My quilt studio has become a bag factory.  I've been churning them out.  I now have fourteen completed for my guild's boutique and for gifts.  I can't say that it was boring, since each was made with different fabric, or at least different linings.  I'm quite pleased with them all.  They're about ten inches tall, a useful size.

 

I did like that I was able to use a lot of fabrics that I've bought because they had wonderfully bold patterns and then wondered how on earth I would use a fat quarter of the fabric in a quilt.  

On the other hand, making these bags has kept me from the work of making quilts.  AND now I'm heading for Quilt Odyssey at Hershey, where I have signed up for yet another class to make a wall hanging that will be someone else's design, not my own.  

I took a very pleasant scrap quilt class at my guild a couple of weeks ago and didn't even make the first block.  I enjoyed the color theory information but recognized that I would not be making that particular quilt.  I don't want to stop learning, but I need to make my own quilts.  Sooner, rather than later.

I've been doing a lot of clean-up/catch-up work this week.  I finally got the binding on the Anita's Arrows quilt, now known as "Dewey's Quilt."  It's on the white sofa ready for Dewey to nap on when the cold weather comes.  In the summertime, he sleeps outside, often on the patio chairs or table.  I've never had a cat before that could sleep soundly outside.  He's a pretty self-confident guy.

I've also put labels on a couple of quilts.  I've been typing them in Pages (the Apple version of Word) and printing them out on fabric pressed to freezer paper sheets.  Some people make really lovely labels, and I'm not too happy with the look of these.  They have a technology-produced look that runs counter to the look of the quilts.  I'll have to post a few of my efforts so that I can look at them and think about what to do.

I've also been working on some little bags.  My guild asks everyone to donate at least three handmade items to sell in the boutique at our show.  I found the pattern and tutorial for these by the Gourmet Quilter.  I just love her!  She lives on a houseboat that makes tantalizing creaking sounds during her YouTube videos.  She is unassuming and absolutely clear in her instructions.  Her taste in fabric is totally different from mine, and sometimes I scratch my head at her choices, but I love her ideas and techniques.  Here's a link to the bag tutorial:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcKMLG75cb0 .

I went to the quilt auction at the Kutztown Folk Fair today.  It is THE place to see traditional quilts, especially those made by the Mennonite community.  There are about 2400 quilts selected for sale in the quilt barn during the 10 days of the fair.  On the final Saturday, 24 of those quilts, those judged to be the best, are sold at auction.  Of the 24 this year, 21 were hand-quilted.

Here is a photo of the audience waiting for the auction to begin.

The quilts that sold at auction went for $1000 to $5000, with most in the lower range.  The bidders here love hand quilting and traditional designs.  Three of the quilts received no bids and were returned to the farm.  I can't begin to imagine how I would feel if that happened to me.

Here is a gorgeous cheddar, red, and green hand-quilted Whig Rose quilt. 

This beauty with the traditional Amish distlefinks was a favorite with the crowd and sold for about $3000.  Personally, I'm not fond of the stars in the corners.  I think that they detract from the lighter look of the hand applique.  (Just my opinion.)  In case you're not sure what a distlefink is, it's a dove-like bird that is always looking back over its shoulder toward Germany from Pennsylvania.

When the auctioneer described this quilt has having "yoyo flowers," he set up a howl in the audience, which gave him a quick and chaotic lesson on ruched flowers.  It was quite funny!

I've learned that it really pays to stand in the line for the ladies' room.  The woman in front of me was the successful bidder on the quilt with ruched flowers and shocked her husband by telling him that the dogs would no longer be permitted to sleep on the bed.  The woman behind me was a tiny Mennonite woman who explained to me how she hand-quilts away from her body on a frame.  (I have to use a hoop, because I can quilt only toward myself.)

It was a glorious day here in PA, and we even bought a beautiful hand-made rocking chair.  No quilts: those I have to make myself.

I've been away, cruising on the Danube River.  What a beautiful trip!  It's funny how I see everything through a quiltmaker's eye now.  I kept snapping pictures of patterns for applique or quilting.  I'm not much of a photographer, but these are really just for reference.

This one was a plaster ceiling in the abbey at Melk, Austria.  Another one below.

The next one is the tile roof on the Matthias Cathedral in Budapest.

And here is a doorway in the Parliament building in Budapest.

And these two small bags were irresistible.  They are Hungarian and hand-beaded.  I can see them translated into applique.  They are stunning on black, but I'm not sure I want a black background.  I'm starting to imagine a medallion quilt with a pale yellow background and some of the flower designs in reds and pinks.  Not at all sure about that, though.

When I travel, I take along a project that will probably last me for years.  I make small Sawtooth Stars, cut from templates and pieced by hand from my scraps.  (I thought that these were called Evening Stars, but maybe not.  I think that they are also called Variable Stars.)  I try to make each one pretty within itself, but I don't try to make them match each other in any way.

Meet Dewey.  Look at that arrogant face!  "You want to take a photo of a star?  Well, here I am."

I've finished the quilting on Anita's Arrows and taken it off the frame.  I'm pretty happy with the quilting.  Some of it is free motion.  I'm able to do the vine/leaf/curlique quite easily.  For the ditch work I use a Line Tamer ruler, and for the even curves in the petals in the four-patch blocks I use a semi-circular ruler.  I've gotten much better about not wandering off the rulers.

Now I'm worrying about the binding.  You can see from this photo that the quilt is not square.  I had to choose between keeping the points on the border squares and making the quilt square.  Since I'm addicted to points, I went with the uneven edge.

However, to get 1/4 inch for the seam at each point, I have a tiny margin for the seam between the points.  The quilting pulled the top in between the points, so I will have (I hope) 1/8 inch of the top with 1/4 inch of batting and backing in the seam.  I've got the binding cut, but I'm expecting real trouble sewing it on.

Distractions!  Distractions!  Besides too many non-quilting irons in the fire, I keep adding quilting projects, so my Christmas house is languishing.

My guild had a workshop last Sunday with Linda M. Poole.  Yet again, the topic was WAY outside my comfort zone, so, of course, I signed up.  What fun!  It was like playing with a really cool coloring book for a day.  We started with line drawings of a sweet bird.  We used ink pencils, InkFusion textile medium, and brushes to create a water-colored look.  Then we used a simple fabric marker, the kind I remember using to write my daughter's name on all of her camp clothes, to outline the colors.

Here is my finished painted bird.

And here are the tools from the kit.

I'm thinking of using this as another mini for my guild's mini-raffle at our show in October.  I might try quilting swirls in the sky background or maybe take my first shot at McTavishing.  For the bird, I'm thinking of following the black lines with black stitching.  But first, I have to free up Big Mama, my longarm machine.

I haven't yet mentioned that I am working on a UFO on my longarm, too.  You may recognize some of the fabrics as scraps left from the quilt I use as the banner for this blog.  I just loved these colors and patterns, so I decided to do a quilt from a Craftsy class with Anita Grossman Solomon.  The design is called "Anita's Arrows."  I'll show you the whole thing when it's done.

I have a white sofa.  Don't ask me why I bought it when my daughter was a baby and we had two kittens.  Oh, maybe it's because I was completely crazed at the time and doing irrational things.  Anyway, our indoor/outdoor cat, Dewey, likes to sleep on it and eat mice and moles on it, so it's always covered with an old blanket, thus destroying the beauty of the living room.  I've been using this quilt to practice my longarm quilting, and it will officially be "Dewey's Quilt" and cover the white sofa.  (What the heck.  I'll wash it, right?)

Even from a distance, you can see that the quilting is nothing to write home about.

With any luck, my next blog entry will be about a finish - of something, anything.

I went on a quilt retreat with my guild.  It was so much fun!  There were thirteen of us in a lovely setting, with a cook who happily made me gluten-free meals, a massage therapist one day, and lots of sewing going on.

I started on my Christmas house quilt.  It was scary, because I had a picture, but I didn't know how to make it happen.  I got such good advice, especially from a woman who is working on a glorious crazy quilt.  I knew that I couldn't make that little cat out of fabric, or at least not in the way I usually applique, by hand with turned under edges.  The suggestion to embroider the cat with a satin stitch was perfect.  I admit here to using a very fine black marker to improve the outline of the cat.

Since the embroidery went so well, I got more advice about doing the wreath.  I used a feather stitch in two shades of green for the pine and little red berries of French knots.  I'm very happy with the results.  I did just a straight, black, machine stitch to define the windowpanes.  The next step is to hand applique the door and windows to the body of the house.

I also had a chance to finish the top of a T-shirt quilt that I've been putting off for a year or so.  It's for my public library.  The T-shirts were the prizes for six years of the children's summer reading program.  The thin sashing and borders are from a confetti print I bought at Hobby Lobby.  I'm hoping that the fabric stands up.  It feels fine, maybe a little stretchy.

I'm not sure yet how I will quilt it.  I'm thinking about a bubble-style meander in colors matching the t-shirts on the shirts themselves and something simple in black on the black sashing and the confetti-print sashing.

Once I give it to the library, it will be up to them what they do with it.  They may decide to display it in the storytime room, give it as a prize, or raffle it off.