Appliqué Books
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Mar
10
Just got a note from Teri Leigh Baird, Events Planner with Jaspers Events, who wrote to let me know about an upcoming appliqué retreat in Branson, Missouri. Does this sound like fun or what?
* June 3-7, 2010
* 3 full days of quilting classes
* Award-winning instructors: Kathy Kansier, Connie Sue Haidle, Linda Carlson
* Quilting “room” with ironing stations, large cutting mats, rulers and design walls
* Includes 4 nights lodging at Howard Johnson Branson with Private Room
* Breakfast & lunch each day
* Wine and cheese welcome reception
* Trunk show
* Door prizes and Goody Bags
Visit the Jaspers Events web page for full information.
And, if you click on the Events tab at the top of their website you’ll see the many intriguing vacations they have planned, including several more quilting retreats.
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Filed Under Classes | Leave a Comment
Mar
5
The winner of Tile Quilt Revival is Connie Eldridge. Congratulations Connie! I’m currently in Manteca, California, for a quilt show and I’ll be getting in touch with you early next week.
To all those who thanked me for holding the giveaways, you’re so welcome! I greatly enjoy reviewing the books, and I appreciate your reading All About Applique.
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Filed Under Prizes | 3 Comments
Mar
3
At the Road to California show in January, I had the excellent fortune to sit at the breakfast table with Carol Gilham Jones and Bobbi Finley. Several friends of mine were staying at the hotel, and they were also friends of Carol and Bobbi, so introductions were made–on a first-name basis–and Bobbi was flabbergasted when I asked her, “Are you Bobbi Finley??” That was a very familiar name to me after years of hanging around with active members of the American Quilt Study Group.
Carol and Bobbi had a special exhibit of their tile quilts in the show. Passing these at warp speed as I did the first time, these beautiful pieces have a stained-glass look, but lighter and airier. Bobbi says that a lot of people compare them to stained-glass quilts, but they’re not. Construction-wise, instead of “leading” applied over the raw edges of the shapes, these shapes are finished with turned edges, and the background is left exposed to create the spaces between shapes.
Tile Quilt Revival: Reinventing a Forgotten Form is Carol and Bobbi’s fascinating, educational, and inviting book that reintroduces this “unique and somewhat obscure” form of appliqué quilt.
Tile quilts are explained this way:
Traditional tile quilts… are constructed with small pieces of cotton fabric appliquéd in a random manner to a white background, leaving a narrow space between the pieces; this white space serves as the “grout” between the tiles or “mortar” between the pavers or stones.
The books starts out with a brief history of tile quilts, with great photos showing examples from the past. Then comes a section on how to make a tile quilt, reinterpreted for today. When I read the following, the heavens opened up and I heard the heavenly choir!
The tile quilt technique, with its large and simple shapes, creates an ideal showcase for bold, contemporary fabrics. Interesting, large-scale prints are will suited for the tile pieces. If you’ve ever found yourself admiring some of the daring prints now available but wondering how to use them, a tile quilt is an idea project for putting them to good use.
Hallelujah! I have a tub of fabrics in my stash labeled “Modern” that has been… well… sitting there.
Now my “daring” prints have a destiny!
The techniques used in the book are so simple they’re ingenious! No need to consider seam allowances, to reverse patterns, or to figure out where to place the pieces. Another really great thing about this book is that it has fantastic appliqué instructions… needle-turn by hand, turned-edge machine-appliqué and fusible machine appliqué too, all expertly explained and illustrated. If you’re reading this blog, you probably like appliqué already, but how about this section where the authors say:
Even if you don’t love to appliqué or don’t consider yourself to be skilled at it, chances are you will enjoy the tile quilt process because it is not exacting. The tile-and-grout form is quite forgiving, and the inevitable deviations from strict uniformity in the grout add to the visual interest and appeal of a piece.
How cool is that?? Get your A-word friends to take a look!
After the appliqué information, there are instructions for several projects with full-size pull-out patterns.
Then there’s a Gallery of Contemporary Tile Quilts. These are fun and inspiring to look at as you see what quilters of today are doing to reinvent the form.
C&T Publishing is graciously sponsoring a giveaway of a copy of Tile Quilt Revival! Leave a comment before 7:00 p.m. California time on Friday, March 5, to be in the drawing. U.S. and Canada only, unless you’d be willing to pay the shipping.
Those subscribed by email, click over the the blog itself and scroll to the bottom of the post to leave a comment.
I wanna start a tile quilt right now, but dang I have deadlines!
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Filed Under Books, Fabrics, Fusible web, Hand appliqué, Machine appliqué, Needleturn, Prizes | 35 Comments
Feb
28
With no closing ceremony, the quilt show melts away for another year.
The Bargain Garden
They came, they bagged their bargains, they left almost nothing behind.
The Harvest Building
Tear-down time in merchant-land.
The Crosseti Building
Take-down underway.
Clean tarps to lay the quilts on.
Hard work going on by dedicated guild members, their kith, and their kin.
The line for quilt pickup.
Within an hour the building is clear.
…and the work on next year’s show starts… tomorrow.
But tonight, rest.
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Filed Under Quilt shows | Leave a Comment
Feb
27
The Bargain Garden
That's a lot of bargains.
The Harvest Building
Auction quilts and vendors at the ready.
The Crosetti Building
The show, beautifully hung and decorated.
Tin Can Alley. (This year's theme is Recycle, Reuse, Renew.)
Of course I had to zoom in on the tin can dog.
My bright little spot.
Such a fun day.
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Filed Under Quilt shows | 3 Comments
Feb
27
This weekend is my home guild’s 32nd annual quilt show. I look forward to it so much every year. I have a big smile on my face every minute of the weekend… can’t help it. This year I did my best to capture a photo essay of the stages, from nothing to everything to nothing again. It’s quite a miracle what happens. Well, if a miracle can be due to the hard work and step-uppitty-ness of a whole lot of quilters, their spouses, their kids, and their grandkids. What a community.
The PVQA Bargain Garden.
Laura, our BG coordinator, collects donations all year. She sells at every meeting but despite that, our storage locker was jam packed and so was Iris’s garage!
Before the first load arrived.
After we got things kinda sorta sorted from the garage delivery, then the truck from the storage locker arrived. Holy cow.
The Harvest Building
Another building at the fair grounds, where lunch, quilts, vendors, and the stage for the fashion show and live auction will be.
The Crosetti Building
The main exhibit hall, getting ready for intake and setup. My booth location is to the right side, near the front.
The racks are up and the layout is mapped. The menfolk like to come and help because they get to climb on ladders and use power tools. Yes, that's right, these racks are assembled and disassembled every year.
This year the show chairs charged a special assessment to purchase backdrops for the show. Not sure yet how they're looking.
It’s 6:00 in the morning and here I am blogging. (I often don’t sleep well due to the excitement.) I got my booth all set up yesterday so today it’ll be all bright and shiny when the doors open for the show at 10:00. Oops, except that it’s going to be rainy today. Oh well, what can you do. My spirits won’t be dampened. 
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Filed Under Quilt shows | Leave a Comment
Feb
24
The ever-zany daily blogger Pat Sloan has started a new, free BOM. Check it out at Pat Sloan’s Corner. A very cute block and great closeup photography of her fusible appliqué and thread choice.
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Filed Under Blanket stitch, Designers, Fusible web, Machine appliqué, Patterns, Threads | 3 Comments
Feb
20
Kim Jamieson-Hirst of Chatterbox Quilts is a designer friend of mine in Calgary. Recently, she put out the most darling pattern called Hoot-mon!
I love this perky little family of owls.
“Hoot-mon,” according to the urban dictionary, is Scottish for “Yo dude!” That makes me laugh. My grandmother was Scottish, however I don’t remember her using this expression. I guess she just wasn’t that hip. It does convey to me the sense of Canada being part of the Commonwealth.
And how’s this for cute?
They’re stuffies!
We’re giving away a copy of Hoot-mon! to a lucky winner, so leave a comment by 7:00 p.m. California time on Monday, February 22, to enter the draw. Tell us why you like owls!
Coming up on the blog… revisiting thread topics and a look at Tile Quilt Revival.
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Filed Under Designers, Patterns, Prizes | 20 Comments
Feb
12
Even though this is the ninth time, it’s still so exciting when I get that call to come pick up cartons of new books, hot off the presses.
Dolls & Dresses to Appliqué is officially in print!
There are a dozen dolls and cute dresses, plus instructions for a sampler quilt to show off the entire collection.
Doll Shoppe by Kay Mackenzie
Dolls & Dresses is available at By Kay Mackenzie. As my Valentine for you, gentle readers, I created a coupon just for readers of this blog and my newsletter (but feel free to tell your friends). If you’d like to appliqué some dolls, or order anything else from the website, put 2OFF in the coupon code area of the shopping cart and you’ll save $2 bucks off your next order! Plus, the current company special is a free copy of Home: A Heartfelt Nap Quilt with any book order. Such a deal!
Oh yeah… as if pushing out a new book from my company and working on a new book for Martingale weren’t enough, I decided to put out a new pattern too. Meet Sweet!
Available on the Patterns page at the website.
Until next time,
Doin’ the happy new-book dance,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Filed Under Books, Patterns | 5 Comments
Feb
10
Yesterday I had the chance to try out the Superior windfall.
This is an old block originally called Wandering Foot. That name was thought to bring on the wandering foot to youths who slept under it, so a new name was given to it… Turkey Tracks. Much more attractive, don’t you think? It’s also called Iris Leaf when it’s green on white.
Fused and unstitched.
After some investigation on the Superior website, I discovered that the Holy SuperBobs are Bottom Line, a line of thread developed by Libby Lehman. It’s 60-weight polyester. I perused the rainbow and picked out the color that matched the best.
Wow, you can hardly make it out! It really is whisper-fine.
I fired up my Bernina and adjusted the blanket stitch down a few ticks, reasoning that a very fine thread should be given a pretty small stitch. A few minutes later, and voila! The block was stitched, and looked great! My machine liked the thread, which I used in both the top and the bottom, and Mother Superior says it’s not linty like cotton.
How’s that for blending in? From a short distance you can’t see the stitching at all. This thread might be a nice choice when you really want to mimic hand appliqué while still using your machine, or when using the turned-edge blind-hem stitch method of machine appliqué (which BTW I am not adept at).
One thing I did note is that the edges of the appliqués feel a little “crispy” compared to when I use cotton thread.
On to MasterPiece. MasterPiece thread is 2-ply 50-weight cotton, favored by the Piece o’ Cake gals and by Alex Anderson.
A simple forget-me-not.
Fused and unstitched.
My choices from the rainbow.
I adjusted the blanket stitch to my usual setting, just a couple ticks down in width and length. Away I went!
I like it, my machine likes it. I wound a bobbin for the green, but for the dabs of yellow and blue I used bobbins I already had wound with DMC. Worked great! They really are equivalent in weight so that’s a plus for me that I can mix and match at this stage of evolution in my thread stash.
Now on to hand appliqué. I just happened to have a block in the queue that I needed to stitch up twice, to use as an example in the new book I’m working on for Martingale.
Here are the threads I chose.
Poly on the left and cotton on the right.
I started with the polyester first. I was really excited about trying out this thread for hand appliqué. In the past, when I’ve tried other brands of poly thread, it went around in circles, kinked up, and raveled at the end. I’m delighted to report that Bottom Line stays straight. It sinks right into the turned edge of the appliqué and hides itself really well, and I was not plagued with knots or kinks. Yay! The one thing I did notice is that since it’s more slippery than cotton thread, my thread tail kept shortening up on me and I lost the thread out of the needle a couple times. I guess this just takes getting used to coming from the fabric of our lives.
I was on a roll watching the chocolate challenges on Food Network, so I plunged on ahead to the second version, using MasterPiece cotton. Excellent on all counts.
Can you tell the difference in the completed piece? Neither can I, so I’ve been keeping sticky notes on them .
These pink dogwood blocks may seem kinda pale, and that’s on purpose. I’m going to embroider around the edges of one of them to illustrate how you can better define the edges of your appliqués when you want to use low-contrast fabrics.
Well, thanks guys! I got a lot done yesterday!
Chime in! I’d like to hear from others who use Bottom Line or MasterPiece. How do you use it, why do you like it?
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Filed Under Blanket stitch, Hand appliqué, Machine appliqué, Product demo, Threads | 8 Comments
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