A Fall Table Runner - Quilty Finish

Last week I had to go to the grocery store - I don't usually go.  My husband does 95% of the grocery shopping.  But since I was there, I bought myself some flowers for my sewing room.  Pretty huh?

 Ok.  Down to the good stuff.  I have a quilty finish.  A fall table runner for my dining room.  I used Moda's Wrens and Friends mini charm pack for this and it was a breeze to put together.  I love those mini charm packs.
The colors look just fall enough and it has aqua in it which goes with my dining room.

 The cream strips are from a Moda jelly roll in Snow.  It matches nicely.  I also used the same jelly roll strips for the binding. 

 It's quilted with Aurifil 50 weight thread in color 2021 which is an off whitish/cream color.  I did a straight line grid quilting on it and I think it came out great.  Total measurements are 13 x 31 1/2 inches.

 The back is an orange pattern fabric from Robert Kaufman Metro Living.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I have so much to be thankful for - although cooking on Thanksgiving is not one of them :)

**Linking up to crazymomquilts Friday finishes!**

Houston International Quilt Festival - Part 2

Welcome to the Houston International Quilt Festival 2013.  I'm not going to go over every detail or anything.  Just hit some highlights.

This is Ebony Love.  She was my instructor for the Modern QR code quilt class.  The QR (quick read) code is that little scanny thing that is on everything now.  You scan it with your phone and it gives info about whatever it's advertising.

So in this class, we started making one in quilt form.  Ebony was the most professional quilt instructor I've ever had.  Her instructions were all written down for each of the 4 quilts that we could choose from.  She even had them bound with a spiral.  Just that alone made her class awesome.  
We could choose between a gray or off white background and I got to class too late to nab a gray but that's ok because I probably would have chosen the white anyway.
When our quilts are finished they will look like a QR code.  Because they are in color, they won't be scanable but Ebony said that she will send us a label for our quilts that has the scanable bar code on it when we finish our quilt tops.  I'm working on mine now and hope to have it done in time to enter it in our local quilt show.

I really enjoyed all of the classes I took this year.  Not a stinker in the bunch.  I have pics on my phone of some of the other classes and maybe someday I'll get them loaded to my computer so I can post some.

Here I am in my witches costume for Quiltapalooza.  I loved my tulle skirt.  But out of all the people there, about 80% were dressed as witches.  It occured to me that I could have made mine in pink and gone as a Barbie or something.  Maybe next year.  It was a fun party though.  Lots of great costumes and they gave away tons of prizes.  Unfortunately, no one at our table won any.  :(

This was my favorite quilt from the Modern Quilt quild display in the quilt show.  It is called Fireworks Quilt by Tara Faughnan, an individual MQG member.  To see all of the Modern Quilt Guild display, go here.

One of the classes I took was called Fifty Shades of Groovy By Leslie Tucker Jenison.  Her Fifty Shades quilt is one of the ones on display in the above link.  Her class was fun and she is a great teacher.

One disappointment I had was that the majority of the quilts seemed to be landscape quilts.  I love landscape quilts and art quilts but it seems to me that such a major show could have divided the categories up better.  Maybe have an equal amount of each kind of quilt.  I also wish the Modern Quilt display had been bigger.  It's quite a large movement at this point and I think there should be more recognition.  They did offer Modern quilting classes this year, which was a first.  I took as many of them as I could get into.  I'm hoping for even more next year.

Houston International Quilt Festival Part 1 - Preparing to go

Sometimes I have so many things to say on my blog that I don't know where to start and I get overwhelmed.  That's why it's been so long since I posted.  I just didn't know where to start.

On October 29th (Tuesday) I headed down to Houston for the International Quilt Festival which is awesome by the way.  If you are interested in sewing or quilting and you have a chance to go, take it.  They have so many classes, so many quilts to look at and so many vendors to shop from.

Before I left, I made some prayer flags for the prayer flag swap that was taking place.  I had never made one before and honestly, I had to look them up to see what they even were.  My friend Robyn, who also went to the festival, told me all about the ones she had made and sort of talked me into trying it out.  (Thanks Robyn!! I had fun making them and hanging out with you at the festival!!)  So I ended up making 5 and here they are.

 I like to think of them as inspiration flags instead of prayer flags as most of them don't have anything to do with religion or prayer.  I'm not sure where they got their name but I like Inspiration flag better.

 There's too much light in all these pictures and it washed them out.  Ug!  Someday I'm going to master simple photography.

 I bought a sack of these old quilted hearts years ago and I still have some.  I just sewed it onto this batik fabric which looks like it was painted with water colors.

 More batik fabric.  I cut the passage about hope out of a fabric that I've had for awhile. 

 I sewed these sweet felt flowers onto some natural muslin and stamped it with a "sending happy thoughts" stamp. 

 This one says Poppy Garden.  I hand stamped that and sewed on the felt flowers and ribbon.  And of course buttons.  Everything needs buttons.

 A washed out close up view. 

 I also needed a handmade name tag holder.  I sewed this one up really quickly and attached all my pins to it.

 Half moon modern fabric on the front and Michael Miller stripe on the back.

 This year the festival took place over Halloween.  The had a party called Quiltapalooza.  It was a Halloween dress up party/dinner.  Lots of fun.  I made myself this fun skirt.  Guess what I went as.

Closeup.  There was lime green, black and black glitter tulle. 

In my next post, part 2, I'll show my whole costume with some quilt show pics.

Thanks for reading!