During the fall, at the quilt show in Reedley, somebody sent a friend to come see me in my booth and to look at all my appliqué quilts, but I had stepped away for a moment. Later they came back and this friend pronounced that she couldn’t find me because my booth had no sign. (This despite the appliqué quilts hung everywhere LOL.)

It got me thinking. Well, the larger shows often provide signage, but the smaller ones usually don’t. Hmm, I said to myself. Other vendors have really cute quilted signs, maybe I should have one too. So I sat down and sketched out an idea for something simple but graphic. I’ve been working on it the last couple weeks and just finished it up.

That oughta fill the bill, don’t you think? And, maybe it will pre-answer the question that I often get, which is, “Did you do all these???”

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

P.S. The $5 off any order of $10 or more is still on at the website, through December 10! The code is 5OFF.

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Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

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I was delighted to be there, though, because the amazing Janice Whittington was one of the featured artists!

Jan Whittington

Jan’s daughter Shamara runs Second Chance Fabrics, a genius concern that rescues unused fabric out of quilters’ stashes and gives it a second chance! Jan helps out at the booth at shows, and mom and daughter have become buddies of mine.

Part of Jan’s display was a collection of Biology Quilts. Let me see if I can get the story straight. Jan’s husband Nathan, Shamara’s dad, is a high-school biology teacher. When they moved to a new building, the high ceilings made the room echo. Plus, the articulated cow skeleton couldn’t come along, so the space that had been dedicated to it in the new classroom was now bare. On top of that, the school administration sent down a decree that there could be no nails in the new walls.

Now you know what a quilter does with bare spaces and echoing halls. Jan immediately started on a series of quilts to go in that new classroom. The rebel in her came out. She went down there herself to put the nails in the walls. “They’re not MY boss,” she says LOL!

Here are some of the pieces in her amazing biology series.

Octopi for Nathan

Inspired by her husband’s many coastal class field trips.

The Bug Collection

The first quilt Jan made to help baffle the echoes.

Wee Beasties

My personal favorite. Now how many people do you know who’ve made a bacteria quilt?

Here’s another of Jan’s quilts that I just loved.

Aztec Rose

From the Aztec Rose Garden pattern by Colette Belt. Longarm quilted by Cynthia McGunigle of Mac Quilting, Fresno.

Beautiful pattern, beautiful colors, beautiful appliqué.

Well done Jan!

By Sunday the temperature had gone down to “only” 85. The local residents said they were grateful for the cool weather.

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Kay

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Tea Ceremony by Marjorie Kilcrease, 109 x 120

Most of the teapots are from my Teapots 2 to Appliqué. I got the chance to talk with Marjorie a couple times during the show. She was beaming with pride over her quilt and so was I. Here’s the story of this masterpiece, from Marjorie herself.

When I saw Kay’s book on teapots, I fell in love with it. However, I kept thinking “Are you crazy? This is applique!” I collected oriental fabrics for about two years while I was trying to figure out how to display the teapots. Then I found the center panel with the Geisha holding the teacup.

Next, I found the block pattern called BQ2 by Maple Island Quilts and it looked very oriental to me. I was ready to sew!

This was my second appliqued quilt. I used the directions in the book to enlarge the patterns by 150% so they would fit on a 12″ block. I used a freezer-paper method (ironed to the back) with spray starch to anchor the edges down. Then I used the liquid basting to adhere the teapot parts to the block. The final step was machine-stitching the teapots. My husband designed three blocks for me too. The whole project took about four months.

The quilter, Wendy Knight, did custom quilting. In the black horizontal strips are names of tea or words like ‘happiness’, ‘peace’, etc. The vertical black strips have bamboo quilted in.

I had bought a large backing but still needed to enlarge it to make sure there was enough for the quilter. My husband helped me mimic the front design and we offset the black strips (instead of centering them) and then I used another panel that I found to add a decorative touch.

The quilt is for us and will take its turn on our king-size bed. However, all of my friends want me to put it in our will and leave it to them! They’ll need to discuss that with our two daughters though!

What Marjorie didn’t mention is that her quilt won First Place in Viewer’s Choice!

Congratulations Marjorie!!

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

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Debbie is a regular blog reader and reports that she has been trying to get this book from the library but apparently someone liked it a little too much to bring it back. She plans to use the designs for some Christmas things this year, so hopefully we’ll see some photos soon! But Debbie, no pressure .

In other news, I’m about to embark on a busy spell of traveling to quilt shows. I just finished a couple of mini quilts made out of single blocks from my Baskets to Appliqué Pattern Pack to hang underneath the sampler quilt.

Daisy Basket

Knitting Basket. This one is actually a combination of two different designs. It's fun to mix and match the contents with the baskets.

Here’s where I’ll be.

Sept 8-10, 2011
San Diego Quilt Show
It’s the 30th annual show of the San Diego Quilt Association! The show is held at the beautiful San Diego Convention Center, right on the water.

Sept 17-18, 2011
Quilts & Threads Show
This is the Sierra Quilt Guild’s 22nd annual show, held at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds in Sonora, California.

Sept 24-25, 2011
Kings River Quilt Festival
The Kings River Quilt Guild puts on this 300-quilt show in Reedley, California.

I’ll be home in between times, so I hope to get a few posts in there.

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

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All the projects in this book are super cute, ’30s style, and all incorporate a touch of appliqué. I’ll try to get my hands on a copy of this book in the future.

By then it was time for a little lunch. At Market you sit down wherever, and usually end up striking up a conversation with your neighbors. I started chatting with a couple gals and found out that they were sisters and co-authors of the new book Circle of Nine.

The subtitle is “24 Stunning and Creative Quilts: One Unique Quilt Setting.” A beautiful way to set a collection of nine blocks!

Holy cow, these gals are Janet Houts and Jean Ann Wright, who was editor-in-chief of Quilt Magazine for 20 years! What a great lunch!

The Checker Distributors Newsletter has a lot of great photos from Market. Pat Sloan also has fun Market recaps up on her blog, and recorded some radio interviews while she was there. More to come from me, including a lot of great information addressing some of the questions in the recent call for topics.

For those of you in the greater Los Angeles area, I’ll be in Northridge this weekend for Quilting in the Valley 2011, an annual show put on jointly by two area quilt guilds. Full information at quiltinginthevalley.com. Hope to see you there!

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

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Julie operates an on-line boutique fabric shop, The Intrepid Thread, stocked with fresh modern fabrics. (And a whole lot of new ones coming after she saw the fabulous lines debuting at Market.)

And get this… Julie said her friend Sally, who was picking her up at the airport, would give me a ride to my hotel too! How’s that for nice? No Supershuttling! They even picked me up and took me back to the airport for the flight home!

These are the sweet gals who adopted me. Julie, left, and Sally, right.

Sally Keller’s shop is Sally’s Angelworks, offering darling mini art quilts, unique fabric camera-strap covers, and other handmade items.

Julie and Sally were there to shop, of course, and also to help out Amanda Herring at the Quilted Fish booth. All of them are part of the Riley Blake design team. Whew, these young quilter gals! Enough energy to power Salt Lake City for a week! Both of them have nice Market photos and stories on their blogs.

Thursday was Schoolhouse, which is a series of short break-out sessions geared toward the shop owner, to introduce what’s new and exciting. This is how it works. Two hours before the whole deal starts, you can get the schedule. There was a huge room full of chairs where you could sit and study the offerings, plotting and scheming on which ones you wanted to go to. There were about 20 sessions in each time slot, so if there were two at once you liked, you had to pick the one you wanted most!

When each session ended, it was that silly thing that happens when elevator doors open… people wanting to get out and people wanting to get in at the same time. There were thousands of bodies, everybody had wheelie bags, and it was one great big milling churn dash. I’ll share the first couple sessions that I went to, and I’ll put up more information later, in bites.

First on the docket I chose to go hear Dan Purcell. Dan is the boy genius son of Bob and Heather Purcell of Superior Threads. Dan, a smartywhistle techie extraordinaire, grew up in the quilting industry and is the nicest, friendliest young guy you would ever want to meet. Dan operates Websites for Quilters, a company offering a whole bunch of services for quilters who want to be on the web and need a little or a lot of help.

One of the great things that Dan told us about is his FindMyFabric.com, a fabric, quilting, and sewing supply search engine. You can search for products offered by hundreds of online stores to find exactly what you are looking for. You can also search by uploading a photo of the fabric you need more of! How cool is that?? And totally free, this one.

Dan also operates QuilterBlogs.com, a directory of quilting blogs that you can check out to see what’s out there in the blogosphere.

I bought Dan’s book so I can learn more valuable nuggets about having a quilting website.

Next I went to the presentation by Stacey Michell of Shades Textiles. Stacey’s main product is SoftFuse, a paper-backed fusible web that has become my favorite. It’s the lightest weight, and it actually works the way this type of product is supposed to work! What a concept! It fuses quickly, the paper comes off right away, and like I said it is extremely lightweight and flexible.

Stacey’s mom is Marti Michell. They were both there at the session to show us how you can use the product to do a prepared-edge type of appliqué for either hand or machine stitching. It’s fused, and the edges are turned! Very interesting! I’ll be giving this a try myself and will report the results here on the blog. I ordered some SoftFuse so I’ll be able to offer it on my website soon.

This was my favorite entry in the quilt display.

I’m Watching You by Barbara McKie of Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Much more to come,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

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I’d now like to go back two weeks in time to the Delta Quilters Guild show in Antioch, California. I was there as a merchant, and after I finished setting up my booth I took a tour of the show buildings. I came around a corner and was flabbergasted to see a beautiful quilt made from my first collection of teapot designs on special display against the wall.

As I drew closer, I saw that this was a memorial area for two of the guild’s members who had passed away during the year. My heart filled up and I felt so honored that the daughter of the lovely lady who had made this teapot quilt had chosen it to represent her mother in the display.

Helen Holoch, quiltmaker.

Her are some closeup shots of individual pots. This lady had a very special collection of fabrics, I’d say!

Thank you, Helen, and thanks to your daughter Nancy, and also to guild member Terry Matejcek, who helped me round up the information about the quilt and gave me permission to post the photos and the story.

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

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It wasn’t until the October PVQA meeting that I had a chance to see the completed quilt. So exciting!! It was red-hat-letter day for me, as there’s nothing better than seeing what others have done with your designs.

How darling! I didn’t know a lot about the Red Hat Society, so I asked them to send me some information about it.

The Red Hat Cats, who created this self-portrait quilt from your book, is a local chapter of the Red Hat Society. Two of us purchased your book at the last PVQA show, and the members worked from the books together to create the blocks in the quilt.

The Red Hat Society-Fun and Friendship After Fifty-is a “disorganization” of women. Sue Ellen Cooper, the founder and Exalted Queen Mother was inspired by the “When I am an Old Woman” poem written by Jenny Joseph. The very first Red Hat, given to a friend of hers who was turning 50, is now in the Smithsonian.

We get together to have fun, and we are very good at it. Our chapter meets once a month to sew together, and we have monthly field trips (most recently to Half Moon Bay for lunch and pumpkin picking) and what are now traditional yearly events such as a Holiday Cookie Exchange, Summer Potluck and Croquet tournament, and a Winter Soup Potluck. We all belong to other organizations, but we tell ourselves often that this group is the one that we cherish most. There’s a huge span of ages from a Pink Hat (under 50) teacher in her thirties to women in their late seventies. Everyone is supportive, active, and FUN. I’m sure you can tell that from the blocks on the quilt.

Thank you for inspiring us with your book. We loved making the quilt blocks, and Shary Lewis had fun assembling the quilt. Carole Donovan quilted it at one of our sewing sessions, and we are super pleased with the result.

For more information about the Red Hat Society, contact their website at www.redhatsociety.com.

Denise Martin, current Queen Mother of the Red Hat Cats of Los Gatos.

It was great to learn more about the disorganization and about the Red Hat Cats .

Here are some closeups so you can see more of the personalization and detail that each member put on to portray themselves.

This flapper lost a shoe in all the excitement, poor dear.

I love all the little details, embellishments, and additions. They really took my patterns and soared! Not all of the members are quilters, but I heard that they enjoyed learning how to fuse from the ones who are.

We enjoyed sharing our quilt with you at the meeting. We really had a great time creating our “dolls.” Several gals had never done any fusing and they thought this was great fun. We hope to put it in the PVQA Quilt Show and also the SCVQA Quilt Show in 2011. We will take turns hosting the quilt for a month at a time in our homes. My whole family was able to pick out me immediately and it will be fun to hear if other families can do the same.

Participants were: Denise Martin (Queen Mum), Jacquie Christensen, Linda Collins, Karen Cognac, Kimberly Cognac, Carole Donovan, Dee Hallett, Pat Havey, Jeanne Holmes, Shary Lewis, Anhela Oropeza, Joyce Schellenberg, Fay Taylor and Janeanne Walters.

Thanks for a really fun pattern, I am hoping to do it with my granddaughter (she will be 8 in January).

Shary Lewis

My pleasure, one and all!!!

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

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Nightmare on Quilt Street

It has a happy ending, especially for Marble.

Travel note: I’ll be at the Delta Quilters Guild Annual Quilt Show this weekend in Antioch, California. Hope to see you there if you live in the area! Full information at the Delta Quilters Guild website.

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

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