Posts filed under ‘Quilt Shows’
AQS Lancaster 2012 (and 2011!)
Monkeying around at the quilt show
I can’t believe more than a month has passed since the AQS Lancaster Quilt show. Spring is apparently when time gets away from me more easily: I had actually started to write a post about last year’s show, but got busy and never finished or posted it. So I’m going to beg your patience and try something a little different: let’s call it a time travel post! Starting in the past:
On Saturday, March 19, Ronan and I attended the AQS Lancaster Quilt Show. We met Diane and Lisa there, and spent from 10 am to 4 pm on the premises. The crowds were decent, but not unmanageable; although it was the only weekend day the show was open, it was also the last day of the show. Quilts were viewed, stuff was bought.
So far, everything from last year applied to this year’s show as well. I reiterate my frustration with AQS’s policy of running their shows Wednesday – Saturday rather than continuing to Sunday the way the Mancuso shows do and Quilters’ Heritage Celebration always did. The rationale that’s given at my father-in-law’s model railroading shows is that vendors who have brick-and-mortar stores can be open on Monday if they have Sunday to travel and unpack. Yet at the same time, I frequently hear representatives of both hobby communities lament the increasing average age of hobbyists and bemoan the difficulties of attracting younger people. Talk about unclear on the concept! Younger people work, or attend school, or have young children. In this economy, I see plenty of people who are afraid to take a day off work for dental treatment, let alone to attend a quilt show; child care is also frequently easier to arrange on weekends. To me, having the quilt show end on Saturday is saying to young quilters, “We are not at all concerned about making your attendance easier, because we don’t need you.” Not exactly the message I’d expect.
"Blue Rhapsody" by Carolyn Rider. Breathe, Sarah, look at the pretty blue quilt and calm down...
Hey, who left that soapbox out? Anyway, back to 2011:
Based on a rereading of my blog posts from last year’s inaugural AQS Lancaster show, I’d very much like to claim to be a great predictor of the future. However, my March Madness bracket hanging in the office lunchroom puts the lie to that. So I’ll have to settle for believing that the powers that be at AQS must be very perceptive, receptive, and willing to fix what doesn’t work. I’ve been impressed with the organizers of Quilting with Machines on the very same counts, which gives me hope that the future of organized quilting is with people who are open to change.
First, and most important, it was all under one roof this year– no more silly Liberty Place nonsense. And as if that weren’t triumph enough, they utilized the space they had in the convention center far more effectively for displaying the quilts, placing them in the most brightly lit areas of the main exhibition hall. The displays are still chained off, making it difficult to see details on the center quilt in each group of three, and AQS policy is still that no turning of quilts is done by the “white glove angels” to show quilt backs, but overall the quilt viewing experience was vastly better this year.
Again, nothing to add. They’re still playing with the layout of the competition quilts on the main floor, and I think this year was the best yet for traffic flow and lighting.
"Princess Argiope" by Martha Lorshbaugh. She made an arachnid quilt. I love this hobby so much...
I can’t talk about my show experience without discussing how different it was to walk a quilt show with a four-month-old. He was in his element: there were colors, lights, and lots of people smiling at him. He’s a little ham, and quite the extrovert, so of course he was smiling and showing off his dimple and generally flirting with everyone in sight. He was mostly well-behaved, only fussing when he needed to be fed or changed, and was willing to ride in his stroller for most of the day with just one interval mid-morning of needing the Baby Bjorn. That was when I had my big moment of starstruck quilt geekdom, when Rachel Pellman (!) came over to me (!!) to confirm that I was the pregnant woman she had talked to at a guild meeting last August and to see the baby!!! So Ronan made Rachel Pellman remember me! I can live with that. Far better than if she’d said, “weren’t you the one who told that cat vomit story at a guild meeting?”
It was even different again to attend with a 16-month-old. Ronan was very well behaved in his stroller, smiling at ladies and even reacting to some of the quilts!
"Out On A Limb" by Ann Horton, Joyce Paterson, & Renee Gannon. Ronan reached out for this quilt with both hands and jabbered away about it!
I tried to be as considerate and unobtrusive with the stroller as possible, and while the multilevel nature of the convention center required me to spend a far greater fraction of my day waiting for elevators than I would ideally have liked, I can’t fault the facilities otherwise. There was a lovely “family bathroom” in the main exhibit hall that made changing Ronan very easy and convenient, and the third floor had clever little banquettes built into the wall that made for a quiet, private place to feed him. Overall, good baby and good environment made for an excellent experience.
That quiet area on the third floor also worked out this year as a place for him to run around and burn off some energy after having been in the stroller for too long.
A well-deserved break in the quiet 3rd floor hallway
As I’ve been trying to do at most quilt shows I’ve attended lately, I kept fabric purchases to a bare minimum, just a panel for a gift and some interesting salesman samples still on their cardboard hangers. I did buy a decent amount of thread, hitting the Superior Threads booth as anticipated but also getting some to try from Fil-tec, which is located right in relatively nearby Hagerstown, MD. I also fell victim to my usual Achilles’ Heel, intriguing notions and gadgets, with the purchase of a set of strip pressing bars that have already made themselves very useful in my studio.
But of course, as always, the stars of the show were the quilts. I’m always looking for inspiration for quilting designs, as well as just enjoying the beauty, especially the unexpected. The official show website has better pictures than I could ever take of the top ribbon winners, but here’s a sample of some of the others that stood out to me:
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- “Neuron III” by Pamela Kirsch
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- Detail, “Pane Reflections” by Timna Tarr
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- Detail, “Boston Common” by Peggy Holt
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- “My Spirit Is In the Rogue” by Nancy Lee Chong
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- Detail, “Bohemian Fireworks” by Sandra Peterson
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- Detail, “Let’s Start!” by Ikuyo Kitada
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- Detail, “An Unexpected Snow” by Laura Fogg
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- “Astral Burst” by Beth Nufer
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- Detail, “Tea With Miss D” by Sandra Leschner
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- Detail, “Birds in Hand” by Mandie Burrell
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- Detail, “A Garden Romance” by Glenda W. Ely
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- Detail, “Parrot’s Paradise” by Judy Woodworth
Last Post about QwM 2011: Vendors
Some final cleanup! (This was a broken shredder, imprudently left in the hall prior to disposal)
I was very well-behaved at the vendor mall for QwM: I did not buy a single piece of fabric! Not one!
(And no, I wasn’t sick.)
Part of it was the realization that I am so over full-priced fabric. First of all, I don’t need anything. I could quilt for literal years without needing to buy any fabric. I can possibly justify buying some larger pieces for borders and backs as needed, but over all, a fabric has to be pretty darn special for me to feel comfortable paying full price for it– especially now that full price is $10.85 or more per yard! The cotton price increase I had posted about last year has definitely arrived, giving a whole lot of quilters a pretty significant case of sticker shock not only at recent shows, but also at the local quilt shop. And since it’s usually the shiny new full-price fabrics that vendors bring along to the shows, not their discount rack, I only had to use a small amount of willpower to keep my wallet in my purse. If I’m going to buy any full-price fabrics, I’d rather give the business to the quilt shops near me who have given me so much in return over the years by way of service, support, advice, and the fostering of a greater quilt community.
Besides, this was Quilting with Machines! There were so many other fun things to buy that I definitely can’t find at my local quilt shops. MeadowLyon Designs was indeed there again this year, and as I posted when I had finished Ronan’s Minkee Dragons quilt, I had planned to buy at least one or two more of her “pictogram” designs. Well, she made the proverbial Offer I Couldn’t Refuse (although no horses were harmed in the making of this purchase.) The pictogram patterns are normally $18-20 each, depending on size, and Judy was running a show special of five patterns for $60! At that rate, it seemed like leaving money on the table to only buy two. So needless to say, I am now the proud owner of five more of her patterns.
In comparison, I was relatively restrained at the Superior Threads booth, considering I’ve already bought the thread for my upcoming big quilting projects, and I’m no longer using their titanium needles for machine quilting. I was considering buying some more NiteLite glow-in-the-dark thread to quilt my Halloween Buzz Saw quilt, but it doesn’t come in orange the way I thought it did, and I couldn’t settle on an alternate color that would look good. Instead, I bought two cones of Rainbows, their 40-weight variegated trilobal polyester, in Piñata for Halloween Buzz Saw and Neons just for fun. In fact, I used that Neons thread for all my class samples and really had a great time with it. I think that’s a thread I’ll be able to use for some Patsy Thompson-style hyperquilted feathers, as well as for anything I want to show up on a print. I also bought an entire 3,000 yard cone of Bottom Line in Tangerine, since in my studio, orange is a neutral.
At the Friday night banquet, which I attended for the third year, there are always door prizes donated by various sponsors and vendors, some of which are worth close to $100. For the first time, this year I won one! The good news was, I was the lucky winner of a Westalee adjustable strip cutting ruler from Quilter’s Rule. The bad news was, I already had it– along with their half-square and quarter-square triangle cutting rulers. I dearly love that ruler; someday I’ll have to do another Favorite Things post about the quilting gadgets and gizmos that make my quilting life more enjoyable, and that ruler would definitely make the list. But I didn’t need a second one. Fortunately, the very nice people at the Quilter’s Rule booth were willing to let me exchange it towards getting some design templates:
These are 1/8″ acrylic, in contrast to the 1/4″ acrylic used for longarm quilting templates, and therefore are at least half as expensive, but can be used for tracing directly onto fabric or onto Golden Threads paper for quilting designs. Sue Patten used shapes like these as the basis for the Zen-Sue-dle designs in the class I took. I’m excited to play around with them and see what I can come up with. The circles will be useful as different-sized arcs as I make my Spirograph-type designs with Renae Hadaddin’s circle and ray tool on Taupe Winding Ways (someday…)
But definitely the best thing I bought at Quilting with Machines this year was my Fine Line Quilter’s Ruler from Accents in Design. I didn’t actually buy it in the vendor mall, but instead from Beth Schillig during her feathers class.
That’s the sort of thing that frequently happens to me when I take classes: the most valuable thing I learn in any given class is often something only tangentially (if at all) related to the stated focus of the class! Beth was showing us a quilt in progress to display the feathers on it, but we students immediately zeroed in on the beautiful textured border quilted in close parallel lines like beadboard. She demonstrated how she accomplished it with no marking, which is a phrase that’s always music to my ears! I had accepted up to this point that acrylic templates for quilting were a longarm-only option, since you need to guide the machine head along them. However, Accents in Design has developed rulers with handles on the top and gripper strips on the bottom, like super-strength Velcro, so that the template can be used to move the quilt along the foot on a domestic machine. In addition, it has etched lines on the underside so that you can space multiple quilted lines evenly. Beth had brought along extras to sell, and I’ve been greatly enjoying it. In fact:
That’s a preview of my next “Finished!” post, which I could not have accomplished so quickly or sanely without this little gadget. More to come on that soon!
QwM 2011: Quilt Show!
The shared space for the vendors and quilt show at this year’s Quilting with Machines was significantly easier to navigate through, and not just because I’m not seven months pregnant this year (thank God.) Part of the increase in available space was due to the wise move of relocating the demo area to its own adjacent room. What I’m not entirely sure of was whether they actually had more space to work with by opening up an additional section of ballroom, or if there were just simply fewer quilts and vendors and therefore more available space. I heard both opinions voiced, but didn’t get the opportunity to talk to anyone in a position to actually know for certain. The crowds also seemed less dense, but again, whether that was due to fewer attendees, the timing of my visits to the show, or again, just more available room, I do not have the facts to determine.
The Best of Show winner was Fire and Ice by Claudia Pfeil, which is gorgeous and fabulous and has got to have won its weight in ribbons by now. I’ve seen it at several other shows, so I didn’t take a new picture; there are nice ones of it and all the other winners at QwM’s show page here. Most of the pictures I did take were of the kind of quilting I think I can reasonably aspire to; there were lots of great ideas. Recently, as I attend shows I’ve been focusing more on trying to get pictures to serve as examples of how other quilters have solved the kind of design decision problems I’m always wrestling with: the kind that Debby Brown addressed in her class. I tried to get some good detail shots of the quilting, as well as the overall beauty of the quilts.
So bear with me as I try out the slideshow function of WordPress for the first time, and allow me to be your virtual White Glove Angel as you enjoy the pretty!
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
The Rest of My Classes at QwM 2011
"That's a great lake, all right!"
Continuing my story…
Friday afternoon and Saturday morning were devoted to my two hands-on domestic sewing machine quilting classes. I feel almost honor-bound to take as many of these as the powers that be at QwM will offer, as I want to do my part to make sure they keep offering them. It also gives me the opportunity to meet, and therefore evangelize to, my fellow DSM quilters who may not know that any of the design-type classes are equally applicable to them as to the more numerous longarm quilters in attendance. We may have to sit through some minor references to canvas leaders and advancing the machine and so forth, but I use that time to meditate about how I can quilt in any direction I choose, for as long a distance as my quilt requires, and how my dining room still has a table in it. Kidding, of course, but Leah Day had an excellent post recently on Seven Reasons Why I Don’t Want or Need a Longarm, which was exactly what I needed to galvanize me pre-QwM against feelings of machine inadequacy. She reinforced the fact that quality machine quilting is possible on a DSM even if you’re not Ricky Tims/ Diane Gaudynski/ Lee Cleland/ Patsy Thompson/ Barbara Shapel/ Karen Kay Buckley/ Caryl Bryer Fallert/ Hollis Chatelain. Don’t get me wrong; if I walked downstairs tomorrow morning to discover that my house had magically grown an extra room with a longarm quilting machine in it, I wouldn’t turn up my nose. But in the real, non-magical world, that’s a huge investment for a huge machine that I’d only use for my own quilts, and buying one wouldn’t automatically turn me into a better quilter, just one with no dining room and a big payment to make every month. The learning curve is still paramount, and the big machine isn’t a shortcut around practicing.
OK, off the soapbox and on to what I did in class. The first was “Freehand Feathers” with Beth Schillig, who has had quilts at Houston and Paducah and used to be a Bernina dealer near Columbus. She was a kind, patient, generous teacher who showed us several feather styles I hadn’t tried before, and I was very happy to have produced these doodle cloths in a four-hour class:
(Click on the pictures to zoom in if you need to, photographing wholecloths is hard.)
The next morning I had “Becoming a Domestic Diva Part 2″ with Penny Roberts, who is primarily a longarm quilter and inventor of longarm gadgets, but keeps her hand in with DSM quilting and was an excellent teacher with a well-thought-out lesson plan. She provided us with a pre-”stitched in the ditch” sample so we could concentrate on the free-motion fun stuff. When she started with continuous curve, I was concerned I had taken too beginner-y a class, but I quickly came to realize that my current lifestyle doesn’t really allow me much time to just play and experiment with my quilting; I always feel like I have to make every minute count so I have to accomplish! Taking these classes was like the “spontaneous activity in a prepared environment” concept from Montessori school: it gave me permission to just goof off with my machine, and I definitely feel the value of the experience. As you see:
Not to mention, through all that in-class quilting, I did not have a single problem with my machine! Not one! I certainly hope this augurs well for the future.
Saturday afternoon, feeling more than a little fried, I finished up with “But How Should I Quilt This?” with Debby Brown. While the class was excellent, the most valuable thing I took from it was finding Debby! She was not someone whose reputation I knew before taking her class, and I’ve greatly enjoyed perusing her blog and checking out her free online videos and tutorials. She was an entertaining lecturer, and really synthesized a great deal of disparate information into a fairly coherent system for helping the quilter focus on a few complementary designs to successfully quilt each top.
Debby's quilt that she quilted in 2 days to hang behind her on QNN
This spoke very centrally to my recurrent problem of Analysis Paralysis when it comes to quilting my own quilts: I fall for the fallacy that there is only one way to “correctly” quilt the quilt, and if I don’t find it, the quilt will be a failure. Debby rationally and rightly pointed out that the first step to quilting a top is to simply make a decision. Her next words stopped me in my mental tracks and made me write them down: ”Sometimes it’ll be just good enough, but sometimes it’ll be perfect.” I think the reason I found that simple statement to be so profound (aside from sheer mental and physical exhaustion) is what she didn’t say, but I’ve apparently believed to be true, that there is no acceptable alternative to perfection. And the secret, of course, is that there is. There’s good enough. There’s quite nice. There’s really special. What there is not, is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE OH MY GOSH YOU RUINED YOUR QUILT. Because even crappy quilting results in…A QUILT! Not a top sitting in a box, waiting to be sold in (hopefully) many decades in my estate sale, but a quilt, that gets used and loved. That keeps the baby warm. That gives the cat a place to sleep. That lets me see that fabric I absolutely had to have. That goes to show and tell and hangs in the guild show and maybe gets given as a gift to wrap the people I love in the longest-lasting hug I know how to give. A top can’t do any of that, and it’s not a quilt until it’s quilted.
So I’m going to go quilt those tops. I’ll keep perfection on the horizon, but I’ll try to keep perfectionism at bay. Let’s go make some good enough quilts.
Classes at Quilting with Machines 2011
I’m back from a whirlwind trip to Quilting with Machines in Huron, Ohio, and the quilting center of my brain is just vibrating with new ideas, skills, and motivation. Finishing Ronan’s Minkee Dragons quilt was a real confidence booster going into it, and I’ve got four quilt tops basted and ready to quilt while I’ve got some good momentum going. We’ll see how it all shakes out!
"I'm on vacation!"
Dan and Ronan came to Ohio with me, and at first that seemed like a mistake. We left Wednesday evening after I got home from work, planning to spend the night in a motel in Hermitage, PA, which would get us most of the way to the resort and leave us just two hours yet to drive in the morning to get me to my 11:00 am Thursday class. Easy, right? As you faithful readers know, I tend not to do so well with the whole “best laid plans” concept, and adding a 10-month-old baby into the mix doesn’t exactly improve my batting average. We left a little later than we’d planned, but still thought we were doing OK until Ronan decided he wasn’t going to sleep. Ever. I got about 3 hours of very intermittent sleep, with Dan doing a little better (he was driving in the morning) but we managed to get me to class with 20 minutes to spare.
Fortunately, it was Sue Patten’s class, and anyone who could sleep through one of her classes probably needs to have a physical. The class was “Zen-Sue-dled in Fabric and Thread,” Sue’s version of the ZenTangles idea. I’ve been a fan of her Three Textures concept for quilting ever since I first heard it in one of her classes two years ago, namely that every quilt needs to contain Puffy, Medium, and Stipple-ish textures of quilting the same way the quilt top needs to contain light, medium, and dark values in order to have depth. In this class, she extends the concept to an idea for designing a wholecloth quilt in a very randomized, artistic, no-rules manner to create a framework for creative play. “Put your favorite part of quilting into this,” is what she told us.
A Zen-Sue-dle wholecloth in progress
I think I could use a piece like this as an opportunity to try some threads, filler patterns, and techniques without the stress that comes from worrying about “ruining” a pieced top, while still finishing something I could call a quilt rather than just creating yet another doodle cloth. Plus, it’s always worth the price of admission to watch her quilt, and she always makes me laugh. After all, this is the banner she had up in her booth:
Next up was Dawn Cavanaugh’s “Quilting Feathers When You’re a Chicken.” Dawn writes the machine quilting column for Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting magazine, and I had taken her continuous curve class at last year’s QwM. I unfortunately missed the first half-hour of class because my poor sleepless brain somehow thought there was an hour between my 11-1 class and my 1-5 class! Hopefully I didn’t miss anything life-altering, but Dawn graciously welcomed my apologetic breathless disoriented self into class, and I spent the next 3 1/2 hours happily drawing feathers on a whiteboard as she talked us through different feather styles and techniques. I definitely understand Kim Brunner’s “Twirly Whirly Feathers” better now, and I think I know how I’m going to quilt the setting triangles on my Shop Hop sampler quilt.
My favorite of my whiteboard designs
Thank heaven (and more locally, Dan,) Ronan took a good afternoon nap and then slept well Thursday night, so Friday morning I felt like a human being again and was prepared for class. My morning class was initially a letdown through no one’s fault but my own: I had accidentally registered for the exact same Pam Clarke class, “Fabulous Block to Block Custom Quilting,” that I had taken from her 2 years ago! My heart sank when I flipped through the all-too-familiar handout. But not only was this a great topic for review, but Pam emphasized slightly different aspects of the material, especially as she responded to class questions. Also, since Matt and Alyssa’s wedding quilt and the double pinwheel table runner, two of the only projects I’ve finished in the last year, relied almost exclusively on her concepts and designs, it would have seemed wrong not to take a class from her when attending a seminar where she was teaching, even if it was review.
I had a three-hour break until my next class, and while I did go see the quilt show (future post) and shop at the vendors (future post), my top priority was to go swimming with my family. So I did, and it was great! The Sawmill Creek Resort has this crazy pool:
Yes, Dan is holding Ronan up, but he didn't want to be in the picture so is underwater.
We had a lovely time swimming before my next class, which loosened up my back and neck before sitting at my machine all afternoon, and completely justified the decision to make this a family vacation. At only ten months since Ronan’s birth, I would not have been ready to go away for four days, nearly 400 miles away, for “just” a hobby trip. I’m already feeling some pangs over my desire to attend the guild retreat in December. But thanks to Dan’s generosity of spirit, we managed to make it work together. He may not be a quilter, but he totally gets it.
And this post got really long, so the second half of classes will be in Part II!
The Airing of the Quilts 2010
It doesn't get much better than this!
Tunkhannock is a tiny little town in the Endless Mountains region of northeastern Pennsylvania. It has an admirably vibrant main street, beautiful Victorian architecture, treacherous winters, and traffic jams on high school football game nights. In many ways, it’s just like a lot of other picturesque American towns that we drive past on the highway at 65 mph. But Tunkhannock has Jeannette Kitlan.
Jeannette’s quilt shop, Endless Mountains Quiltworks, is definitely a destination quilt shop, and I’m very glad that the Northeast Pennsylvania Shop Hop introduced me to it. In 2002, just a year after opening the shop, Jeannette started The Airing of the Quilts, an open-air quilt show, held rain or shine, the first Saturday in October. Home- and shopowners along Tioga Street, the main street in town, hung out family quilts if they had them, and borrowed quilts from Jeannette and the local quilt guild if they didn’t. In just a few short years, this little display has expanded to also incorporate indoor quilt exhibits at the theater, the Catholic church, and the middle school; annual quilt-related speakers or performances at the theater; lunches provided by multiple community organizations; a quilt block contest; and a trolley to ferry attendees around to the various events. What started as a little quilt show has turned into a full-fledged town-wide fall festival, and I know I’m not the only one who travels in from several hours away to be a part of it.
This year, the featured speaker at the Dietrich Theater was Gail Kessler. Owner of the ever-fabulous Ladyfingers Sewing Studio in Oley, PA, she is also the marketing director for Andover Fabrics in New York City. Gail delivered a fascinating presentation called, “From Concept to Cloth,” about how quilting fabric is designed, manufactured, and ultimately makes it into the quilt shops. Although my guild had hosted a speaker on a similar topic within the last year, Gail added significantly to my knowledge on the subject. For example, I didn’t know that Jinny Beyer was the first fabric designer to design fabric specifically for quilters. She also discussed licensed fabric designs, such as the Olivia and Eric Carle fabrics Andover currently manufactures, and revealed that there aren’t many actual quilters working for the quilting fabric companies. That’s why, so often, details like providing proper seam allowances between panels are ignored. She also displayed many quilts made as examples of different fabric lines. A fascinating and entertaining talk; and since it was held in a theater, we got to eat popcorn while listening.
Gail Kessler at the Dietrich Theater, 10/2/10
We had an absolutely beautiful day for walking around Tunkhannock. The exhibit at the Catholic church was very interesting, featuring quilts made by a group of friends who would go on retreat together and each make her own version of the same design; I wish they had displayed the groups of similar quilts together, rather than displaying each quilter’s work separately, but other than that quibble with exhibit design, I really enjoyed it.
"Tree of Life," by Lorraine Ezbiansky, 2001
The show at the middle school was also interesting, featuring “The Pennsylvania Invitational” quilt show. Quilters from throughout Pennsylvania were invited to select a signature work for display. Therefore, several of the quilts were ones I’d seen before in various venues, but as several were many years old, seeing them again was quite welcome.
Pinwheels was among the vendors at the show, and they worked their usual mojo on me, so I left with a couple of taupes.
We finished at the shop, which was packed with eager shoppers, and therefore didn’t actually buy anything due to the mad crush and long lines. My mom will be returning there within the next few weeks for the Shop Hop, so she’ll get a second bite at the apple. This will be the first time I’ve missed a shop hop in years, but with good reason: as appropriate as it might be for my child to be born in a quilt shop, I don’t know that anyone else would appreciate it much. Plus, the entertainment value to me provided by the fact that my dad will have to chauffeur my mom around to the various shops this year is rather priceless.
I do wish, though, that I had gotten the opportunity to thank Jeannette for starting this event, and to congratulate her on how it’s grown. It’s really gratifying and inspiring to see how one woman’s passion for quilting can bring a whole community together to produce something beautiful, and I’m grateful for the chance to share in it.
Quilting with Machines, Part III: The Quilts
This was the first year that QwM incorporated an actual quilt show. Last year, they had a small but extremely impressive display of teacher quilts, including Sharon Schamber’s “Spirit of Mother Earth,” which I could not stop scrutinizing:
Detail, "Spirit of Mother Earth," by Sharon Schamber
It was really great to see QwM supporting the ultimate result of all the learning in machine quilting they promote, by offering a venue for the student attendees to show off what they can do. If I had a criticism, it was that the room housing the quilt show and vendors was way too small. I suspect they ended up with more quilts than they had bargained for. As it was, the aisles of pipe-and-drape for displaying the quilts were so close together that I couldn’t get any straight-on pictures of the bed-size quilts because I literally couldn’t get far enough away from them to get the whole quilt in the frame without backing into the quilt opposite; that’s why all my trying-to-be-full-view photos are from an angle. I considered buying the offered CD of the show, but it was $22 (!!), more than twice what they charge at the Quilters Unlimited show. Besides, I was mostly interested in detail shots of the quilting, anyway, which I was more than capable of photographing myself.
"My Majestical Sunflower," by Kathryn Gostola
I failed to mention the space issue in the vendor post, but it presented a challenge in their half of the room as well. The aisles of vendors were packed so tightly together that there was really only room for about 3 people to walk abreast down the aisle between the booths. If two booths opposite one another had items displayed along their front tables and shoppers were perusing them, that closed up the available walking space pretty quickly — and that was normally just the spot that one of those, “Oh, hi! didn’t know you were coming, great to see you, let me show you what I bought!” conversations would spontaneously take place.
Add to this the fact that the vendor booths were pushed up against the side wall so that you could only move from aisle to aisle at the one free end, and had to retrace your steps to get back out of the aisle, and you have a recipe for pedestrian traffic jams. I don’t necessarily attribute this to bad planning, but just to unexpected success: this was the first year in a new venue, the first year with a quilt show, and I would have rather kept things the way they were with the number of quilts and vendors than to have had fewer in either category. I am very impressed with the QwM committee, their willingness to learn from experience, and their eagerness to solicit suggestions from attendees; I have no doubt that they plan to address and mitigate this situation for next year.
Anyway: quilts!
The quilts were very impressive and represented a wide spectrum of complexity, skill level, and professional status. There were quilts by international names such as Claudia Pfeil, who won the Viewer’s Choice ribbon, hung alongside quilts by amateur quilters making family gifts. Several of the faculty had entered quilts, including Dusty Farrell, Shirley Stutz, and Sandra Soni:
"Tanzanite Star of Africa," by Sandra Soni
Detail, "Tanzanite Star of Africa," by Sandra Soni: Wow! I bought a spool of gold metallic thread after seeing this
And speaking of faculty, it was fun to see quilts displayed that used recognizable techniques taught by QwM faculty like Patsy Thompson and Renae Haddadin. I can’t wait to use my Mini-Ray tool!
Detail, "Oh My... Stars," by Sandra Soni, using techniques and tools developed by Renae Haddadin
I got many wonderful ideas for my own quilting, such as this beautiful embellishment-without-distraction of an appliqued vine:
Detail, "For the Love of Gracie," by Sandra Stitt
There were object lessons in how the right choice in quilting design can make the piecing “pop”:
Detail, "ZigZag Madness," by Barb Beer
…and all the many, varied, wonderful things that those quilted feathers I’ve been trying so hard to master can do:
Detail, "Blue Beauty," by Janet Joehlin
My personal pick for Viewer’s Choice was a wedding quilt made for the quilter’s daughter:
"Surrounded by Eternal Rings of Love," by Terri Vanden Bosch
And no, I didn’t vote for it just because it was taupe! Although I loved the fabrics and the quilting, what really set it apart for me was the fact that she incorporated bits of needlework, tatting, and hankies made by or at least belonging to various ancestors, and even used photo transfers of love letters sent by the bride’s grandparents during the Korean War:
Detail, "Surrounded by Eternal Rings of Love"
I think it was the air mail stationery edging that set me off. Anyway, the quilt was not only so lovely but so saturated with love and meaning, that to me it summed up everything emotional and transcendent about Why We Quilt.
Good show.
Quilting with Machines 2010, Part II: The Vendors
This will be a much shorter post than the recent monster about classes, although I wish that were because I hadn’t bought much. While I still managed to get away without buying any fabric, the unique nature of this show meant that I had the opportunity to purchase things I don’t usually get exposed to. I actually hadn’t expected to buy too much, as the vendors were very much skewed to the longarm demographic: several booths selling actual longarm machines, several more specializing in pantographs, quilting templates, and software for computer-guided machines. I expected to buy some thread from Superior Threads, of course, but not much more than that. HOWEVER:
Stencils. I’ve mentioned before my weakness for quilting stencils, and there was a good selection from companies I don’t normally encounter at traditional quilt shows, such as Patsy Thompson; StenSource, who makes DeLoa Jones‘ stencils; and a company I’d never heard of before, The Calico Kitten, that had some really interesting designs by Linda Mae Diny.
Pantographs. As a domestic sewing machine quilter, I had written these off as a longarm-only (or at least frame-quilter-only) item. But hanging in the show was a simple Minkee crib quilt that had been quilted in an all-over design using a slightly darker thread:
Detail, "Frogs, Lizards, and Minkee, too" by Marla Work
I loved it. What a simple baby gift! Here was a charming, cuddly quilt that could be dragged around, soiled in every way imaginable, and repeatedly put through the wash with no worries or second thoughts. Then I went to Cheryl Barnes‘ class, and as she is the founder of Golden Threads, she couldn’t exactly not talk about uses for their flagship product. I personally have had a love/hate relationship with Golden Threads paper; I love that it allows a design to show up on any fabric without marking, and I hate hate HATE removing it! But Cheryl gave some intriguing tips for accomplishing that step with less pain (use a pencil eraser, a shop vac, a lint roller, or one of those Scotch Fur Fighter things) that makes me willing to approach it with less dread and loathing. It occurred to me that the Golden Threads paper would allow me to overlay a traced pantograph design onto an impossible-to-mark fabric like Minkee so I could then follow the lines with my machine, accomplishing the same result with just the additional step of transferring the design to the paper.
With this idea already lodged in my brain, I then happened upon the booth for MeadowLyon Designs, who make not only pantographs, but a line they call Pictograms, which are non-repeating 11-inch x 12-foot designs. That means you can make a 36″ x 44″ quilt by stacking four 3-foot x 11-inch sections of the design and never having it repeat. As soon as I saw their Dragons Galore design, I was sold! I’ve bought a piece of green variegated Minkee since then, and will hopefully have more news on that project soon. I also visited a neighboring booth, Munnich Design, and bought a simpler (and cheaper!) pantograph design of ladybugs to be able to use on baby gifts for less nerdy, I mean, dragon-focused, families than ours.
Sue Patten’s new book. “Adaptable Quilting Designs,” which she signed at the Golden Threads booth, contains a lot of the designs she showed in her “Stunning Sashings” class, but with variations. Not only do I want to support Sue as a professional quilter by buying her book, but the book itself is a beautiful thing and has very clear directions on how to stitch the designs.
Renae’s Amazing Rays. My biggest purchase, both monetarily and physically, was from Renae Haddadin. I had taken her “Amazing Ways to Use Circles and Rays” class last year, and while I was fascinated by the process, the tools were very expensive: $60 for the mini-ray ruler, $30 for the instructional DVD, $50/set for the arc rulers. Much as I wanted to try the techniques, I didn’t want to make that kind of investment. So I took a year and thought about it. I’d had a good idea for the quilting design on “Taupe Winding Ways,” to use Renae’s style of spirograph-type designs to highlight some of the circles in the overall quilt top. Even though I haven’t finished the quilt top, I decided to buy the mini-ray ruler so that I’ll have it when I need it without having to mail-order it. It’s a very unwieldy piece of equipment; it was even awkward to carry it around for an hour or two until I could take it back to the room, and I had to be very careful with packing it into the car to avoid breaking it. But it is a very well-designed ruler, and I look forward to playing with it. I also bought the DVD, so I’d have the full complement of instructions as well, rather than having to rely solely on my class notes from last year. I was able to forgo the arc rulers, though, because I don’t need the heavy 1/4″ thick acrylic arcs that longarm quilters use to guide the hopping foot; I just need an arc I can trace onto fabric or Golden Threads paper. Quilter’s Rule sells a set of nested circle templates that are available in 1/8″ thickness for half the price of the 1/4″ set, but I’m going to try to use some of the circle rotary cutting templates I already have, such as the Circle A Round cutting ruler, before making additional purchases.
Threads. Of course, I did buy some thread from Superior. In addition to the prewound bobbins that saved the day for me in Patsy Thompson’s class, I also bought a cone of Highlights, a cone of Metallics, a spool of NiteLite, and the cone of New Brytes that I’ve been looking for for months, to use when I quilt “Taupe Winding Ways.” They haven’t been bringing the New Brytes cones to the shows lately, and I hadn’t wanted to pay for shipping. But Bob Purcell offered to have it shipped to the show booth with the rest of the restock order when I asked him about it at the Wednesday night preview, and it was at the booth by Friday morning with a little personalized note for me from the warehouse included in the bag! Once again, the quality of their products is exceeded only by their customer service.
Next post: the quilts!
Quilting with Machines 2010, Part I: The Classes
It was such a great experience to attend Quilting with Machines again this year. Going last year was fantastic, and I learned an incredible amount, but I hadn’t really had much idea what to expect. This year, attending as a veteran of last year’s event, I felt fully prepared to soak in the knowledge. And soak I did, as if Madge from the old Palmolive dish soap commercials were facilitating:
Upon registration, along with a lovely and well-designed tote bag and badge holder, we each received a name badge that listed all our class numbers on it. I was interested to see that Diane and I were definitely on the upper end of the curve for having filled up our badges, taking nine and ten classes respectively over the course of the three days. While some other attendees may have been just as busy as we were, since all-day classes would have been represented as single numbers just like the more common 2-3 hour ones, I definitely got the impression that most of the other registrants had left themselves a lot more free time than we did. However, to my way of thinking, if I’m going to take time away from work, family, and other obligations; if I’m going to go all the way to Sandusky, Ohio, incurring all the travel time and expense that involves; if I’m going to pay to stay at the resort; then darn it, I’m going to pack as much into that experience as I possibly can. Not to mention, with the ample selection of excellent classes to choose from, I certainly wasn’t stretching to fill my days; if anything, I had to make some very hard decisions as I haven’t yet figured out how to be two places at once!
Plus, even though QwM had a bigger vendor mall this year than last (future post) and they held their first actual honest-to-goodness quilt show (further future post), it’s not like I needed additional time off during the day to investigate those more fully (better for the budget that way, too.) More free time during the day may have allowed us to explore more of the area quilt shops, or more of the area itself: right next to Cedar Point amusement park and right on the banks of Lake Erie, it’s apparently quite the tourist destination. But I was there to learn to be a better machine quilter, and we could have been on the nuclear test site at Alamo, Nevada as far as I was concerned, as long as I achieved that goal.
Only time will tell if I’m actually becoming a better machine quilter, but it won’t be for lack of a good education on the subject. My ten classes were almost uniformly excellent, and the few that fell somewhat short were still very good, just not quite up to the extremely high standard set by the others. Here was my schedule:
Thursday
8-10 a.m. Stunning Sashings, Sue Patten
11-1 p.m. Continuous Curve Quilting, Dawn Cavanaugh
1-2 p.m. Solutions for Quilting Star Quilts, Cheryl Barnes
2-4 p.m. Filling In the Fillers, DeLoa Jones
Friday
8-10 a.m. Design-O-Rama, Kim Brunner
11-1 p.m. Every Little Bit Counts, Sue Patten
2-4 p.m. Leaves, the Fun with Shapes Way, Diana Phillips
Saturday
8-10 a.m. Show Off!, Renae Haddadin
11-1 p.m. Echoed Puzzle Filler, Dusty Farrell
1-5 p.m. Feathers, Glorious Feathers Part 2, Patsy Thompson
Class sample, "Every little bit counts" by Sue Patten
Among the standouts was Sue Patten, of course. I had taken a class from her last year and found it to be not only extremely entertaining, but probably one of the most practically useful classes on any subject I’ve ever taken, as far as being able to go home and immediately implement what she’d taught. My strategy for class registration was to make a list of the teachers I absolutely had to take a class from, and make sure I had at least one with each of them before filling in the rest of the schedule. After last year’s experience, Sue was right at the top of that list. This year I took two classes from her, both lecture/demonstration classes during which she quilted on the longarm machine while explaining what she was doing in her own inimitable way. Each room with a longarm was also staffed by a young man with a high-quality video camera, so that what was happening at the machine was simultaneously projected onto a big screen, like at an arena rock concert. We followed along with her excellent handouts as she stitched, adding notes and occasional pattern variations, and leaving with a whole catalog of new, interesting, easily executable designs, as well as some very funny stories and one-liners, like ”We don’t handstitch in the church basement any more. It’s too cold down there, and there’s no more brownies.”
As if I weren’t enough of a fan already, I won the door prize drawing to take the class sample home from the sashings class:
Another high point was Kim Brunner, of the aforementioned Twirly Whirly Feathers book and DVD. The class was mainly about how to design the quilting for a quilt based on its intended purpose and cues from the design and fabrics, and was chock full of helpful content. However, the main thing I learned was exactly why she won the Machine Quilting Teacher of the Year award for 2009. She was absolutely in control of that room, overcoming administrative difficulties (our attendance sheet was MIA), technical difficulties (her portable graphics tablet stopped working partway through class), and student difficulties (you know how there are so often 1 or 2 students in a class of 30+ who think the class is just for them alone?) with astonishing grace and flexibility. She kept her cool and sense of humor no matter what, had a list of guidelines and procedures at the beginning of class that really laid out what we could expect from her and what she expected from us, and generally was just the apotheosis of friendly professionalism. And if that wasn’t enough, I won another door prize, this time a year’s subscription to Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine!
Kim was also our speaker for the Friday night banquet, which had already distinguished itself by having surprisingly good food for a big hotel sit-down dinner; none of the cliched rubber chicken there. She gave a talk entitled, “Grandma’s Girl,” about the quilting women in her family going back a century in rural Minnesota, that had us all laughing and crying at different points. I think my favorite moment was when she revealed her horror at learning she was descended from the dreaded Sunbonnet Sue (prompted by finding a photograph of an ancestor in a poke bonnet that hid her face), but there were many hilarious and poignant moments throughout the presentation.
Class sample of "Good feathers gone bad" by Dusty Farrell
I didn’t expect Dusty Farrell’s class to be one of the standouts, but I was pleasantly surprised. He’s the biker-looking guy you see at the Nolting longarm booth, quilting on the machine decorated with painted skulls. He’s heavily tattooed, including some quilting designs he drew for the tattooist to follow. Not only was the improvisational quilted filler design he taught gorgeous and inspiring, but I was really impressed by his whole attitude and philosophy about quilting. I took down lots of quotes in my class notes like, “You only get better if you play, and the only way to play is to make your quilting fun.” He owns a quilt shop in northwest Pennsylvania with his wife and his mother-in-law, made a total career shift to longarm machine quilting for hire after losing his job as a high-end luxury item repo man (!!), and just approaches the whole field with a refreshing outsider’s outlook and a very serious-minded dedication. I actually wished my husband were there to hear Dusty talk, which is a first for me at a quilting event. Plus, his quilting was very entertaining to watch, as he used the YLI blacklight-activated thread on black fabric with a blacklight bulb in the longarm machine, so it was more like watching a laser-light show than watching someone quilt. His class models were amazing as well. He’s just getting into teaching, and I hope he gets many more opportunities.
Class sample, "Echoed puzzle filler" by Dusty Farrell
Patsy Thompson’s class was simply wonderful. For all I’ve learned watching her DVDs (and I own 5 of them!) there’s just nothing like having her right there in person, giving gentle guidance and feedback. This was a hands-on class on the domestic sewing machine, and I felt very fortunate to be able to participate at all after the near-disaster I had precipitated through my own negligence. Before leaving home Wednesday, I had very carefully packed up my supplies, actually physically checking items off the class supply list Patsy had provided — and then I accidentally left my bag with all my notions, threads, sewing machine feet, bobbins, scissors, Machingers, etc. in my car trunk parked outside Diane’s house, three hours’ drive to the southeast of the resort. Whether I was distracted, excited, or just blind — black bag on black trunk carpeting — who knows, but I was devastated when I realized what I’d done. I had my sewing machine, thank goodness, with its cord and foot pedal; I had my practice quilt sandwiches; and I had left my freemotion quilting foot on the machine because I’d been quilting before I left the house. But I had no thread, and not a single bobbin for my Janome. Fortunately, the Superior Threads booth at the vendor mall (staffed by Bob Purcell himself!) came to my rescue. I was going to buy some threads anyway, and it turns out that the size L prewound bobbins fit my machine! With a Tim Gunn “Make it Work” attitude, and the addition of some kind loans of supplies from Diane and from Patsy herself, I barely missed my forgotten bag, and was very happy with the techniques I learned and the work I did in class.
Next post: the vendors!
PA National Quilt Extravaganza 2010
"Which Came First" by Anne Morrell Robinson and Grace Whiting
Actually getting around to posting about this!
The first issue I must address about this show is the name: Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza does not exactly roll off the tongue. It doesn’t even have a cute acronym. This is why I, and most people I know, tend to refer to it as “the Fort Washington show”, even though it hasn’t been held in Fort Washington for at least four years. Since it moved to the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center I’ve been flirting with calling it “the Philadelphia show,” but a) it’s not really in Philadelphia, being located about a 40 min. drive to the northwest of the city; and b) that sounds less like a quilt show and more like a TV show about corruption and cheesesteaks. (I kid, I kid, I lived there for five years.) At least it’s less confusing than it was during the intervening years between the Fort Washington expo center and the current location, when it was held at the Harrisburg Farm Show complex, because calling something “the Farm Show show” just leads to shame and self-loathing.
"Reflections of a Rising Sun" by Ann L. Petersen
So: Diane and I went to PNQE (that works in print if not in speech, but hey, we’re on the internet here!) She had been in the area for a work-related seminar, and I was departing Friday afternoon for a weekend of work in Indiana, so we were able to attend the show Thursday on its very first day. It was crowded but not ridiculous, which was a good thing because I haven’t internalized the fact that my pregnant body is now no longer any narrower if I turn to the side. (Fortunately I only knocked a couple of fat quarters on the floor with my belly trying to absentmindedly squeeze through booths.) Like the other Mancuso quilt shows I’ve attended, it was large. The majority of the quilts on display aren’t actually from the competition specific to the show (which always drives my mom nuts when it comes to voting for Viewer’s Choice) but are traveling exhibits such as the World Quilt Competition, quilts from SAQA, and the Hoffman Challenge. The show program actually lists seventeen special exhibits. This means there are over six hundred quilts (and garments) on display, according to the show website. I’m getting fatigued all over again just typing about it.
"Henry the Octopus" by Betty Busby
I have to say, I really thought the competition stepped it up a notch this year. (Good pictures of all the ribbon winners can be found here.) The quilts were amazing, and special congratulations to Diane on sharing in a blue ribbon for Best Wall Quilt for a stunning Alaskan landscape slice quilt:
"Ketchikan, Alaska" by Lila Mason, Fran Frederick, Rose Kotzalas, Diane Quinn, Karen Zemba & Nancy Reigel
"Ketchikan, Alaska" by Lila Mason, Fran Frederick, Rose Kotzalas, Diane Quinn, Karen Zemba & Nancy Reigel
Vendor-wise, I managed once again to be very conservative in my purchasing. I didn’t entirely escape buying fabric, because I knew I would regret not buying this fat quarter:
but mostly I bought stencils, having found some good deals and being very much in the machine-quilting mindset. Plus, I suspect someone at The Stencil Company must have planted a post-hypnotic suggestion on me or something, because I seem powerless to NOT buy something from them every time I’m within gravitational pull of their show booth. At least all my new (and old) stencils are catalogued and organized now, so I don’t have guilt associated with them — well, except for the part about not actually using them…
Once done with the show, we met Rhonda for dinner and proceeded to my quilt guild meeting, where we enjoyed a trunk show lecture by Didi Salvatierra full of even more quilty gorgeousness:
Detail, "Stars on the Susquehanna" by Didi Salvatierra
And then Friday morning we watched a Patsy Thompson machine quilting DVD until it was time to get packed up and on our respective roads. I didn’t get to any quilt shops while I was in Indiana; the only one whose hours aligned with my work schedule was Back Door Quilts, and I had just been there in August, so I passed in favor of some really good thrift store shopping. I did, however, have my laptop and my quilting DVDs with me, and I watched Kim Brunner’s Twirly Whirly Feathers DVD in my motel room to mentally prepare myself for Quilting with Machines, my next stop — and next blog post.
