograph quilt (or maybe two normal sized ones  🙂 )

Who knows when that will be? If you are interested in my Repliqué technique, you may purchase either of my books on the subject at: https://www.chrisquilts.net/books/.

If you’d like to have me present a class for your guild, please send me an email at .

What a wonderful trip to Paducah! The quilts were amazing, the crowds were huge, and a good time was had by everyone I spoke with! As I mentioned last week, Wendy and I had a display of our quilts at the Tribeca Gallery, but Wendy wasn’t able to spend Quilt Week in Paducah this year (It is her birthday today though – happy, happy birthday Wendy!). Another dear friend, Linda, joined me in the fun. Here we are having lunch at Kirchhoff’s:

One of the quilts hanging at the gallery was a collaboration quilt between Wendy and me entitled Garden of Grace. Last year, while having a lovely quilter’s lunch at Grace Church in Paducah, I took this photo (the dogwoods were at their peek!)

Wendy and I had talked about doing a “slice quilt” together, and decided this was a good photo to start with. The National Quilt Museum’s traditional block for the “New Quilts From an Old Favorite” contest this year was the ever popular 9-patch. We decided it would be fun to photoshop in a 9-patch quilt,

enlarge the photo to 50″ square, and divide it into a large 9-patch. Colored corner and center squares alternate with black and white ones (you’ll have to look closely to see it in the picture).This made the entire quilt one large 9-patch. A line drawing was made next,

and each of the 9 squares were printed out full size. We each chose the sections we wanted to make and got together when most of the blocks were done.

At this point we decided it might actually work – and scurried to finish all the blocks.

 The blocks were sewn together and Sommer helped me layer the quilt in a frame.

Wendy and I took turns quilting it, and Wendy did the finishing. Our quilt was not accepted into the museum contest, but we were thrilled with the memory quilt we had created, and we both felt we learned a lot in the process. It was very exciting to have the opportunity to display it in Paducah, even if it wasn’t at the museum. This is the finished quilt:

So, Linda and I had lunch this past Friday at Grace once again and I was surprised to find that the crumbling base on the cross in the church yard had been repaired and the large dogwood branch cut away.

It looks lovely, but I think the photo from last year was much more interesting  🙂 !

I spoke with some of the ladies from the church and they’re very interested in having it hang at their quilter’s luncheon in 2016. What a blessing!

I’d like to leave you with a few more photos from the AQS show. One of my favorite quilts (and there were many) was made by Nancy Prince. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The figures in the foreground were machine embroidered and then applied to the quilt. It was amazing.

A fun way to get around town was to ride in the bicycle rickshaws provided by Quilt in a Day.

Linda and I really enjoyed an evening Ghost Walk tour through the streets of downtown Paducah. We were led by a costumed guide from the Market Street Theater who entertained us with many gruesome tales.

And at the end of the day on Friday, Lisa gave new meaning to the phrase “shop til you drop”.

I went up to her and asked if she was alright and, when she assured me she was, she gave me permission to take her picture. We introduced ourselves and had a nice conversation  😉 !

Now I’m home, having great fun reliving a wonderful week in Paducah, and looking forward to Quilt Week 2016!