One of my favorite thing about Linda’s quilts was that she said she likes to make the backs as interesting as the fronts. All of her designs were original creations and she’s won many major awards for her quilts.

After viewing quilts of this caliber at Road to California last month, I felt right at home with Linda showing us her amazing work. Everyone around me kept saying, “I could never do that!” I had quite a different reaction. Mine was, “I can’t wait to follow in her footsteps!”

Lord of the Rings Quilt

This was my favorite quilt that she displayed. She told us how she made it for her teenage son. She created the middle part of the quilt, showed it to him and his response was, “Where’s the rest of the story?” So she created the individual scenes as side borders. It was truly a work of art.

This is the quilt I put together for my quilt circle, Rainbows. Each member submitted a heart block and I added novelty fabrics surrounding each representing what they desired. Themes were things like more time, money, happiness, sleep, travel, chocolate!, peace, tranquility, wisdom, good health, fabric & thread, etc. Although we didn’t win, we sure had fun trying!

Below are just a few of the quilts other guild members made. I am amazed all the talent we have in our group. They never cease to inspire me! Click each picture for a larger image.

Such beauty and workmanship!

Here’s a group shot of our quilting guild. We have big events each calendar quarter.

Ballot Counting

Finalizing the Winners

It sure was fun to be behind the scenes and  see all the work that goes into running a successful quilting event.  With the help of several members, we got the ballots counted in record time. Each winner received a gift certificate valid at the quilt shop of her choice (including mine!)

On my next blog post, I’ll write about the special guest speaker we had and show some of her beautiful quilts!

She just converted a bedroom back into her sewing studio,  so she wanted something nice and bright to replace the cushions on the worn out sofa in there. Nice job, Megan, and thanks for the inspiration!

I want to teach her the basics first, so we practiced loading the thread, winding the bobbin, and threading the needle. She got the hang of it quickly, and it’s just the right size for her.

I wanted her to practice straight lines so she sewed on pieces of lined paper for awhile. She had a lot of fun with that and picked it up very quickly. For our next lesson, we’ll practice on fabric and I’ll let her rummage through my scrap pile. We had a great Saturday afternoon!

She ordered the green Flower Fairies and Fairy Frost fat quarter combo from me plus a little extra of the green Fairy Frost. Isn’t this bag simply adorable? She used Penny Sturges’ Big Bag pattern and adjusted it to fit the size she wanted.

She made the tote bag and matching pillow as a gift for her daughter in law who’s favorite color happens to be peridot green.

Gwen loves to make bags and totes as  gifts for Christmas, birthdays and weddings. They are fun and quick to make and really let you show off some pretty fabrics. Way to go, Gwen!

This quilt is an absolute Super Star as it’s name implies. Made by Marilyn Badger of St. George, Utah it contains lots of sparkling crystals that are hard to see in the photo.

ICU – Do UC ME? by Birgit Schueller of Germany. Imagine my surprise when I saw a photo of this quilt in a magazine just a few days ago, then went to California and walked by the real thing hanging up in the show! These quilts are all award-winning magazine-worthy quilts. I am in total awe of these quiltmaker’s talents. They truly inspire me. Notice the sparkle!

This quilt was amazing on both the front and the back. Click to see closeups of all that gorgeous colorful quilting!

The Magical Mermaids Castle was made by Claudia Pfeil of Germany.

This fun bright quilt is called “American Woman”, made by Jo Ann Blade & Kim Diamond of Sedro Woolley, Washington. I think it’s simply fantastic. During the quilt show, there was a vendor selling bright “quilty” shoes similar to those depicted in this quilt!

There was gorgeous quilting and embellishments galore in this quilt. I simply couldn’t get enough! This one is titled “Jewel Box”, by Cheri Meineke-Johnson, quilted by Linda V. Talyor of Corinth, Texas. It contains over 20,00 Swarovski crystals. Amazing!

Last, but not least, this was probably one of my favorite quilts of the show, “Ms. MacDonald Had a Farm.” I love how the quiltmakers used different printed fabrics to get the dimensions and details they wanted. There are lots of bright and colorful Kaffe Fassett fabrics in the piece, and it’s “sew” fun to see them being used this way! This quilt was made by 12 ladies of the Hanging by a Thread Quilt group from Chehalis, Washington. It was quilted by Bonnie Keller and Audrey Prother.

What a week in quilts! I only hope that some day, I could achieve this level of workmanship. All pictures were taken by me at the Road to California show. They are for personal use only, and of course, can be the source of much inspiration!

This is called The Gossip Garden by Debbie Martinez of Hobart, Indiana. I absolutely love the mouth pieces. It reminds me of a fabric I have in my stash! Debbi states, “There are many ways gossip circulates and there are many symbolizations of gossip in this quilt.”

This quilt, Bright Baja Bugs, was part of a youth exhibit of quilts all made by students aged 8-17. I’m really partial to fun, bright quilts. How fantastic to get a jump start on creativity so early! This one was made by Jordan Phillips from California, age 14. My husband drove a Baja in high school, but never one that looked like this!

Although you cannot see all the wonderful quilting in the picture, this quilt really spoke to me. It was heavily quilted and hung perfectly straight. It took over 120 hours just for the quilting! This is absolutely what an award-winning quilt should be. It’s entitled, “Dresden’s Dilemma” by Deborah Poole and Sharon Del Pino of Shelley, Idaho.

I thought it was very interesting to see the same quilt design interpreted in two different color schemes. These were both fantastic and all of the individual designs were done with machine embroidery using Sarah Vedeler’s digitized designs. The bright one, “Bedazzlder” was made by Linda Sipes of Colby, Kansas and the muted one, “Go! Be Dazzled” by Sandy Lawrence of Phonix, Arizona.

This quilt took my breath away! It’s called “Venetian Menagerie”. Yes, it’s all one quilt depicting a menagerie of exotic masks and oddities seen on an evening stroll in Venice by quilt artist Melissa Sobotka of Richardson, Texas. She made it from batiks with fusible applique. My kind of quilt!

I should be able to post the rest of my Road to California quilt pictures in my next blog entry, so stay tuned!

They were called “Alpine Rose” and “Thread Painting is as Easy as 1,2,3″, both taught by Nancy Prince. She was an absolutely amazing instructor and I’m addicted now to her techniques. I bought her book “Thread Painting with Style” and am thoroughly enjoying reading it. You can visit her website NancyPrince.com.

She made her classes both personable and fun and I learned something that I never thought I would try. It’s basically free motion embroidery and embellishing with thread.

On the first day’s class we learned how to fill in a floral design completely with thread and make a stand-alone embroidery design. The techniques were comfortable to me since I do a lot of free-motion quilting and machine applique. This was the next logical step and I can’t wait to combine it with my current work.

Be sure to click on the pictures to see them closer up. Nancy showed an example of how shading really changes the look of a piece. It was amazing!

Nancy loves to combine her thread painting with beautiful landscapes which she paints or prints onto prepared for dying background fabric.

Next, we learned how to make trees and bushes. By simply following some guidelines, we were able to make very realistic-looking trees.

Her classes were well organized and included kits with the backgrounds all ready to go. At right is Nancy’s quilt that she based our second day of classes on.

Below is a tree canopy that I thread painted and some shrubbery that fellow classmate Kathy made.  Kathy was one of the first quilting students I ever taught years and years ago. It was fun to meet up with her again in class!

The first stop on my journey was to visit with Dr. Bob of Superior Threads. I signed up for two thread painting classes so I had to make sure I had enough supplies. After this weekend, I am head over heels for these threads. I placed an order for more and will soon be stocking them in my shop. My favorites? MasterPiece cotton 50 weight for piecing and shiny 40 weight tri-lobal polyester for machine quilting and embroidery.

Here are some pictures of a few quilts that just made my heart sing! The quilt below is titled “Life in Holly Ridge”, made by my teacher for the weekend, Nancy Prince.  I’ll go into more details about her wonderful classes in my next post. This quilt had the most amazing embroidery and thread painted details. Each of the figures was individually constructed!

The picture below shows Cindy Needham’s quilt, “Infinity”. My friend Judy took a fabulous machine quilting class from Cindy who also happens to be an educator for Superior Threads.

It was fun for each of us to take different classes then tell each other what we learned!

While walking the show, we could hear the sounds of beautiful harp music playing by Bronn Journey.  What a serene and peaceful way to view the quilts!

He and his wife Katherine make beautiful music together. With her voice and his harp,  you can hear a sampling of their music on their website at www.bronnjourney.com.

All in all, it was a wonderful weekend and I can’t wait to do it again next year.  Be sure to read the next two posts coming up about the rest of my weekend!

Here is a closeup shot of the dress, using California Dreamin’ fabric by Jenean Morrison for Free Spirit. If you are “sew” inspired to make something similar, you are in luck as I just put that collection on sale for a limited time.

Here’s what Pat had to say about creating this dress, ” I made the dress because all you can buy locally are  dresses which are are the same as each other. This was economical and fun to make.

“The materials went together so well and were just perfect.  I used my bias binder to make the strips down the front. The fabric was so easy to sew and did not crease and I only needed a small amount of each fabric. I added some fancy buttons and little daisies. My grand daughter is 8 and still loves girly things.”

Ok, this seriously makes me want to venture out of my quilting comfort zone and try something new!