Lowell Quilt Festival 2012

Yesterday, I was able to attend the Lowell Quilt Festival.  Until a client of mine entered a quilt there a year ago, I didn't even know about it.  It is not a huge show, having about 80 competing quilts.  The caliber of the quilts, however, is generally high.  In addition to the judged quilts, there were a couple of special exhibits - one by the wonderful Pat Delaney, a MA-based machine quilter.  She brought about a dozen of her show quilts, most of which have a bucket of ribbons.

The main part of this show is at the Lowell Memorial Auditoriom.  While it is a pretty venue for the show, it has dismal lighting and very limited space for vendors.  What Lowell that does do that is unique is that they have 6-8 other locations throughout the town that have quilts on display as well, including the New England Quilt Museum.  A free shuttle bus can take you around to the various venues.

I learned early in the week how my quilts did.  It was hard not blasting it to the world, but I went to the show again with my mother and wanted to preserve a small surprise.  I was aware that Rainbow Nouveau had made their "big stage", but was delighted to see that Sea Glass was there too.  It is just SO much prettier with the better lighting, that only the stage has.  Here's a glimpse at the show's winners as seen from the stage...

Patricia Washburn's quilt (with a very long name!...My Mind: All Skewed Up Without Zentangle Meditation, a overall workmanship award), Space Crystal by Alice Means (HM), my Sea Glass (3rd Mixed Wall quilts)

Standiford Star by Herbert Menzel who repeated an 1800's quilt design received both 1st place in the Pieced Bed quilt category and exemplary piecing awards.  The next one is Redbud Ramble by none other than Linda Roy.  She earned 2nd in the Mixed Bed quilt category and the Exemplary Applique award.  More on this in a moment.

The next one I have seen before in magazines.  Megan Farkas' Sakura I: Hanaogi Views the Cherry Blossoms took first in the Mixed wall category.  It's a lovely hand done quilt.  I have a closeup in a moment. You all recognize the next one.  Yup, my Rainbow Nouveau..my naughty stepchild from earlier this summer.  Good news, this one has learned to behave, and rather nicely I should add.  Completely to my utter surprise, this baby took 1st in it's Mixed Bed quilt category as well as Best of Show.  Flabergasted!  Seeing it hanging on the stage, it is starting to grow on me.

Going into the corner is one I unfortunately cannot identify.  It hangs beautifully though.  The colorful quilt is Cetena by Timna Tar, a person often receiving awards for good use of color.  It also earned 2nd in the pieced wall quilt division, despite having a whole lotta appliqued circles on it.  Seems like a Mixed quilt to me.  Lastly, Homage to Spring by Susan Ziel (HM in mixed wall).

Now, how about some close up...

 

This quilt is truly gorgeous, from the background that softly grades from green to purple, to the delicate detailing on the applique.  It is hand appliqued (and if you know me, you know that that's my preference).  It is also hand quilted, which I also love.

Every applique piece is outlined with black embroidery thread, giving them exceptional visibility.  It's a trick I will have to stick into my bag of tricks to use someday.  The background quilting, though it is all the same for the entire 60"x90" piece, is period appropriate and effective. 

Linda Roy's quilts never disappoint.  I have seen 3-4 other quilts of her's in the past couple years, and am always amazed.  They are often appliqued, heavily, and hand quilted to the heavens and back.  Last year, she took Best of Show with her Vintage Button Bouquet.  And if I were a judge, this probably would have won this year.  Guess it's a good thing for me that I haven't been appointed a judge yet!

 

Like myself, she likes stitching circles (a LOT!) - there must be 750 of the little pink buggers on this!

The one thing that still gives me the shivvers, and has since the list of show winners was published Wednesday is that my quilt scored higher than this quilt.  How in the Earth?  What didn't she do, that I must have done?  I am so in awe of what this woman creates.  She's such a masterful artist.  I just wish the judges comments could tell me what the fine dividing line between her's and mine was.  I will forever be elated and grateful for what Rainbow Nouveau is accomplishing and earning, but deep inside me, I need to understand.  I know...I am nuts.  I operate on being rational and logical, and having the understanding helps me to do the right things on future quilts.

A few last closeups...

 This next one is hand quilted, and is quite lovely up close.

And just so you could see this one, I pulled my picture fromVQF (the one from Lowell was dreadfully blurry).  The color progressions are nice.

I'll do another post later this week of other show quilts, a couple of the special venue shows including the Boston Modern Quilt Guild's show which was nice.  I had the great opportunity of meeting a very good client who I have only known through the quilts she's mailed me.  I also had a client from the Boston area that put a quilt I quilted into the show (a surprise until I stumbled upon it!).

If you're within a few hours of Lowell, this is a nice show (despite picking up my quilts just after the monsoon rains started!)

Lightening Strikes Twice

You always hear that lightening never strikes the same spot twice.  I know that this is only a saying, but it does seem that to get a really good thing to happen a second time is harder than getting it to happen once - if only because the psychology of the human mind gets involved the 2nd time.  Humor me & read on...

I have been athletic all of my life.  As a young girl and teenager, I was a competitive gymnast.  I was pretty good, and I really worked hard to be successful.  I took this nearly to the point of being superstitious.  I'd save all the green m&m's (yea, this tradition was started before the connotation we know of came around for green m&m's) from every package.  There would be a baggie in the freezer of all my m&m's, and I'd take this to gymnastics meets for good luck.  Somehow, I struggled with consistency, and the candy supposedly helped.  As a result, I kind of expected that if I'd done really good at one meet, the next one might be a dog meet.

The competitive nature continued throughout high school with musical endeavors, and into my adult life when I decided to try my hand at competitive adult figure skating.  I always tackled things head-on, and with an intention of succeeding.  Or winning.  I'm not one of those people that loses gracefully.  Or happily.  I am a firm believer that I control my own destiny.  If better people beat me, and I did my best, it's one thing.  But if I goofed something up, and could have controlled that, then I get upset.

So how does this relate to anything??  My quilting career has taken off like a rocket.  I purchased my longarm less than 3 years ago.  I quilted client quilts a month later.  A magazine contacted me for quilt photos after 3 months.   I entered my first quilt show after 6 months, and won Rookie of the Year.  At 11 months, I was selected by HandiQuilter to be part of their 2011 advertising.  It was moving and moving fast.  I was surprised, but the roller-coaster was fast, and flying towards success.  I didn't want to slow down long enough to blink for fear I'd see the progress decline.  A year ago, as I had done for the previous couple years, I entered 2 quilts in the Maine Quilt Show.  It's a decent, smaller show.  It lacks a lot of higher end quilting that you'll see at machine quilting shows, but is still generally well represented by hand and machine quilters alike.  When I arrived to the show last year, I stood in shock to see my quilt hanging with the Best of Judged ribbon.  It still strikes me as shocking that I have already received a best of show award.  I haven't put in my decade of dues yet.   It was a strong wake up call that my quilting is good.

It was also a scary thing, because all last fall I wondered how on earth I'd ever make anything that could top that for this year.  Winning once was easy.  I never thought about it, in fact.  It just happened.  But repeating it would be hard.  Nobody wants to go back the following year without a quilt capable of knocking the judge's socks off.  At least, I certainly didn't.

The quilt I had been working on, and intended to enter in this show, was giving me absolute fits.  First off, I had horrendous tension problems with the Glide thread on the batik fabric that I had to rip out a huge section.  I then opted to stitch with a gold Glide because the gold bobbin would blend with the backing fabric, disguising any tension problems.  The problem was that I hated how this looked on the front.  It was not in my "plan".  The general quilting went pretty well.  I found one small pleat on the back because of how I chose to quilt (SID all first, then go back and fill - places on the quilt were hard to keep smooth and taught during quilting).  I conceived a long and skinny label to cover that.  Creative or Ingenious??  You be the judge!  Then it was done quilting and onto the blocking boards.  Then the shit hit the fan.  OMG, there was bleeding.  It was horrible.  Areas of the ivory fabrics looked bruised.  I didn't want to say that the freaking quilt was jinxed, but it sure seemed that way.  I contacted another fellow quilter that helped me with the dye release.  It took about 4 days and 100 Shout color catchers.  But when I was done, I had another problem.  Some of the pins I used to secure the color catchers in the wash cycle had left a rust spot on the quilt.  This was maybe 15-20 1-2mm rust spots onthe front and back -- and not in locations where I'd conveniently place a crystal!  I tried washing it again with a rust detergent.  The problem is that all the washing I did on the quilt, and all the use of detergents, color catchers, etc had taken it's toll on the quilt's brightness and fullness.  It just seemed thin and limp, not having the nice loft it had the day I took it off the frame.  And the bold batiks had visibly faded.  Perhaps nobody else but me would realize it was a shadow of it's former, unwashed self.  But I knew.  And I was heart-broken.

I opted to finish the beast anyways.  I got out the crystals to discover that the ones sent to me were not hot fix!  Another sign, or so it seemed.  I waited a week, and Dreamtime kindly returned the wrong crystals for the type I needed.  I did the hand painting, as planned -- not originally, but after seeing the gold Glide thread on the gray triangles, I decided I'd paint the vinework to better blend it in.  I don't think I really believed that, but at that point I was just going through the motions in a feeble attempt to finish this quilt.  In fact, the picture below is the only thing I can find that shows any of the painting!  

I continued on and added what seemed like an ingenious variagated piped binding.  I did post about that here.  I used about 60-8" segments of graded color around the binding.  It looked pretty cool.  Correction: It looks freaking awesome.  But I still had reservations about sending this quilt to the Maine Show for fear it flopped.  All signs with the multitude of issues I'd had were that it would flop.  I didn't want to go into the show and have egg on my face.  I don't have the Tara Lipinski mindset (remember her as the one-time wonder, who won the olympics in 1998, and then retired before she could ever compete again.  I don't think she wanted to not be able to repeat her performance).  Anyway, I have digressed there.  I don't give up.  I tackle things strongly, and would prefer to go down in a blazing ball of fire than to run the other way.  But, I really don't want to go down in a blaze of fire anyway.  So...

Tentatively, I entered (OK, the real truth...I entered the quilt before it had ever been quilted, and before it had any problems!!)   my new problem quilt, named Rainbow Nouveau, on account of all of it's many colors.  I also entered my Sea Glass quilt.  I think that this will have nice appeal with people considering the show is in Maine.  Very (VERY!!) much to my surprise, my client and friend Kathleen called last night from the show preview.  She said that Rainbow Nouveau had won the Best of Judged.  I was shocked.  More than shocked - I think I had a cardiac moment.  I was starting to think that the judges had a mental lapse, when she told me that the two judges were there with her and wanted to talk to me.  Oh holy freak out on my end, are you kidding?  They were very nice and had fabulous things to say.  If only I had the where with all to ask them a real question or two about what they really thought!  Oh Lordy, thank you for them not having enough time to discover where the garbage tension is, and where the rust spots and remaining dye bleeds are.  My theory seemed to work - With enough to look at, the eye will wander continuously, and it won't be possible to find all the bloopers!  I am elated and surprised that lightening did strike twice.  I have found such tremendous fortune and success and pleasure with quilting.  And the hard work and perseverance is rewarded and recognized sometimes too.  I will indeed take some close-ups of the quilt on Sunday, since I don't have any!  This is the one my friend emailed this morning.  I warned you this was a busy beast!

Oh, and Sea Glass took a 1st place too.

The end.  The show is this weekend at the Augusta Civic Center.

In the Press

Have you received your Machine Quilting Unlimited?... I got an early edition mailed to me which arrived yesterday. There's a great article, more than 6 pages in fact, on water quilts. My Sea Glass quilt made it into the article! It has a lovely selection of widely diverse quilts for which water of some form has been the inspiration. Sea Glass is one of my more favorite and special quilts made to date. It is painfully simple in design, constructed of just 48 kaleidoscope blocks (albeit with a good bit of applique added). But it's my first quilt of axisymmetric borders, and non-traditional design. My 7 year old middle child, Bryce, loves it. It will forever remind me of his discovery last summer of sea glass. It may have really been a broken beer bottle, but the joy of hunting for it on the beach together made it sea glass.

A Quilters' Gathering Show

Yesterday, I drove to Nashua, NH for A Quilters' Gathering. It's smaller, juried only, quilt show of mostly regional quilts. I say mostly because there were a few from well known quilters that are not from anywhere near here too. In August, I signed up for an invisible machine applique class from Harriet Hargrave. The only invisible machine applique I had done ("dabbled in") was for attaching the pieces of sea glass in my quilt shown below, and despite thinking this method yielded ok results, I felt I needed more education. At the time, the quilt had not yet gone to any shows and I did not have any judges feedback about how the appliques looked. I thought the stitches were darn near invisible though! The quilt went to MQX and back without so much as a comment about the applique.
My quilt was fortunate enough to receive one of the ribbons - 3rd in machine quilting excellence. It's pretty hard to do better when this was the quilt that received 2nd! There were some nice quilts at this show. The show had particularly bad lighting though. I like the many different farmers-wifeish blocks and their setting on this quilt.

This is a nice landscape.

Elements of this quilt are nice. I think it received one of the color compatibility ribbons for its soothing look.

The machine quilting of the 9-patches is particularly interesting. My guess is it is computerized, but it's cohesive with the theme of the quilt. I'll add it to my bag of interesting tricks to try sometime.

And the center block is something I'd like to applique.

Speaking of applique...the class was about 5-8 too large so the overall pace of it was not really to my liking. Lousy liting in the room too. But nobody can deny that Harriet is a pioneer in our industry. She's taken tomatoes and eggs in the face so that we might now succeed in our craft. She noted that in 1983 she was in Houston at Market and brought a machine quilted quilt for the 1st time. The thought of this gentile quilting society and their reaction of her when the machine quilting storm started is just unimaginable. I guess it is the same thought as this. What if someone sent a quilt to a show today that was only constructed with glue. Fast forward 30 years and they are all made with glue. She's honed techniques for machine makers to make our lives easier, and faster. She's also a steadfast believer in the fact that anything polyester will ruin the world so never mention that you longarm with poly thread. You go to her black list almost immediately. Kind of an inside joke here, but only kind of since I couldn't find her beloved cotton thread in a store Friday and showed up with something not cotton (gasp!!). Even if the class more of less reiterated things I have read elsewhere, I think it is always educational to have someone with as much weathering in this business talk to you for 6 hours. You cannot help but learn something. Even if it is largely just respect and gratitude. Expect to see more applique work from me. I have honed in on my skills and can do it better and faster now.

Back to the show... I always like interesting geometries, even if this style of quilt seems overmade of recent years. The black and white color scheme was appealing and different. The Delft blue color scheme was lovely, as were all the pieced stars which I know first-hand are a PIA to piece. This person won a couple ribbons for her nice quilts.

There is an appealing simplicity here. Guess the judges saw it too.

The quilting has areas which I like - She's obviously tried the dual-curve cross-hatching ruler from Ronda Beyer (which I have and am awaiting the perfect spot to use!).

Lori-Lyn King had 3 small quilts in the show. I have seen this somewhere this year. It's trapuntoed to brilliance. The colorations are from placing a pieced (or moreoften a single) and immensely bold color underneath the top trapunto layer. And then apply kick-ass quilting.

Some color gradations are subtle, but look closely. I learned in my trupunto class at MQX to respect those that do this technique. It is hard, especially when there is another color to show through.

Another ribbon winner, and a very large hand quilted Jacobian applique piece...

It's pretty, but the center almost seems like it needs more of something. The quilting was in colored thread. Lots (LOTS) of radiating lines.

And the grandma of them all...again! Linda Roy. Master hand quilter. How on earth does she find time to make all of these very detailed and hand quilted pieces?? Does she have a secret machine that makes if look hand quilted?? Nice thought. Seeing this has made me add a quilt to my "Must make before I die" list. The solid color is amazingly dramatic. I'd avoid white like the plague, but I love the concept of allowing the white trapunto and applique to show the details.

Just look at the sashings...That is a modified cathedral window technique. Way cool. Linda's quilts rarely dissapoint. As a former hand quilter, I still love the notion that they are still made, and there are some out there that beat the pants off of a machine quilted quilt too!

Sea Glass wins 2nd at MQX West!

I happily got the word this morning from some of my viewers in Oregon that my Sea Glass quilt has earned a 2nd place ribbon and a Teacher's ribbon! I know I may have shown a few of these pictures in the past posts, but heck, who cares. I will be able to take a better full quilt shot in a few weeks when I see it at another show. This one is bad, I know, because it is suspended from my balcony, and has horrible backwash light.
Some of my closer up pictures do, however show the quilting details. This one was before the bindig escapades.

I did add somewhere around 2500 crystals to the quilt. I bet it just twinkles...

For those interested, it is 63"x78", all batiks or hand-dyes top and back. I used Hobbs 80/20 with Tuscany wool on the top of that. The thread is Bottomline, a little So Fine and some Rainbows on the waves.

The binding looks nice (maybe not the best first attempt at a scallop border, but hey). The color changes of the binding match those of the outer border. And I added a tawny batik piping, which helps it lay nice and smooth. Added pain & suffering, yes, but it is worth it in the end.

I love my juxtiposed semi-traditional border of curved cross-hatching with the very free-form quilting of the interior of the quilt. A first for me to be so unstructured...

If you want to see more pictures, look here, and here , and here, and here. Or get yourself to Portland, OR this weekend to see it at MQX!~

Goings On for the week

The week is over. I have had some good work time this week, with school starting. Despite it being a short week (Tues-Thurs), I still had calm, productive quilting time. I have done one customer quilt, and taken in a couple more to get done in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I am frantically trying to get all the last details of the Seaglass quilt finished up. This week was for binding and the sleeve (which is approaching done).
I have the last of the crystals that are being put on this quilt due to arrive next week. The binding was time-consuming, but is so worth it in the end. The micro-piping coordinates with the backing and tones in the sand fabrics. It also stiffens the edge to help hold the edges from ruffling while hanging. I also went to the pain-staking trouble to align all of the changes in binding fabric with where the border fabrics change. It's a nice effect, but took lots of tweaking.

Before we left on vacation 2 weeks ago, I was working on my so called "fast pieced quilt". It was supposed to be designed with minimal piecing so it could be more of a quilting project than a piecing project. Oh, was I so wrong. I have learned I am incapable of doing easy and simple and fast piecing. My mind thrives on the complicated and intricate patterns, and even better when they intertwine. This is lacking a couple more borders still, but you get the idea.

These are some of Northcott's stonehenge fabrics from the Amazon and Maui (I think) lines. They are so gorgeous; I just love them, even more than the Stonehenge ones I used on my Postcards quilt. My heart beats to purple and green. Just a simple fact. A few of the materials have gold leafing on them too.

One more looksee...

I have been helping my 9 year old design and sew a placemat. And my 5 year old is attempting to hand quilt a doll blankie that I pieced on machine. They are having fun, but it's eating into my time!

And lastly, I loaded the silk wholecloth this afternoon. It is only 36" square so in theory, it ought not take that long (famous last words, I know). I have only done this much, and I have things to rip out and redo. The Bottomline thread is giving me frequent fits on this job, making little nests, and bunching out when it should not. From a few feet away, it may look OK. My eye is too trained to want the feathers more uniform and areas of symmetry to be actually symmetrical. I may leave it and opt to fix things when the rest is stitched. On the bright side, the silk is not hard to stitch on, just a bit nervewracking.

Rev 1 Done

Duties call. I have taken my quilt off the frame so I can quilt 4 quilts that are due in 3-4 weeks. I spent 12 days playing mostly freehand-fun with this one. It was liberating while mind-boggling all at the same time. My mind thinks in orderly and symmetrically. I love using templates because they generate perfect lines and equal spacings. This was challenging from that perspective. I know I have several things left unfinished on this, but it was done enough that I could safely remove it and finish them later.
I'm trying to use my WonderFil gift certificate to get some heavier and shinier thread to use to accentuate the swirls and other features. Go figure, they can give away gift certificates, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to use them at their online store! I shall call Monday...

This weekend we have a small mudroom to lay ceramic tile in. It's a doable project, hopefully. My right arm has nasty carpal tunnel and numbness in 3 fingers from all of the painting that has been done recently too. Oh the joys of a failing body... We are delighted that our house is coming back to normal. I put away most of the dishes. The table & chairs are once again out of the living room (as the dining room had been a holding zone for everything else. The new rug is down in the new and enlarged living room. All this room lacks is the baseboard heater to be completely finished. Plumber is returning when the kitchen's granite counters are here (abt 1-1.5 weeks). So close...I need to call to get the new dining room furniture delivered now that there is a real room for it. It almose seems surreal that we are only a couple days from being contractor and noise free, and living in a gorgeous new space. Oh, and there's that one issue of the basement. Sigh...I must clean it sometime, and reorganize the stuff, unpack my fabrics, sweep the woodchips, etc. It became usable 2 weeks ago, but I knew better than to clean it until the entire renovation was done.

More Sea Glass

Obviously, I have a good bit still to do, and then there will be rework before it is ready to be shown, but it's now down to the bottom border. Thankfully. It's hard to get the full effect of how the seaglass pieces play with the entire design, both in piecing/applique and in quilting, until it is off. Right now I am just hoping it will look as envisioned, or somewhat close. FYI - I have stitched around over 100 of these appliques.
I'm trying for interesting fillers, with meaning and flow, but time will tell there too. I plan to go back over key motifs with a 30 or 40 wt poly thread with a nice sheen, to make them show up more.

Here's a small closeup of a paisley filler, learned in an online wholecloth class quilt recently. In a larger quantity, it looks pretty interesting.

Today's going to be a noisy day - my living room hardwood is being installed. It's crunch time here at home with the renovation. Getting very close to being finished. My customer quilts are piling up, and will be attacked hard in a couple days when Sea Glass comes off the frame.

The teasers continue

I know it is hard to get a good sense of where my madness is leading when I only show snippets of the quilting. Sorry, that is somewhat intentional. There will be a grand reveal eventually.
I am trying to create am organic look here, with some new quilting motifs for me, ones that can convey the flow of water. Waves and tides to be exact. These are difficult items to "quilt", but hopefully you will see this feeling eventually with this quilt. The picture above show a couple of the "waves" I appliqued onto the watercolor background. Below is just sand.

Abstract or art quilts are hard to stitch. This is a tremendous stretch for me, as my orderly brain thinks better in terms of traditional, and symmetrical quilts. I am approaching halfway through the mid-section of this top. It does quilt up relatively quickly in comparison to other detailed quilts I have done recently since it is 95% freehand quilted. On one hand, it is very liberating. On the other, I have no idea if this will be nice or just 3 miles of thread!

Do you have any suggestions for organic shapes to quilt?