This post is in the same vein as “what I did this summer”, but instead it is about what came home with me…..either as “stuff” or as ideas. Here goes…..

Ruth Ann Berry talked about making those amazing 3-D quilts….you know, the ones where it looks like things are floating in space!! I always imagined the designing of those to be horrific, but she uses 60 degree triangles which means NO inset seams!!

Karen Kay Buckley not only reminded me to use a medium heat when working with Templar templates, but she also emphasized the importance of cutting the template plastic so that there are super smooth edges. To this end, I bought three pair of her scissors…..two for templates and one (serrated edge) pair for fabric…..

She said that if there is a slight bump on the template edge, you can use an emery board to smooth it out, and she also urged using a piece of fine sandpaper under the fabric when you are drawing the shape on.

Finally, she gave great instructions for preparing a leaf shape for applique. The first hint was to put a small loop of painter’s tape on the back of the template so that it doesn’t slide around when you are pressing the edges in place. Then, after you have used Magic Sizing and ironed all of the fabric in place, slightly wet the tips and pull the fold back so that it doesn’t overlap the leaf edge.

Deborah Gale Trico talked about Wool applique and thus encouraged me to buy a kit to make a small wool applique hanging…..

She was also giving out free needles and a skein of wool thread….gotta love freebies. The most interesting thing that she talked about was how to thread a Chenille needle. Here is her video…..

She also talked about using a thread to baste the pieces in place and hold them while the applique was being done. I came home and decided to baste my circles in place as I applique them and it has made the positioning a lot easier…..

I listened to Lois Hallock talk about how to organize your fabric and although I liked her suggestions, I finally decided that I have mine organized as well as I can. WHEW….nothing to change!!!

Jean Impey talked about using Fabrico markers to paint and reminded me AGAIN not to draw lines but to shade.

I had mentioned in the previous post that the vivacious Susan Cleveland talked about using piping and random prairie points to spice up your designs. This was probably my only “impulse” purchase, but I bought her book and templates for both the piping and the prairie points…..

Let’s hope that you see it in use in the near future!!

Reeze Hanson was talking about Machine Applique and said to use a super fine thread (80 or 100 wt) to do the stitching around the appliques…..what a good idea

One of my most memorable talks was from TSC designs. They are the ones who sell lots of inks, markers and stencils. As I walked up to the talk, I was just standing to one side rather than sitting down. The woman who was supposed to be the presenter (Joyce Teng) had lost her voice so another woman was doing the talking. Joyce walked up to me and invited me to sit. I declined and stood there for another minute or so. Finally, she walked back up to me again, pointed at the chair and explicitly told me to sit…..I sat!!! But, the tip that came from my sitting time was that you can use 404 spray adhesive to hold the stencil in place so that it doesn’t shift!

In the Color seminar that I have already talked about, she encouraged us to add white or light tones to “open up” the quilt. She also suggested taking a photo in Black & White so that you can look for value and better determine if your quilt needs different values to keep it exciting.

I have been interested in trying some heavier threads in my machine quilting and bought three spools to start with. Two spools of 28 wt thread from Aurifil and one spool of 12 wt from Superior…..

Let the practice begin!!!

I purchase this book by Lea McComas (the award winning quilter who made “The Long Goodbye” from my first post)…..

I am not sure that I will ever try anything this detailed but it is interesting to read her process.

The final purchases were some facial toned fabrics that I MAY use in an upcoming piece……

….and a cute applique quilt that I am looking forward to playing with (in my spare time)!!!…

Finally, I leave you with two things that caught my fancy as funny…..

First of all, as we walked past the “Lost and Found” table, there was a HUGE stack of reading glasses. Does that tell you anything about the clientele for the show.

Lastly, as you can imagine, the Ladies bathrooms were always busy and often there was a line out the door. In the bathroom on the show floor, there was an attendant who was hilarious. When you were waiting, she pointed out that there was an open stall for you to use and when a line started forming, she called out “Alright ladies….there is a line starting out here so get going. I need to hear some flushing!!!” I felt bad for anyone with a shy bladder!!!

To recap….the show was wonderful as always and I came away with so much inspiration and excitement about my favorite pastime.

Enough talking…..let’s get up to the studio!!!

When I woke up on Saturday morning, I wondered if there was any more to see at the show…..boy was I wrong!!!!

We started the day with the “Saturday Sampler” with 24 quilter’s talking about their specialties. Our first stop was to Karen Miller again as she was talking about Quilter’s Doodles.

She said that this next quilt was supposed to be at her display since it was the perfect example of her techniques, but, alas, it had been accepted into the show so wasn’t available for the sampler…..

Next, I spent time with Nancy Roelfsema who talked about “Coping Strips”. No, they don’t help you cope with your life, but they do help to put different sizes of blocks together perfectly!!

The comment that struck me most was that when you have a block with points, don’t “square” it up, but instead “trim” each edge so that points aren’t lost and then add the “coping” strips!!

Next, I spent some time with Susan Cleveland who was talking about using piping to add pizzazz to your quilts. Her technique is interesting and I admit that I bought her supplies to give it a try sometime.

I also spent some time with Karen Kay Buckley on both mornings as she talked about preparing applique pieces. Last year, she taught me to use templar plastic to prepare my fabric pieces and her templates are the ones that I have used for my circles. I did learn that a few of my templates had warped because I was using too hot of any iron!!! On the second day, I watched as she prepared pieces with internal and external points and I certainly feel more confident about trying them at home.

One of my favorite exhibits in the show was the “Up and Coming Quilter’s”. Terri Grant was one of the people featured and I have been following her blog for many years and have loved her work. She was scheduled to do a talk about her quilts but wasn’t able to be there. I would have loved to meet her in person!!

One of the reasons that I wanted to meet her is because she owns a piece of my work. MANY years ago, I created a small quilt and offered it as a gift on my blog to celebrate my first blogging anniversary, and she won it!! When she posted photos of her new studio I was excited to see a corner of it in the sitting room of her new building….

She hasn’t been posting much in the last year so I am a bit worried that she might not be well.

When we hit the main show floor again, we realized that we had missed a very important aisle…..the portrait quilts. These always amaze me and the following were my favorites…..

The quilter made this next quilt by turning a photo into a mosaic pattern and then laser cutting 4,000 pieces!!! It is so cute…..

The excitement on this little boy’s face is palpable…..

This was one of my favorites…..based on a photo where the dog was being introduced to the newest member of the family……

Needless to say, this landscape/portrait struck my fancy…..

I loved this architectural piece…..

….probably because it reminded me of a photo that I took in a palace in India…..

This next quilt was interesting in that it used only two colors and that the designs were made with strips of striped fabric…..

The colors in this cathedral were amazing, but the hexagon background is what really caught my attention…..

This landscape from Taiwan was also a crowd pleaser…

The geometrics and color in this piece were eye-popping….

And before we knew it, we were back at Pappasitos for our final Tex-Mex dinner, although we did make one last, quick foray to the Vendor’s!!

I am thankful for my friend, Linda, and that she is such a wonderful companion on these IQF trips…..

Here’s to many more!!!

Friday morning started with the “Friday Sampler”, a two hour session where 29 quilters presented their specialties and we were allowed to move between them and glean what we could.

One of my favorites was Karen Miller who specialized in Free-motion quilting. On this day, she was talking about using rulers in your designs. After telling us about threads and needles, she then displayed a number of examples of simple quilting done with rulers…..

The “bead-board” border on this quilt is fantastic….and simple too.

I also spent some time with Gail Garber, watching her draft the amazing designs that she specializes in…..

I was reminded to go home and pull out my “flexible” ruler and GET TO WORK!!! This was one of her fascinating pieces…..

This landscape quilt caught both of our eyes, but Linda was the one to really see the vines on the fence post. Some of them were tiny bias binding and some were couched threads. It was super effective…..

This sweet quilt was one of the first that we saw when we arrived on the show floor. It was a magnificent mixture of thread painting for the bird and applique for everything else. I cant remember, but the windshield wipers may have been a photograph…..

These “dampened” colors made for a very effective quilt…..

……as did the colors in this quilt…..

Just the opposite colorwise, this quilt was full of happy, bright colors and WAY TOO MANY perfectly matched stripes. This person must have been seriously OCD. But, the result was a fun quilt!!

I spent a lot of time in the “Landscape” division and was drawn to this quilt……

….and was not surprised when I saw that the artist was one of my favorites from last year!!

I did love that she used a tulle over the fused applique pieces and then quilted over the tulle…….

This seems to be a current trend and certainly makes quilt with lots of little pieces easier to create!

I loved these gentlemen sharing their bench with a dog…..

As we wandered into the SAQA retrospective exhibit again it was fun to see an older quilt by Elizabeth Barton….one of our Athens, GA quilters!!!

This was the 45th anniversary of the International Quilt Festival. Since the Sapphire is the stone for the 45th year, they had presented a “Sapphire Challenge” and the results were amazing. There were old quilts, new quilts, big quilts, miniature quilts and everything in between. The medium size quilts were all displayed from the ceiling of the ballroom and the display was striking…..

After several hours of looking at quilts and several more in the vendor mall, we were both tired and headed back to the hotel.

The Holiday Inn Express is a special place to stay during Quilt Show week!! They do so many things to make us feel at home, including providing dinner for us on one of the nights.

It was fun to sit and listen to the voices of so many women united in conversations about color, fat quarters, rotary cutters, piecing and applique…..seemed a bit like heaven to me!!!

Thursday was our first full day a the International Quilt Festival and, believe me, it was a FULL day.

As you know, I am truly enamored with thread work and quilting and these are a few of my favorites for the day……

This amazing quilt was another creation of Hollis Chatelain and there are no words…..

I loved this whole cloth quilt that was done entirely in free-motion quilting. It reminds me of a type of Zentangle design.

This was another whole cloth design and the quilting was exquisite. I especially enjoyed the dimension that she was able to get in the top sky checkering…..

I thought that this was an applique piece with some amazing machine quilting, but when we got to look at the back, I realized that the ENTIRE scene is done with thread…..

This is an older quilt (2014) that was part of the SAQA exhibit but the thread work is astounding…..

And this guy…..you just want to walk up and ruffle his fur….and then run of course!!!

I didn’t include the entire quilt in this post but these bricks were quilted to great effect…..

This quilt was a group project and we loved how the ladies overlapped between the panels and also the way that each person added interest in the bottom border of the quilt. I wonder which one gets to keep the finished project??

This quilt was part of a “Seasons” exhibit and although the focus should have been the trees and mountains, everyone was oohing and aahing over the raccoons!!!

These two quilters certainly captured the soul of their subjects…..

….and these “Step Sisters” were so lifelike……

In the landscape division, I was drawn to this simple picture and amazed by the light that she added with fabrics…..

When I glanced at this quilt, my first thought was that it reminded me of a photo of the Great Wall….and then got close enough to find out that it was the Great Wall!!!

This is a smaller version of my train quilt that was started many years. I REALLY need to get it out and finished!!!

It seems that circle applique is super popular today. I guess everyone has learned how easy they are to applique…..

This quilt is a simple design, but I love the color movement…..

We met this woman in the entry line this morning and were excited to see her with her quilt……

I attended two lectures during the day. “Playing with color” was presented by Cindy Grisdela and was another good reminder of how much color comes into play when designing a quilt. She encouraged us to think about where our color comfort zone was….what colors do we wear or decorate with. Then, she challenged us to step out of that zone and try different colors.

She did veer off topic for a minute and talked about machine quilting. Her admonition was to stop worrying about the individual stitches that you are doing but instead to think about the texture that you are creating. I think that is good advice.

The second lecture, “Kicking up your creativity” was supposed to by by Jane Dunnewald but she was unable to attend, so Susie Monday filled in for her. One of her first statements was the most poignant as she reminded us that, thru history, people have made things more beautiful than they had to be. That is a good reminder that it is okay for us to be creative and look to beautify our mundane lives.

The day ended with dinner at “The Rustic”, a new restaurant close to the convention center….

The grilled Jalapeno was the PERFECT accompaniment!!