Karen Van Den Brink
Who was the featured artist of the show.

A week has gone by and I never got a chance to show more pictures from the show.  Karen Van Den Brink was the featured artist and I love the quilt above.  It is reverse applique and very simply quilted.  If you could see, it’s just straight lines diagonally across the quilt from corner to corner of each solid block of fabric. I told her how I liked her choice to quilt it simply and she laughed saying that she quilted it herself on her domestic which is why it’s so simply quilted.  I thought it was a design choice and thought the simplicity really made the complexity of the blocks stand out.  I liked it!

We will Never Be Royals
Dottie Cincis

The Shaman
Marty Boles

Golden Rain
Victoria Crayne

There were so many beautiful quilts at the show and I am extremely grateful to be part of a guild with the talent that was exhibited at the show.  I’ve taken note of my favorite quilters and I’m hoping to track down the ones who still give classes.  Some of them do periodically at the quilt shops around here.  I personally love the applique and the hand quilting.  One day I plan to start working on practicing hand applique and quilting on smaller projects.  I generally make big quilts and hand quilting a big quilt takes too much time.  I do not enjoy that process.  I’m already hand quilting Raining Cats and Dogs and I barely touch that 1-2 times per month.  I hope I can get to it more.  Now that basketball season is over for my Clippers I’m going to have to find an evening each week to spend some time quilting that project.

On the personal side: The hubby is back from the Philippines and we’re having friends and family come over today to welcome him back.  I hope to get some crafting done before they arrive.  I’m still having trouble staying motivated and working on things.  Knitting is easy because it’s small and travel ready.  I’ve picked up a copy of Love at first Stitch by Tilly Walnes.  It’s all about garment sewing for the beginning garment sewer.  I’m familiar with my sewing machine and quilting but have not ever done anything on garment sewing.  I’m intrigued by the #memademay movement and I’m inspired to start on the path of dressmaking.  I’ve struggled to find the right fit and the right look at commercial stores and pretty much only wear t-shirts and yoga pants on a day to day.  I hate shopping.  If you don’t know about Me Made May it’s all about wearing something you’ve created every day in May.  It’s meant to encourage crafters to use their handmade items more regularly and incorporate it into their daily wear.  I don’t have much of anything to actually wear so I’m just watching from the sidelines.  It’s a wonderful concept and I’m looking forward to trying out garment sewing.

The problem with starting is that I’ve got a backlog of other projects that I haven’t finished up yet.  To be honest, it’s like a weight around my neck. I don’t want to start anything new but I can’t find the motivation to finish anything.  I have an idea of a new quilting project and I want to get started.  I’ve had the book The Civil War Diary Quilt forever and I’ve always wanted to work through the book and make each block.  But I haven’t for one reason or another.  I woke up one morning with an idea to just start with some colors in mind.  I’ve been gathering the items I need and have finally gotten the background fabric I’ve decided on.  I was getting stuck on this and I decided not to get a lot of fabric.  I decided to just do one block at a time and see where this takes me.  There are 121 blocks in the book.  I do not know if I’ll make all of them.  But I’ll start with one and I hope to get at least 1 done every week.  That’s about all I’ve got for right now.  This is very different than how I normally work.  Normally I have a pattern or a plan and I follow it to the bitter end.  This is the first time I feel I’m winging it.  I’m kind of excited about this.

Those other unfinished projects… they’re going to have to remain unfinished.  I need to get my sewjo back and I hope to get that by starting this new project.  If you’ve worked on the Civil War Diary Quilt, any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

~Happy Crafting!

~Melanie