Quilt Pictures

This year I had the opportunity to help set up for the Manteca Quilt Guild's show. This gave me the opportunity to take pictures of the quilts before the opening. This is a specular Baltimore Album quilt made by Sandra Mollon. I wish my picture showed the incredible detail in the quilt. I have added the Baltimore Album quilt to my bucket list. This next quilt was made by my friend Jan Truscott. She was Manteca's featured quilt artist this year. The pattern used to make this quilt is Venice Rose by Norah McMeeking from her book Bella Bella quilts. I will be starting this quilt sometime in April. I've picked my fabrics from the Stonehenge collection by Northcott. If you haven't seen this fabric line you might want to visit Northcott's web site. Quilter's Friends in Lodi carry a few of the bolts. There must be 25 different color's in the line with new ones arriving in the next couple of months. These fabrics are a good change from batik's. They have a marble or stone look to them. The January 2010 issue of The Quilter features a quilt, Rolling Stone, in this fabric.

This is a close up of her applique in the center.

This wall hanging has a lot of detail work and rumor has it, it was a round robin project done my a group of quilters. They seem to be at the same skill level. The trees in the corners are machine embroidered.

This quilt is from the Once-Block Wonders Encore book by Maxine Rosenthal and Joy Peizmann. I think they are very interesting to look at.

I would love to post every picture I took but I don't have time. All the quilts were beautiful and I think the show was great.

Spring is in the air and I would rather be outside then sitting at my sewing machine. I guess had work on a Baltimore Album quilt might be the project to start. I could have the best of both worlds, sitting outside and working on a quilt. Either way I know it will be a glorious day.

Keeping Busy

This is a picnic quilt I made three years ago. The pattern and fabric came from Fons and Porter. I love their magazine and the quilt kits they offer. I started quilting this soon after I got it pieced but need to put the binding on. Finally, a finished project. I think it is so cheerful. I was putting all my projects together that I need to complete but it has gotten to overwhelming so I have stopped. I will just take them as I go.

I've been spending a lot of time on the Internet because my car has been in the shop. That's not exactly true. I'm going to quilt a couple of tops I finished last year and I'm not sure how to quilt them. I've been spending hours looking at different blogs and trying to find the best designs to use on these quilts. This is really a tough decision. Since I'm looking at three hundred plus to have them quilted I will work through this process. I have taken four different classes on how to quilt your quilt top so it's time to apply some of those lessons.
I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Cars. Where would we be without them? Home!!! That's were I have been stuck a lot lately because my car keeps getting sick. My 93 Honda has 99,580 miles on it. Honda's are supposed to lost 200,000 plus miles so I wasn't worried about it. I have never had any real problems with it but now it seems things are creeping up on me. I get it in the shop to fix one thing and another thing pops up. What's up with that. I keep telling myself it's cheaper than a new car payment and life goes on.
Have a blessed day.

Quilting on the Oregon Coast

I'm home after a four day quilting retreat at Gold Beach Oregon. It was a long nine hour drive but I didn't mind because it was a beautiful drive. I went up hiway 20 to 101. It rained off and on and the hill sides were green. There were numerous places where patches of daffodils grew. There wasn't a lot of traffic and I cranked up my CD's and enjoyed the drive. Before I share some photos of Oregon I wanted to show you the quilt my friend Cat made. She attended the Dresden workshop in January that I mentioned a few posts back. I should have gotten a close up because this picture doesn't do her quilt justice. Great job Cat. Now, back to Oregon. This is the view of the ocean from our condo. Mary and I lucked out and had to take the condo because the two couples who were booked in it had their dogs and the motel has the pet friendly rooms, not the condos. Being the kind and thoughtful persons that we are, Mary and I agreed to take over the condo. This is Mary showing off fabric she purchased at one of the quilt shops she stopped at along the way. This is her room. Our rooms were the same except for the color.

This is picture of the living area overlooking the ocean. It would have been nice to have spent more time at the condo but we were having such a good time quilting, eating and chatting that it was late before we headed back and we usually were in bed within an hour.

This is a quilt panel Mary picked up along the way. It is so cute.

The room we were set up in had windows along one side and people took advantage of the space between the windows to hang small quilts. This is one of the small wall hangings.

I did a demo on X-Blocks and these were two examples I took. There was fabric, patterns and quilts all around the room.

They were very creative when finding ways to display merchandise.

This is a view from the back of the room. Everybody got a gold bag filled with goodies.

As soon as somebody finished a quilt top they found a way to show it off.

There was a variety of projects going on all around the room.

The top and bottom wall hangings were done by the same person.

This is a picture of one of the tables that was set up next to a window. Friday it rained all day and it was nice to be inside and see what was going on outside.

I did the block in the middle, top row. Mary did the others. They are tonga bitiks and she is making up quilt kits and wanted a completed quilt top to display in their shop.

This quilt was cut and pieced in less than a day. I should have bought the pattern. This was made for a wedding gift. It's a picnic quilt that will be accompanied by various picnic items packed in a basket. How cute it that? The theme has something to do with black birds in a pie.

So after three days of eating, quilting, talking, eating more, quilting more we decided that we would get up Saturday morning and take a long walk along the beach, since there was no rain in the forecast. Much to our surprise, there was a Tsunami warning in effect and we couldn't go down to the beach. The warning wasn't lifted until 2:30 that afternoon. Oh well, it was more quilting and a short walk to a gas station to buy a latte.

This is a picture of the 2 foot tsunami wave. We watched it from the window. It was such a beautiful day.

I think things were just about over when these pictures were taken.

I love the ocean and the day was beautiful. I'm looking forward to going back even if it takes nine hours to get there.

This weekend is the Manteca Quilt Guild's annual quilt show. So, look forward to more eye candy.. I'm going Friday to help with the set up and will be there all day Saturday. My friend Jan is the featured artist. She is so talented and I'm looking forwarded to the vendors and to seeing all the beautiful quilts.

Have a blessed day.