What's Up Wednesday: Guild Day

Today was our December Orlando Modern Quilt Guild meeting.  Always a fun time.  Our membership has grown so much since 2010, and our meeting space is pretty much packed!    We are so fortunate to have The Sewing Studio host our meetings.

Today was a special treat as Juki educator Karen was demonstrating the Juki longarm machine.  She even brought goodies for all of us!  After the meeting, members had an opportunity to use the machine.  I must admit this was the first time I had ever touched a longarm quilting machine.  I must say I liked it!

Do any of you have a Periscope account?  The Orlando MQG does and is now broadcasting portions of their events.  Check it out!  After 24 hours, the broadcasts are stored on their Katch.me page.  If you go to this link, you will find the quilts that I shared today for Show and Tell.

The guild is in a friendly "race" with a nearby quilt group to see who can make the most pillowcases for our local National Guard troops about to be deployed.  I am pretty sure we are well on our way to winning the Pillowcase Challenge of 2015!

Our group also receives 15% off purchases on meeting days.   Gabriela was sweet to let me take her picture while she was working the register.

As you can see, I exercised restraint in my purchases.  I had to take advantage of The Sewing Studio's 33% off precuts sale though.  I may have purchased more of the fabric lollipops than is shown here...they make cute "happies" for quilty friends  ;-))

Do you belong to a local quilt guild?  I hope you so.  It's nice to find "your tribe"!
Thanks for stopping by,

Spiraling Butterflies

Spiraling Butterflies is my finish for the QuiltCon Michael Miller Glitz Fabric Challenge.

The butterfly blocks were made using Little Bluebell's paper pieced Modern Butterfly pattern.  I just love this pattern and have so many other butterfly quilt plans!

The background fabric is Michael Miller Cotton Couture in Blush and also in Love.  The color variation is quite subtle, but I like the depth using two different colors provides.

I finished making the blocks and determined the layout while at our Orlando MQG retreat (still need to post about that!).  Having creative input from others was awesome!  After that, the top came together quickly.

I used my walking foot to quilt spirals (THANK YOU Jacquie and Craftsy for the refresher) starting a little offset from the center.  Aurifil 2410 in 40wt was the thread I used.  I had just enough left over from this quilt and the color matched perfectly.

Twice before, I quilted spirals, but one was a mini quilt and the other was just on a portion of the quilt.  I said I would never do it again, but this time I found the process quite therapeutic.  Crazy, right?!

The Cotton Couture solids are SUPER soft, so possibly that made a difference in the quilting?  All I  know is, the {continuous} turning of the quilt through my Juki didn't seem as difficult as I remembered.

 
The backing fabric is Michael Miller What's Your Angle? and the binding is the pink pearlized dot from the Glitz line.

 The binding was hand stitched to the back while on Thanksgiving break.  I finished just in time to photograph and upload before the deadline.  This is my first time entering a quilt into a show.  I must admit, it was quite exciting and nerve wracking at the same time.

I saw on Instagram this morning that a record breaking number (1,810) of quilts were entered in QuiltCon 2016 and approximately 300-350 will be accepted!  What an incredible show it will be!

To me, it's a win-win.  If my quilt gets in...Cool!!!  If it doesn't....I don't have to make a hanging sleeve and ship it have to part with it!  Good luck to all who entered!

Friday Finish: Bubbles Bee Top

I'm on a roll with finishing bee quilt tops!  Here's another from the MCM Bee.

  In June I requested Aylin's bubble block from the MidCentury Modern bee in the 12.5" size.

Gorgeous colorful blocks arrived in my mailbox and then brightened my design wall until recently when I added strips, log cabin style, around the blocks to make them 18.5". 

With only the twelve bee blocks I have a nice 54"x72" quilt!   Thank you to all my bee friends!

My daughter helped me get photos before I handed off the quilt at Wednesday's guild meeting to quilter Frank!

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts this fine Friday!

Thanks for stopping by,

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Fall 2015

Welcome everyone!  It's quilt festival time again.  I am sharing Fifty Kisses, the quilt I made my sister for her 50th birthday.

The quilt consists of 50 5.5" cross blocks using fifty different Cotton+Steel prints plus one oversize block (11" representing one to grow on).  The binding is the Melody Miller view master print.

Carolyn Friedlander crosshatch in blue was used for the background and the same print but in black was used for the backing.

Guild member Frank Palmer quilted this beautifully giving the quilt such a nice texture that came out nice and crinkly after washing and drying.

My original post can be found here if you want more details.  Thanks for taking the time to visit my Blogger's Quilt Festival post.  Please leave a comment so I can say hi back!  

Friday Finish: Dresden Blocks Top

I have a lot of friends to thank for this one!  Thank you MCM Bee friends for the blocks; thanks to several quilty friends who put up with my constant texts asking for background fabric and layout advice; our guild secretary took the only photo I have of the entire top; and a big thank you to Frank and his polling random salon customers to weigh in on the background color!  It takes a village....ha ha!

blocks patiently waiting....  

These gorgeous Dresdens have brightened up my design wall since last December while I contemplated their fate.  In the end, I decided to stitch them randomly on a widescreen print by Carolyn Friedlander in Pacific blue.  It's difficult to capture the color on "film".  You will notice it looks different in every picture here.

my block...still without the center ;-)

My friends may have selected the background color (between Pacific, Flame, Yarrow), but Max had major input on the block placement.  I wanted to complete the top before Wednesday's guild meeting for show and tell and completely forgot to get a picture with all the blocks stitched down.

see what I mean about the color?

Ede was kind enough the share the photo she took at the meeting.  I think we were holding it up sideways :-))  It's on the large side to fit the bed in my guest room.

There is so much negative space and my shoulder is still giving me trouble (that's my story and I am sticking to it!), so I have outsourced the quilting.  I'm excited to get this one finished!

I won't forget to take pictures once it is quilted!

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts!  Have a wonderful weekend!

Friday Finish: Even More Pincushions

I may have become a tad obsessed with making pincushions.  Besides the three pincushions made during the Good Neighbors Pincushion Party, I made three others with Amanda Jean's pretty fabric!

Since I am also a big fan of spiderweb projects, I made a spiderweb pincushion following Amanda's mini spiderweb measurements.

Isn't the selvage tag so cute?!  I love those coffee cups, and of course they are blue which make them even cuter!

The carry-all pincushion is from Anna's Handmade Style book.  During the blog hop, Holly made a beautiful version with Amanda's fabric. 

For mine, I paper pieced tiny flying geese from my Good Neighbors scraps using an aqua linen for the background and side panels.  The sides are X's in teal and the ends are Dots in tomato. 

 There are so many pockets for storage in this pincushion!  I love that!

Have you noticed scraps beget scraps?!  

So with scraps from the spiderweb pincushion, which came from scraps after making the others, I made a different version of the spiderweb block and turned it into an oversize deluxe pincushion from Heidi's book Sew Organized for the Busy Girl.

Whew!  That's a lot of pincushions, and I doubt that's the end of my making them.  I think there may be some pincushion gift giving at Christmas time ;-))

Again, the wrap up of the Good Neighbors Pincushion Party can be found on the Connecting Threads blog.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts!  Have a great Friday and thanks for stopping by,

Giveaway Winner

A big thank you to all who took the time to leave a comment on my pincushions and giveaway post.  Veronica is the lucky winner drawn randomly (i.e. "Ally pick a number between....."!) who commented "I like the Leaves Array print in sea breeze." and will receive a charm pack of Good Neighbors Fabric from Connecting Threads.

This blog post from Connecting Threads has a recap of all the party participants with pictures and links to all the pincushions.  Also, they are giving away a fat quarter sampler of the Good Neighbors line.  The contest is open until October 4th, so head on over and enter!

Happy stitching,