Stories from the Sewing Room

The IHQS was last week. As you probably recall, I entered my Grassy Creek quilt. 

It did not receive any ribbons, nor did I expect it to. Here is the feedback from the judges:

1. The pieced border is a visual element that adds movement to your central design. (Ugh, that stupid border. I knew it needed it, but as you know, I did not enjoy its creation.)

2. Strive for precision in piecing. (Totally fair. There were a lot of mismatched points in this one that I either couldn't get to match or just gave up on caring about. This is a busy quilt and I don't think it shows much unless you're really looking like the judges are.)

3. Quilt design is well chosen and evenly spaced. (Yay, me. I do do this for a living.)

4. Quilting technique is very good. (See #3.)

5. Excellent binding. (I was proud of this one.)

I think that I went in to viewing the show with a bit of an attitude. The IHQS does attract quilts from all over, especially from a few nationally well-known quilters. I understand this is part of their business model for drawing crowds to the show. I guess I have a problem with the same few big names who do not live in or near Indiana swooping in taking the top prize every year. I understand that the prize money is how these quilters make their living, but I also resent that 1. Quilters in the state don't have a shot at winning due to the same few people dominating year after year and 2. these "top" quilters seem to be in a circuit and you end up seeing the same quilts over and over if you go to bigger shows such as AQS. It gets really boring, especially when their new quilts look virtually the same as all their previous quilts, some of which are also in the same show. I saw this on the back of a quilt and felt some rage and disgust. It had already been in at least eight other shows. Like I said, I had an attitude about it. Sorry. 

Here are the only pictures I took. An art quilt I liked and two that I quilted for others.🤷🏻‍♀️

Made by Catherine Carvey

Made by Haley Hatton

Made by Sue Connell

Something I really enjoy about the show is the classes. They are certainly not as inexpensive as they were pre-Covid, but they are close by and generally offer really good teachers. I took the Anything Goes Star Tessellation class with Gyleen X. Fitzgerald on Friday. It was really fun! The day flew by. I brought in around 70 sets of pre-cut fabric (she said up to 100 sets). I got a few sewn--I think 21 fabrics? She gave us a two-hour lunch break and that is when I viewed the show and also shopped. I added four more pieces of Kaffe fabric to my pile of fabrics for this project because I felt I was lacking prints. I also had to buy more sewing machine needles--oops.

This is the tool that was required for class.

Closer view of my blocks.

The whole thing so far. You have to pin your extras on so you don't lose track.

She said she was going to steal and toss our trimmings, but she didn't. LOL. I'm glad, because I use them for leaders and enders. They will be super-cute 1" HST someday. Maybe I should incorporate them into the backing.

Gyleen shared many stories from her early life during class and also told us about her binding technique for show quilts--apparently you get more judging points if you use a fabric that wasn't in your quilt top. Here's a tip that she learned from Diane Gaudynski: to make your show quilts really flat, place them under a mattress. Gyleen is no longer doing show quilts, but is doing a lot of teaching, including lots of virtual. You can take her classes on Facebook.

I was in love with this quilt of Gyleen's:

I wanted to buy the pattern--turns out it was a book. The book said you needed two templates of hers. Of course after I purchased everything, she told me that you need a different template set for the version I liked. I will buy that sometime in the future because I have really blown my budget lately.

What I bought.

The set of templates needed for the smaller version of the quilt.

Thankfully, my workload has really increased over the past few weeks. Pat P. sent me three patriotic quilts. The first one is quilted with Ashley's Star Echo.

I used Star Spangled on the second one.

And Shooting Star on the third. 

These all need to be fully bound, as do many of the quilts in my queue right now.

I also quilted Identity on Carol H.'s two-sided quilt.

I carefully marked everything to get it as close to centered as I could. I was so glad when I advanced the quilt and found the center top and back pins were very close! I always tell people I'll try my best, but I cannot guarantee a perfectly centered backing. It's fabric; sometimes it shifts or shrinks up differently than you expect during the quilting process.

I neglected to share my PHD progress report for February, so here it is:

Sadly, I missed the window for the link up in February. I'm hoping to finish at least one more quilt this month, so I feel like I'm in pretty good shape to to finish the PHD this year.

This month's RSC color is purple. I had my purples and pinks mixed in one basket, so I sorted them out and separated them into two baskets. The more I use my scraps, the more they seem to multiply. Some of my purples are very close to my pinks. I think they could go either way, depending on what else is with them.

Out in the garden, the first of the daffodils bloomed on February 28. Many of them are starting to bloom now, after rain and warmer temperatures.