Humble Quilts Antique Block Challenge

 These are the five antique quilt blocks I received from Lori at Humblequilts.blogspot.com. The challenge was to incorporate them into a finished quilt. They were quite wonky…seams were wide and uneven…dye was unstable. 

I took them apart….

….and created a new little quilt. 

The binding and inner border fabric is the last bit of this vintage print that I have hoarded for years. I still want to add some handquilting (especially to the center blocks) but I think this is close enough to “finished” for now! Thank you for the challenge, Lori!

More from Market!

It is such fun to see so many Quilters, designers, bloggers, and teachers (so many people do all 4 things!) in real person at market. I spotted Kaffe Fassett surprising one of Kathy Doughty’s friends with a piece of fabric she apparently coveted. So sweet!

We saw a beautiful, vibrant quilt at one booth and were directed to the maker’s booth.....It was by Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle! Their company, Modern Quilt Studio has gorgeous fabrics (check out their warp + weft yarn dye fabrics) which were showcased by these quilts. Their website modernquiltstudio.com offers much better photos of the fabric than what I have here.

Market ended Monday and the festival will start on Thursday.

I have more pictures from Market and will try to get those loaded before festival starts. I have had trouble posting these using my iPad. If anyone has any hints,let me know!

Houston International Quilt Market 2018!

I am so excited to be attending Quilt Market in Houston this year! I will try not to put exclamation marks after everything, but I am very enthusiastic about everything I have seen and experienced so far. Market started on Saturday, November 3 and runs through Monday, November 5. Quilt market has been held for almost 20 years (1979) and is the only wholesale trade show for the worldwide quilting industry. Did you know that the quilting industry is worth an estimated $3.7 billion yearly  (yes, with a B) in the US alone?

There are many educational classes, demonstrations, business seminars, and opportunities for networking with industry professionals. Each morning there are numerous Take and Teach classes offered. Basically, these classes are designed to teach shop owners how to use a new product, often providing hands-on opportunities to create samples to take home. The biggest down fall on these classes? There are so many to choose from and you can only take one each morning. This morning I took “All the Secrets for Ultimate Handbag Construction “ by Cheryl Kuczek of Paradiso Designs.

She brought virtually every handbag hanging on the wall behind her to our Take and Teach class. She went over all the important construction details for the basic construction of the bag and then the different design features of each pattern. She patiently answered questions and passed around all the bags so we could closely examine them. She also has cool skirt/clothing patterns available. Paradisodesigns.com is her website and she can be found on Facebook at Paradiso Designs.









There are almost 900 exhibitor booths in the convention center offering wholesale goods. Most were
very busy taking orders, answering questions, and giving demonstrations.

Here are a few pictures of exhibitors that caught my eye:

 This was one piece of fabric (no patchwork or blocks). It was colorful abstract design with some white spaces. The white spaces were each creatively quilted and the pink areas were all quilted alike.

 The following photo shows the fabric unquilted on the left and quilted on the right.

This would be a great way to enhance a neat piece of fabric and practice your quilting at the same time.

Here is some gorgeous hand dyed wool.

Mary Flanagan’s wool fabrics are hand dyed. You could purchase a bundle of her woolens that were dyed together in the same batch. They are such beautiful colors.

 She also had patterns of her own designs available

Her website is www.mfwoolens.com

Lots more info tomorrow!!

H

Another Vintage String Corduroy Quilt

 This is my brother’s Corduroy baby quilt that Sallie and Annie Johnson made.  There are a couple of things that amaze me about these corduroy quilts. First, the variety of fabrics. These were made in the late 50s. There are two corduroy fabrics in my quilt (shown at the top of the blog) that appear in Jack’s quilt as tiny scraps. Can you find them? Otherwise, no fabrics are used in BOTH quilts. That’s quite a variety.
 Another thing that amazes me is that the seams are not bulky. This is a string quilt and there are lots of seams, but the thickness within the blocks and where the blocks are joined together is all very smooth and even. I can’t even feel the seam allowances.

 The binding and the backing are of the same fabric. It seems to be some sort of nylon fabric. It’s kind of heavy and has a corded texture to it. The quilt has never been washed.

 When you view the individual blocks up close, this just seems to be lots of random string blocks put together. But when the whole quilt is view at a distance, it is obvious that the quilter/designer took a lot of effort to lay the blocks out in a special order. I love how the large “X”s appear in both quilts.

More from Pond Hollow Quilts

I am currently working on two special quilts. One is a wedding signature quilt (used as the guest register) and the other is my daughter’s graduation quilt. Sigh. The graduation quilt should be finished by this weekend but it looks like that’s not going to happen. If I had just made a quilt using a pattern, I would be finished. But no, I had to make it so unique and incorporate lots of different special fabrics (most of which I didn’t want to cut too small because it would lose the animals depicted on the fabrics.....it has an animal theme). So this is what is on my design wall right now:

Lol. Looks like I did cut those fabrics pretty small after all! Those of you who are familiar with Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran probably notice their influence on this design. I will add a few rows of black/white fabric to give some visual relief from all the color and pattern. Here is a glimpse of some of the fabrics:

If I had it to do over again, I would choose a pattern, maybe  Bonnie Hunter’s Scrappy Mountain Majesties or something else with a repeating block (but still using scrappy fabrics). When you use a pattern, most of the time-consuming decision making has been done for you......never underestimate how much work is involved with figuring out block/piece sizes to get everything to fit together. At this point, I am keeping Gwen’s advice in mind: if it’s too long, cut it off......if it’s too short, add something.