"Festival" is coming!

Houstonians refer to the big International Quilting Association's quilt show as "Festival" - a byproduct of its name in earlier years. Festival is coming soon - it is held in the late October/early November timeframe every year. The past couple of months have been busy for me, as I'm preparing two quilts that need to be ready for the show. The first one will be the (shhhh!) new block-of-the-month for Alex Anderson and Ricky Timm's online community, "The Quilt Show" (www.thequiltshow.com) - or "TQS." The quilt below, "Ruffled Roses," will be the fourth block of the month that I've made for TQS - Alex and Ricky have given me such an honor to design this quilt just for TQS. Check out their booth at Festival this year!
"Ruffled Roses"

The second quilt that I've been working has truly been a labor of love (though when I'm pulling my hair out to get it done on time, it's sometimes hard to remember that!). I designed all of the blocks, with some of them based loosely on antique Baltimore blocks. It still needs a final border of 1" half-square triangles on the outer edge of the quilt -- that will get done after Festival is over.

The borders are all unique -- each border has a different vase and bouquet in the center and each corner also has a different vase and bouquet. I don't think I've had so much fun designing a quilt in a long, long time! Here's one of the borders...

And here are three of the corner vases. When they are stitched onto the long borders, the joining seams will be invisible, as will the vines and flowers that flow across the seams.


In September, some friends of mine chartered a bus and 57 of us rode over to Austin, Texas (about a 3.5 hour drive) to go to the Austin Area Quilt Guild's show. The Austin guild has almost 600 members and they hang 400 quilts in their show. It was a lovely field trip for me! Here are a few pictures of quilts that hung in their show.

The first one was the Grand winner at the show -- "Star Medallion (or 96 Baskets)" was made by Kathleen McCrady. It is based on an original quilt made in 1890 that was featured in three issues of Quilt Mania in 2009. Kathleen's quilt is hand pieced and hand quilted. I love seeing her work; she is an amazing quilter!

This next quilt caught my eye because the quilter (Mary Laminack) used one of my TQS block-of-the-month patterns - and she won First Place in her category - go Mary! What amazed me was the write-up about the quilt: "I had gone to the Houston International Quilt Show and saw a group of my friends with stars in their eyes and grins on their faces. Not wanting to be left out, I rounded the corner and saw the most beautiful quilt that I had ever seen. Being a new quilter, I immediately started crying because I thought that it was much too advanced for me to accomplish. Now, one year later, I have finished my quilt and I am entering it in the AAQG Quilt Show." Mary offers us a tremendous lesson in commitment, dedication, and perseverance: if you really want to do something, you probably can. So for all of us who have thought "that's too difficult"... think again!

This next quilt tickled me: "Mother's Yellow Quilt" was made by Lynette Morgan Dundee, Michelle Mears, Terese Morgan, and Cecile Morgan. For their mother's 80th birthday, they decided to make a quilt with four quadrants - and each quadrant would represent one of their interests and personality. They worked individually for almost a year, hand piecing their quadrants. Two of the women had never made a quilt before. They finished this 77 x 78" quilt and presented it to their mother, who is a quilter and had made quilts for each of the daughters. What a gift! So if you decided to make a set of blocks that represented you and your interests, hobbies, personality, and pastimes, what blocks and fabrics would you choose? What a wonderful, intriguing idea!

Quilter Elaine Rich made the quilt below, "America" (86 x 68"). She views America as "a nation of people from across the globe, living in communities organized into states, with a shared vision but a set of individual personalities.... This quilt celebrates our history and the role we can play in forming a future for our planet." I love how Elaine has made the color wash across the quilt from light to dark, in rainbow fashion. What you cannot see in the photo below is that each of the little squares captures a piece of our Nation; check out the close-up below and you can begin to see how Elaine's creativity played a huge role in the making of this quilt.


The quilt below is one of the many small wall hangings that hung in the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) traveling exhibit. The Austin area is replete with art quilters - and their work is wonderful!



Here's an art quilt ("My Nesting Place," 20 x 28") made by Sara Sharp -- the sky is full of feathers, trees and grasses are made of her hand-dyed fabrics and commercial batiks and prints, and the thread-painted warbler sits on a nest that was built stick by stick. Sara says that "the joyous freedom I feel as an artist is represented in the quote: 'a bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.'"
Close-up of the warbler in "My Nesting Place"

This quilt was also made by Sara Sharp; "Cape Cod Dreams" (25 x 33") is based on a photo she took out of a house overlooking Cape Cod Bay. I like how Sara's work immediately brings memories to mind.

Close-up of fruit in "Cape Cod Dreams"

Here's yet another art quilt; "Eagle" (11 x 11") was done by Tresha Barger. Her quilt was based on a photo by Jack Marshall of Austin, who consented to her use of the photo. She used only four thread colors: white, black, and two shades of orange. What a talent she has for embroidery, right? Below this picture is a close-up so you can see the incredible job of embroidering that she has done.


One of the treats of the Austin quilt show as a "bed turning" that happened several times over the weekend. Marcia Kaylakie, a quilt collector, teacher, judge and AQS Certified appraiser from Austin, specializes in American quilts history. She generously offered a set of her antique quilts for a bed turning. What, exactly, is a bed turning? In a bed turning, a bed is brought in to a guild or quilt show and quilts are placed on it. One by one, each quilt is turned and held up for the audience, and its history and story are told. It was a joy to see a real bed turning -and Marcia's quilts were inspiring to see! Below is only a small sample of the quilts everyone got to view - wow!

That's all for this month. The rest of October will be taken up with preparations for Festival - and then I will rest a teeny bit before I finish a round-robin quilt I'm working on, applique a tulip challenge quilt, tackle hand-quilting my Baltimore (and finish writing up the patterns!), and... oh yes, start designing the next block-of-the-month!

Happy quilting, everyone!
Sue(c)2010 Susan H. Garman

Here's a close-up of her hand piecing and hand quilting - note that, ever the Texan, she put 5-pointed Texas stars between all of the baskets.

More Quilts!

I wish to thank everyone who commented on what you would like to see in a blog. I heard you loud and clear: pictures, techniques, and tips! With that in mind, I am sharing several things I have been working on and have completed in the last few weeks. November has been a wonderful month for quiltmaking -- and I have been working on being focused on completing things. I have way too many unfinished projects.

First of all, I am nearly finished with a quilt for a dear friend who has hosted a dinner for our book club for the past 5 years. In appreciation for her generosity, we are surprising her with a quilt that has 1) a favorite quote of each club member inked in the tiny outer border, 2) a list of each book we've read since our inception in 2004, and 3) quotes from The Thought Gang, which was the first book we read as a group -- it was painful to read but had some of the funniest quotes in it -- the story involves a professor and a one-armed crook who team up to rob banks. The recipient is not a quilter, but three of us teamed to make the quilt; here is the front of "The Thought Gang" quilt.

"The Thought Gang Quilt"67 by 67"

Here are several close-ups of the quilt - first the border. I am tickled at how it turned out - I quilted a piano key border (1" parallel lines), but inserted a feathered vine in each corner. It adds a softness, which I like, to an otherwise very geometrical quilt. Here is a closeup of the quilting in the interior of the quilt. Notice that in the 2" wide border, I did "ribbon candy" quilting. Sometimes it is hard to design something to fit into those narrow little borders, but this works well and is fairly easy to do. The double feathered wreaths in the "open" block areas also soften the look of this quilt. I love double feathered wreaths and do them quite often when I quilt open areas. Note that I ran the geometric echoing lines around those wreaths -- I've seen too many wreaths where the "triangles" at each corner are left unquilted and bubble up. I like filling that area with something.


And here is the back of this quilt. The quilting shows through very clearly. I pieced the back from leftover fabrics from the front. My friend Jerrianne E made the blocks for the front, and when she gave them to me for the quilt, she also gave me a lot of leftover fabrics. Interspersed inbetween all of the rectangles are some "open" rectangles, where I inked a list of all the books we have read -- along with some of the funniest quotes in the world from The Thought Gang book. This quilt will certainly carry memories for Dot, our glorious dinner hostess.


And here is a close-up of one of those rectangles on the back of the quilt. There are a lot of great things about being in a book club: seeing friends every month, having very interesting exchanges about the book we've read, and "upgrading" the level of reading that I would otherwise do. Without a push, I tend to read nothing but thriller detective novels.

Next: I am a strong believer in supporting community events and activities. And so when a friend called me and asked if I would mind "hemming up some sort of puzzle piece" that would then fly on the next NASA Space Shuttle mission, I jumped and said yes. You see, their son was diagnosed with autism, and they have struggled with appropriate therapies that give him the best chances for an improved quality of life. Autism is a mysterious disorder, and as with so many disorders, research funding is critical. Funding for the Autism Research Institute is being aided through "The Million Dollar Puzzle" initiative. By selling puzzle pieces, researchers can continue their work in solving the puzzle of autism. While I was only asked to "sew something that looks like a puzzle piece," I replicated the logo of the Autism Research Institute; after it flies on the Space Shuttle, it will be gifted to the institute.

Autism Research Institute logo(www.autismwebsite.com/autismpuzzlepieces/)

Next are two quilts that I made for Ricky Tims' and Alex Anderson's The Quilt Show. They are the featured block-of-the-month quilts that are being offered online, at no cost other than "joining" The Quilt Show (www.thequiltshow.com). It's a bargain -- a $42.95 one-year membership brings you featured artist videos every 2 weeks, two block-of-the-month projects, free classes, an online quilt guild with blogs and forums, and lots of additional show-and-tell, articles, and information. And the very best part of all of this is... you can do it all in your jammies! So here are the quilts. The first one is an applique quilt called "Hugs and Kisses." I named it that because of the X's and O's that traditionally represent hugs and kisses.

"Hugs and Kisses"71 by 87"

Here is a close-up photo of the quilting on this quilt -- each of the "X" leaf sprays have a feathered wreath quilted behind them. The "O" shaped wreaths are quilted with diagonal cross-hatching. There is also a 4-inch sashing strip between all of the blocks; you can see it in the above photo. It is quilted with a meandering feathered vine. The ruffled swag border is quilted with feathers, while the background behind it is quilted with "bead-board" slats (Yes... I listened to all of you when you said you wanted more information on techniques, quilting, etcetera. Let me know if you want more (or less or different) information!).
The next Quilt Show block-of-the-month is called "Star Crazy" - because it is filled with stars. This quilt is a fairly simple one to make -- with the exception of only a few star-interiors, all of the blocks use either 1-1/2" or 2" (finished size) units. I wanted to give everyone a break from making my usual 1" (finished size) units. Or maybe I was just giving myself a break from the complaints (just kidding!). I have long believed that you don't improve if you don't push yourself to do more difficult things. I wear a bracelet that my friend Cynthia gave me that says "Always do the hardest thing." It's become my mantra - it keeps me focused on learning and growing.

"Star Crazy"84 by 84"

And here is a picture of the quilting in this quilt -- again, I used double feathered wreaths in the border, and inserted a feathered wreath "behind" each of the star blocks in the central part of the quilt. The area around the border of smaller stars is quilted with just fill-feathers, while the outer border has a meandering feathered vine.

I hope you're still with me - I still have more quilt photos to post. My latest quilt is a Coxcomb and Currants quilt. Below is a photo of my rendition of the traditional coxcomb and currants block. Many of the older versions of the block are a bit too "chunky" for my likes. My version strikes me as being almost being "lacy."

And here is the quilt; it still needs to be quilted. My friend Margo has suggested that I "echo" the coxcomb design in the open areas through quilting. I'm not sure that I am skilled enough to tackle that, but wouldn't it be wonderful? I'll give it some thought. I am using this quilt to teach applique at a retreat in Utah in January 2010. Yes, I do quite a few lectures and workshops across the country. If I ever get my act together, I'll rebuild my website (which currently just points to this blog) and list all of the workshops that I teach, along with dates and sites. Teaching is FUN for me! But I digress... here's the quilt:


Phew -- I'm worn out! I hope you all still have plenty of energy to quilt some more today and all of your tomorrows. Until we meet again...

Happy sewing -
Sue
(c)2009 Susan H. Garman
All Rights Reserved

"Coxcomb and Currants"56 by 56"

Last, but certainly not least, is a Princess Feather block from an antique quilt I saw last month. This really is a chunky version of the block -- but that's what makes it so delightful! I have had a red and green Princess Feather quilt in process for over two years -- it has all the ins and outs in each feathery plume - which means that it has a lot of perimeter that needs to be appliqued. I have only about an eighth of a final feather to be appliqued, so there is a chance that you will be seeing my own version of a Princess Feather quilt in the near future (I can only hope!). In the meantime, I plan on drafting this chunky princess feather design into a new pattern - I just love how chunky it is -- and that it is done in an unusual color; I've never seen a navy princess feather!

What's New for Me?

The International Quilting Association's grand show in Houston closed Sunday night -- and my feet were so thankful! Quilt shows are always so much fun for me. I love seeing the quilts on display, meeting the makers, visiting with friends old and new, and hunting down antique quilts and blocks that can serve as inspirations for new quilts. The Houston quilt show definitely fulfilled my hopes: my brain is just buzzing with ideas for new quilts! I saw so many wonderful 19th century quilts; I just need a few more hours a day to get them made... don't we all? And the daylight savings time change only gave me ONE hour. What's with that?! So until I get those new quilts designed and made, below are some quilts that I recently finished.

Stars for a New Day
83 x 83"

At the Houston quilt show, Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims hosted a booth for The Quilt Show, their online community for quilters. Alex and Ricky are warm and genuine people. They had invited me to design and make the 2009 Quilt Show block-of-the-month. And so my quilt, "Stars for a New Day," made its debut (pictured above). The quilt patterns for this block-of-the-month are free of cost to anyone who signs up for a year's membership with The Quilt Show at http://www.thequiltshow.com/. Each month in 2009, a new pattern becomes available online and members print it out. The quilt pattern is a bargain if you join, but there is so much more. Go to The Quilt Show website, take the "tour," and see one of the online video shows. Membership is a lot of fun!

By the way -- I also started making a second version of "Stars for a New Day" using Alex Anderson's "Never Enough Romance" line of fabric -- I love how it is turning out.


And so what else have I been working on? I finished Ruffled Feathers -- I love the blocks in it because they each have a "halo" around the star. The blocks are easily made and the pattern, as are all of mine , is available from Quakertown Quilts (http://www.quakertownquilts.com/).

Ruffled Feathers
69-1/2 x 85-1/2 inches

I also finished my chocolate and bubble gum colored "Lily Rosenberry" quilt. As soon as it comes home from its visit to a local quilt shop, I'll post a photo of it. I love brown and pink fabrics together.

And so what am I working on now? I am leading two workshops and giving a lecture down on Galveston Island in February. One workshop will be aimed at teaching applique techniques and skills, using an antique rose pattern (pictured below). The other quilt will be a delightfully simple pieced quilt with no critical seamline intersections -- I'm looking forward to a fun day with that class, because there is nothing frustrating about the piecing. Pictures of that quilt will be forthcoming! If anyone is interested in the Galveston Retreat, it is being organized through Quakertown Quilts -- we always have a lot of fun at this gathering, and winter is Galveston's best-kept secret!

The Antique Rose Quilt
69 x 86 inches

That's all for now -- I hope you are enjoying the Fall weather.
Until we meet again, happy quilting!

Sue
(c)2008 Susan H. Garman

Medallions Galore!

I love medallion quilts -- the quilts that have multiple borders surrounding a central block. Today, The Quilt Show (Ricky Tims' and Alex Anderson's online quilt community - http://www.thequiltshow.com/) aired and a long-secret announcement was made: Alex and Ricky have asked me to design the next block-of-the-month for The Quilt Show. Their 2008 online block-of-the-month, "Bouquets for a New Day" was designed by me and is being shared in monthly installments, with the final one to be posted online in December. The "Bouquets" quilt has a dozen appliqued blocks in it. For 2009, I was asked to design a pieced block-of-the-month; I just finished making it this week (except for the binding!). It is a medallion quilt, with a feathered star in the middle, surrounded by borders and blocks; the monthly patterns have a ton of tips in them, along with many photos to show how to make the quilt. While everyone who is reading this now knows the secret about who is doing next year's block-of-the-month design, I will still wait for Ricky and Alex to debut a picture of the quilt. So... what the quilt looks like still remains a secret!

In the meantime, I have been working on another medallion quilt called "The Washington Medallion Quilt" that my distributor, Quakertown Quilts (http://www.quakertownquilts.com/), will begin offering as a block-of-the-month in September. This quilt is unique in that I made this quilt as a "learn to quilt" block-of-the-month. Each month, there are lessons on precision piecing, accurate measuring and cutting, different techniques for making units, etc. An adventurous beginner should be able to make this quilt.

So where is the photo of this quilt? Well... I confess that I haven't taken a picture of it yet! I have a couple of "teaser" photos for you to see -- a close-up of the center star, and a photo of the first four months of stitching. You'll see the remaining 8 months of additions when I post again, soon!


Until then,
happy quilting!

Sue
(c)2008 Susan H. Garman

The Quilt Show Debut!

Today, the taping I did with The Quilt Show aired. The Quilt Show is Ricky Tims' and Alex Anderson's online web community; if you haven't explored it and have some time, you'll find that joining gives you a pretty good "bang for the buck." Their web community has "shows" with a wide, diverse range of quilters, as well as "classes" with Ricky and Alex, free mini-projects, a quilt gallery with thousands of quilts posted by members, a free block-of-the-month pattern, blogs galore, and lots of online friends who offer their experiences, ideas, and support. If you check out their "take the tour" pages and go to page 4, you can watch a part of one show and learn a cool way to make flying geese with one seam line, how to do great photo transfers, and how Jean Wells designs and makes her lovely quilts. Check it out at www.thequiltshow.com.

Being an introvert, taping the show made me a nervous wreck, but Ricky and Alex put me at ease in a nanosecond. They are wonderful people, as are John Anderson, Justin Shults, and the entire TQS film crew. In my taping, I demonstrated how I do as much pre-work as possible when making a quilt -- it makes quilt-making go so much faster! In the show you'll also see some close-up photos of some of my quilts.

Enjoy!
Sue
(c)2008 Susan H. Garman

Bouquets for a New Day

The secret is out!

In late September, I was approached by The Quilt Show (Ricky Tims and Alex Anderson's online web community) to design a block-of-the-month quilt that they would feature during 2008. With such a short fuse, squeezing designing, making, and writing the pattern into my schedule was a challenge, but it was such a wonderful opportunity for me to share my love of quilting with others that... how could I say no?!! It also represented an opportunity for me to focus on a different venue: presenting patterns on-line, which opened a lot of new doors in "teaching" by allowing color photos to be incorporated into the pattern. As you can imagine, reproducing color photos is quite expensive in an "every day" pattern.

In Bouquets for a New Day, the patterns are all bouquets of flowers in baskets or vases, and a new one is to be posted on The Quilt Show website every month. The twelfth month will also include the setting instructions. To get the instructions for the patterns each month, you simply have to join The Quilt Show (http://www.thequiltshow.com/) as a Star Member -- and on the first of each month, the pattern will be posted and ready for Star Members to print and make.

Below is a photo of the quilt - it is not quilted yet, but my good friend Denise will be taking care of that in the near future.

Bouquets for New Day (c)2007 Susan H. Garman

I hope the new year brings you great joy, terrific health, and much love.


Sue