IQA raffle quilt two more rounds

I finished the last two round of the raffle quilt over the Thanksgiving holiday. I had time to eat but did not have time to take advantage of the black Friday bargains. I have a few details to fill in and need to fill the blank spaces with background but it is nearly ready to go to Sue Nichols for quilting. I have attached a couple pictures of the view out my window. It was a snowy weekend at Red Lodge.

john

IQA raffle quilt round three and four

I have completed rounds three and four. the space will be filled with the background fabric it is just easier to size it when the other pieces are sewn together so I will not cut it yet in case i need to change on of the rings. Today I will be cutting the triangles to go around the octagon and the perimeter of the quilt so I will have a piecing project for the long weekend in Red Lodge.

IQA RAFFLE QUILT ROUND 2

This is the first round of feathers around the star. I laser cut the pieces shown above and sewed the ring. I have not attached to the star in case there are changes to be made. What I did not tell you yesterday is that this is going to be the 2009 IQA raffle quilt. I am piecing the top and passing it off to Sue Nichols to be machine quilted. You will be able to buy raffle ticket at any IQA show-Chicago, Long Beach or Houston.
john

new 5 pointed star feathered sun quilt

This is the start of my new Feathered Sun quilt. It will be similar to my old 5 pointed star quilt with a few subtle changes. The number of feathers has been changed to correspond with the five pointed star and the colors are much calmer.

john

A Medical Week

Here are the two projects John finished up last weekend. The pinwheel will be a pre-cut kit one of these days. The Glorified Nine Patch is a UFO; you know what that is, I'll bet.

I was brave and went for a general checkup this week and then the blood tests, and feel very pleased with myself. Unluckily, John broke a tooth last night and is all repaired temporarily, at least. Luckily, we aren't somewhere in the middle of the US where we don't know any dentists, that was a good thing. So that's enough medical encounters for us for a while.

John is starting a new quilt, a version of his Five Pointed Star that has a very Native American flavor. But really what we have to do this weekend is clean, since Thanksgiving will be at our house this year, hurray! I'm ready to start doing samples of the embroidery for my bed skirt, so if we get enough cleaning done, we'll both have projects.

Take care

Brooke

Errors and Omissions

I just spent a couple of hours writing and proofing our newsletter and bugging both John and Kate to help me with the pattern for the clutch ball. And then I converted it to a pdf file, fluffed it up a little, put both the image and a thumbnail on the website and wrote in that strange and foreign language called HTML. And completely forgot to refer to the clutch ball pattern in the newsletter so now no one even knows it is there.

Except if you read the blog, you know it is there and can look for the pattern if you are interested. Simple pattern and instructions are in "Free Lessons". Free Lesson
Scroll way down, it's the last one.

Doggone it, it's hard getting old. Well, I was forgetting things when I was twenty, so it's no real change, I guess. Sometime I will tell the story of finding a turquoise bolo tie we borrowed in a little paper bag in the back of the refrigerator. Not today, though.

Brooke

Cat Naps

So many quilters have cats. I think the cats around here have us; or tolerate us anyway. John has wanted to make a "cat tower" for over a year. In fact, this giant piece of 1/2" wall PVC pipe has been laying outside in the parking area for a long, long time. It is 8' tall and 18" in diameter and made a really good parking stop - you can see it still has mud on it from its time outside.

Kate and John really enjoyed making the tower which has little fitted platforms with openings so the cats can go from level to level and an exit on the back to the new food shelf. Anna, the Siamese, does not even pretend to like the cat tower. Patch, who is a little daffy anyway, allows Kate to put him in the tower and then he swarms up and out. His favorite thing in the shop is a cardboard box anyway, so it is tough to compete.

Another of Kate's miniature Storm at Sea quilts was just auctioned off on ebay for the Alliance for the American Quilt fundraiser. John has a little quilted sampler on auction right now. Here is the address ebay

I have started Christmas shopping - our son gave me a list, some of it is things for the computer I have never even heard of. I have things picked out for Kate and her husband, but just on a "wish list" in case I hear any "hints" in the next week or so. John said he wants socks. He always says that. Our "Holiday Special" is ready on the website, if you don't already have a Multi-Frame and Stand.

Holiday Special

We are heading to Red Lodge this afternoon. The big news in Carbon County right now is the lady who keeps chimpanzees and their escape and all the trouble she is in. One was found running amok down the highway and the other bit a neighbor, so Bad News for the chimps, I'm afraid. Have a great weekend!

Brooke

Weekend Projects

When we leave for Red Lodge every Friday, (assuming we aren't headed for a quilt show) we pack the car or van with projects to keep us busy over the weekend. John tested Kate's newest pre-cut kit, working name "Hexagonal Pinwheel". It is going to be cute and bright. Then he found a partially pieced Glorified Nine Patch in calico and solids and got a lot of those blocks pieced. Both John and Kate are getting fascinated with miniatures. I expect to see more of them being offered soon.

My projects were to bake a chicken in the new stove and find the turkey roaster in anticipation of Thanksgiving. We also located the "good china" which is hand me down but very pretty and special to our family. Need to hand wash it before the big turkey day. I also am shortening a bed skirt and I wanted to make sure it was pre-shrunk so I didn't have grief later on. I want to use the fancy stitches on our Bernina 200 in colors to go with the quilt on the bed, of course. Choosing thread is always fun!, love it!

Then there was The Cabinet. It is about 60'' high and 60" wide and is one of those "assembly required" deals. Never, ever again. It is really handsome now that it is assembled and in place. But an engineer and particleboard furniture and instructions written in China are not a good combination. Don't do it. John did not yell at me but he said some bad things to the cabinet.

Here are a couple more observations about International Quilt Festival. The DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) loaned some exceptional, rare and very old quilts to the show. There were wonderful examples of the way quilts were made in the 1800s when fabric was hard to get and expensive. Lots of wonderful hand quilting and a really great chance to see old fabrics, some of it block printed by hand.

We sponsored the Alzheimer's booth, Ami Simm's project to raise funds for Alzheimer's research. Several of the quilters who bought John's little quilts came by to have them signed. One girl, about 10 years old, bought a little quilt and John really did enjoy signing her quilt and visiting with her. How generous of her to spend some of her "show cash" for something fairly abstract for a youngster. I haven't hear how much the booth raised but every little bit helps. http://www.alzquilts.org/

This week is another week of catching up and cutting kits for Benartex. I can't wait to get started on my machine embroidery. Oh, I want to hand embroider on it too; got to have a hand project.

Brooke

Too Much to Report

We are back from Houston. John taught 3 days and they were successful classes. Brooke and Kate staffed the booth which is always fun, but long days. The pre-cut kits were really popular and it was fun to watch quilters try to decide "which one?".

We have some rituals at Quilt Festival, mostly involving FOOD. We had a lovely dinner out with our friend and quilt teacher/author, Nancy Johnson-Srebro. On Tuesday night, we went to the IQA award ceremony, where all the winners are identified and the top quilts in each category are revealed. You can get right up to the quilts and admire and the quiltmakers are often there for you to congratulate. Our company sponsors the Merit Hand Quilting Award and this year, one of our favorite hand quilters, Hazel Canny, won First Prize in our category.

Then there was a wonderful and kind of noisy dinner at an authentic Mexican restaurant with our vendor friends. Saturday was the Silver Star Salute banquet for Silver Star recipient, Alex Anderson. All the top prize winners speak at the banquet and the quilter from Japan who won one of the top awards wore her traditional kimono and gave her entire speech in English which impressed all of us! It was great to see Alex's early quilts and learn about how she got in to quilting. John got to visit a minute with her Dad who has been on salmon fishing trips with them. On Sunday, after breakdown, we always go to a local Vietnamese restaurant which is near the Convention Center, tasty and too much to eat.

The little Silent Auction quilts went over well - and got lots of comments. Brooke's went for $75, Kate's for $225 and John's for $575, we think. Anyway, all for a good cause, the International Quilt Association. Some lucky quilter won Phil Beaver's beautiful raffle quilt but it wasn't me.

We had quilters from Spain, Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain, Japan and, we think, Belgium. This year was our 19th show at International Quilt Festival. You know what that means, next year is our 20th Anniversary!

My camera quit working right before the Show so I don't have nice quilt photos to share.

Kate flew home on Monday and was petting her dogs by 1:00 pm. John drove really hard and we got to Billings about 7:00 pm on Tuesday. We listened to CNN Election coverage all the way and were ready to take a break from news until the polls actually closed and results could be reported.

Next weekend, time off in Red Lodge. There may be snow; I know for sure it will be peaceful.

Brooke