My A to Z of Quiltcon Savannah {Part 1}

This morning, as I prepared to ruin a second batch of sugary, buttery pralines in my quest to replicate the delicacies that had me salivating in Savannah (don't worry, I saved them just in time!) my thoughts turned to Quiltcon 2017.

I realised it's been a month since I arrived home, high time I took up the story of my amazing USA holiday where I left off.

If you haven't already done so, and you don't mind a few 'spoilers', you can always pop across to Linda's blog and read on. Unlike her scatty and disorganised friend here, she has conscientiously kept up with her blog posts, already sharing all the fun we had at Quiltcon and beyond.

So here's Part 1 of my A to Z of Quiltcon 2017 highlights!

A is for Awards Ceremony, early on the first day, necessitating a pre-dawn start for our drive from Hilton Head to the Savannah International Convention Centre. As slides of each award winning quilt flashed up on the screen there was much cheering for the winners, but I was most excited for Aussie quilters Katherine (Kat) Jones (@twocatsquilts), winner of Best in Show, and Jess Frost (@elvengardenquilts), winner of 3rd place in Improvisation.

"Scattered" by Jess Frost

B is for "Bling", Kat's stunning Best in Show winner. Measuring just under 100 inches square, it looks like a giant princess cut diamond. Kat paper pieced each of the four segments with an identical pattern, but using different shades of solids to cleverly replicate the subtle play of light on a real diamond. If you think it looks amazing here, believe me, it's breathtaking in real life!

"Bling" by Katherine (Kat) Jones

C is for celebration, something we Aussies do well! At the end of day 1 we were more than happy to raise a glass to Kat (centre in this photo) and Jess (back home in Australia). 

(L to R) Michelle Hickson, Di Jobbins (me), Katherine Jones, Lorena Uriarte and Monique Nugent

C is also for the warm and generous domestic machine quilting diva Christa Watson (@christaquilts), whose book, "The Ultimate Guide to Machine Quilting" (co-authored with Angela Walters), is one of my most valued references.

With Christa Watson

Since we live on different continents, and I may never have the opportunity to take a class with her again, I was super keen to soak up as much knowledge from Christa as I could.

So I attended both her lecture "Quilting on your Home Sewing Machine: Tips and Tricks", and her 3 hour class "Free-Motion Alternatives to Straight Line Quilting".

Her spray basting technique is one I'm definitely planning to try, and I was encouraged when she said she uses the same favourite double-batting combo as I do (cotton on the bottom/wool on the top). Yay! I was doing something right!

In her class she patiently taught us more than two dozen machine quilting designs, starting with drawing out a pattern in our sketchbooks, to machine stitching the design on a pre-prepared quilt sandwich. 

She even allowed us to fondle her quilts and see her work up close, without a white glove in sight!

 I'm in love with Christa's geometric chains, swirls (above) and pearls (below).

Pebbles and jagged stipples (below) 

And switchbacks, pebbles and swirls (below)

D is for domestic machine quilting , the subject of the hands-on class I took with Kathleen Riggins (@kathleenquilts), "A Cheater's Guide to Free Motion". 

With Kathleen Riggins

I may have been overdoing the quilting tuition just a tad, but, having flown more than 15,000km to be here, I was going for the full-immersion domestic machine quilting experience, keen to learn from all my quilting icons! 

I drool over pictures of Kathleen's work on Instagram and I follow her blog, but she's a longarmer, and I only quilt on a "mature-aged" domestic Bernina. So when I saw last year that she was teaching a class at Quiltcon using domestic, sit-down machines I grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

Here are some of my bumbling attempts at swirls and pebbles. Kathleen's class taught me many things, but most importantly the need to practice, practice, practice!

E is for "Every Quilter is a Teacher", the featured lecture by keynote speaker, Angela Walters. While dazzling us with slides of her amazing quilts, she also shared how her husband's grandpa, a quilter, had been her mentor. A warm and charismatic teacher herself, she encouraged us to nurture other quilters along this creative path. 

With Angela Walters (Don't you love that quilted chevron tote of hers!)

And she was happy to pose with this breathless fan-girl. How lovely is that!

More soon ;-)

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We love our work

The cricket's on the radio, carols are playing in the supermarket, and there's barely a space left in my engagement calendar. Yes, Christmas is almost upon us, and with our Christmas break-up workshop and lunch this coming Saturday it's high time I caught up with sharing our St Mark's Quilters' October doings.

 There were some truly amazing kindy quilt finishes.

Di B brought along her cot-sized Paint Box quilt, beautifully quilted on her domestic machine.

Sue M was working on the placement of pieces for her gorgeously scrappy hexagon "I Spy" quilt.

Michaela was stitching down the binding on her latest kindy quilt.

Perdita was cutting sashings.

And Michelle, Liz, Margaret and Gail were just concentrating hard. You'll see some of their beautiful finished work if you click on the Blankets of Love and Kindy Quilts for "The Marcia" tabs above.

Our lovely Barb usually drives down all the way from the Central Coast to be with us, but sadly she couldn't make it. 

This time Susie W won the gold star for coming furthest - from Orange! We've missed Susie since she and her DH retired and drove off for a tree-change earlier this year, so it was wonderful to have her back, if only for a visit.

Di B and I continued our tag-team process as we started on the binding for the Autism Puzzle quilt we're making for the reception area of the KU Marcia Burgess Autism Specific Early Learning and Care Centre at Liverpool.

Creating quilts always makes us happy. Sometimes it's laugh-out-loud happy, especially when we're working together. Sometimes not. 

Even making a Blanket of Love gives us deep joy, trusting and praying it will warm the heart of a grieving parent. Only rarely, though, does it become 'personal'.

A friend contacted us recently with a special request. Some friends of hers had just lost their much-wanted and loved baby girl, born far too early, and she wondered if we had a Blanket of Love she could give them.

We chose this pretty starry hexagon quilt made by Gillian, stitched on a personalised label to the back, with the bub's name, and sent it to her parents (via our friend) with much love from St Mark's Quilters. 

We've never met this family, but being able to make this little gesture felt so good. 

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Twin quilts = Double the fun

One of my most satisfying quilt finishes this year has been these two cot-sized quilts I made for my young friend Alex's twin baby daughters.

Though they were possibly the worst kept secret ever because I couldn't resist sharing sneak peeks on Instagram, I wanted to wait until they were in Alex's hands before sharing here.

Alex likes to keep her home decor to a restrained palette of grey and white, with splashes of colour. So last year I made this grey, white and yellow quilt for her newborn baby boy, Atticus.

Knowing that this time she was expecting twin girls, and being something of a pink-lover myself, it was a no-brainer to choose a pink and grey colour scheme. 

Both quilts consisted of basically the same design, scrappy triangles of pink bunting fused and machine appliquéd to a whole cloth background. The girls are fraternal twins, so I wanted their quilts to have a similar appearance so they look matching in their cots, but with easily spotted differences so there are no mix-ups when they're older and want to quickly grab their own quilt to snuggle under while watching TV.

This quilt belongs to baby Harper Emerson Indiana, and the background fabric is white dots on grey.

... and here is Harper asleep on her quilt. I like to think that's a tiny smile of contentment.

The really fun part of making these quilts was being able to cut loose and try out lots of free motion quilting fillers. Some of the designs came out of my imagination, having seen something similar on the internet.

I like the way the matchstick quilting lines in this circle throw the flying geese design up into relief.

Some designs, like this next one, were created with some high tech help, in the form of the Westalee Spin-e-fex Snowflake templates. Along with a ruler foot to my sit-down domestic sewing machine, a vintage Bernina 1230, it was really quite easy to stitch this pattern.

But not all my tools were sophisticated. I also had some very low tech help, five bowls of assorted diameters that I kept close at hand and drew around (with my Sewline air-erasable pen) whenever I needed a new circle. It's fun to improvise!

This quilt belongs to baby Calliope Florence Eleanora, and the background fabric consists of tiny white stars on grey.

...and here's Calliope herself, fast asleep like her sister :-)

Grey is such a useful shade, and a great foil for any colour, whether pastel or bright, but it's not very easy to photograph. So here are a few more detail shots showing the quilting more clearly from the back.

 Oh, I do love how Harper and Calliope are already snuggling into their new quilts!

Harper's Quilt

Calliope's Quilt



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Love

Love was in the air last weekend, Valentine's weekend, as St Mark's Quilters gathered for our first Saturday workshop of the year.

This is our sixth year stitching Blankets of Love for Royal Prince Alfred Hospital's Newborn Intensive Care Unit,  and our seventh making cot sized quilts for the little ones at the KU Marcia Burgess Kindy, and we love our work!

With permission from Megan Pitz @canoeridgecreations I shared her True Love Mini Quilt pattern, and took along my version. With an extra border or two it makes a very sweet little Blanket of Love, and would look gorgeous hanging on a nursery wall.

Sue was hand piecing a heart block of her own, to be joined up with three others for a flower effect.

Di C and Perdita wasted no time cutting out fabrics for new quilts.

This was Perdits's latest sweet finish, perhaps suitable for an Easter bub?

This donated quilt top found a volunteer eager to take it home and finish it as an 'emergency' quilt.

Gail carefully pieced these little blocks, undaunted by all the Y seams.

She also brought in these two cheery Blankets of Love. 

[The quilts in my photos are really not as wonky as they look. It's just that I like to photograph them in the bright shade outside in the garden, and our grassy lawn is particularly lush and spongy right now after a good rainfall.]

Michelle relaxed with some big-stitch hand quilting. So pretty!

Sophie and Susan brought in this cute finished Kindy quilt, made from a jelly roll and two bunny border prints.

And this Blanket of Love.

Barb made these two beauties.

...and this delicious French Apple Cake for our morning tea. Yum!

Gillian was still feeling the Dresden love.

..and we loved the lemon slice and chocolate cakes she brought along!

There was no need to ask Margaret how she spent her holidays. Look at all these beauties from our hexie queen!

Robyn's hand piecing is meticulous, but when time prevented her finishing this beautiful little quilt with hand quilting Di B helped in with a great spot of team work, and machine quilted it. 

Finally, look who had a birthday this week. Happy 12th birthday, lovely Matilda!🎉