25 Years

Kate and I are back in the office after our annual trip to Paducah. This was the twenty fifth anniversary of the show and it gets better and better. I know I promised to take pictures of the winners, but right in the Show Guide it says not to put pictures from the show in your blog. So you will have to wait to see the winners in the next issue of the American Quilter. They will be better pictures anyway.

I will say that I can't help but be impressed and amazed by the quilts from Japan. Almost always, the handwork and the amount of work is just incredible. I have always loved the combination of piecing and applique and often the Japanese quilts have those in abundance. The miniatures were also a lot of fun to see, full of imagination and skill.

Last week I took an early morning picture of the Ohio River from our hotel in Paducah and this morning a picture of the view up the canyon from our home in Red Lodge. Beauty is everywhere.

John will be driving in soon and I think he stopped at an antique store on the way home. What treasure did he find?

Brooke

Finished!

A little of the history of the 2009 IQA Raffle Quilt - it's a bit of an epic. John and Sue Nickels, who are members of the IQA Board, stepped up to make an emergency replacement quilt for the 2009 raffle. There are some design guidelines to be met and John's design was accepted back in November 2008.

On November 23, he started piecing madly (cut the pieces out on the laser, of course!) and, if you look back in the blog, there are updates as the top grows. By January 5, 2009, it was ready to send to Sue Nickels for machine quilting. She fit the magnificent quilting in to her busy schedule and sent the quilted project back to us as she was leaving for New Zealand.

It is now bound, has a sleeve and is on its way to Chicago to be displayed for the first time at Spring Quilt Festival. We all think it really turned out great - the machine quilting is really, really beautiful and adds so much texture - I hope you get to see it either at Chicago, at Long Beach or in Houston where some lucky quilter will win it! Oh, it's name is "Red Hawk Rising".

Brooke

Quilter's Heritage Celebration

All three of us are back from vending and teaching at the show in Lancaster. John enjoyed his students and Kate and I had some good visits with quilters who stopped by the booth.

We had breakfast with our friend Nancy Johnson-Srebro who has always been a good, generous friend to us and whose cutting and piecing accuracy are legend.

We managed to take a few pictures - here are pictures of the awesome "Best of Show" titled "Remembrance" by Dawn Gerber of Hanover, PA. It is handquilted and a real beauty. More pictures soon.

If you have visited the website http://flynnquilt.com/lately, please tell me about your experience. It's new, you know, and there are good things and maybe not so good things. It is a work in progress.

Brooke

Vending at Quilter's Heritage Celibration

This is our company booth at the Host Expo Center in Lancaster PA. It's finally quit raining, hopefully. We will have new quilt pictures tomorrow.

Kate