Monthly Archives: February 2015

Kitsap Quilters Guild Show – Viewers’ Choice

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The ballots were tallied and the awards for our quilt show last weekend were made at our guild meeting on Tuesday. I had to share the fantastic Viewers’ Choice quilt with you. The quilt, Daddy’s Home, was pieced and long-arm quilted by Marybeth O’Halloran.MarybethQuilt The center is a Lone Star and the four corner stars are made using a pattern by Karen Stone. Marybeth made this quilt for Jeff and Sena Harvey using three generations of men’s silk ties and Italian shirting. Working with the ties was challenging especially on the corner stars. The silks added to the lush richness of this quilt and were well complemented by the beautiful quilting patterns.

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Look at Marybeth’s exquisite quilting. It’s been fun to see her skills develop over the last few years and she keeps getting better and better! She runs a long-arm quilting business, White Lotus Quilting, on Bainbridge Island, WA and was our quilt show chairperson this year. Congratulations Marybeth, and thank you for sharing your outstanding talents!

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Kitsap Quilters Guild show – the hanging process

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February is quilt show time for my local quilt guild, the Kitsap Quilters, and our show runs for two days, today and tomorrow at the Kitsap Fairgrounds in Silverdale. Yesterday, I spent five hours helping to hang the 200 quilts and took some pictures to share. It’s fun to see it progress from an empty hall to a beautiful exhibit.

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Kitsap County covers quite a large area and we had several drop off places for the quilts. The drop-off people arrived early with the quilts that they had gathered. The quilts were sorted numerically in their categories and then placed on the appropriate spot on the floor which was labeled. The upright poles have slots in the top into which are inserted the hooks on the ends of the cross-pieces.

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Each cross-piece has a white sheet with sleeve at the top. The pole is inserted through the sleeve. The quilts are required to have hanging sleeves and each has a metal dowel. The cross-pieces support two quilts, one on either side of the sheet and the metal dowels are leashed on using the plastic zip-ties. This is much easier than in former years, when the quilts had to be pinned onto the white sheets.

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The show looks great – do come if you in the vicinity. We have some extremely talented quilters in the group and there is a wide variety of quilts made using different techniques. We also have several vendors as well as a boutique run by guild members and silent auction baskets containing all kinds of quilting supplies and goodies. I’m planning on returning today and will post another couple of blogs about it in the coming weeks.

 

The Disappearing Pinwheel

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My small quilt group met recently and our prolific member, Joanne Bennett, shared an attractive and ingenious pattern with us. Watch the video and give it a go!

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The technique used is the “Disappearing Pinwheel” demonstrated in this video by Jenny Doan from Missouri Star Quilts. The block is remarkably easy to construct beginning with two 10″ squares of contrasting values (in the above example light cream fabric paired with a color). Large Pinwheels are constructed and then cut into nine pieces. The center piece is the small Pinwheel and you also get four half-square triangles and four squares made of two rectangles. Rotate these pieces to make the Shoo-fly or Monkey Wrench patterns surrounding the small Pinwheels. In the version below, Joanne has switched the Pinwheels to create more variety in the colors of each block.

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The Quarter Inch Seam Allowance

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One aspect of teaching that I enjoy is learning about new quilting tools from my students. When I taught recently at Quilters on the Rock, Whidbey Island, a lady had a plastic gadget to gauge precise seam allowances. An accurate 1/4″ seam allowance is very important especially when pieced sections of blocks are joined to non-pieced sections. If the seam allowances are off by even a tiny fraction, the error is compounded with multiple seams and can cause serious piecing problems.

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This little gem is made by Bonnie Hunter and included as a freebie if you purchase one of her books. However, if you go to her website, you can order these in quantities of six ($24 for a six pack). The seam guide is easy to use and it works! Simply place the machine needle through the appropriate hole with the plastic aligned squarely on your machine bed. Then position tape along the edge and remove the gadget. Butt the raw edges of your fabric against the edge of the tape as you sew and you will have a perfect seam allowance.

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