Project Quilting Road Trip Challenge

It was a busy weekend, full of important tasks like keeping the giraffes at the zoo well fed, attending graduation parties, backyard campfires, reading bedtime stories, working in the garden, and of course checking out the pool (whew, now I need a rest).

But before the weekend was too far underway, I was able to get this project finished before the deadline for this week's Project Quilting Challenge. The theme was Road Trip, so I made a Trip Around the World quilt.

I left a couple passes of the diamond shape light colored fabrics so I could stitch in a favorite quote by J.R.R. Tolkien. To do that, I first marked the words on the finished quilt top.

Then I layered the quilt top, batting and backing the usual way and with 12 wt brown Sulky thread, I quilted through all the layers to thread paint the words. To keep with the theme, the rest of the quilting was done in an all-over meander.

These are 2" finished squares. I pieced it quickly by sewing 2 1/2" strips together and formed a tube, subcut that and then sewed the strips together again. I made mine a little differently, but you can find a great tutorial on how to make a quick Trip Around the World quilt on the Quiltville blog.

If you know any Tolkien fans, this quilt is also for sale in my etsy shop.

To see the other wonderfully creative Project Quilting entries for this week, and to cast your vote for your favorite to be entered into the public giveaway go to Kim's blog here. Thank you for the votes on my last Project Quilting entry, my Rectangles Tote came in 2nd in the Public Vote :)

"Not all those who wander are lost." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
I think this quote is particularly appropriate to those of us who wander the blogs :)

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Market Goodies Winner

Stopping to smell the flowers this weekend, and spend some time with family, but I do have some quick business to do first... According to Random Number Generator, the winner of my little Market Goodies give-away is Number 6 ~ Rebecca! I'm emailing you next Rebecca to get your mailing address. Thank you to everyone for all of your nice comments!

I wish you all a Happy and Safe Memorial Day weekend. Fly your flags...

...and remember.

~ Dawn

A Last Look at Minneapolis

One last post with a few little fun things from Minneapolis...

Just to show you what a fun city Minneapolis was, I even snapped pictures of cool structures as we walked about town, I couldn't resist sharing my two favorites :)

Back at the Convention Center...I look so tired ~ but happy! When checking out the Accuquilt booth, I happened to pick up a flyer of Quiltwoman.com patterns that use the Go! Cutter, and there was my Circle Gets the Square pattern. I had no idea this flyer existed ~ It was such a surprise, and I was so thrilled that Heather had to snap my picture with said flyer. What can I say, it doesn't take much to make our day here :)

And while at the Accuquilt booth, we also got excited about some of the new dies for the Go! Cutter. This is the Basket Block, the Rose of Sharon applique, and the 4" Quarter Square Triangles (there are more new ones, like the Blazing Star, and a new Ricky Tims applique, but these three were my favorites). And for the icing on the cake, when I returned home, my local shop, And Sew It Goes, already had the new dies in stock, so now these three babies are mine :)

Another item from Market worth a mention is this cute little sewing desk from Arrow Cabinets. I just love it in this pistachio color! It wasn't new this year, it caught my eye last year in Pittsburgh, so I'm thinking that means I might just need to have one...

And to close out our trip, here is a view from our hotel. We were only on the 5th floor, but the city evening was still a wonderful sight. Don't forget to leave a comment on my last post to be included for a chance at the give-away! Random number is being picked tomorrow, so don't delay :)

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Sights from Quilt Market & A Give-away!

As you can see, the weather was beautiful in Minneapolis, and we thoroughly enjoyed our short stay in the city.

Here are just a few sights and neat finds from Market.

I got to meet up with Jo Morton a few times, and here in her booth Heather snapped our picture ~ and we just had to show off "The Jo Bag". The quilts behind us in Jo's booth are just a couple of her beautiful new creations in her new book, "Coming Home".

I attended Mary Koval's Schoolhouse session where she introduced her new fabric line with Windham Fabrics called Baltimore Album. It's based on this antique quilt from Mary's collection called the Lady of Victory Quilt. It was a treat to see it in person. Mary was taking it to donate to a Wisconsin Quilt Museum after leaving Market.

The Baltimore Applique Society is reproducing this quilt and a complete pattern set will be available in the future.

This was a cool new tool debuting at Market. Sullivan's The Cutting Edge Ruler, along with having nice markings (and I love the light frosting), it has a diamond powder encrusted edge to maintain the sharpness of your rotary blade as you use it ~ how cool is that! These will be available on the market soon in many great sizes, and the prices are very reasonable.

And for a little Market fun here at home, I'm having a giveaway of some goodies that I received at Schoolhouse and picked up around the show. Included in my giveaway are a coveted Andover Tote from Jo Morton's Schoolhouse sesssion, an Oodles of Doodles fabric kit from Ricky Tims Schoolhouse session, a pattern called Paintbox Squares from Kim Schaefer of the Little Quilt Company, a thread decorated emory board, a Clover retractable tape measure, a scissors shaped key ring from Brandy's rulers, and an assortment of various free patterns from Clover and Embellishment Village. Just leave a comment on this post, and I'll pick a ramdom person on Friday :)

I'll be back tomorrow with a few more fun finds from Quilt Market :)
Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

This little quilter went to Market...

So we're a little late with the post about Quilt Market, but we were understandably rather tired when we made it back to Maryland. Since this was my first Quilt Market, Mom asked me to do the first Market post so that I could share some of the things I saw and experienced. She'll do an update tomorrow.

We left for Minnesota Wednesday afternoon, although I had a little bit more trouble than Mom did. Maddie simply did not want me to leave her behind, she kept trying to pack herself into my suitcase!

The next day we were in Schoolhouse sessions pretty much all day long. It was pretty cool, but I wasn't expecting anything quite as intense. We took in a lot of information during those sessions. I tried to get a few pictures, however they were too dark, so I wont be able to share them. During lunch we stepped outside to snap a few pictures and I nabbed this one of our Hotel. We stayed at the Hilton, and this basically showed you just how close we were to the Convention Center.

We also discovered this little gem, where we ate dinner after a long day at Schoolhouse. Hell's Kitchen was just a few blocks from our hotel. I actually found out about it when I was wandering around the Convention Center before the day's events started. I like to look at Information kiosks when I get to a new city to see what all it has to offer. The flier for Hell's Kitchen stood out above the rest. We decided to give it a try and found that it is now one of our favorite places in the country. The food and atmosphere were awesome, and if anyone is in Minneapolis, we recommend they check it out!

As we went through the Vendor Room, we ran into several familiar faces. It was so nice to see people in person that you meet through blogland! Here is Mom and Pat Sloan. Pat was manning a booth to introduce a really cool new product line that she helped to create, Mom will post about it tomorrow. There were tons of Vendors and it was unbelievable that we were able to get everything done! We met with some new fabric companies and are looking forward to a few exciting projects that we have coming up. Also! In the vein of exciting news, we met with some website designers who were present at Market, and we will be working with them to develop our own website! We are in the very early stages right now, but keep watching the blog for more information.

We got home yesterday, exhausted. And I'm fairly certain we left our feet somewhere in that convention center after all the walking we did! All in all it was a great experience that I am so excited that I was able to have.

Peace!

~Heather

Another Tote Bag

I've been on a tote bag kick lately. I made this one completely out of Jo Morton fabrics from my stash. The two large outside front pockets are made from the 8 pointed stars that I hand pieced at our quilt show earlier this month. I blogged about them in this post ~ and I actually did get to finish the project that I had in mind this month :)

The reverse side has another large pocket

...with a zipper! This is a feature that I wanted to try to incorporate, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

These are the inside pockets (a must), and the bag bottom that I made out of a piece of tag board that I covered with coordinating fabric.

And I found these cool reproduction vintage buttons at our quilt show from Piecing the Past. I didn't see them on their website, but if you contact Donna, I'm sure she can set you up with them.

I think this is my new favorite tote, mainly because the Jo Morton fabrics are so "me". It turns out that Heather is going to Quilt Market with me tomorrow, so I gave her my Batik Rectangles Tote from my last blog post for her to carry. I'll catch you up when we get back from Minneapolis, and I'm sure I'll be able to find some neat little things there for a giveaway or two!

Shameless plug alert: Don't forget to go on over to the Project Quilting blog and vote for my tote bag, it could use some love ~ and you'll be entered in the giveaway :)

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Project Quilting Challenge Rectangles Tote

I got my Project Quilting Challenge project finished yesterday, and before the deadline! I needed a new tote bag to carry around at Quilt Market this week, so I used the challenge to design this baby. I started with 48 3 x 5" rectangles (8 each of 6 different colored batiks) and two half yard batik cuts. I left half of the rectangles 3 x 5" and sub cut the other half into 3 x 3" and 2 x 3" pieces. Then I randomly sewed them into 5 rows for the bag body. The remainders were pieced together for the handles.

The half yard cuts were used for a nice sized outside pocket on each side of the tote (that measures 4.5" x 7"), the bottom of the tote, and I pieced the lining of the tote and handles with them.

And I added a 6" x 6" patch pocket to the inside with some of the leftovers.

I quilted in a very geometric horizontal and vertical pattern on the rectangles (this helped to hide the lines that sewed in the inside pocket). I outline quilted around the butterflies on the bottom. The overall size of the tote is 14.5" tall x 16" wide, x 6" deep.

I literally used all of the material that the challenge allowed me to start out with, and only had a few chunks and strips left over. It was a lot of fun to be challenged to come up with something quickly ~ I'm not one to work very fast, or to work out of my normal comfort level.

Hop on over to Kim's blog and see all of this week's Project Quilting entries. It's quite a collection of creative projects (you can click on the pictures to see each entry in more detail) ~ cast a vote for your favorite one and you are entered into a public drawing of great prizes!

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn