I Blinked

Posted on February 28, 2016 by prairiemoonquilts in Travels

And an entire week flew by!

I can hardly believe I’ve been home from California for a week already. I want to share with you some of the sights I saw and the goodies I found while I was at QuiltCon!

The most important thing I saw while in California was my daughter! I haven’t seen her since her sister’s wedding back in August, so it was really good to get to spend some time with her. She came to the show with me on Saturday, and had a really good time!

She was amazed by all the quilts (which she should have been), and she had a fun time visiting the various vendors. She got to trace her hand:

Dannashand

And try out a longarm quilting machine to quilt it down (so this is what you do all day, Mom?):

Danna

She got to use a Sizzix cutting machine to cut some fabric pieces, she colored in the C&T Publishing booth (and ended up buying two coloring books to take home for later!), and we attended Victoria’s lecture on Creativity and Process together.

We also had time for a brief lunch of ice cream together. Oddly, she looks like she should be Victoria’s daughter in this picture instead of mine!

VMeDanna

Since she had to work Thursday and Friday, I was on my own for the first two days of the show, and I looked at quilts and did a little shopping. The French General booth had a different show special and make-and-take every day of the show. I picked up this little embroidery kit — so adorable:

FGEmbroideryKit

 

I met up with Sarah Maxwell in the Marcus Fabrics booth. I love her 1950’s-inspired fabric line (naturally!) and she has a new line coming out soon.

MeSarahJ

Victoria’s fabrics are also with Marcus, and they had her Star Power quilt hanging in their booth. It was an eye-catcher, for sure! I got to quilt this one for Victoria, and it was a fun one to quilt.

StarPower

The gals from Timeless Treasures / Dear Stella had a booth, and they were letting people sew their hands for charity quilts. You could stop by and sit a spell, and they had all the supplies for you to trace your hand on fabric, and stitch it down on a background piece. They collected nearly 200 hand blocks during the show — that’ll make a lot of quilts!

DSBooth

Here’s the one I sewed for them!

Hand

And then there were the quilts in the show — every one of them fantastic! I didn’t take near enough pictures. This was one of my favorites — made by Elaine Poplin, aka Messy Goat, she calls it “Escapade”. It’s a quilt made from Jenny at Sew Kind of Wonderful’s Metro Rings pattern. I just love the organized mess of color in it!

messygoat

And the quilting was wonderful, too:

messygoatcu

But the very best part of the quilts in the show was — Victoria and I got a Judge’s Choice ribbon for the quilt she designed and I quilted called Mr. Swirl E. Bones!!!! Woohoo!

Ribbon

And that’s not all! We also won the People’s Choice award, which was a HUGE honor as well — thanks to Scott Murkin for choosing Mr. Swirl E. Bones as his favorite and thanks to everyone who voted for him. He was a collaborative and very fun project, and we’re pretty proud of him.

MenVnBones

Would you like to see a few closeups of Mr. Swirl E. Bones in progress?

Hours and hours and hours of little tiny pebbles:

Pebbles

Lots and lots of straight lines:

Bones1

Cobwebs:

cobwebs

Thread changes, phone discussions, photos flying back and forth . . . all well worth it. We think he turned out great!

Bones2

You can read more about Mr. Swirl E. Bones, and see some more of the quilts that were in the show HERE on Victoria’s blog. You can see another of my favorites from the show over there: Kathy York’s “Falling” quilt — very nicely done!

My pal, Lori East, was on the same flight as me both going to and coming home from LA — a nice surprise. It was good to have someone to travel with, and she didn’t even kick me or pull my hair once!

My Cowboy picked me up at the airport, and I arrived home to all our animals, and my copy of Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine in the mail, in which a customer quilt I quilted is featured in Diane Doran’s article on Dresden Plate quilts!

MQUarticle

I’ve had a couple of whirlwind weeks, being gone and then trying to catch up once I got home!

Next week, I have plenty more customer quilts to keep working on, the usual paperwork to do, and on the weekend, I’m teaching a workshop for my home guild’s annual spring retreat, so the fun never ends around here!

I hope you all had a great week last week, and have an even better one in store for you coming up!

8 responses to “I Blinked”

  1. Cindy says:

    Well it would take a week just to catch your breath from such a world wind trip. Glad you had such a great time! Congratulations to you and Victoria, that is sew awesome!!!!!

  2. Congratulations on your wins and affirmation of your beautiful work!

  3. Barb B says:

    So happy for you and Victoria! Awesome!!

    Hope you have had time to unpack and get your laundry done. The time is flying by.

    Welcome home!

  4. Beverly says:

    Great to know about the “Mr. Swirl E. Bones” quilt and your individual addition with Victoria’s inspiration!

  5. Lori says:

    It was SO nice to have a travel buddy, and super sweet of your lovely daughter to chauffeur me to and from the airport.

    Not only did I not kick you or pull your hair, I didn’t even steal your lemon loaf.

    It was terrific to see your (and Victoria’s) work. I think you two make a pretty darned good team.

    Fun week! Let’s do it again!

  6. denniele says:

    Sounds like you had a marvelous time! Yea for you!

  7. Stephanie in MI says:

    Great job! The quilt is beautiful, and your quilting is stellar! How can you say you weren’t feeling very creative?! It’s awesome!

  8. Rose Marie says:

    Can’t wait to see you on Saturday!! I gotta go to all those other places from this blog and see more exciting stuff. This was a great post.

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