The Little Red Hen

Confessions of a Free Motion Quilter

I am a sucker for upbeat music and choreographed dance moves. There, I said it. I love a good classic movie musical.  

I am on a musical movie kick this week and it has really gotten me out of my recent mental paralysis. I had too many ideas and couldn't make progress on any of them. While watching musicals I have quilted the Paris quilt and am getting going on a couple of other projects. I love when that happens. I'm just glad that no one is here to see me wearing a pair of big dj headphones while singing along and sewing. Fun times.

Yesterday I watched Grease; it had been years since I had seen that one. Today- High School Musical. I had never seen that one before. I liked it. 

I'll be requestiong some more classic musicals from the library. I'm sure there are a bunch I haven't seen. Do you have a favorite musical that I can add to my list?

Do you have a secret to help you get in the creative groove? I'd love to hear about it.

 

Wordless Wednesday

(1982 scanned slide. I guess I was trying to be artsy way back when.)

Welsh Quilting

As I am working out the quilting design for my latest quilt I thought I'd share some of my favorite quilting resource books with you.

I recently purchased two new books focused on Welsh quilting. 

Making Welsh Quilts the Textile Tradition that Inspired the Amish?  by Mary Jenkins and Clare Claridge is a great book that shows old and new quilts with Welsh quilting. I like that each of the project quilts in the book also has a complete quilting plan. You can study how the quilting works with the patchwork of the quilt and use those ideas on your own quilts.  Welsh Quilting Pattern & Design Handbook  by Marjorie Horton is an excellent source for Welsh quilting motifs and patterns. It has no color photographs and shows no finished quilts but is jam packed with quilting ideas. Both of these books are geared to hand quilters but with a little creativity you can do similar things in continuous quilting on a long arm or domestic sewing machine. I'm working on that right now. 

In looking through the Welsh quilting books, I can see that Gwen Marston has been influenced by Welsh quilting. Her book, Quilting with Style: Principles for Great Pattern Design, another of my favorite quilt resource books, features many similar designs and also shows how to draft cables and feathered vines to fit any space. 

The random number winner for the GenQ drawing was 2, Emmmylizzzy! Congratulations.

While I was Away...

While I was at Quilt Market, P and M built a newspaper geodome in the yard.  It had gotten soggy and collapsed before I got home so I was glad they had taken a few pictures.

It looks like they had fun making it AND with the photoshoot.

Flashback Friday

1967 - at the Virginia Tech greenhouses

Pixie Hat

During our drive to Kansas City for Quilt Market, I did a bit of knitting.

I finished this super cute pixie style hat. It's really a pretty quick knit.

Miss Petunia loves it. I like that it comes down and covers her neck. I think that will be great to keep the wind off her neck next winter and will also make getting ready for recess a little quicker - no fussing with a scarf. This one is a wee bit small for her so I plan to make a bigger one and make the neck/scarf part a little longer. She has chosen a pretty pink yarn. She said I could give it to her for Christmas. Isn't that sweet? 

The pattern is sized from baby to adult. I kinda want to make one for myself. M thinks that would be a little weird. I offered to make him one but he declined. Well, he didn't want the elf shoes either so what fun is he?

The pattern for the hat is Lyalya Hoodie by Natalia Schaffer.
The yarn is Artyarns supermerino.

Generation Q Magazine

The folks at Generation Q had an inviting booth. You may not be able to tell from this photo but that is a tub couch a la "Breakfast at Tiffany's". 

I won a little goodie bag made and filled by Scott Hansen of Blue Nickel Studios, one of the Gen Q team, for being one of the first to visit their booth on Friday. I love that he filled the bag with blue items and even included a piece of vintage fabric. 

And those tiny little monkeys are just adorable. They were quite a hit with the kids when I got home.  Miss P covets them. Thanks Scott. 

I actually met Scott in the lobby of our hotel on Thursday morning where he was still binding a couple of quilts for display. Now THAT is some last minute stitching. 

Generation Q  also had a door prize give drawing which I won later in the day! I scored this fab box of Cotton Couture solids by Michael Miller. 

Oh yeah, they have a print magazine now! I had a chance to read the magazine while I was there and on the LONG ride home. I think it is a great magazine. I love the conversational tone it has.  It made me feel like members of my local stitch group were talking to me. It is packed with a variety of articles, projects, an iron review, and much more. I also like that it is in a small size format that will easily fit in your purse. 

Congratulations to the Gen Q team on their first print issue!

I picked up an extra copy that I'll give away to a lucky reader. 

To enter, tell me something you would most like to see featured in a quilt magazine. I'll keep comments open until Sunday night and announce a winner on Monday.

Favorite Things at Quilt Market

Just look at this! So much eye candy. Melody's Miller's retro room was my favorite. I wanted to move right in.  I LOVE her fabric! 

It was great to see a few booths featuring organic fabrics.  I have to admit that Cloud 9 had some cute samples! Recognize any?

I also liked the new organic fabrics from birch.

The new line from Mona Luna organic fabrics also looked pretty great. (sorry, no photo).

Liberty of London introduced a quilting weight cotton which can be seen here.

Carolyn Friedlander had some nice patterns and her sample quilts had impressive quilting on them. I also like the embellishing she does with her stamps. You can see some of that at her website.

Don't look now had some dense quilting on her samples too.

We laughed, walked, gawked, and drooled over fabric of all kinds and colors.  The amount of patterns, notions, threads and books was downright overwhelming. 

edit to add:  After writing this I saw Ellen's post here.  She and I seem to have pretty similar tastes.   I will have to seek her out at the next market I attend. I agree with some of her notes at the end of her post. I have also been wanting to see some of the sample quilts mixing in more than one line of fabric. That would really give a fresh look and also show some versatility to the new fabrics.

International Quilt Market in Kansas City

Whew. I'm home from my trip to Quilt Market in Kansas City with Brenda, Anna, and Debbie. It was exhausting but lots of fun. I learned a lot and have many ideas in my head that I need to process and write out before I forget. Right now things are swimming around in my head in a blur.

We took classes, attended school house presentations, experienced the madness that is sample spree, went to the  Moda customer appreciation dinner, visited ALL of the booths, and went to the Modern Quilt guild meet up. 

(line for sample spree - This is the front of the line. We were in the way back where you can hardly see. The line went on and on after us too. Crazy.

(Brenda and Anna - plugged in and instagramming our wait in line for sample spree)

(Kona solids at sample spree)

(Alex at the aurifil table. A table piled high with Aurifil. Heaven.)

I loved meeting lots of people I know from the web. The Fat Quarterly team was just as fun in person as I had expected. Here Brenda and I are with Katy and Tacha.

And here's Tia. I wish Tia were my neighbor. I think we would have lots of fun sewing together. 

It was a great few days - everyone was really nice and I learned tons. I hope I can go again! Next time I'll have to take an extra suitcase for the return trip. I brought home twice the amount of what I took on this trip. Crazy.

I have lots to share with you but I think I'll sort it out and share in a few different posts. I'll share some of my favorite things from market and I'll also have a few book reviews later in the week. There will also be a give away so be sure to stay tuned.

Flashback Friday

1974 - Mt Rushmore