Mountain Quiltfest Day 2 Antique Quilts

Friday was a good day for demos and visiting the bed turnings as they call them. They're about 30-minute shows where they go over several antique quilts. They give you the history that is known and who made the quilt. Of course, the sad part is lots of quilts are never labeled so we don't always know who made it.

They also have a display of crafts done at the time that use the same techniques and fabrics like a quilted vest and pillowcases made out of feed sackcloths. If you have antique quilts you can have them appraised at the show for a very reasonable rate.

The presentation was very informative and sparked a bit of interest in antique quilts. I have lots of the quilts shown in both presentations in my Mountain Quiltfest photo album.

Many of the quilts are made out of feed sackcloth and some are made out of scraps of different types of fabrics. The backs of some of the quilts are done from sackcloths.  The history of feed sackcloth in quilting is a very interesting and ingenious use of fabric that could have been thrown away at one time.

Quilt Shop Saturday- Asheville Cotton Co.

I got a chance to go to Asheville, NC Saturday. My trip was meant to go see Biltmore (you can see photos I took here), but I like to stop into fabric shops on my vacations. It gives me some great ideas seeing a new shop and sometimes there are unique finds you wouldn't find in another part of the country. This trip I stopped at the Asheville Cotton Co. shop.

This was my second stop at this shop. Last August I had gone with my mom and my friend Regina. This trip was only me and Regina but I had to go back to the shop. I like this shop. It's a good sized shop and has a great selection. They also had this cute sample quilt done with some whimsical peter pan fabrics. If I was a huge peter pan fan I would have loaded up on these.

Quilt made with peter pan fabrics

I did get a variety of floral fabrics and a couple of fat quarters of this cute tomato fabric I found. Mom had asked me to pick up some floral for her so we're going to get together and divvy out the fabrics this week.

We stopped at the shop early in the morning. So early we were there about 15 minutes before opening. I ran into the nearby Fresh Market and picked up this matcha ginger tea. I thought it was a store brand, but it's by Matcha Love. It was very good and refreshing. I did get two yellow plums for a snack and never got around to eating them. I plan to do that today with some lemon iced tea while I sew and catch up on household stuff.

Quiltcon 2019 Nashville Experience

#QCGreetingsfromNashville

So for my first Quiltcon experience I loved it. Now as said this isn't my first show but one of the biggest I've been to. But this is the first one to feature exclusively modern designs. I loved the experience and was very happy to get a chance to go. I only had one day and bit of a drive to get there. The weather was terrible. It rained very hard all day all over Tennessee. All the way there we had flood warnings going off like crazy.

Getting there we first went to the vendor area. Now all the quilts in the show are in front of that but I wanted to get to certain booths to make sure I got some things I was looking for. We spent the majority of the time in this area. I got tons of deals and great patterns. I made sure I went by the Soak booth and picked up two bottles of flatter. When I went by the Pink Door Fabrics booth Tula Pink was there. The crowd was crazy and I didn't really want to stand in line, so I did not get to meet her. I did go back to the booth and got a pattern I had been looking at before.

One of the first few booths I visited was the Sewing Party booth. I met the designer of the "Rose for my Boyfriend" quilt pattern and was able to see the original one done for the magazine. I also showed them a photo of mine and they asked me to email it to them so they can post it on their Instagram! I love sharing my quilts and am so happy the designer liked mine.

One of the fun things about the show is they had a lot of areas you can sit and sew. They had booths that were doing charity quilt blocks. They give you a pattern and you can go through scraps and sit down and sew the block for them. These blocks will go into a quilt that will be sold for charity.

They also had a hand stitching area where you got to try out a free hand stitching design provided by sulky. It was printed on a dissolving interface so you can put the guide on and not worry about it messing up the final look. This was a nice area to go visit cause I was really exhausted and needed a bit of time to rest. Also this lead me to go back to the sulky booth for another free design. I found glow in the dark thread that was a must have.

After that it was time to go through the quilts. They had a collection of antique quilts and a collection of youth quilts that were both very interesting. There was a feature of quilts using a mix of fibers like faux fur or knitting. I also got to meet a few of the people with quilts in the show walking around.

Afterwards we went to the Flying Saucer for dinner. I have been to this place before. It's a pub/taphouse type place that has tons beers and ciders on tap as well as in cans and bottles available. I have been trying to do a low carb diet so I did not get one of the ciders that I wanted to but did get a burger. Mom's sandwich ended up being too spicy for her so we swapped what we got.

In all the trip was a success. Mom and I had a huge bag of stuff to split when we got home and I've got a lot of new projects to add to my to do list. I have sprinkled pictures through the post of the different things I saw but I also have more photos available on google photos.

2018 Quilt Review Pt 2 Epp and New Orleans

2012 at Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop

This is a post I could take forever at making so I am going to try to keep it short. in May of 2018 I went on a week long trip with my mom and two friends to New Orleans. This is my second trip and if I compare the two it shows just how different a person I am versus my first trip.

My first had been in April 2012 with just my friend Karen (who went on both trips). We had spent all our time exploring most of down town and went to the Aquarium and Zoo. I had fallen and hurt myself so I hadn't really picked a lot of places extra to go due to avoiding too much walking. We did go on a ghost walk cemetery tour and even a fabulous park all with lots of sitting and breaks while my friend took lots of photos. My leg has never been the same but it also never locked up on me. The trip was still fabulous and forever shapes my memories of New Orleans.

Quilt Block tile at welcome center. 2018

My second trip I still insisted the people I was with pick stuff to do because this was their vacation as much as mine, but it is shaped by having my mom with us. That is not a negative both of us have lots of things in common and share a love for quilting. We went to a quilt shop and explored areas outside of down town more. We stayed in a hotel across the river and it was so much hotter because the weather did a major change between end end of April and the beginning of May. These factors meant leaving downtown by rush hour to get to the hotel and cool off before dinner.

The four of us at the Zoo. 2018

The quilt shop we went to was Uptown Needle. They had a fantastic quilt on display that was a Nola 300 special pattern of the map of New Orleans. I picked up several fabrics from there and was awed at their cute little shop. Apparently as of now they have closed and are going to relocate. I'm so sad.They had a nice article about them in the Louisiana edition of Quilt Folk if you ever get to read it.

EPP in Progress

This trip I also got to go to the A& E fabric store in Pensacola. Karen lives in Pensacola so we took a few extra days to visit the beach. That store is huge and has lots of great finds.

Finished Flamingo EPP

With fabrics from both of these places I dived into my first EPP project. I had never done english paper pricing before and with a few videos from Mr Domestic I got a clue and started. I was very happy with the finished project. It's a table topper size or small wall hanging. I find these easier to quilt on my little Machine then a full size quilt.

I also entered it into the local fair and won a 3rd place ribbon! This one was a new learning experience with me. I want to do more EPP's in the future.



Since this post is mostly about my New Orleans trip I want to continue with stuff I got from there. But alas, I did not get an appropriate tea picture to share.I will share one of my drinks from New Orleans. It's only fitting.

Bloody Mary in the French Quarter near the French Market.

Shop Hop Saturday

Big Pile of fabric

JoAnn's haul

Last weekend I did a bit of a shop hop with my mom. It wasn't anything strictly planned but that's what it turned into. Mom and I actually started it with a stop at Tuesday Morning and Joann's on Friday. I got a pinwheel by Benartix for half off at Tuesday Morning and a few fun fabrics from JoAnn's. They had a Van Gogh panel for 30% off and I got a cute sushi fabric.

Mountain Creek Quilt Shop haul

Saturday's quest actually started with my recent obsession at searching online for Japanese fabrics. I'd been researching Nippori Fabric town and have been watching too many YouTube videos about it (way too many click the links). I plan to go one day. The main plan was to go to Mountain Creek shop in Greenback because they have a bin of salesmen samples. They fill it up every once in a while and will have Japanese import fabrics. I got some pieces from Food Land by Leicen. They're small but enough to use as accent pieces for a table topper or lap quilt. Sorry the photos blurry but I got a few fat eights and some cute frog and mushroom fabric. I have so many ideas for this I don't know where to start. I also got a cute pair of scissors that is pen shaped. I saw someone using it in a journaling video and was so happy to find it.

Twisted Sister's Haul

Since Maryville is so close and it's been awhile since we went to the shop there we decided to visit Twisted Sisters. They have moved to a new space since I was last there and it's huge in comparison. It's like they have a labyrinth of quilting fabric. The parking situation is so much better also. I wasn't terrified of running into things on the narrow area they had before. Here I got a panel from the Cat-i-tude collection which I just saw in a magazine the night before. Panels had been 20% off so I scored a deal. Also ransacked their clearance section for fantastic deals. I got some Art Gallery Fabrics that I had passed up before because of their price. If you're ever in the area I suggest going just to see how big this shop is.

Gina's Haul

So Much Fabric

The final stop after lunch was also a why not. Mom lives in Knoxville close to Gina's Bernina. I love this shop. It's always got something new and surprising. They also had a sale going on. Surprise! For all the sales we hit I had no clue any of them were going on. I got only a few things from this shop because well I had a big stack already. I did get a cool USA panel in black and white. I also had a package of fat quarters from Missouri Star when I got home.

With all this fabric I've got a few projects thought out. I am going to do some pre-plans soon and sort my existing stash.