Quilt Festival

I'm back after a week away and like I always say, "There's no place like home."

I had a wonderful time with Becky and Kathy and all the quilts and vendors at Quilt Festival, but we all decided that it was just too much and that we are just as happy with smaller, regional shows like Pacific International Quilt Festival and Road to California. The show had over 500 vendors and supposedly 1000 quilts, but many were small journal quilts the size of a piece of typing paper with artist statements the same length and quite honestly, had meaning only to the maker.

We took a class, "Scrap Quilts from Antique Quilts" with Pepper Cory and had a good time with that. We are pictured with her in front of the antique quilt (above left-right) Becky, Kathy, Pepper, and MsJan. Pepper was a charming lady and her sample quilt was gorgeous. I got a few rows done and it will be a great project to keep by the machine for those times when I want to sew without thinking too much.

One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to M & L fabrics in Anaheim, a gi-normous warehouse of fabrics from $7.98-$1.98/yard depending on how close to the front door you are....literally! The place was mind-boggling. The back area was filled with row after row of very neatly stacked flat folds. Here is a picture of Kathy and Becky among the flat folds and if you can figure out how to pull one from a stack you are smarter than we are. We just stared in awe and moved on to the $2.98 fabrics figuring it was worth a buck a yard to not have to pull one of these out.

This is a view of the store from the front of the flat fold area. Mind boggling to say the least. We all picked up some quilt backs and a little bit of this and that and Becky got some gorgeous boucle woven for a jacket in just her color and I got a hunk of Robert Kauffman tropical rayon blend for a sarong to wear in Hawaii in September (at $2.98/yard).

I got a little bit more done on the boy's Christmas quilts and need to add the last row for Becky to commence the quilting for me. More on that later.

Gone Quiltin'

I'm not slackin' again, I'm actually being quite productive with my pal Becky in Lompoc. Greyhair and I traveled south and stayed Saturday in Cayucos, CA, a tiny beach town where both of our families spent summer vacations and where my parents and tow sisters eventually retired. I'd been shunned from a family wedding in Visalia (long story), so I decided to go visit my old home-away-from-home while the "cats were away."

Greyhair dropped me off with Becky on Monday and we've been sewing and chatting up a storm. I'm working on the applique technique using fusible thread and have discovered a new trick which I will share as a tutorial next week when I get back.

We pick Kathy B. up in Santa Barbara tomorrow and then its down to Long Beach for the first International Quilt Festival on the west coast. Festival starts Friday and we have a class on Saturday, so on Thursday we thought we might see the Queen Mary or do something else touristy.

Are we excited? You betcha!

Spells

I finished another block of my Verna Mosquera Block-of-the-Month from Thimble Creek. Yahoo! I now have another in progress that is acutally three blocks sewed together with three bats and a spiderweb. The shoe full of candy and jack-o-lantern are ready to do the prep work and of course the skeleton is ongoing.

I have to say that I'm really enjoying being home in the cooler temperatures, even though I miss my little boy buddies.

Roasting in Fresno

I'm not really slacking, I'm just visiting with daughter Kate and the grand-boys Benjamin and Alex in hotter-than-hot Fresno. We were scheduled to go to UC Irvine for a second laser treatment on Benjamin's facial hemangioma, but he got a little bit of a cold, so we had to stay home and play with Legos. Back home and quilting tomorrow.

Another Friendship Block

This is for Kathy H. in my quilt guild and I'll be handing it off to her on Thursday. Kathy is the organizer of our block of the month this year and the girl loves star blocks, so she themed her blocks "Oh My Stars!" and asked for star blocks on dark backgrounds from 4" to 12" finished.

I went to my go-to book for star blocks and swap blocks in general-- Judy Martin's Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts--for this block, named Fiery Star.

I love Judy's books and have gone so far as to purchase some out-of-print titles from Ebay and Half.com. This book is my absolute favorite and I go to it again and again and again. She has a ton of star blocks in all sizes and a gazillion layouts for them that you can mix and match.

I used it to design the memorial quilt we made for our guild member Norma when she lost her son in Iraq.

As I said, a go-to book.