Lowell Quilt Festival

BMQG Mini-Challenge Quilts

Yesterday and today my hubby and I enjoyed the Lowell Quilt Festival.  This is much more than a simple quilt show and there are several venues in the downtown area and a shuttle bus connecting the sites. We started at the Lowell National Historical Park  Visitor Center lot and got our free parking validated and walked the short distance to the New England Quilt Museum where we enjoyed their quilts and shop.  From there we took the shuttle bus to my favorite part of the show ... the beautiful display of works by the Boston Modern Quilt Guild.  Photo of their Mini Challenge Quilts above. 

Here is a photo of some of the BMQG quilts artfully displayed so we could see the beautiful backs without looking for a white glove lady...

BMQG Quilts Displayed at Appleton Mills

Here is one of my favorite quilts ...

"Tissue Paper Petals" ... pieced and quilted my Stephanie Harrison

Inspired by a tissue box !

There were sew many beautiful quilts!  I was feeling very inspired by these simple designs and lovely colors and delightful quilting. 
Then we walked to the main venue in the historic Lowell Memorial Auditorium.  You always know you are there when you see this quilt covered car.  When it came time to make my vendor purchases. I was mostly drawn to some very beautiful new fabric lines and soft colors.

Here is Quilty Inspector Butterfly approving my quilty goodies. :)

Goodnight and sweet quilty dreams!

Quilty Treasures

Today I needed to move some things in my sewing corner ... and this is what I found. This is the block I made a long time ago for a My Quilty Corner of the World Block Swap on The Quilt & Needle.  It is on top of the small stack of blocks I received from some of my quilty friends ...

golden quilty treasures of the heart.

Have a Happy Quilty Day!

:-)

Custom Curtains 101.1

I have the valance sewn and hung. It covers the top of three windows.  I did this in one continuous piece, which looks nice as there are no gaps or breaks in the line between the windows, but it made for several very loooooooooong seams and was awkward to handle and press.  Looks nice and hubby is happy with the results sew far.

A few how-to photos for those who might be interested.

Planning how to best place the fabrics ...

carefully cutting the border print into long strips ...

cutting on the black between the stripes resulted in 10" wide strips ...

I cut the black for the top rod pocket into 9" wide strips ...

the yellow strips for the bottom and hem were 4 " wide

layout the pieces ...

ready to sew ...

I carefully alighned the narrow stipes in the border print and pinne dand removed the pins as I sewed these into one long strip ...

after the sewing the black at the top and yellow on the bottom, I pressed ...

the finished valance!

:-)

On to the cafes which will be pieced in the same fabrics.  There will be six panels for this so it should be much easier to handle.
 "Fireflies" by Faith Hill and my "Country Women" playlist is playing ...

" ... I believe in fairy tales and dreamers dreams of bed sheet sails and  I believe in peter pan and miracles anything I can to get me by ..."

Time to sew!

Have a Happy Quilty Day!

It's A Guy Thing

These are the fabrics my hubby found at the Vermont Quilt Festival for his "man cave" curtains for the room he has established as his private domain since the boys have finally (mostly) moved out.  As it is on the northeast corner of our house with a tree overhanging the yard, it a dark room and it fronts the street so there is a need for letting in as much light as possible while maintaining privacy.  We decided on cafes. 

The metallic floral is from Plume from Timeless Treasures.  Then he decided to make it sunny with the gold which is classic Kaufmann Fusions from our LQS. Sew I am sewing curtains this weekend.  My hubby has very precise ideas about what he wants for these curtains. I hope I am equal to the task.

This will keep me inside much of the time and it is so hot and humid we have the AC humming full blast.

Coolness ... ah, yes!

My hubby is outside weeding and waiting for a ton of dirt to be dropped in our driveway that he will have to shovel and move into gardens for our newest home improvement project.  I do need to do some planting at some point, but I think I have the better of the deal as I get to stay inside most of the time and work with this fabulous fabric.

Fabric ... ah, yes!

Thinking of fabric ... which of course, I do all the time ... I just found this very interesting entry on the event calendar of a nearby quilt guild ...

 a Fabric Fair !!!

Ah, yes! ;)

My New Summer Wall Quilt

My sunflower wall quilt is done!!!

I am calling this quilt "Good-day Sunlight"

"Good-day sunlight
I'd like to say how truly bright you are ..."

While I was quilting it, the song "Who Needs Shelter" " by Jason Mraz kept popping up while my playlist was set on shuffle.  Quilts give me shelter. "Nuff said.

When I figured out that the reason I was having trouble choosing a binding because the quilt top was not quite finished, it all fell in place.

Sew ... I added an extra narrow outer border in yellow ...

Then it was easy to see that the binding for my quilt should be brown ...

Because I went to the edge of the quilt, I had to "stuff" a little extra batting to fill my binding.   As usual, I had a lot of help.

This time my daughter's kitten got into the act when she dropped Pepper off for a "playday" with Katniss. 

Katniss took it upon herself to show Pepper all she needs to know to be a quilty cat. 

And Pepper took right to it ...

I added a label!  This may not seem like much of a quilty accomplishment, but I have only added labels to quilts when "I had to" because someone else asked me to do so.  I finally figured out my "Signature Label" 

I just made a bunch of signature blocks for a swap on the Q&N and a light bulb lit up in a dark quilty corner of my mind. 
Make a simple siggy block for each quilt with fabrics from the top. 
Add pieces of the selvages to identify the fabric ...

Name it ... sign it ... sew it!

I will be "signing" all my quilts this way now.

Easy peasy :)