I Did Not Attend Houston

Nor have I ever attended the International Quilt Festival in Houston, but I would like to sometime. Depending on life, finances and the state of the universe it could be as soon as next year. In order to attend Virtual Houston, head over to the QA blog for some entertaining photos and commentary by Pokey Bolton.

I was pleased to see that she has a picture of Pamela Allen, doing what she does best: showing off her style (though she is a pretty great teacher as well).

I also love the Caroline and Co booth. I wonder if I could paint one of my rooms with those orange stripes; people may rebel and/or develop a sudden, recurring bouts of insomnia. I do like the cheerfulness, though.

  blog it

Longarming a Tree Skirt??

As I mentioned, I have had longarming on my mind lately. One of the things I have been trying to work out is how to use different colors and different machine quilting designs in one quilt. I don’t want my quilt to look like I didn’t think about the quilting design and just Pantographed over the whole thing. Quilting Arts has a pattern for a tree skirt and it occurred to me that this might be the PERFECT project for the longarm. I could sew several pieces of coordinating fabrics together, longarm it and then cut out the tree skirt. They suggest stamping and painting and embellishing, which is a good idea. Another project to think about!

Denyse Schmidt Fabrics: A New View


countyfairpurse2
Originally uploaded by SarahQFD

I wasn’t that enamoured with the new colorways that DS came out with recently. I like the designs, but the colorways didn’t do much for me. Today I saw this photo (still working my way through the DS Pool on Flickr). These fabrics are obviously designed to be used together. That weird gold looks almost buttery next to the burgundy. It makes me wonder about a fat quarter pack. I have to stop myself, though, because there are many, many gorgeous fabrics that I could use with a bunch of fabrics I already have and these would almost certainly have to be used together and then what would I do with the finished project?

I am glad to see that these fabrics look nice together. Quilt Fabric Delights blogs about these fabrics and this purse at: http://quiltfabricdelights.typepad.com/quilt_fabric_delights/2008/09/i-sewed.html

Bags of the Kemshalls

Linda and Laura Kemshall are quilt artists extraordinaire. I love their Thr3fold Journal and the straightforwardness (is that a word??) and artistry with which they present their projects. They have come out with a new gift bag pattern via Quilting Arts. I looked at the pattern and it is kind of a backwards bag. What I mean by that is that you create, paint, embellish, bead and torture your fabric THEN you make the bag out of it. I can see where this pattern would work for stuff you already had around the house or for test techniques that you didn’t want laying around after you were done testing. These bags look pretty complicated, however. Please note that I haven’t made one, but I am very much a fan of he 10 bags an hour method. Let me know if you make one of these bags and how it turns out. I’ll be happy to post your photo to my blog or link to your blog etc from Artquiltmaker blog.