Yahoo!

We are going to wake up to a new tomorrow and take our country back. Peace.

IQF Day 2

After wandering the show floor a bit we wandered over to the sea of vendors making our way to the Quilting Arts booth. This is located next to the Make it University class area which is surrounded by all the arty mixed media fun vendors in the show.

I asked Barb from QA if they had brought my felted ornaments for the booth, since they were displaying many of the projects from the gifts issue. Well, they ended up being left behind in Stow, this meant I had no samples for my workshops. Luckily, I had extra felted balls and felt, so I passed out supplies to all my talented friends. First stop the lovely Laura Wasilowski and Frieda Anderson.

Not having my ornaments turned into a blessing in disguise, because I ended up with a great assortment of fresh ideas and beautiful ornaments to inspire my students.

Ornaments in progress, Laura and Frieda used Laura's colorful hand dyed threads, gorgeous!

A typical dinner at IQF usually consists of no less than 8 people at the table. right to left Deborah Sylvester, Carol Sinnreich, Maggie Weiss, Rachel, Leslie, Jamie and Frances.

After dinner we usually put on our jammies and meet in the sitting area outside our hotel rooms. Jamie models her heavy metal apron covered with snaps zippers, washers and safety pins.
We attracted the attention of a passing Bernina Fashion show winner and her family, while we stitched and made too much noise for a thursday night.
Rachel and I seriously stitching ornaments.
Rachel models one of Frances' wreaths from the Quilting Arts Gifts issue.

International Quilt Festival

What a trip, Houston was a blast! I have to warn you I do not have any quilt pictures, I barely saw the show. I know there are lots of people who have taken pictures and have posted them in their flicker accounts, so if I come across a good showing I will post a link. OK, I found one here. I have photos of some of the fun happenings in the Quilting Arts/Cloth Paper Scissors area to come.

Quilt Festival is more than just a quilt show. I have gone 12 years in a row and there is nothing better than seeing those friends who have become so dear over the years that I see each October/November. This is like an annual reunion of soul sisters.

We began our trip around the exhibits Wednesday night, trying to find each others quilts hanging in the show and catching up on what has been happening in the last year.














Including a knee surgery and hip replacement for two friends, which led to a moment to rest on the show floor, with lots of laughter and photos followed by a fabulous dinner at the restaurant at the Hilton, then wine, snacks and stitching in the lounge area on our floor of the hotel until the wee hours.


Me, Frances Holliday Alford, Leslie Jenison, Rachel Perris, Jamie Fingal

International Quilt Festival

I voted early today to avoid the potential lines on November 4th and my daughter got to vote for the first time today too. What an exciting time to vote. Lets hope we see none of the antics of the last election.

I am leaving for Houston in the morning and will be back on the blog Monday, so I will leave you with this chameleon painted with Tsukineko inks, it is a detail from a group quilt called Fauna.
I will have lots of photos to share on my return. If you happen to go to Festival and see me please stop and say hi.

I will be working in Open Studios: Friday 12:30-2:30 and Saturday 4:30-6:30.

Come take one of my workshops making felted wool ornaments in Make it U Friday 3:00 or Saturday 10:15, right when festival opens.

The New Quilting Arts book

I just got a copy of The Quilting Arts book. Wow, it covers all you need to know about making art quilts written by Pokey Bolten and an amazing line up of contributing artists. You can see all the chapters and contributors on the table of contents and a sneak peak of several pages by the Kemshells, Laura Wasilowski and Robbi Eklow.

This book is supposed to be a beginner 101 of art quilting but it would be welcome addition to the bookshelf for advanced art quilters too. There are so many different techniques and ideas covered there is plenty to get those creative juices flowing with lots of new things to try. Put this one on your Christmas list!

Sewing Metal

I know some people might be afraid to sew metal on their sewing machine, so to dispel any fears I thought I would make a short video demonstrating how I sew metal on my Fiesta Ornaments.

If you double click on the vidcast, it will bring you to the youtube site where you can click on "Watch in high quality" to get a much sharper image. You will have to close the previous window though, otherwise both vidcasts will play at once.

I want the thread to show up well against the metal so I use a bright colored heavy weight cotton thread in the top and a matching color thread in the bobbin. Generally I use a top stitch needle, but often I just sew it with whatever needle I have in the machine with no problem.

MIU Prep

In preparation for my MIU workshop making felted wool ornaments I have been winding embroidery floss onto little cards made from manila folders. Craft Chi came up with the great idea of making decorative floss with these great ornamental designs. I did not take the time to cut them out really nicely since I have wrapped at least 500 of these for the workshops. They are so much cuter than plain cardboard.

Whahoo PIQF!

Arbol de Vida won 3rd place Innovative,
and Moon Garden won an Honorable Mention
at Pacific International Quilt Festival, happening this weekend in California.

Walking home from the "bean"

I love scenes like this, classic Chicago. This is the view looking west from Millennium Park, when we leave the park we walk directly west on this street to get to our place.




I think it is so interesting when you see these Gothic style church spires poking up in the middle of all the skyscrapers. Glimpses of the past amongst modern architecture.



As we walked along we came across this other very old Gothic style building under going reconstruction. It is split vertically in half with the external structure removed exposing the internal skeleton of the building.



Walking past the Thompson Center we see one of many modern sculptures that grace the streets of downtown Chicago.




As we leave the downtown loop area and cross the Chicago river we get a great view of the massive Merchandise Mart, this is where the design trade has wholesale and retail spaces. When this building opened in 1930, it was the largest building in the world with 4,000,000 square feet of floor space. It is truly massive!

Nextfest

Every year Wired magazine sponsors a show of future technology called Nextfest. This year it is in Chicago at Millennium Park, what an awesome show! I would love to see so much this technology used now. This is the description from the website: WIRED NextFest is the premier showcase of the global innovations transforming our world. Now in its fifth year, WIRED's gallery of the future includes unique and bold exhibits of sustainable design, next generation healthcare, interactive art and games, humanoid robotics and more.
Toyota was well represented here with quite a few really interesting vehicle designs. This chair type vehicle was really interesting, the maneuvering controls were hand held.

Brainball was really cool, people strap on headbands that read brainwaves.
The ball starts in the middle of the table and is drawn to the person with the higher stress level.
The screen above them showed each persons brain waves. There were two people who closed their eyes and the ball rolled back and forth between them in a battle of relaxation, then one guy opened his eyes to peak, he must of gotten excited that he was winning, because the ball was immediately drawn to him and he lost the battle.

I love these mower sheep. Can you imagine a flock of these mowing a grassy field?
It was such a beautiful warm day, look at that cloudless blue sky reflected in the bean. You don't see that too often in Chicago. The state of the economy was quite apparent here. For a friday afternoon on a holiday weekend there were surprisingly few tourists.