A Few More Red & White Quilt Photos

Here are a few more pictures from the exhibit. It is pretty safe to say that there isn't a pattern out there that doesn't look good in basic red and white.

The Infinite Variety quilt exhibit

The "Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts" exhibit was sponsored by the American Folk Art Museum and features 650 quilts owned by Joanna Semel Rose. This exhibit was held at the Park Avenue Armory in NYC on March 25-30, 2011. This event was free, and you could take as many pictures as you wanted, in fact they even having a photo contest for the best photos taken at the event.

The exhibit is just visually stunning and overwhelming! If you are used to regular quilt shows this may disorient you a bit, as not all the quilts are at eye level. Some you are able to examine close up, but others are a couple stories above you. This is definitely not a linear show. Everything is in circles and at different heights and angles.

Sue and I went down for the opening day and even though we were not there long, I ended up taking over 100 photos. I am sharing some of the overall shots I took, I also took a lot of photos of individual quilts. And I am still sure that if we had stayed longer we would keep noticing new quilts we somehow had not noticed in our previous viewings. There is so much to look at all angles it is unbelievable. This was definitely worth a special trip into the city.

This event has broke the mold and has set a new paradigm for showing quilts.

Mystery Quilt - Step #5

This month's step for the guild's mystery quilt is to sew 2 of the 4-patch blocks with the dark squares to 2 of the half-square triangle blocks with the medium colors. There are still all the 4-patch blocks with medium colors so obviously the blocks shown really don't represent what the finished quilt will look like, but it gives the general color scheme and shapes involved. I

laid out the blocks a couple of different ways just to see what options there were at this stage. We get the next step at the April meeting.

Quilt Retreat Report (part 2 of 2)

Came across the Seattle Streets quilt concept/pattern on the Stashbusters Yahoo group and decided to use it to use up most of my Christmas themed scraps and fat quarters. I of course needed to do it 'my way' so while the original pattern is pretty efficient, I designed 3 different blocks with different construction requirements so mine took a bit longer, but I wanted more variety in my blocks and the fabric placement. I ended up making 20 12-inch blocks and had just enough scraps left over to do a border made of 4x6 inch blocks as well. I still need to lay out the block and use the black strips to join them all and the borders. With any luck I will have this quilt done by the next retreat.

I also started working on Scrap Therapy's Bloomin' Steps pattern. I bought the pattern at least a year or two ago, but finally got into my scrap bag and did some cutting (lots of 2-inch blocks) and brought them to the retreat to start sewing them. I managed to sew all the colored blocks for the center of the quilt to the background strips and made the half-square triangles in 3 of my selected 8 colors. I got a good head start on this project but it will likely take a bit more time to finish this quilt. Especially since I still have to press and cut all those 2-inch squares. I am thinking doing it in 15 minute increments over the next couple of weeks to keep the monotony and back strain to a minimum.
I did follow the no-buy challenge rules. I stuck to my list of needed borders, backgrounds, backings, and binding fabrics. But as my no-buy does not include books I did indulge a little bit and bought a few books.


Before I left for the retreat I also bought Bonnie Hunter's new book 'Scraps and Shirttails II.' While I already love many of her patterns on her web page, and enjoy making crumb blocks, I had to have this book because she has a pattern named "Holy Toledo."

So those are the quilting highligts of the retreat. As always it was great to see all the quilters we only get to see ocassionaly at the retreats or ocassional quilt shows. It sounds like the Wings Falls Quilt show and the Vermont Quilt Festival will be another chance to catch up with several quilting friends.

Quilt Retreat Report (Part 1 of 2)

Well as promised in the last post, I did get my 'Charm Stars' quilt finished this weekend. I finished hand sewing the binding to the back of the quilt 15 minutes before show and tell at the retreat. I thought it was appropriate to finish the quilt at this retreat as I started it at the last one in November.

On the first day of the retreat I put the borders on my 4-patch posy quilt. I did not have much of the 4-patch fabric, but it was enough for a 3 inch border. I also added a 2 inch inner border from the light greeen I used to frame the blocks. Following the no-buy challenge rules I did buy the backing and binding fabric for this quilt during this retreat trip. It is always good to buy during the retreat because we get discounts at all the local quilt shops, plus the usual coupons for JoAnn's.

The next project I worked on was the borders for my crumb quilt. I attached the bias strips I had made before the retreat to the border strips with a machine blanket stitch. I then spent some time cutting out leaf shapes to applique, I only did 2 of the leaf shapes, I have about 5 more shapes to do, but I can only use the scissors for so long before my hand starts getting sore. The leaves are just laid out on the fabric to give you an idea of what look I am going for - they are not attached yet, and I have to make a lot more of them. All the leaves are made from my fabric scraps.

This Quilt will be Done Next Weekend

This may look like a finished quilt - and it is darn close to it. I just sewed on the binding to the front of the quilt, but I still need to hand stitch the binding down on the back. I will save that for next weekend. I sent this quilt out and had it machine quilted by Distinctive Quilting North. I was thinking of quilting it myself but it came out a bit bigger then I originally thought it would (that's what happens when you keep adding blocks). It is now about a twin-sized quilt. As I am not sure what else I may have done in time for the CVQGNY quilt show this may be one of the pieces I enter into the show.