Exciting News!

 

My quilt guild, Pajaro Valley Quilt Association, is hosting a virtual Quilt Show starting Monday Feb. 22, and running through Sunday, Feb. 28. That's next week! You are all cordially invited to attend. The show is available to view all seven days, as many days as you want and long as you like. Its free, and you can view it in your pajamas!

Our featured artists are Joe Cunningham, and Margaret Fabrizio. We have a variety of wonderful quilts on display (of course) which this year includes a special exhibit of "Quilts from the 1930's".  Several of our usual vendors have signed on as well, available to sell their wares online. You can get all the details  here. There will be a link on the website when the show begins.

Above is this year's Opportunity Quilt, titled "Light Shines Through" made by PVQA members and designed by Sujata Shaw. Tickets will be available during the show, with the drawing in May. 

Meanwhile, take a look at Margaret Fabrizio's quilts. They're stunning! 

And Joe Cunningham is no slouch. You may remember he  collaborated with Gwen Marston in his early years as a quilter. Go here to see his more modern work.

Although I will sorely miss our live show this year, I am really excited about the virtual show. Members got a bit of a sneak peek a week or so ago, and I have to say I am really impressed! God bless the folks with the technological skills to put it all together. This is the first year in my 25 year history with the guild that I have not been involved in the Quilt Show (we used to call it a "Fair"). I loved every minute (mostly, ha ha) of whatever portion of the show I was involved with, but I admit I"m happy to let the newer members take over. Yay for the younger generation! 

OK, on to other things.

A long time ago, my friend Debbie asked me if I would make her a quilt. Let it be known: I feel really uncomfortable with "commission" quilts, even when they're free. Therefore I put her off for 15 years. I recently decided I needed to do this, but the quilt would have to be more or less my design, and from my existing stash. I gave her a couple of choices - traditional repro, or scrappy improv, like Berzzirkistan. Well, she showed me this:

Made by her Aunt Jackie, for her sister, Debbie's mom, who has now passed away. Unfortunately Debbie didn't inherit the quilt. 

I'm thinking, oh great. Red and black is about my least favorite color scheme. But ... it is an easy pattern. I told her I could not duplicate the quilt, but that I would "interpret" it, using a variety of fabrics from my stash, and it would be a throw, rather than bed size. She seems happy with that. 

Here's what I came up with:

 

The only fabric I had to buy was the border fabric, which I found pretty much immediately at Connecting Threads. I consider this extreme good luck! I could have searched for days and not found anything as fitting. I'm now in the process of stitching on the binding, and will hopefully get a chance to deliver it to her next week. It will feel good to get this off my list! 

Then we found out a couple days ago my husband's long-time friend Alan has been diagnosed with cancer. It sounds like he'll have a long battle including chemo, etc. Of course, I think he needs a quilt. I immediately dropped everything else and started on this:

The fabrics are mostly from a bundle of Tim Holtz Eclectic Elements I purchased as a "daily deal"  from Missouri Quilt Co. a while back. I also had some leftovers from another one like this I made a few years ago, plus a charm pack I picked up somewhere.

Below is the original one I made.

The story behind this one is, my client Tim came down with cancer and I wanted to make him a quilt. I knew he would not love my usual style (traditional repro's) so I struggled with how to come up with something that might be more appealing. Well, at some point previous someone had sent me a charm pack of these Tim Holtz fabrics. I thought what the heck am I going to do with these ugly things and almost threw them away. Fast forward, when I found them still untouched in my pre-cut bin, I gave them another look and thought, hmm ...  Luckily I was able to get a few yardage cuts plus another charm pack online, then filled in with a piece from my regular stash. Do you see that Civil War Presidents piece third row up? HA ha !!! I got a repro in there after all. 

Tim was over the moon when I gave him the quilt (not a reaction one always gets) and I was really happy  (although I wish I would have re-thought that black binding). I've been in love with Eclectic Elements ever since, seeing how effective the fabrics are when combined like this, and search them out at every opportunity, as they are a bit hard to find. 

Side note:  this is a really super easy and fast quilt to make, esp. when you have a large variety of curated fabrics. Anyway, the new one contains slightly different "Elements", but I hope it will please our friend. 

On another note, I have been totally uninspired in the mini-quilt department for the last few months (can you tell?) so nothing at all for this month. I still love looking at everyone else's though, and thank Wendy for continuing to host this fun monthly challenge! 

All for now ...

love, Sandy