Anatomy of a Quilt Show

It's been almost two weeks now, but I'm finally getting around to posting some photos from the quilt show.  I helped coordinate the set-up again this year, and it's just amazing that what takes an entire day to come together comes down in less than an hour.  It's all worth it, of course, to see the amazing work created by guild members, to earn funds for the guild's programming, and to get to know the other quilters better.  But the amount of work that goes into pulling off this two-day event is unbelievable.

First, a few photos from set-up day:

Our car loaded with some of the racks we used:

The main room at Mount Mary, empty at about 7:15 a.m.:

The stack of racks and poles after we carried them in:

Progress putting up racks and quilts, taken at some point mid-morning:

Hanging curtains in the smaller room (to which we would pin the wall hangings):

Hanging quilts in the hallway:

Having a good time:

After a long day's work, it was great to see the fruits of our efforts in the nearly 350 items hung.  Ben did a great job photographing all of the quilts; if you weren't able to attend, here is a slideshow with images of everything in the show.

Pearls 'n Pinwheels

So a week after my half-square triangle catastrophe, I've completely started over and finished this quilt top.  I LOVE IT!  Gotta get backing soon and get this off to the shop to get it quilted before the baby arrives.

Pinwheel Progress

Thanks to Jen's help in obtaining replacement red and white fabric for the center pinwheels, I've been able to make a bit of progress on the Pearls 'n Pinwheels quilt! 

Here's a photo of four of the blocks, completed through "round 1" of piecing around the center square.  I'm really liking it thus far and am amazed at how quickly it's going together due to the pattern's strip piecing instructions for constructing the side units.

Looking forward to more sewing this week and am crossing my fingers that this doesn't turn out to look too patriotic (I don't think it will)!

Reading Instructions is Important...

and advisable before you sew 160 or so half-square triangles and trim them up and then realize that the pattern designer did NOT want you to sew on each side of the diagonal line you drew on the back - you were supposed to SEW on the line!  So I have twice as many half-square triangles as I needed, and they're all the wrong size!  ARG.

And I no longer have enough of either fabric to continue work on this quilt.  This is a major bummer - I'd wanted to make some progress and can't really do anything else until I make the center pinwheels.  Here's the project - Atkinson Designs' Pearls 'n Pinwheels.

Maybe I can sneak out from the quilt show on Saturday to pick up some replacement fabric from Patched Works...  and now I've gotta figure out what to do with all of these ill-fitting blocks!

Anchor's Away!

Amidst the quilt show preparation, I found a bit of time to put this quick little project together.  It's not large (about 25"x29"), but I think it'll be perfect to hang on a nursery door, and it was nice to finish a quick project and feel like I'm getting somewhere!

Pattern is "Anchors Away" by Sandy Gervais, and the fabric is her Nautical and Nice line. I resisted this for a while, but ultimately, had to order the kit from the Fat Quarter Shop. I may be in trouble - when I just created those links, I discovered there's another pattern for a really cute sailboat quilt!!! Can I resist temptation?

Strips 'n Curves

About a year ago, at a quilt guild meeting, we were asked to write on a notecard a quilt-related "resolution" to finish a UFO (or more than one) and told to plan to finish it for a meeting at some point this year.  I decided to write down the Strips 'n Curves quilt from Louisa Smith's book of that name that I started in a class a few years back at Fabric Fusion in Brown Deer (unfortunately, no longer there). It got set aside because I needed to make some more strata and had to find some additional light batiks to do that.  Never mind that I did find some light batiks at the Chicago IQF not that long thereafter, yet I didn't pick up the quilt again!

Well... the show and tell reveal is next week, and I hadn't made much progress on my resolution by about 6 weeks ago.  I managed to get a few strata sewn in late January and then life got in the way once again.  I found some time this week to lay out the units and sew them together.  Here's the current progress:

I really do love the colors and need to decide if I want to put on a border of the orange-red batik.  Not so certain about the layout and geometric nature of the work.  It's certainly a bit of a departure from my normal work. 

I'd originally thought there was still some hope of getting this done by next Wednesday.  But now that I've got quilt show preparation duties taking up some time on both Saturday and Sunday, I'm not certain how reasonable that goal is (the top is about 45" square).  But I can still try.  Anyone have any good quilting design ideas?  Thoughts about thread colors?