Quiltcon 2025

 

Quiltcon is a national quilt show for modern quilts, held once a year. This year it was in Phoenix, just an hour from my home. A group of my friends got together and drove to the Phoenix Convention Center and we had a wonderful day! 

Our first order of business was to wait in line for the Ruby Star Society booth. We waited in line for an hour and a half! It was worth every minute. During that time, we got to meet the lovely and oh so talented Miss Melody Miller. She came up to me and asked if she could see my quilted jacket. Do you see her examining it?  I felt so special ❤️ She saw all the Ruby Star fabric and her name on one of the selvages on my collar. 

Here I am in the Ruby Star booth 💗💗💗 Thanks Nedra for capturing the moment ❤️

I also got to meet Elizabeth Hartman, eeeeeeeeek!!!!!! I've made and loved and admired so many of her quilts.  My grandchildren thank her!

Awesome Ocean, Fancy Forest, Penguin Party, Llamas, and more.

Our quilting friend group ❤️

Nedra made the quilt that is displayed behind us. Such an honor for it to be displayed for everyone to see and enjoy!

Here are some photos I took at vendor's booths.

I love looking at traditional quilts, but modern quilts inspire me even more.  I mean the ones that were displayed and some that won awards. I noticed a lot of straight line quilting.  I know I can do that on my sewing machine. There are lots of techniques I can take from those creative quilts and use it in my own quilting.  

I only went for one day, and walked my feet off!  It's the slow walking that makes me tired 😂 Maybe next time I'll go for two ❤️

Thanks for following me :)

Dinosaurs quilt

I posted about this quilt a while back, but I finally gifted it, so wanted to tell you more about it.  I've made a few Elizabeth Hartman quilts before and have always loved the process!  Making one of her quilts is like putting a puzzle together, there are so many little pieces! It's the joy in the journey, and it's always so much more fun when I know who I'm making the quilt for.  

I chose blue fat quarters from my stash, some light blues and some darker blues. It almost gives an hombre effect.  I had to buy the background fabric.  I chose a mottled slate which I wouldn't have liked it on its own but knew it would be cute with the dinosaurs. I made the baby size, which is a quarter of the regular size.  In the past, I have made two regular size Elizabeth Hartman quilts, Awesome Ocean and Penguin Party, and I machine quilted them both myself.  I've also made Fancy Forest in baby size, in both blues and pinks/oranges.

You can see the wavy stitch I used to machine quilt, on my Bernini QE 750.  My machine is great for quilting!

I just couldn't resist this adorable skeleton dinosaur fabric for the backing.  

Usually it's difficult for me to part with one of my quilts.....so much time and love, and money!!! 😂 Not this time, it was going to a very special little baby.

When we lived in California, I had a calling in the Young Women organization, working with teenagers.  Sarah was one of my Young Women and I just loved her and her family. ❤️ We had a lot of adventures together over the years. I was thrilled when she and her husband moved here as newlyweds.  A couple of years later, baby Isaac was born and I was so excited to make him a quilt :)

I think Isaac likes his quilt, lol!  Isn't he a precious baby?  I love how he has his hand on top of mine ❤️ I'm so blessed to have this sweet family in my life.

See you next week!

Dinosaurs quilt

 I worked every spare moment and many, many hours and I finally finished this Dinosaurs quilt by Elizabeth Hartman. 

Have any of you every made one of Elizabeth's patterns?

You don't buy a pattern, you buy a book!!! Her directions are so easy to understand although each dinosaur has so many pieces! Like 50 pieces sometimes! You have to really pay attention and practice a lot of patience.

The pattern book has the twin size quilt on the cover. It's so pretty with all the beautiful, bright colors.  I wanted to make a baby quilt, so I decided to just use blues.  Half of the dinosaurs were a darker blue and the other half were a lighter blue.  Elizabeth made it very easy for color placement.  She tells you where to put the dark colors and where to put the light colors. 

I just love this little quilt!

I found the perfect backing fabric for this baby quilt, little skeleton dinosaurs.  So perfect!!!

I was able to machine quilt the Diosaurs with a wavy stitch on my machine.  I had a difficult time choosing the background.  I thought it was ugly by itself, but worked so well with little dinosaurs.

Thanks for following along!

Chuckles Quilt

In August 2017,  my Sew Sampler box from the Fat Quarter Shop, had this cute pattern enclosed with a fat eighth pack of Elizabeth Haartman fabric.  I bought the Kona solid for the back (I liked blue instead of gray) and it was tucked away for all these years.  I used most of the fat eighth pack for the "Awesome Ocean" quilt that I made.  I just pulled some scraps from my stash and made these cute little fish.  It was surprisingly fast to make!  I used the wavy stitch on my Bernina 750QE and the quilt was machine quilted in no time at all. Well, it did take time, but not as much as other quilts :)

I found the cutest fish fabric for the back. I had to piece it a little but I think that adds character and interest to the quilt.

This is a much better view of the fish fabric, and the label I made.

Here's the quilt pattern, I love anything designed by Elizabeth Hartman.  This quilt is definitely going into my grandchildren pile!

Lloyd and Lola

  I finished quilting Lloyd and Lola by Elizabeth Hartman!  I think these two llamas are so cute and I loved every minute designing and creating them!  Putting the quilt together was so much easier than the machine quilting.

Look at this sweet face!  I know all of my grandchildren will want this one.

My grand daughter Neo suggested that I give the llamas curly hair.  What a great idea that was.

I did squiggly lines on the llama's legs.

I quilted swirls in the pom poms.  I also quilted Seguaro cactuses on the top and bottom borders.

Here's my label from Sweetwater, I just added Lloyd and Lola, 

and the year 2021.

I used this adorable llama fabric from Art Gallery, I bought it on Etsy.

To think that these pieces were Lloyd and Lola's beginnings. 😂

I really like the Sage Kona that I used for the background.  I was looking for a color that reminded me of the desert.  All the other fabrics I had in my stash.  

Thanks so much for following me in my quilting journey :)

Penguin Party

 My idea was to keep machine quilting the quilt tops I have hanging in my closet.  My goal is one per month.  As I looked at those forlorn tops waiting for some attention, I realized that I only have one quilt appropriate for a boy.  I love Elizabeth Hartman's cute animal patterns, so I decided to make Penguin party!  My oldest grandson is almost 16, and he will be the first one to choose a quilt.  The other boys are 8 and 4 and all the rest are girls.  I looked at all the Penguin Party quilts that people have made and liked the penguins with plaid the best.  I had to buy some nice Riley Blake woven flannel fabric on Etsy for the penguin bodies, along with the background fabric.  I wanted to backing color to be the color of ice.  I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Cutting the fabric was pretty fast. 

There were three sizes of penguin bodies.

The face was the most tedious to make, there were so many pieces!

It's also the face that gives them their personalities :)

Assembling the penguins in their neat, tiny rows, made me feel like I was at their party, lol!  I machine quilted the quilt with a staple or jigsaw design.  I used a grey dove color of Aurifil thread #2600.

I used a light blue minky fabric for the back of the quilt.  Penguins make me think of freezing arctic temperatures, so I had to use a cozy fabric :). The binding is scrappy, I used all the flannel penguin body fabric.  I added a Sweetwater label to the bottom of the back of the quilt and framed it in the black and white check.  I just added the name of the quilt and the year.  I literally made this quilt in about 3 weeks, and loved every moment of it!

It's March 1 and I didn't get a quilt top machine quilted in February.  Technically, I quilted 2 quilts in January (Spell it with Moda and Penguin Party), so one of them can count for February 😊

Awesome Ocean finished!

 I worked really hard on this quilt, knowing that there would be times that I had to put it away, and let life take over.  After all, we can't quilt 24/7, right?  Well, maybe we can!

I quilted the quilt very densely, using a vertical line with my walking foot.  The lines were free motion and I would purposely go into the previous line a little bit to give the quilting a "movement" look.

My favorite sections are the pinks and oranges, 

and the teals and greens.

You can see a little bit of the teal minky on the back.

Even with all the dense quilting, the minky still feels really soft.

I made a label with an extra block that I had.

I know that Lucy will love this quilt!!!

I had my hip surgery and am not feeling as much pain as I was before, which is great!  I'll be using a walker for a couple of weeks and can twist my body or bend down.  I'm at the mercy of my caretakers, lol! My husband is doing an excellent job of taking care of me, and so are my kids :)

Awesome Ocean

 I finished my Awesome Ocean quilt top, yay!

These are the cute little clown fish. I like the rick rack one :)

These are the little angel fish.

I like the subtlety of the white bubbles on the Kona oyster.

My friend made this quilt and she said that she logged 

more than a 100 hours!!!

As I was sewing the fish and the rows together, my pants were constantly covered in little threads 

because of all the pieces in each block.

Ta-da!

I was worried that the colors wouldn't blend and look hombre with each other, but I think they do.

I had a fat eighth bundle of Elizabeth Hartman's "Reef" fabric which was about 8 pieces 

that I got in a Sew Sampler box from the Fat Quarter Shop online.

Elizabeth Hartman's patterns are amazing, she tells you exactly how to place each block so that the colors will mesh.

I changed a few of the blocks because I thought they looked better.

Not the blocks themselves, but the colors.

I wanted to get a beautiful, soft minky for the back.

I kept looking at the blues, but there isn't a huge range of colors.

I decided on teal, hope it won't be too dark.

I'm going to machine quilt it myself, with a vertical seaweed looking design that I will figure out how to do!

I hope you enjoyed my "Awesome Ocean" journey.

Which block is your favorite?

Have you seen Elizabeth Hartman's new dinosaur pattern?

It's so cute!!!!