Fun Challenge from Valley MQG

At Valley MQG, we love to have fun.  Our last monthly meeting was especially eventful and filled with surprises.  We had a lot of laughs and my cheeks hurt from smiling and laughing so much.  It was our 2nd birthday celebration.  Our membership chair had solicited and found lots of donations of gifts from many quilt shops in Southern California.  Almost everyone had something to take home.  This was mine to take home that night.  I always wanted a thread catcher and a basket.  What a great gift! 

Our monthly challenge was 'Fortune Cookie challenge'.  Our President, Scott Griffin, bought fortune cookies for everyone and we were supposed to read our fortune and interpret it into a quilt or a project.  My fortune said, 'A secret wish will be revealed to you in the near future.'  I waited the whole month for it but with disappointment, no one revealed any secret wish to me.  So I decided to reveal my own secret wish.  My wish is that I can travel the world and collect fabric and stamps.  I got this wonderful fabric with pictures of places such as Paris, Shanghai, Bombay and Madrid on it and a coordinating fabric with stamps and postcards on it.  I decided to make a collage quilt.  Here it is.....

I used some charm squares as background and arranged picture fabric on them.  I decided not to use any adhesive on the fabric.  I then put very light gray tulle on top of everything before quilting it.  I had a lot of fun doing free motion quilting on this piece.  Another secret, this is my first time doing pebble quilting.  Boy! my arms were tired.

I absolutely love home grown vegetables, especially tomatoes.  This year our beef stake yielded a lot of fruits and, in my humble opinion, they are the best kind for tomato sandwiches which I enjoy so much.  I'm saving seeds for next year.  Here is a tomato that I just picked today.  It's more than 4 inches in diameter!!  Doesn't it look perfect?

Have a great day!!
Go have some fun and make quilts!! 


Linking up to Sew Fresh Quilt

The Fall Paducah show

Hi there!!  I'm home from the Fall Paducah QuiltWeek.  What a fantastic time I had.  I was truly amazed at the talent of those who participated in the show.  So much inspiration from the quilts, colors and patterns.   If I post all the pictures I took, this blog will be just pictures.  I will post only those that I was attracted to the most.  I tried my best to get the quilter's name for the quilt but missed one, I'm so sorry.   Here we go.....

Journey by Grace Sim

My Rhodie by Andrea Brokenshire

Doesn't this flower look real?

Menopausal Insomnia by Irelie Beatie

I smiled when I saw this quilt title.  Somehow I knew what it meant.

Cool Jazz by Shirley Gisi

I love the color play in this quilt.

LiLY by Hiroko Miyama - Japan

This girl looks so alive and lovely.

Unconditional Love by Ruth O'Sullivan

Isn't this quilt sweet?  I love dogs and looking at this quilt made me think of my old dog, Shadow.  He wasn't a German Shepard but a black lab mix.  He was a really sweet, gentle and smart dog.  We miss him!!

Cherry Blossoms and Moon

Magical by Joanne Baeth

Don't these white doves look like they are flying off the quilt?
 

This is me doing my demo about my book in AQS Author Showcase booth.  The audience was small in number but they were very inquisitive and engaging.  Working with flannel is hard on your machine because flannel creates a lot of lint underneath the throat plate so I made lint removers as a giveaway and they were a big hit.  They are made with pipe cleaners and coffee stirrers.  This is what they look like.  I got this as a gift some time ago from Scott Griffin in the Valley MQG.

At the Fall Paducah QuiltWeek, AQS had a free shuttle service which was great.  They allowed me to see the town and I went to some shops too.  I spent every available minute to take in everything as much as I could.  The most memorable incident was at the Must Stitch Emporium.  While in the shop, one lady from Indiana recognized me and asked me to sign her Show-book.  I never expected in a million year that someone would recognize me!!  Wow, what an ego boost for me.  

I got to go to the National Quilt Museum too.  Couldn't take any pictures in there.  The quilts in there are of exquisite beauty and workmanship.  

I also bought some notions and of course fabric.

 

I love the V and Company fabric line and try to collect them whenever I have a chance.  I don't have a plan for this acquisition yet.  The fabric on the bottom is not from V and Company but I like it for background for future project.

I really had a marvelous time in Paducah.  I would like to do a shout out to Pat, Karen and Gail.  I'm glad that I went and had a chance to meet you all.  Thank you ladies so much for making my time in Paducah a memorable one.  
 
Have a great day!

AQS QuiltWeek and works in progress

I'm very excited to say that I'm going to Paducah, Kentucky next week.  The AQS is having an Author Showcase booth at Fall Paducah QuiltWeek from September 13-16.  My scheduled time slot is Friday 15th at 2:30 pm. to do the demo and talk about my book.  I've never been to that part of the country before and I can't wait to see it.  I've heard of the National Quilt Museum in Paducah and I'm dying to see all the beautiful quilts in there.

I've been busy working on several projects. They are commissioned works, gifts and my personal projects.  I'll show more pictures when they are done.  I may have some quilts to submit to QuiltCon. 

I also have been working on my son's new quilt.  It's a HST quilt and I tried to quilt diagonal lines on it.  You can see the picture of the quilt here.   I used a Juki TL-98E and Aurifil thread to do the quilting.  When I finished all the quilting in one direction, I put the quilt on my work table to examine the quilting lines.  I used my hands to smooth out the quilt.  The thread snapped and broke in many places.  Every quilting line that I touched, the thread would break.  Plus there are a lot of skipped stitches as well.  I've used Aurifil thread to quilt before but never had such an experience like this.  I had to take out all the stitches and this was very discouraging for me.  I discussed this incident with my quilting friends in my mini group and the conclusion was the tension.  I just had this machine serviced by our local authorized Juki dealer about a month ago.  I'll bring the machine back to the dealer before I try to quilt with it again and hopefully it will be better than the previous attempt.  

Have you had this kind of problem when you quilt?  If any of you want to share your experience of quilting on diagonal line, please make a comment for me.  Thanks!!

On top of all these quilt projects, I'm reupholstering a sofa for my dear friend's daughter.  The original cover is old and faded, but the frame is in an excellent condition. She took some pictures as I go along, and here they are.

Sofa's before picture

Stripped it down to the frame, then covered with new material.

This is how the sofa looks today.  When the frame is all done, I'll work on the cushion.  Before I became a full time quilter, I did many re-upholstery projects.  Those projects were for myself, my family and friends.  Some projects were for strangers who heard about my work from friends.  I even got paid on some of the projects too.  I really enjoy re-upholstering furniture.  It's very satisfying to see an old piece of furniture get a new and fresh look. Picking out a new fabric for furniture is really a lot of fun as well.

Have a great week.  

Go do something good and fun!!