Erin's Bee Block

I have recently joined my first online quilting bee! (I was part of the [3x6] sampler quilt mini bee for a bit, but that's not really the same kind of bee.)

It's called Bee Tweet and there are some seriously great quilters in there! I'm so excited to meet new quilty friends and make blocks that I've never made.

Erin's up for the first month - May. She wanted a scrappy block like Aneela's. Here's mine.

Giveaway coming up!

I'll be giving away something really great on Monday, May 23rd - so don't forget to come see what it is!

to market to market

Wow! I got to go to Quilt Market last weekend. It was really fun to meet lots of people I know from online. But I wasn't the greatest at getting photos of people so I'm going to have to borrow.

The first thing we did was go to Sample Spree on Thursday night. Amy, Kati, and I met up and we also ran into Erin and Colleen. While waiting in line we ran into Jacquie and Alissa! They were so nice and fun to talk to. It was so fun meeting them!

thanks for the photo kati

I had no idea what to expect. Actually - I thought we'd get a bunch of free stuff (samples). But it was a bunch of the new lines of fabric for presale. Each fabric manufacturer had a table and there were also other people selling things besides fabrics. I bought some Pick a Bunch (a roll-up) for a great price. If you want to see a little bit more of what we did - check out Kati's post here.

Friday morning Erin, Colleen, Ginny, and I went to the exhibition hall and looked at as many booths as we could. I was only there for about 2 hours before I had to go. The first person we met was Sandy Klop who designs American Jane patterns and fabrics. Her mono pez may be my favorite fabric ever and in her new line she's got some new colors of multi pez. (They're not legally allowed to be called pez so I think she said they're called magic beans - but we'll always call them pez.) Anyway - she was SO nice! I asked her if she will be designing any new colors of mono pez in the future and she said YES! (Though she said maybe not for a few years. That's okay - I'm happy to wait.)

My favorite booth was the Kona booth where we got our photo taken in exchange for fun free stuff - a Kona bag and a color card!



I found a new-to-me Japanese fabric company - Hokkoh - with some really beatiful designs.



I met the lovely Sarah Jane with some great new boy (and girl) fabrics.

I found this beatiful quilt in some booth (Erin - do you remember whose booth?)

And saw some of this girl's lovely quilts in person! They're all gorgeous!

This was in Anna Maria Horner's booth - which was all lovely.

A few other things: I got to meet John of Quilt Dad and Heather of {House} of A La Mode. They were really fun to meet! And last but not least - I got to see the quilt that I helped Lizzy House make for her booth!

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Welcome to all of you visiting from Blogger's Quilt Festival. It's so fun to see new quilts and meet new friends! For those of you who've already seen this quilt - thanks for reading!

I started this quilt before my oldest was born - so probably around 11 years ago. At some point I put it away because I decided the colors weren't boyish enough. But eventually I finished it. I'm not even sure when - maybe 3 years ago? Anyway - it took me a while.

I planned this all out in my idea notebook at the time. I picked 5 colors of embroidery floss that I loved and designed a different plaid pattern for each square (or partial square). I also designed a border that I never got around to doing.

The quilting doubles as embroidery and both the front and the back are white, so they are pretty close to the same.

Before starting the stitching I marked the squares with an erasable quilt pencil. For the stitching I used masking tape as a guideline. I also started in the center (using a ruler to find it) and worked my way to the outside of each square.

I love how this quilt turned out and I love that it was so creative and original. It's hard to be original these days when I find so many great ideas that someone else has already come up with.

Free-Motion Quilting Ideas

Did you know I free-motion quilt? If you're new to my blog you probably didn't know that. I've had my last 3 or 4 quilts done with a long-arm. But before that I've done all my quilts myself.

Even though stippling is doable, and it looks nice - I get bored with it. That's why I created this new flickr group - Modern Free Motion Quilting: A Reference. It's meant to be a great resource for free-motion quilting so that we can all get some new ideas going. So far it has some great ideas I've never seen before.

If you free-motion quilt and have some new ideas - please add your photos to the group! And if you are trying to think of new ideas - please go look around.

Also - Kati - of from the blue chair - recently did a great post on free-motion quilting ideas (based on our recent Modern Quilt Guild meeting).

Do you free-motion quilt?

working on . . .

The hexagons are coming along after a Spring Break car trip. I think I doubled the total from last time.

I also cut a whole bunch of triangles yesterday. Way more than 400 - and I don't really feel like counting them all.

Now they're all ready to sew into double hourglasses.


What are you working on?

Winner!

Thank you, thank you for all the comments and for all my new readers! I loved reading all your comments and visiting all your blogs.

The winner of the Heather Ross fabrics is:

Bek who said: the thing i love most about sewing is that i can take what looks like a pile of colourful flat sheets and turn it into something amazing and beautiful - and the fact that not eveyone can do it, makes it even more worth it!

Congratulations Bek! And to all of you who didn't win - I hope to do another great fabric giveaway soon-ish!