Some quilting and a quilt show!

A wonderful, quilting-filled long weekend—despite the monsoon rains.

I visited Katrina this past weekend for some good girlfriend time—and the bonuses included (1) a guild meeting where Katrina was the program speaker and both of us won door prizes, (2) attending the Q.U.I.L.T. Guild of Northwest Arkansas’s biannual show, and (3) quilting the Tattoo quilt! 

Katrina belongs to a longarm quilting guild, and she presented a topic near and dear to me—organization. I loved hearing her ideas as well as ideas from the other guild members. 

After the meeting, we slogged our way through the thunderstorms to the Benton County Fairgrounds to the quilt show. Lots of quilts, meeting new people and running in to friends, including a high school friend’s sister. There was some really lovely work on display:

The two quilts above are from The Quilt Show's 2022 BOM designed by Irene Blanck. As a general rule I am not one to do BOMs, but this one sparked my interest and I have the patterns. The one with the black background made me swoon.

The two photos above are temperature quilts. I love seeing these; I may make one, and I may not.

I knew this was a Quiltworx pattern, but it took me a minute to realize it was Carnival Flower, of which I have a kit and hope to start this year or next. This one was a stunner.

I am often drawn in by the simplest of designs. This one reminds me of the Blended Quilt style championed by Marsha McCloskey and another quilter. If you zoom in, you can see how the quiltmaker used a striped fabric to its advantage.

I loved the designs of each of the above quilts. The one immediately above this paragraph was done in many colorways by several members of the guild. I am not a pink person, but I loved this quilt--the color structure, the design, and the quilting.

Back to my maven of mud head, this is one that I saw long ago at a trunk show at a local quilt shop, and immediately purchased the book--that was over 30 years ago. I still want to make this quilt, designed by Gerry Kimmel-Carr of Red Wagon Quilts.

I am always drawn to log cabin quilts, and am amazed at the many different ways they can be interpreted. There's nothing fancy about either one of these, but the first one looks thoroughly modern with a very limited palette; the one done in all black prints above is going on a list of to-dos for me.

And scraps galore! I always look forward to seeing scrappy quilts, and these were a few of my favorites.

The vendors were great, too! I’m trying to rein in my purchasing—I bought 3 pieces of yardage for part of a backing, and was persuaded to purchase the Mondo bag pattern; I have some mini charm squares that have been in my stash for probably 10 years and I’ll use them for it. I also purchased another bag pattern.

After all of the fun on Friday, we dawdled Saturday morning away over coffee and breakfast, then headed to Katrina’s longarm studio. She had loaded the backing onto the longarm Friday night. We loaded the batting and quilt top, and we were off to the races. 

And here is where muscle memory takes the stage again. While I had a lot of ideas for the quilting of this quilt, I resorted to my go-to—doodling. Katrina did all of the ruler work inside the blocks and center panel, and it took us the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday to crank it out.

I brought the quilt binding with me. Katrina wanted to attach it while the quilt was still on the frame, and she did! It was her first time to do it. We watched a video from Angie’s Answers that did a fine job in explaining how to do it. She soldiered through and boy, what a timesaver for me!

So now I’m back home and will be finishing the binding with hand stitching. I am debating about putting a hanging sleeve on the back. The label hadn’t yet been created and I will focus on it this week or next. I know I have some time because the person I’m making it for has not yet announced a retirement date.

I have lots to do this week. Hubs has decided to speed up his retirement date and I want to get some stuff done (not just quilting) before he retires. He’s taking annual leave next week to burn it up (the district will pay employees $50 per DAY for unused leave—that equates to $6.25 per hour for an 8-hour workday—the nerve!). I don’t think much quilting will be done next week. 

My debate over what’s next is quilting the Cabana Huts quilt or starting the Sierra log cabin quilt or another secret project. Cabana Huts will probably win because it will be another quick finish. We’ll see!

In the meantime, go make!