Latest first: Vermont Quilt Festival

My friend Claire and I decided to take a road trip to Burlington, Vermont, starting in Portland, Maine, to end up at the Vermont Quilt Festival near Burlington.  Our plan was to spend time with Wendy Reed and we were pleasantly surprised that Barb Vedder was able to come up for the day as well.

I'll start with the latest pictures.  The show was fabulous.  There is an entire collection of antique quilts grouped separately from other quilts that is truly amazing.  Sharon Waddell shared her quilts and also had a very educational talk about the quilts.  The variety of quilts in the entire show ranged from very basic, traditional to very modern creations.

First things first:  the  3 blogging friends got to spend time together!  Three Muskateers?  Three peas in a pod?  Three ring circus?   Three of a kind?  Three stooges?  Three wise [wo]men?  Three in one?  Three sheets to the wind? {not at all}

I've met Wendy twice before and first met Barb at the show.  We three had a fabulous time going through the quilts and just laughing and being silly.  They are both exceptional women with great experience and knowledge about quilts (and other important life issues as well!).  Just hanging out with them was worth the trip, honestly.

But the quilts?  OH MY...
Barb has posted pictures of a bunch of the antique quilts so I'll show others before filling in ones she didn't post pictures of.

Let me first show you Wendy Reed's blue ribbon winning beauty.  It's all hand-pieced and hand quilted (Wendy's potholder method once again shows beautifully).  We got Wendy to pose in front of it!


Wendy's quilting skills (in terms of design, applique, piecing and quilting) are extraordinary.  She reproduced the same quilt in a smaller version, which Claire and I saw at Wendy's house earlier in the week.  Here you can compare:

I'll post more about Wendy's show n tell on another day.  I hope you won't miss some of Wendy's beautifully folded stash along the right of the picture.  This is just a fraction of her "holdings"!!












This quilt was mostly made using DiFord fabrics and the quilter did a fabulous job dividing up the pillar print on the border.  Simple block with gorgeous fabrics!


Fabulous fussy cutting on this hexie quilt using a bright red background!  This is just one example of the amazing cutting.






Each section of flying geese was done with the colors increasing.  I loved the idea.



Nice Gypsy Wife;  the border is one fabric;  loved the use of grays for the backgrounds to not compete with the blocks.


This is one of my favorites!  I'm thinking I will replicate one of the pineapples for my donation to the Hawaiian auction later this year!  Such a happy quilt!


I loved the use of the traditional piecing with the applique all in very bright red/white/black colors!


Winner of the best wool appliqué ribbon.  There was another one I liked as well using a Primitive Gatherings pattern.  Will try for a picture tomorrow.


All the bases of these baskets are the same;  the flowers are all different. LOVE it!


Another extraordinary hexie quilt.  This one was made a little differently than the red one above;  this one's connecting pieces were hand-sewn onto the hexies.  The quilter is a friend of Wendy's so we got to ask her directly!



This is another of my favorites.  The quilter was there so I got her picture and also was able to ask her lots of questions about her quilt (which is two sided and both sides are AMAZING).  Here's just one close-up:


Two things not to miss in this area:




Today we are off to the Shelburne Museum and plan to meet up with Wendy again.  Sorry to say bye to Barb who needed to head back to her house early this morning.  Claire and I plan to make great use of our last day in Vermont!  Also plan a quick trip back to the vendors at the show in the morning!! vbg Forgot to pick up something that looked very appealing to me (more on that later!). xxxxx

Life is good!

At last, May mini

you know... better late than never, right??  I also am a huge fan of being able to finish off a UFO that's been waiting for attention!  I pieced this at least 4 years ago but never quilted it.  This is my meager attempt at baptist fans...  I should probably stick to stippling!  vbg



On the drive up to the cabin, I worked on the summer block of the week from last year (Primitive Gatherings).  This project will take a while (there are 12 blocks)--lots of long drives.  I'm almost done with this one block.  The red is much more burgundy than it appears in this picture.  I need to also embroider the leaves (and sew the rest of them down) and add more berries.  


I brought along another block and started prepping it.  You know that the prep takes as long as the actual sewing (well, not exactly).

Yesterday I tried out my new inflatable kayak for the first time.  Some friends and I went out at the marina in Sunriver and floated down the Deschutes River.  I think it's one of the most serene places I've ever been to!

Teacher quilts and under my needle

Today was my grandson's graduation (!) from pre-school.  I honestly remember my kids' graduations from the same levels!!

My daughter had asked me to give the kindergarten teacher a quilt and I didn't think I could do that and NOT give a quilt to the teachers at the pre-school who had all three of her kids over the years.

So I went through my stacks of quilts and picked out 3 which I thought would be enjoyed by the teachers.  I made some of them a while ago but they've been just sitting in piles, so why the heck not??? Don't you agree? Giving away a quilt is much better than just keeping it sitting in a pile or a closet.  At least, that's how I feel.


I gave this one to Teacher Paul, who I really enjoyed over the years.  Very interesting man to talk to (I went on field trips so he and I had some time to chat).  

This one went to Teacher Nicole, a very feisty single woman who loves sports.  This was a sampler I made years ago and I'm happy to have it live with someone who will cuddle under it~!


This last one went to one of the people who runs the pre-school.  Several years ago, I donated a quilt to their auction and one of her friends bought it.  She lamented that she never got one.  So Olivia got her own this year!

This is one of my favorite settings of all time!

This week I've done a little sewing.  Still determined to make kid quilts for my little quilting group, I saw something on Facebook that looked very appealing so I found a pattern on Pinterest.  It's called "Mosaic" and someone figured out how to break it down into 15" blocks rather than trying to piece it horizontally.  I don't know about you but sewing together long thin rows doesn't appeal to me.  This has been a lot of fun.


Here are the instructions I followed:


Initially, I was cutting rectangles for the first couple of blocks.  I then decided to see if I had a die for my Accuquilt that might help.  Well, imagine my surprise when I found a die for rectangles 2x3-1/2"-- never opened it.  WOOHOO!  It made cutting so fast.  And, happily, I used up three fairly large pieces of white on white from my stash.  It didn't reduce the stacks of lights but I felt good knowing that I used up THREE large pieces of fabric that had been sitting around!!

I think I may do this quilt in a specific color. Imagine it in blues?? (my favorite)

this will make a great quilt for an older child, I think.  I'm making it 3x4 blocks and will add a skinny 2" border around.

My husband and I are heading up to the cabin this weekend and plan to stay an entire MONTH!!  We are very excited.  I am going to Vermont in the middle of that time (that's a whole other post worth talking about...staying with Wendy Reed and meeting Barb Vedder!!) and my daughter is coming with her family and another family so it'll be a busy time but just exactly what we had in mind when we built the cabin!  We're very happy to have the cabin filled with people!! And kids!!  

bouquets to arts - another form of artistry

Once a year, the DeYoung Museum hosts a 5 day exhibit called Bouquets to Arts.  I've posted about this before.  They "assign" a particular piece of art from the museum to a floral designer to create something that "copies" the art.  The variety is phenomenal.  It's truly amazing.  If you like flowers or know anything about flowers, you'll want to enlarge the pictures to see the variety of mediums that were used in each display.

I tried to get photographs of the  floral displays adjacent to or in front of the art it was supposed to mimic - I wasn't always successful since the exhibit is very popular and it was pretty crowded.  Ironically it was way more crowded than it was when I went to see the Monet paintings!

The floral displays are throughout the museum so I wandered all over.

This was the display commemorating the exhibit itself.  Not sure you can see all the variety of flowers.  People were posing in front of it for pictures. I didn't have a lot of time so I just snuck a quick picture between people!


This was my favorite. I had to do two pictures:
the art first:

Floral display (don't miss the leash, too!)

































I happened to walk past this exhibit when the woman who created the design was there so I asked to take her picture by the floral display she created.  Isn't it fabulous?  She is holding her business card which describes her wedding flower business.


Can you see the water pump in the middle??!!














I neglected to take a picture of the heads and flowers that were in the rest room--they even had glittery eye-lashes pasted on the sculptures.

Hope you enjoy these.  They're not quilt-related but I think it's so amazing to see the variety and extent of the ideas and creativity displayed.