What. A. Weekend.

Whelp, it's official.  I am an official chunky monkey and slightly old.  After 4 days wandering International Quilt Market in Portland this weekend, my glutes are not only full of an unreasonable amount of lactic acid (who thought quilts could make you "feel the burn?"), but I am totally whupped mentally and physically. So many clever and useful things learned and so many amazing and beautiful things seen (and bought!).

That is NOT by any means a complaint.  It was SO worth it, and I cannot wait to do it again in October in Houston! Time to start saving those pennies for the plane ticket!

I know I promised a big fatty fat blog full of what we saw, what we did and what we learned but after uploading close to 500 or so pictures...which, by the way, is not an exaggeration by any means, if anything I'm underestimating...it would be the longest entry of all time and you'd get bored as all get out about a third of the way through.  So, I am going to post in little chunklets:

- First, you'll see what Schoolhouse is like, and a little run down of the neat things we saw and learned.
- Then, you'll see the show at large and of the booths that the vendors very kindly allowed us to photograph (always ask first!)..and who we were lucky to meet!
- Finally, you'll get a glimpse of a selection of the gorgeous quilts on display...and yes, they DID allow pictures of quilts to be taken on the grounds that credit was given to the creator and it is stated that the quilts were displayed at Market.

Most of the pictures are posted on The Cotton Patch's Facebook page ("Like" us if you haven't already, and   take a cruise through the pictures there), but I will be posting here as well, with all credit given where credit is due! And just a forewarning...I might be the LEAST photogenic person on the planet so most pictures with me in it, so there are lots of awkward, unflattering and bizarre facial expressions...I'm not that ridiculous looking in person, so why ti has to be that way on film, I don't know.

But anyway, I feel very lucky to have been able to go and be a part of Market, if even just as a customer and fangirl. I can't wait to see what Fall Market in Houston has in store!

International Quilt Market...in PORTLAND!!!

I love my job working in a quilt shop, and it's awesome just about always, but sometimes...it is absurdly cool.

I'm going to the Spring International Quilt Market in Portland tomorrow through Sunday. 

I'm only a little excited. 

I went to Market in Houston  a year and a half ago, and it was amazing:

This isn't even a quarter of what was there. 

That was Fall Market, which is always in Houston...great for easy access to Waffle House hash browns (don't EVEN get me started!) but not so great on travel convenience.  But luckily for us in the Northwest, Spring Market moves around and this year it is in Portland.  I'll miss the hash browns, but it's going to be great being so close! 

Once Market is all over with, I'll have a nice long post of pictures, news and cool stuff on here, but if you want live posts of what's happening, go "Like" The Cotton Patch's Facebook and see what we're seeing! 

Mid Valley Quilt Guild: Fire and Ice Pictures

So the MVQG show is over for this year, and won't take place again until 2015.  Want a little snapshot of what you missed?  I've got some pictures to post here...if you want to see some more up close and personal pictures of the quilts, go to the shop's Facebook, The Cotton Patch

It's Quilt Show Time! Fire and Ice: Pieceable Passions

Well, Quilt Show season has officially begun!  It's time a for a few shameless plugs!

The Mid Valley Quilt Guild, native to Salem, is putting on their biennial quilt show in Rickreall beginning today through Saturday.  This year, the theme is Fire and Ice: Pieceable Passions.  Many very talented local quilters will have their beautiful quilts on display and there will be lots of vendors to check out as well.

By the way... The Cotton Patch has a booth there!  I will be in the booth this afternoon, tomorrow afternoon and all day Saturday to hold down the fort.  If you have some time to come and see the gorgeous quilts on display, please drop by our booth to say hello!

Fire and Ice: Pieceable Passions is located at the Polk County Fairgrounds (520 Pacific Hwy) in Rickreall, Oregon. Admission is only $5 and parking is free!

Hours are:
Thursday, April 25: 9am - 5pm
Friday, April 26: 9am - 8pm
Saturday, April 27: 9am - 4pm

PMQG Block of the Month: January - April

So the first third of the blocks for the Block of the Month I'm doing with the Portland Modern Quilt Guild is complete.  The point of the program is to make one block for yourself, and one for charity.  For the charity blocks, we can do "black, white and a splash of color," "scrappy" or "ROYGBIV."

For my charity blocks, I chose to do the black, white and a splash of color.  Honestly, I didn't think to take pictures of these blocks, but I have been changing up the splash of color each month. 

For my blocks, I also chose to do the black, white and a splash of color, buuuuuut I chose a theme...and it should not be surprising at all to anyone reading this blog.  Yes indeed, my Block of the Month is Halloween themed.  Hey now, this girl can never, ever have too many Halloween quilts!

So I grabbed all of my Halloween themed black and white prints, and I've been tossing in splashes of orange, green, purple and pink, with the intention of using my Michael Miller hearse fabric.

Hearse fabric. I like the touch of morbid humor, with the little casket bouncing out of the back.

So here are my blocks thus far...

 January 

This block was tricky for me because my brain did NOT want to think of this in tube format, which is how it was initially assembled and which is why not all my prints are right side up. I just figure the skeletons have been listening to too much Lionel Ritchie and started dancing on the ceiling.

February

I initially was going to just keep it to purple, orange and green, but I had this bright pink and orange geometric and I thought it'd be fun to pop in there.  

March

Not going to lie, I'm going to use a LOT of that bat print because it is my absolute favorite.  The green is much more of a bright, borderline neon green instead of the kind of bluish green it shows here.

April

This is when I wish I had a better camera than just my cell phone camera.  The pink is much more similar to the bright pink from February instead of the bubble gummish pink in the picture.  Also, the strip in the middle isn't burgundy, it is a really rich deep purple more similar to the purple from February as well, and the spots are a bright pink.  In person, it is much more cohesive than this crappy picture shows.  Someday when I am rich and famous I will have better equipment to take better pictures with.

I am SO impatient, I can't wait to get the other 2/3 of the blocks done so I can see what the whole thing will looks like...but that won't be until December!

UFOs Are Abuducting ME! The Luray Caverns Flowers Edition

Several weeks ago I was over at Mom's house helping her clean out her sewing room.  It had gotten out of hand after having to hurriedly make room in the two spare bedrooms several months ago...things just sort of got stacked in there and she was left with little room to get around and do her projects.  So she asked me to help, and little did I know that I would be coming home with four garbage bags of fabric, another two of notions, magazines, books and patterns, and then another 5 for Diane's Secret Stash.

There was one more bag, and it was chock full of unfinished projects in varying degrees of completeness.  A few of them just need to be quilted.  Some just need borders.  A handful are mostly pieced, but need to have pieces appliqued down...and then there are several fistfuls of coordinating blocks that are complete, but she never got around to putting them in a setting.

Then there were a few rescue missions.  There were a handful of paper pieced flower blocks that, when we moved here, got tossed in with something linty by the movers and so these blocks looked a mess.  Mom decided she didn't like the blocks enough to clean them up and put them in a pile that was set to be pitched.  Now I'm no dumpster diver, and I have never previously taken it upon myself to pick through the garbage...but I did pull these blocks out of the garbage pile.  They were just fuzzy...one of those sticky paper lint rollers, and these blocks would be good as gold.  So that's what I did. Pulled them from the garbage, and cleaned them up.

Once I laid them all out, I recognized them as these paper piecing patterns that were the same as the little ones she made me stitch up when I was 6.  I looked at the paper backings and sure enough they were from a lady out of Luray, Virginia.  Hey, a little slice of my childhood, can't be throwing that away!  I remember when I was 6, we went on a field trip with my school to Luray Caverns and that is probably when she got them.

 

Luray Caverns circa 1993. The abominable snow child on the right would be me.

But she really like the patterns and bought a bunch, which are now mine to make. I did my best to stay true to her fabric choices even though now the pieces are 20 years old.  Below, the beginnings of the sashing are modern fabrics, but the white settings for the blocks are hers from back in the day.

It needed a border, and after testing a bunch of 30's prints that looked okay, I found this border print at the shop.  I do not like it at all as a stand alone piece, but with this?  It does the trick!

Here's a better look at the border:

I need to nab a backing for it, and I'm thinking I'll take a stab at quilting it myself.  I figure, if she was going to just toss the blocks, then a homegrown quilting job won't be a big deal.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

And, this is just the first of several UFOs that have abducted me!

PMQG Michael Miller Neon Challenge: Mission Complete!

Well, I was going to do a few blocks out of the neon selection from my last post, but after some pondering I went in a completely different and nerdy direction.

If you know me then it's no secret I have kind of offbeat interests (as if you couldn't figure that out from my blog theme), and this is no different. Leave me to my own devices and every project wills imply reek with nerdiness. I'm primatology geek and my favorite of all the monkeys, lemurs, apes, etc is the gorilla. They're badass, period.  

Any questions? I rest my case.

So, since I was in need of a new makeup bag for my purse anyway, on account that my old one is looking just pathetic, I decided it was time to give it a whirl. Here's the result...my killer gorilla makeup bag. I'm pretty proud because I actually managed to improvise the whole thing, and even popped in a zipper, which I haven't done in years. 

The front

The reverse

The interior

It's all quilted with glow in the dark thread.  Just because. 

After this, I can't wait to see what our next challenge will be!