Bloggers Quilt Festival: Spool Play

Welcome to Spring Bloggers Quilt Festival! I'm so happy you stopped by.

Spool Play was made as a challenge quilt for a quilt retreat I attend every year.

Everyone is given 1/2 yard of a specific fabric. Here is this year's fabric.

 

The idea for my quilt came from a combination of wanting to do a traditional spool block but in different sizes, and my absolute obsession with selvages edges, so I got out my graph paper and colored pencils.

While most of my selvages are stored in ziplock bags by category, this quilt required selvages to be sorted by color.

It was really fun seeing the quilt come together block by block.

When it came time for the quilting, I machine quilted in the ditch around brown part of each spool, and then outline quilted around each full spool using perle cotton.

In the border I used a fabulous variegated perle cotton, and even added a sewing needle in the bottom border.

Can you see the selvage edge pieced into the flowered border?

This was a fun and easy quilt to make. I hope you enjoyed seeing it. Enjoy the rest of the show!

Oh Scrap!

What? It's WIP Wednesday again?! Nothing to report this week. Again.

If you don't get the adoration of Flea Market Fancy, then you won't care about this. But when I was making Popbeads,

I saved every little corner triangle and put them in a ziplock. They were too small to sew together so I had to come up with another idea.
 
I turned them into greeting cards. I got the value pack at Joann's (using a 40 percent off coupon, of course), which included 50 cards and 50 envelopes, set the stitch length on my machine to a longer length (3.5, I think), and sewed the scraps to the front of the card. When I sewed the first one, I used a dab of fabric glue to hold it in place, but really after a couple of cards, that didn't seem necessary. But change your sewing machine needle after this project because it will be dull.

Then I got out my alphabet stamp pad set to add some words to a couple of the cards, and tied them all together with some pretty ribbon that was wrapped around a prior fabric purchase. Easy, economical, and a good use for those FMF scraps!

I finally broke down and got the Hipstamatic app for my iPhone. Is that ever a fun app! This was my first picture, taken of my coffee cup at Borders the other day, just to see what everyone was talking about. I like this picture. A lot. Kind of dark and moody.

Yesterday this arrived in the mail (yay to amazing Sweetwater Christmas fabric, boo to forgetting that I had even preordered it--which probably explains why I have two Sherbet Pips jelly rolls...).

So here's the way I look at it. When I take an awful picture with my Canon Rebel and don't have the time to Photoshop it (because I'm behind in my online photoshop class so I don't know what I'm doing anyway...), I'll just say, hey, this is from the Hipstamatic. And then you will all be thinking, "Wow, what an artsy and creative photographer Cindy is!"

Is everyone else sad they aren't leaving today for quilt market in Salt Lake City? And I really considered going. I have the credentials to get in and everything, and can even take an "employee" along...so when I mentioned it to my friend, she said, "Why didn't you say so? I would have gone with you!" (Hi, Miss Luella...).  Next year...

I was going to start The Name Game this week, but this is a busy week with people at market and the Bloggers Quilt Festival starting the day after tomorrow,

so I'll push it into next week. First up will be Julia with little girl quilts. The amazing Julia is the person who redesigned my blog and made this button, so it seems fitting to start with her.

I'm still sitting here wishing I were on the way to the airport to fly to SLC for market.

*sigh* Okay. I'm done. I'll try to get some sewing done instead, so I have something next week for WIP Wednesday.

Gobble Gobble Giveaway

This year my birthday is on Thursday. That's right. On Thanksgiving Day. Which guarantees that I will be spending nearly the whole day with those who are nearest and dearest to me. What a gift!

Were you a part of Blogger's Quilt Festival 2010? Did you post one of your quilts? Did you check out the other amazing festival quilts? What amazing talent out there in blogland. It's not too late. You can still spend some time getting inspired here.

Through a series of kind of weird events, I have an extra pincushion that I made specifically for Blogger's Quilt Festival 2010. Just leave a comment and let me know if you posted a quilt, if you checked out the other quilts, if you've never heard of Blogger's Quilt Festival, whatever. Time ends on Thursday, November 25, at 4:37 a.m. PDT.

I know. Weird time. But that's when I was born. Month, day and time. And that's as much info as you're getting about that topic...

I'll notify the winner on Friday. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Bloggers Quilt Festival: Just Between Friends/Calendar Girls

I thought a long time about which quilt to feature for Bloggers Quilt Festival. This has been a strange year and there wasn't really a new quilt that was ready to go. So since my dear friend, Sue, passed away in March, which has kind of defined 2010 for me, it seemed fitting to feature a quilt from about five years ago, for a couple of reasons.

Perfect fabric for the back: Just Between Friends/Best Friends (by Mary Engelbreit)

Long before I knew anything about virtual quilting bees and online block exchanges, a group of us did our own block exchange. Sue picked out a focus fabric and decided we should each make star blocks, any star pattern as long as it was 12" finished. The quilting expertise ranged from quite experienced to those who had never made a quilt before but were eager to learn.

So we picked our individual star block, made 12 of the same block, and then shared them, so everyone had a set of 12 blocks, one each from every other person in the group. When we were finished, we planned an evening where we would have supper, exchange our blocks, take a group picture, and then....

Remember the movie Calendar Girls? One of our friends and her husband own a photography studio and we thought it would be fun to take individual pictures, each holding our own block, and then assemble them into a calendar.

This was the funniest part of the story. My friend, Maggie, thought it would be a "good" idea to email my parents, and here is part of what she wrote to them:

"Tonight I am checking in to see if you are aware that Cindy is Miss April...If the movie Calendar Girls is unfamiliar to you...some older women stepped out for charity. In fact, they stepped right out of their clothes for a wildly popular calendar. And Cindy has participated in a local Calendar Girls situation...In case she hasn't told you. Anyway, she is Miss April. She has a pieced 12x12 block placed strategically over her chest...kind of racy, don't you think? Well, you know how those pastor's kids can be...."

We waited and waited, and never heard a peep from my parents.  Finally, Maggie called them up and stopped by. I think they were really quite nervous as she prepared to unveil the calendar to them. Close your eyes if you're a little nervous about seeing me as Miss April...

Anyway, I love this quilt and all the fun times and good memories. Thanks, Sue...

And before you leave...I'm a sponsor for Bloggers Quilt Festival. Leave a comment on Amy's blog and you will have a chance to win one of these selvage pincushions, custom-designed especially for this fall's BQF. See? It even says "BQF 2010" in the middle of the pincushion.

Enjoy the rest of the show!

Friday's feature presentation

A couple of my quilts, along with a short interview, are being featured over at Amy's Creative Side today.

And I didn't even realize it until a few minutes ago because she had changed some settings so nothing was coming up on my blogroll. Yikes!

Amy has a wonderful blog and is the creative genius behind Blogger's Quilt Festival. So if you want to learn some truly fascinating and personal information about me (just kidding....), head on over to Amy's Creative Side.

Pssssst....I'm over here

I just completely stole that title from Amy, but it's really because of her  and Blogger's Quilt Festival that I'm over here. Heather and Megan have a great blog called Quilt Story where they feature the story behind the quilts, and today my One in Every Color quilt is being featured. I hope you will hop on over and take a look.

And every once in a while, it is possible to find yourself mentioned somewhere and you didn't even realize you were mentioned until you decided to take a break from being bored to tears working so hard, and catch up on your blog reading (about halfway through the post).

C UR I DKTR--Blogger's Quilt Festival

It's Blogger's Quilt Festival  so get ready to see quilts that will knock your socks off. Picture after picture of beautiful quilts, and each one has a story behind it. And before I forget to mention it later, my new etsy shop, Sewing on the Edge, is one of the premier sponsors, so be sure to comment on the festival post to be entered into the giveaways.

Our son, Aaron, and daughter-in-law, Christa, spent five years in Portland, Oregon, while Aaron went to optometry school. I always knew I would make him a quilt when he graduated. I didn't know I would be lucky enough to find eye chart fabric.

I found the pattern, "Hollow Cube," and started collecting black, white and red fabric. The blocks look complicated, but with some organization they were pretty simple to construct. Even then I was finding a way to work selvages into my quilts. Nearsighted...

Optic...

Black, white and read all over...

Lots of eyeglass frames for the back.

And a little pin for the front: the eyes have it!

The first eye chart fabric I found was quilting related. Fortunately I found something closer to the real thing for the border on the front. Because I'm pretty sure Aaron wouldn't have appreciated an eye chart that reads: "quilting and sewing makes me happy, love to buy beautiful fabric." No matter how true that is.

C UR I DKTR. Good advice for anyone. Especially anyone who spends a lot of time at the sewing machine.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Enjoy all the quilts.

And we have a winner

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the Sew Mama Sew giveaway. I appreciate all the encouraging comments. The winner, picked by the random number generator, is #190, Stephanie, who said: "I like them all. Such a good idea."

Thanks, Stephanie! This will be in the mail to you on Monday.

There are still some pincushions at Sewing on the Edge, and a lot more will be added next week so feel free to head on over and do some shopping.

And y'all come back for Bloggers Quilt Festival starting tomorrow!