Exciting News!

Did you see my Facebook on Tuesday or the Modern Quilt Guild newsletter?  I'll be teaching at QuiltCon!  It is going to be so much fun I can hardly stand it :)  QuiltCon is the first national quilt show by the Modern Quilt Guild.  It will be next February in Austin, TX and have a quilt show, classes, lectures, vendors and more.

I'll be teaching three applique classes.  Here is a sneak peek of my Hand Applique class project.  Isn't he cute?  My goal was to include all the basic applique shapes in a fun, small project.  Nobody wants to have to cart five yards of fabric across the country and I am personally not a fan of kits.  I always want to choose my own fabric.

Mark your calendars - registration for QuiltCon begins Aug 30.  More on the other projects I'll be teaching soon.

Modern quilting magazines!

One of the exciting things about Quilt Market was getting to see a little of some the new modern quilting magazines that are coming out.

I've been reading the Generation Q magazine blog for quite a while now.  I always enjoy the chatty and informative style about the goings on in our q-niverse as they call it.  I picked up a copy of the "hot off the presses" new print magazine at Market.  The first thing you notice is its size - smaller than the typical magazine at about 7" x 9".  I'm not sure why I find the size appealing, but I do :)  Inside there are great articles, interviews and quilt projects.  

One regular feature that I know I'll turn to as soon as I get my magazine is called "Block Builder".  Community Editor, Scott Hansen, has sketched a partial block. Finish it any way you like and then submit your version for a chance at a prize.  What a fun idea!

You may have noticed quilting stars Amy and David Butler on the cover.  Inside there is an interview with the designing couple that provides a peek into their working process and their home.  The view from their house would certainly inspire me!

The article reviewing five irons was very helpful and provided concrete information as to which irons performed well and which did not.  Of course, there are quilt projects from well known designers such as Scott Hansen, Heather Jones and Julie Herman and much, much more.

Lucky you that I have a copy to give away! If you'd like to win a copy of Generation Q magazine, leave a comment telling me about your favorite part of quilting magazines.  Do you like the projects, the interviews, tours of studios, tips on working with scraps or pre-cuts or.....?  If you'd like additional chances to win, follow my blog or my Facebook or Twitter (@eschhousequilts) and let me know in a separate comment.  The giveaway will remain open until the end of the day on Thursday, May 31.

Edited to add:  I always forget to add that I must have a way to contact you if you win!  If you are a no-reply blogger, please include an email address in your comment.  If you don't know what a no-reply blogger is, check your Blogger profile.  If there is no email address listed on the left side, I will not be able to reach you unless you include your email address in your comment.  Thanks!

The Desperate Housewife's Quilt

Do you know about the Desperate Housewife's Quilt?  If not, you should!  Jane (quiltjane) has published nearly 100 8" block designs - half of them her own design and half of them by guest bloggers.  Today, I am so excited to be one of her guest bloggers!  Check out some of the other blocks on the Desperate Housewife page on Jane's blog or in Flickr groups here and here.

My block is called Pebble Path.  These organic pebbles were such fun to make!  I hand appliqued my block, but it would be easy to adjust the block for machine applique if you prefer.  Here goes:

Pebble Path 8” block

Materials:

8½" square of background fabric

8-16 small grey scraps for pebbles

Removable marking pencil

Thread to match pebbles

1⅜" circle template

1.   Make a small dot 2¼" and 4¼" from the top on the left side of the block and 4¼" and 6 1/4" on the right side of the block.  These are the guides for your path.

2.   Using a removable marking pencil, draw a gentle curve between the 2¼" mark on the left side and the 4¼" mark on the right side.  Repeat for the 4¼" mark on the left side and the 6¼" mark on the right side.  (Note:  if you aren't confident in your drawing abilities, draw curves on a sheet of plain paper until you draw one you like.  Cut along the drawn line and use it as a guide to draw onto your block).

3.   Using your circle template, mark 16 1⅜" circles on the wrong side of the pebble scraps.  Cut out the circles roughly on the drawn line.  Note that you will NOT be trying to appliqué beautifully round pebbles J.

4.   Arrange your pebbles along your path until you are pleased with the fabric mix.  Pin the pebbles roughly in place - they may need to be moved a bit as you stitch them down.

5.   Using needle turn appliqué*, turn under approximately 3/16" and appliqué the pebbles in place.  DO NOT make them perfectly round.  Give them bumps and straight spots like real pebbles have.

6.   Where the pebbles overlap other pebbles and the edge of the path, trim the pebble to the right shape.

7.   Leave 1/16 to ⅛" between your pebbles.

      That's all there is to it!

If you want to make more of these blocks, here are a couple of options.  Both of these use some blocks like the one above and some mirror image blocks.  Just turning the block won't get this design.  Making a mirror image block is simple - all you have to do is move your path so that the left side measurements are on the right side and vice versa - so the path goes from lower left to upper right.  Doesn’t it make a great border if you fill in the corners?

*This block can be made just as easily using fusible web machine appliqué.  Draw 1" circles on the paper side of the fusible web.  Cut them out leaving some room around the shape.  Apply the fusible to the back of your pebble fabrics.  Cut out your pebbles with some flatter sides and bumps.  Layout on your path, trimming the edge of the pebble at the edge of the path as needed and stitch down.  Wouldn't a blanket stitch give a nice texture to your pebbles?  

I hope you have fun with this block!  Thanks, Jane, for providing a source of endless inspiration!

A taste of Quilt Market

Quilt Market was an absolutely amazing adventure!  My brain is still spinning.  There was so much to see and learn and absorb.   I got some great books and magazines I can't wait to tell you about, but I want to do them one or two at a time.  So, first we'll do eye candy :)

I'm not the best at remembering to take pictures but I did snap a few booths.  But first - the Sample Spree loot!

Now, this isn't just my loot :)  This belongs to me, Anna of woollykat, Brenda of justabitfrayed and Pink Castle Fabrics, and Lynn of thelittleredhen.  Sample Spree started at 8pm and there were people already waiting in line by 3pm, probably some even earlier.  We got in line about 7.  Anna even managed to snag a fat eighth bundle of Mama Said Sew.  I was hoping to get some, but I didn't think there was a chance so I didn't even try.  Shows how much I know :)  I did get some Kona solid charm packs and a layer cake, as well as a fat quarter bundle of Lotta Jansdotter's new line, Bella.  I also got that amazing little green print clutch to the side of the pile - the fabric is from Juggling Summer, Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic's new line for Moda.  I can't wait to get some of the actual fabric!

I can't believe I didn't get a picture of Melody Miller's booth - it was so cute.  Lynn has a pic on her blog here. I didn't get pictures of all the booths I liked - there were so many and, sometimes, there were too many people in them to get a good shot, which, of course, is a great thing for the booth owners :)

Dear Stella booth

Zen Chic booth

Urbanicity by Michelle D'Amore for Benartex

Mama Said Sew by Sweetwater for Moda

SkipStone Creative- love the quilting hoop decor!

Michael Miller display

Love this quilt in Atkinson Design's booth

Going to Quilt Market!

I am so excited!  I'm leaving for Quilt Market in Kansas City on Wednesday!

I can't wait to meet (in person) some of the people I know online.  Of course, I'm also anticipating seeing a lot of wonderful new fabrics and quilt designs and meeting some new people

I'll be attending the Schoolhouse and Sample Spree activities on Thursday. If you aren't familiar with these, my understanding is that Schoolhouse is a series of mini presentations of new products, techniques and books.  Sample Spree is about samples of new things that you can see and buy.  I'm not sure either of these are the perfect fit for me and my interests, but I figured, since I'm going, I should take the opportunity to see what they're all about.

I've signed up for a couple of short workshops in the mornings before Market opens, but I'll spend most of Friday and Saturday walking the floor and learning how it all works.  There is a Modern Quilt Guild event on Saturday night which I'm sure will be lots of fun.

I'll be traveling with Brenda (justabitfrayed and Pink Castle Fabrics) and Anna (woollykat) again (as when we went to Cincinnati) and Lynn (The Little Red Hen).  I just hope I can sleep the night before we leave!

In the midst of deadlines...

Old system

I decided to reorganize my fabric storage.  It was a spur of the moment decision that was a long time overdue.  The specific decision point was trying to find a group of fabrics I wanted for a design I was working on.  I spent a good 15 minutes looking for it and still didn't find it.  OK, not a good use of time.

When I first organized my fabric storage, I sorted it all into plastic bins by color.  A few years later, I added solids that I wanted to keep separate, so I added a few more bins and sorted those into warm, cool and neutral.  I have really liked having my fabric in the plastic bins.  Whenever I want a certain color, I can pull the bin off the shelf and look through it easily.

New system

Over the past year, however, I have purchased several fat quarter bundles of a line of fabric and I want to keep those fabrics together, not split them up by color.  So where did they go? - all over the place!  However convenient, the bins are not the best use of space so I got rid of them.

Now the top shelf holds the remaining bin of neutral solids and my fat quarter bundles by line - two deep.  The next two shelves hold the fabric that was in the bins, also stacked two deep, and the bottom shelf has the multi-colored fabric from one of the bins and my warm and cool solids.  It will be a little more difficult to pull everything I have of one color, but at least I got those fat quarter bundles all in one place.  After I've used a good portion of the fabric in a fat quarter bundle, I'll mix the remaining bits in with the rest of the fabrics.

I should make this last picture the background on my phone so I remember not to buy any new fabric.  Yeah, that'd help :)

Early works

I've been busy making things I can't show you yet.  I'm sure you know how that goes.  Some of it won't be long now.  In the meantime, I thought I'd go back and share some of my early works.  I have shared this quilt on my blog before, but it was nearly two years ago, so I figure a large percentage of you weren't reading about my quilting adventures at that time.

Midnight Dance was an early quilt design.  Making this quilt was pure joy.  It was 2008 and I had already decided I wanted to be a serious quilter, but I didn't have a blog, didn't have any patterns, didn't have anything published in magazines, didn't have any deadlines and wasn't really sure where my quilting journey would take me.  It was just me, my idea and "The Secret Life of Bees" (the book on CD I listened to while sewing).

The plan for this quilt was expanded from a row I made for a Row Robin quilt with my hand dyeing group.  Sorry, but I can't find any pictures - that may have been pre-digital for me.  The row included the curves and the daisy-style flowers.  My idea to expand it to a bed sized quilt included large monochromatic blocks of color - large like 10" x 20".  I cut a few of those and quickly downsized the plan.  Such large blocks were visually distracting and did not blend together well.  The basic background blocks ended up finishing at 2" and 3" by 9 1/2".  The key to the backgrounds was to get enough variation in color and value to make the background interesting, but not so much as to make it distracting.  I couldn't help adding a few contrasting squares down the left side and across the bottom too.

Cutting the curve at the horizon was a scary thing!  After I had sewn enough background fabrics together to make the quilt big enough, I layered the sky part over the grass part, both right side up and drew the curves.  Then I cut through both layers, flipped it right sides together and sewed the seam.  There were a few spots that needed adjusting, but it went more smoothly than I had feared.

After that, the applique was pretty straightforward using fusible and satin stitching around the edges.  I did forget that my original plan called for one of the flowers to go off the edge of the quilt.  For the quilting, I sectioned off the green areas in sweeping curves like you might see in a landscape and quilted lines about one inch apart echoing the curves.  The sky has a colorless moon with quilting echoing that as well.  The daisies have quilting in their petals and a spiral in their centers.  At 88" x 97", this quilt is the largest one I've made.

I still love this quilt and have enjoyed this little trip down memory lane :)  Have you looked back at some of your earlier works recently?  Do you still like them?

On Retreat!

I'm on retreat this week with my wonderful Handwork group.  We've been meeting every other Tuesday for about five years now.  Most of them are hand quilters while I usually do hand applique.  Some of you may remember that I've spent a large percentage of our meetings working on my Biltmore Bias quilt.

Biltmore Bias

I just love getting away for these few days a year to just sew, hang out with friends and, of course, eat.  Someone always brings some amazing goodies.  The host of our retreat supplies breakfast, we decided to bring things for lunch (salads and sandwiches) and we usually go out for dinner.  We like to eat lunch in so we don't have to stop sewing, but, by dinnertime, we're ready for a little break.  Pure heaven!