MQX West 2011–Summary

Overall, I had a great time at MQX West!

I got to catch up with friends, and made some new ones!  Candi from Washington, who’s been quilting for customers for a year and has done over 200 quilts, and Mari Lee Seei, from Off The Edge Quilting, who sells those wonderful pink long arm rulers!  She was so delightful, informative, and inspiring with the versatility and amazing designs she’s come up with for her rulers!  I bought the new Frill ‘em Up set, which is a  baptist fan variation, the Gimme Frills line ruler,  the 4” Chain O’ Hearts template… and now I want them all!

I took one hands-on class from Judy Woodworth, and had a wonderful time.   Here’s the practice piece I brought home with me:

It was a real confidence booster, especially when Judy told me I was doing a good job!  I’m going to put the piece back on my machine and keep practicing until it’s all filled up.

I took a feather class from Linda McCuean, and while the technique wasn’t new to me, I got inspired to make a whole cloth quilt!  And, of course, it can’t be a small lap quilt, like the sample she showed us in class, it has to be a king sized quilt!  I bought a bolt of 108” wide fabric, batting and thread to go with it, and have been working on a design, mostly in my head at this point.  When I got home, I decided that it should have a flannel back, rather than cotton, which I had originally intended.  So, I need to get some flannel, but I don’t have to hurry at this point, I can keep my eye out for the right piece while I design and practice!

Today, I’ll be working on a comfort quilt with my lunchtime quilter group, and then back to finish my customer quilt.  Oh, what a short weekend!

New Thread!

I got 4 cones of Aurifil longarm thread at MQX West in Portland last week!  I’ve been wanting to try it for a long time, especially since I use it exclusively for piecing.

One of them is a new color, a beautiful autumn, rusty orange!  I got it specifically to do a wholecloth that I was inspired to make while taking a feathering class from Linda McCuen.

I saw the technique she presented about 3 years ago, so the class itself wasn’t new information, and I’m very comfortable with the technique.  She showed a sample in her class, of course, and it’s just beautiful!  It got me to thinking about how I could do the same thing.

While I was visiting a wholesale store in Portland, I purchased a bolt of 108” wide cotton and a couple layers of batting to make a king sized whole cloth!  I’m really excited about it, and I can hardly wait to start!  After I got home, I started thinking I should back it in flannel, so I need to find an appropriate wide backing.

I was lucky enough to come back to have 4 customer quilts to do, so while I’m working on those I’ll be modifying the design we saw in class to work with a king sized quilt.  Since I’ve never done one before, I’m wondering if I should pre-wash the fabric?  I always do on my pieced tops.  And I’m wondering if I should pre-mark before I load?  That seemed to be the consensus in one of my other classes, but they were talking about the chalk marks (I can’t believe chalk wouldn’t come off during the loading process!)

If anyone has experience making a whole cloth, I’d love your input!

Vera’s Family Heirloom

This is the quilt that I was working on last week.  I’m really glad I went with the Variety panto on it, instead of Brocade!  Anne Bright converted the digital patterns for me to paper, since I don’t have a computerized system.  Wasn’t that nice of her?

Now that this one is finished, I still need to quilt the “practice” quilt I made so that I didn’t make a mistake on this one!  Sort of backwards, huh?

I’ve decided, though, to turn it into a showcase quilt and do a few rows of several pantos so I can show customers how they will look stitched out, and then I won’t run into this problem again.  Now I just need to decide if I want to use my Winline bamboo batting that I’m dying to use, or go with a cotton poly, something that would probably be used more often by my customers.  Such dilemmas, eh?

I probably won’t get to it in the next couple of weeks, though, because I am going to MQX West!  I’m lucky to have family in the Portland area, so I’ll be staying with them and it just turns out that my uncle will be turning 70 at the end of that week!  They are going to have a family reunion of sorts, so I need to get a different project done to take with me.  Better get sewing!

Oh, and just for the heck of it…I gotta share a photo of Hunter and Gizmo….they just need to learn how to relax!