Quilting Heats Up At The Winters Outdoor Show

My friend Bonnie deserves a medal for venturing out with me today to Winters, CA -- on one of the hottest days of the summer -- for their annual outdoor quilt show. The forecast was for 106F, and the day was indeed a roaster!

Winters, CA

It was a bit of a bummer that the usual crowds to this show were deterred by the heat this year. However, there were many inspiring quilts:

Bonnie said this quilt is "toothy". ;)

Bonnie's favorite; Love the swirl in this Texas Lonestar.

As usual, going to a quilt show has made me just want to get home and do some quilting!!

Got Scraps? - Part II

Let the scraps fly! That's what I decided for finishing the scrappy star quilt, making over 200 flying geese units for the borders. I used the squares-on-squares piecing technique for constructing the flying geese from our scrap supply: 2.5"x2.5" squares sewn onto both sides of the dark center 4.5"x2.5" rectangle. However, I would not recommend this approach -- many of the geese ended up wonky. Next time, I will use slightly larger little squares, and then trim the geese units after piecing. So, it was definitely a learning experience!

Chain piecing flying geese.

However, I was still able to schmooze my less-than-perfect geese together to utilize a majority of them for the borders. But because of the inaccuracies, getting a whole number of geese to fit each side of the quilt was problematic. So, I decided to "cheat" and use an asymmetrical border design with the geese, which would conveniently skirt this issue. I'm quite happy with the "finished-is-better-than-perfect" results:

Scrappy Stars finished top.

I lost a few geese points, but this quilt is so scrappy that I think these little boo-boos get somewhat camouflaged in all of the busyness.

There's a little bit of whimsy in the quilt: there is one fabric that appears only once!

This top has been added to the collection destined for eventual long-arm quilting service.

Wine Country Quilts Show

One of the great benefits of being a quilter in the San Francisco Bay Area is that on many weekends there's a quilt show within day-trip distance. So for my parents, going to the many quilt shows has been a hobby in itself. And, now that I've returned to my home state of California, I'm also enjoying the frequent trips to see these wonderful shows.

This past weekend we went to the Wine Country Quilts Show, presented by the Moonlight Quilters of Sonoma County, in Santa Rosa, CA. The featured quilter was Barbara Confer, whose art quilts are composed of raw-edge applique, toile, thread painting, and embellishments. I'd love to try these techniques myself sometime, since I like the realistic look that can be achieved.

Quilt by Barbara Confer.

Quilt by Barbara Confer. This was my favorite; the brown dog reminds us of Ginger!

Close-up of "Ginger" in quilt by Barbara Confer.

Quilt series by Barbara Confer.

I can never pick favorites at the quilt shows, but here are a few of the quilts at this show that I especially liked: