Recent Workshops

I've had a couple fun workshops recently with great results.  It is still so interesting to me to see the variety of fabrics the participants bring to work with.  Someone always seems to bring Asian fabrics and since I rarely work with Asian fabrics, I love to see how they work in Tile Quilt blocks.  I think the answer is very well!

The first workshop was at Piecemakers of South Alameda County on 7 January -- the first Saturday of 2012 and a good way to start off the year.  Here are some of the blocks, with Asian fabrics used in the first one.

I'm always pleased when someone has designed their own tile quilt block.  Here is one Cindy S. designed with images that inspire her.

 Cindy's drawing

 

And her block in the process of fabric selection.












And on January 10th, I was in King City at the Valley Heritage Quilt Guild. 

Holly C. had designed a block based roughly on the Winding Ways pattern.

Here is her pattern and a computer drawing of how it will look with 4 blocks.





 

And here is her first block with the fabrics selected and the applique stitching begun in the center. Great fabric choices.  I hope I get to see all of the blocks when finished!








And here are the rest of the blocks from King City with the usual variety of fabric choices for the tile pieces and the background which becomes the grout lines.

Check us out on the Radio!

Pat Sloan has invited Carol Gilham Jones and me to be guests on her internet radio quilting show! Pat's program is American Patchwork & Quilting Radio, which can be heard live on Mondays at 4:00 ET.  In case you miss the show live, recordings are available later. 

We will be talking about our book, Tile Quilt Revival.

Here's a link to Pat's website: http://www.creativetalknetwork.com/

We will be guests on Pat's show Monday, January 16, 2012.  It's 4:00 Eastern Time, so adjust for your time zone if you plan to listen to the live broadcast.   Go to this link to listen: www.allpeoplequilt.com/radio/index.html live and to listen again.

Just Finished

First of all, Happy New Year to all.  I hope all your quilting resolutions are achieved, especially if it includes a tile quilt!

Last spring I had the pleasure to attend a reunion of sorts with a group of quilting friends who have shared many good times together in many places but mostly in a sewing room at a quilt retreat at Point Bonita, just north of the Golden Gate.  Some of us will be back there at the end of this month.  The spring gathering was in Nebraska at the lovely Lied Lodge in Nebraska City.  On the way back to the airport to drop off those who had flown in for the retreat, we stopped at The Quilt Shoppe in Stewartsville, Missouri for one last shopping opportunity.  I gathered up a group of fat quarters that were nicely arranged and for some reason spoke to me.  I don't usually do "cute" but these seemed to be a more sophisticated cute!  For a change, when I got home instead of just putting these fabrics in my stash, I kept them together and finally found time to do something with them.  Here is the result.

I'm calling it Sweet Shoppe. The fabrics include cakes, teacups, crowns, roses and other flowers, and some words in French. 

I've loved the Winding Ways pattern for a long time.  I think it's the way the blocks create the interlocking larger circles though in the case of this small quilt with only 9 blocks there is only one full circle.  Several years ago I purchased a set of ARDCO metal templates from Quiltsmith, Ltd. http://www.ardcotemplates.com/ in Poquoson, Virginia in the 6'' block size. The templates are available in several sizes.  I found the templates very useful and the accompanying instructions very helpful in assembling the quilt blocks. Someday perhaps I'll get around to making a larger quilt, maybe with larger blocks, but I think the pattern worked well with these fabrics.

The quilt is 23 1/2 '' square and is hand quilted.