Ginny's Lollypop Tree Quilt in the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival!

Check out the Honorable Mention ribbon on Ginny's applique quilt - Bucket List! Ginny entered her quilt in the 2015 Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in the Traditional Category.

Ginny made a version of Kim McLean's Lollypop Trees quilt using mostly solids instead of the usual Kaffe Fassett prints to keep the colors closer to nature. She blogs about the process at Minnow Peck Quilts.

Sometimes Tears are a Good Thing...

Lois brought me a lovely vintage quilt top that had been stored away for years, and wanted to have it finally finished. She appliqued the light blue border to the original top to expand it and make it easier to finish. I chose a beautiful feather design for the background, used curved stitching to highlight the stars, and added rows of straight lines in the border. 

When she came to pick it up, she welled up into tears... It's so emotional to re-discover a family heirloom and realize it can finally be used! 

Quilt Show starts Today!

Come see some fabulous quilts at the Durham Convention Center! 

Open Friday and Saturday from 10:00 to 6:00, Sunday from 10:00 to 4:00.

Durham Orange Quilters Guild show - Stories in Stitches

Quilts of Valor exhibit

Junior Quilt Show

Silent auction to benefit the Food Bank of NC

Raffle Quilts

Opportunity to win free tuition

to the John C. Campbell Folk School

Vendors 

And MORE!!!

Vintage View Quilt Show This Weekend in Raleigh!

Wanted to let everyone know about the Vintage View Quilt Show this weekend in Raleigh at the Kerr Scott Building at the NC State Fairgrounds! 

Hope you can take a day to come and admire the quilts. Over 500 quilts on display including a special display of 46 Vintage Quilts from 1830 – 1980, plus vendors, demonstrations and prizes. 

• Vintage View Quilt Show
• March 14-16, 2014
• Kerr Scott Building, NC State Fairgrounds, Raleigh
• Friday & Saturday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
• Sunday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
• $5 Admission, children 12 and under free
• Free Parking!

Quilts of Valor Presentation 9:30 a.m. Friday, March 14 at Kerr Scott Building Lobby prior to show opening. Recipients are John Hill, Mike Dorman, and Sean Moser.  Public Welcome. 

For more information, go to http://capitalquilters.org/2014-vintage-view-quilt-show/ 

Please share this info with your friends...

Modern Hexies and A Ghastlie Christmas

Margaret made this great modern hexagon quilt. She wanted a linear design, so I created one by following the outline of the hexies and then flipping it, offsetting it, and varying the density. I think it really accents the modern graphic look!

A Ghastlie Christmas: what fun fabric! I love the expressions and fancy attire. Not your typical Christmas quilt in color or design - so nice to see something new and different. We quilted it with a snowflake design.

Binding...

There always seems to be one step in the quilting process that holds us up from completing a quilt! I love to do the cutting and the piecing, and I've solved the quilting part for myself and my customers, leaving just the binding as the big hold-up!

I know hand bindings are probably best and a must for heirloom and show quilts, but a machine binding can be more durable for quilts that will get heavy use and are certainly quicker to accomplish

Where Has the Time Gone....

My, oh my - I haven't posted in almost 2 months! How on earth did that happen? Well I'll tell you, we've been busy quilting lots of great quilt tops, and I just didn't take the time to stop and upload your pictures!

Today we'll start with a bunch of great quilts that Lydia made.

Fall Festival and the Fiber Arts Studio

Last weekend we traveled to Brasstown, NC to visit the John C Campbell Folk School Fall Festival. The school was packed with demos, vendors, dancers, and musicians. There was so much to see and do that it took us 2 days to take it all in!

Painting by Lauren deSerres Kelischek

After a quick "Photo Op" our first stop was the quilting studio - of course! It was filled with quilts on display,

Carol's Quilts

Carol has been at it again - making umpteen darling baby quilts for her grandson's adopted family.

She's got quilts for boys and quilts for girls, race car quilts, ABC quilts, Dr. Seuss quilts, dinosaur quilts, nursery rhyme quilts, and cowboy quilts! It's a good thing we have lots of great patterns for kid's quilts...
The children are certainly gonna love them!

Ahoy Quilt

Lincoln is a great lover of Pirates, so Amanda made him this quilt with Ahoy themed fabrics for his bed. We quilted it with a Nautical Edge to Edge design from Kim Diamond of Sweet Dreams Quilt Studio.

The back has these great sailboats on it and it's red - someone's favorite color! Quilts such as this one, and all kinds of other wonderful things, can be ordered from Turtle Birdies - creative stuff for artsy folks... Check out their website!

Check out this Quilt!

 Ashley made a quilt for a friend who races cars. He has an emblem that he really likes - see that little guy above. So Ashley made up some fabric from Spoonflower and pieced this great racing quilt. If you haven't heard about Spoonflower, you really need to look at their websites - it's really easy to design your own fabric! And who doesn't want more fabric?!?

So Mark got to work on designing an edge to edge pattern using the little guy, and this is what he came up with... You can really see the pattern on the back, below. We used Silver Glide for the thread - came out great, didn't it!

Quilts for Ashley's Boys

Ashley made a quilt for each of her boys. The elder will receive this great nine patch quilted with Baptist Fans.

The younger boy loves maps, so Ashley made a quilt with a world map on the back...

 And a US map on the front - and here's North Carolina!

She even included the flag down the side borders! We quilted it with Moonlight edge to edge design from Anne Bright. I love maps too, so this one really speaks to me. I'd love to make something like this for my Grandkids one day.

Wonderfully Striking Batik Quilt

Ivy made this gorgeous lap quilt from strips of batik fabrics. I quilted a fern-leaf design in the white with a soft tan thread and and used variegated thread to quilt a background fill in the colored strips. The border was quilted in ferns.  It really is a striking quilt!

A Design Challenge!

Barbara made this wall quilt in lovely soft earth toned fabrics. Each block is the same block design, but she varied the fabric placements to come up with nine different blocks!

She challenged me to create a different quilting design for each block, so I opened up my Art and Stitch software and went to work.

 I started out with a triangular doodle, cut - pasted - turned - flipped - and recombined to come up with nine different designs all based on the same theme (the original doodle). The final step was to create the sashing design by combining different elements from the blocks.

What fun! You can see the various designs on the quilt back below, and a drawing of the quilt layout following.

Judy's Quilt

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Judy made a great lap quilt with a kit she purchased. She replaced a few of the kit fabrics with fabrics from her stash, and really wanted to use the background fabric for the backing. The store was sold out of this particular fabric, of course, so she launched an extensive search for more. Luckily, she found the fabric she was looking for - and it gave us ample opportunity to design a quilting pattern to mimic the original! Judy's quilt is pictured above with her snapshot of the original below. 

Blooming Nine Patch with Fassett Fabrics!

 Kat made a wonderful Blooming 9 Patch using a variety of Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

We used wool batting and quilted it with Wall flower edge to edge design by Lorien Quilting.

 What a gorgeous colorful quilt - this one really blooms!

 And check out this great backing fabric!