Maine State Quilt Show

We just got back from our day at the Maine State Quilt Show.  Maine has a statewide guild, with chapters throughout the state.  Each of those chapters can have a show of there own, but once a year, there is a huge show in our capital, Augusta with quilts from all over the state.  So today, Brenda, Suzanne and I drove up and had a ball!  Of course, we stopped at a couple of Mardens along the way (huge discount chain here in Maine, and they have a fabric section....yay!)

There was quite a lot of variety this year again.....that's always nice!  And I noticed quite a few quilts have those little sparkle dots (like a small rhinestone) attached to them.  And a lot of beading as well.  Several quilts had so much quilting.....micro-stippling really.....that I'll bet they were stiff as a board!  But WOW, the quilting was really great!

I think you can click on most of the pics and get better detail.

The show is held at the Civic Center, and totally fills the floor.  Vendors line all of the walls, and an additional room!  The quilts were displayed in rows that were probably only 8 feet across to the next quilt, so standing back and getting full shots was nearly impossible......most of the pics are of the main design, or a special block I really liked.

This was really lovely, and the textured from the quilting was great!

Fun colors....and I really liked the built up circles.

These next 6 pics are all miniature quilts.....really fabulous!

This was the largest, and was only about 18 inches square!

This had the little sparkles attached.....and it truly glowed!  Wonderful quilting on it, too!

This was my favorite quilt.....it was such a splash of fun colors.....not my palette at all, but I just love it!

Gorgeous.....both of them!

Amazing hand quilting and applique on this one.....I just love the colors in it, too!  Who knew yellow and red could look so good together!  lol

This had a really sweet border with those sprigs of flowers.

The applique and the hand quilting on this one was so beautiful!  Really lovely work.

The show also had an antique quilt room, with more than a dozen amazing quilts, dating back as far as 1830's.    Unfortunately, they would not allow pictures of the antique quilts.....dang!

Suzanne purchased a great quilt kit from one of the vendors, and also a book she's been wanting.  Brenda and I behaved ourselves, and only spent a smidgen at Mardens on the way home.

And just before we got to Suzanne's house to drop her off.....she showed us a fun little local 'quirk'.  This is a tree stump turned upside down, and the roots have been planted with petunias!  It's so fun!  And there was a second one on the other side of the house, but not near as big.

That was quite a feat turning that tree upside down and 'replanting' it so it would stay!  Yikes!  As I walked around it, I saw the soaker hose peeking out of the center.....so they are really working at keeping those flowers going!  I love this!  Totally cool!

And now I'd better get busy on some quilting.....there are a few priorities already stacking up!  Oy!

Hope you are having a great weekend!

regan

The humidity is gone.....Yay!

That horrible humidity is finally gone......thank goodness!  I was never meant to be in hot weather......I grew up in Seattle, and I moved to Maine for a reason!  We like it cool!  About 75 degrees is as hot as I ever want it!  And 65 is perfect!  lol  So this last week of 100+ degrees was unbearable to me!

Of course, it was great for the garden!  We've been picking over a dozen zucchini EVERY day; I've taken bags of them to work several times, and everyone is quite amazed that my plants are producing already.....most around here have not begun!  I guess it's all that TLC we give them..... and I talk to them......little pep talks, really!  Yay plants.....go go go!  lol

And the cukes have been steady, as well......so I just put up a baker's dozen pints of mustard pickles!  Yum!

Last week, during the heat wave, my friend Brenda and I went to the slots casino.....she won big (over $350!) and I didn't!  lol  But that's ok, cuz before we went to the casino, we stopped at that fabulous little antique shop that I bought those two yard-long pics at back in June.  At that time, they had two other pics, and I really thought about them then, but thought I should wait......no sense in pushing hubby's patience off the charts!  I was really hoping they still had those two pics, and YES THEY DID!  Woohoo!

This is all 4 of them (leaning against the wall, so I took the pic sideways), the 2 newest ones are the bottom one and the 2nd one down.  The second one down is a military shot, and the bottom one is a shot of a White House Reception on May 27, 1926 of the Northern Baptist Convention.  And there must be thousands of people in this shot, the most I've ever seen in one of these pics, and you can see damn near every face (except the way back section)......and they are all beautifully dressed....of course, they're at the White House!  It's really quite a sight!  I love 'em!

And they were only $40 and $45!  Eeegads!  How lucky am I!?!

So those made up for not winning at the casino!

Nothing to show quilty-wise.....but I'm getting in my sewing room tonight!  Or else!  lol

Hope you are having a great day!

regan

Our group's charity, and the local quilt show!

I've mentioned before that I go to a Wednesday night quilt group at our town office.  We started it just over a year ago, and we meet twice a month.  And I love our little group.  Most times there are just 4 or 5 of us, and we talk and hand stitch and look at quilt magazines, and for 3 hours, it's all about quilts!  Yay!

So a few meetings back, I told the girls that I was wanting to do something with the group as a form of a charity.  Most of us have huge stashes, and there is no reason not to use up some of that fabric!  But there are all sorts of 'quilt charities' out there, and I wanted to do something a little different, and for our own community.  We live out here in the sticks.....and it's Maine.....so in the winter, nearly every year, someone gets burned out of their house.  Whether it's the faulty space heater, or a chimney fire that gets out of control....the whole darned place will burn to the ground!  All I can think is that it must be quite terrifying while it's happening, and then the reality hits, that you have nothing left!  How awful!

So I asked the girls at our meeting if they wanted to start 'stockpiling' a collection of quilts that we could give as the need arises......so the next time someone has just been burned out......we would be ready with a quilt or two to help them get started on putting there 'home' back together!

They liked that idea, so we started it last meeting.  It was very impromtu, in fact, we hadn't really put together an idea for a quilt yet, so since I had brought my 2.5" strip bin (it was way too full!), and Pat brought several bags of scraps, and I had my machine......we started sewing up strips!  Everything in blue!  I left the meeting with a ton of strip pieces connected in long strings of about 65" long.....and yesterday I sewed all the strings together!  Yippee!

Here it is, on a queen bed.  We had made so many strings, and I had just kept sewing, that when I trimmed it up, it was 64 by 98!  Sheesh!  So I took off several rows, and now it's 64 x 84.  And tonight is our group meeting, so we can decide if it's getting borders, or just quilt and bind it!  I love how it turned out, and with the extra rows that I took off, we can start another one, maybe with several different color sections, blue (done!), yellow, green, red, orange.....whatever we have an abundance of in our scraps!  And I'm hoping to get a little more organized tonight, and we can 'plan' the next quilt we work on!

Last Saturday, I went to a local quilt show, and got several pics of some really nice quilts!  I hadn't made this show in about 6 years, so I was quite surprised at how much it's grown, and the variety of quilts.  (I remember the last time I went, it seems they had all worked on the same pattern, cuz there were way too many of the same quilt.....kindof silly!)

I loved the colors in this quilt, and her piecing was really accurate!

 This was a stunner.....I love it!

 Great border design!

I just loved this block from it.....I think I need to make it!

Love all the colors in this quilt.....it's so fresh and happy!

This one screams Autumn.....but I love that!

A very sweet little wall hanging!  I love tumblers!

The upper right corner block really caught me eye.....I love the two-toned background.  I've been wanting to do a quilt with that idea, using one of my antique hooked rugs as my pattern.....it's gorgeous!

I guess I'm loving anything with flying geese since I've just done one with a bunch.....I can really appreciate them now!  And this quilt just pops!  And I just noticed that the double red line border and the fat green border don't go all the way around!  Huh!  I didn't even notice that when I was looking right at it!  Guess all the colors were distracting me!  But I like that.....it's so different!

This was probably my favorite quilt there.....it's so lovely, and my friend Rita (she just turned 85!) just made a quilt like this using just the applique blocks.....hers is a stunner, too!  I really like the alternate block on this quilt, as well.....I like to keep pics of 'good alternate block effects' for when I'm trying to put something together!  It always helps to see it, before I draw the whole dang thing out!

Ok......that's the show.....hope you enjoyed it!

Have a wonderful day!

regan

Just needs the borders!

I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since my last post, but I haven't really been quilting that much, and I guess that's when I really think I have something to blog about.

Yesterday I hunkered down, and finally put all the rows together for Jeanne's wedding quilt.

I just need to trim the sides and add the borders, and the top will be done!  I plan on making a pieced back, using large pieces of the same fabrics from the front, something much more calming than the front!  Of course, my hubby immediately said that we needed to keep this one, and make her something else!  Yeah, right!  But I do really like this color mix, so something using this scheme might be in our future.....we'll see!

I actually really enjoyed making all the flying geese.....there are 480 of them......and I had never really made more than just a couple at a time before.....so it was a little surprising how fun they were to make.  And I have  a huge bag of bonus hst's now......maybe that will be a wall hanging, or maybe I can channel Bonnie Hunter and come up with a whole nuther quilt using a bag full of something that should be put to use!  I've always loved how she does that......has a drawer full of 4-patches or something, and designs a quilt around them!  I love that!  I just wish that kind of thinking came naturally to me.....I'm going to have to sit down with some graph paper and play for a while before I come up with 'it'.

On the non-quilty news front......I have a new refrigerator!  Woohoo!  Okay, you may be saying, "Big Whoop".....but it really is!  This is the first NEW refrigerator I've ever picked out and owned!  Everywhere we ever lived, there was a fridge already there, so we lived with it.  And most times, they were fairly new (maybe 5-10 years old), and so they were fine.  I've never been a gadget girl, or bells and whistles girl, so the basic model is fine with me.  But the fridge in this house, that we've lived in now for 13 years, was probably from the early 70's!  No kidding!  I tried googling the codes from the back, and it predates the listings!  So this baby is pushing 40, and I've been saying for about 5 years now, "When the dang thing finally dies, I'm getting MY fridge.....the kind with the freezer on the bottom!"  And every time we have been to the mall in the last 5 years, we've parked at the Sears end, so we can walk through the appliance section, I can find MY fridge, open it up, look inside, do a little dream of how great my stuff will look in there, close the door, and head for the real purpose of the mall trip.

Well, the old fridge did not die, but we were thinking that because it's so danged old, it's probably the cause for at least a third of our electric bill......sucking up all that energy just to run it's tired old motor!  And Sears (bless them!) had MY fridge on fabulous-amazing-can't-miss-it sale.......so it was TIME!

And tomorrow I can start putting stuff into it!  Yay!  I can't wait!

Call me a happy girl.....no more bending over to find stuff in there anymore!  And the doors have HUGE adjustable shelves, so a giant bottle of everything will fit in the door!  OMG!  And see-through produce bins!  I'm just so damned happy!  (Yeah......I know......I'm easily pleased!)

Hope you have a great weekend!

Regan  :o)