Houston

My friend and I got to go to the quilt show in Houston last week!

We both took tonnes and tonnes of pictures.  So you'll have to bear with me.  This will be spread out over several posts...

Here we are in the airplane going to the show.  We're really excited.  Plus!  One of the airline attendants goes to the show each year.  She gave us tonnes of tips for the show; like bring index cards.  That way if you see something at one of the 1100 vendors you can write down the item and booth number and find it again.

This was our first day of classes.  We showed up early, before the festival to take lots and lots of classes.  In the window you can see everything setup for market.  We weren't able to attend but left lots of nose prints on glass as we tried to sneak peeks.

We attended lots of great classes.  (I've got pictures of the projects for another post.)  In each class they provided machines for each of the students.  I took lots of classes on regular machines.

My friend, the lucky bum, just bought a long arm machine so she took lots of long arm classes.

The quilt festival opened Wednesday.  The Tuesday prior they had an evening event where they announced all the winners.  If you attend, you get to see the wining quilts early!

We got to take a tour of NASA!

They also combined the NASA tour with a little shopping.  (In case we didn't get enough of it at the festival. :)

We attended a class on all sorts of applique techniques.  We learned that there are as many ways to applique as there are to skin a cat.

Here we are very tired and very sad to be leaving but our brains were full so it was time to leave.

More Jane

Well, life has been a little crazy lately but it looks like things are getting back towards normal.  

I can tell this is happening because, look!, more Jane blocks!

Now I'm off to catch up on things like all the lovely comments people have been leaving and other fun things.

Water Sports

Things have been quite hectic here lately so there hasn't been much time for quilting.  There was time though for a little rafting trip.  This was our beautiful, unseasonably warm weather that we were able to take advantage of.

We picked up a few friends along the way.

And managed to get a little wet...

On the quilty side of life, my guild started a UFO challenge.  We're challenging ourselves to finish UFOs this year and at the kick-off we had a show & tell of some of our UFOs.  Here are two (sadly neither one is mine) that started off as Round Robins a couple of years ago.  These blocks have the theme of 4-patches and 9-patches.  (we're trying to figure out which person contributed which block)

This is another round robin.  In this one we were supplied the fabric and patterns and asked to create one of the blocks.

With a Thread to Spare

I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture below, but there is a tiny bit of thread beside this month's finish.  That is all the thread that was left after quilting this quilt.  It's funny, as I noticed the thread running out, I started quilting faster.  As if, somehow, that would make the thread last longer.  This is the muddy quilt from quite some time ago.  I've finally gotten around to quilting and binding it.  

Since I've been so Dear Jane inspired/obsessed lately, it wouldn't be a post without a few more blocks.  I'm now down to 30 blocks before starting triangles!

A Matter of Scale

I seem to be working in two very different scales these days.  The little pink block is another Dear Jane block.  The large blue one is my guild's next block for our Block of the Month.  Yup, there is a slight difference in the sizes...

I've been on  a big of a Dear Jane roll lately, so I couldn't stop at just one block and had to do a few more.  I'm getting pretty excited.  I've got under 40 blocks left before I move onto the triangles!

Y-seams

Y-seams can seem a little scary at first but if you keep a few things in mind they're not bad at all.

For all the seams that meet in the Y - sew up to the 1/4" seam allowance but no further.  Then backstitch.

I take Y-seams in two steps always sewing from the outside to the inside.  This helps to prevent puckers in the fabric and ensures that your corner fabric doesn't stretch out.  Pin your fabric together and mark 1/4 inch from the end.  Sew up to but not past the pin (picture below).  Stopping a thread or two before the pin is better than going slightly over.  Backstitch.  (You need to backstitch in the corner because there will be nothing preventing you seam from unravelling.)

Now you do the same thing for the other side.  Remember to stop just before the pin and backstitch.  If you notice from the picture below, I fold the fabric out of the way so that I'm not fighting the fabric while sewing.

Then you press so that your Y piece (the triangle in this picture) is flat.  If you need to, you can trim a little of the bulk of the seam in the corner to help things lay a little flatter.

Dear Jane

I'm not sure what happened with the comments for the previous posts.  Sorry.  I think I have it fixed now.

Our heat wave has broken and I'm starting back into more quilting.  I've been working on quilting a larger quilt as part of finish it Fridays.  It's almost done so I hope to be posting it soon. 

In the meantime I've been plugging away on Dear Jane blocks.  Here are a few more finished.