Yearly Archives: 2016

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I left my family at home for a long weekend away to visit QuiltCon West. I've been home for four days and I think I'm still catching my breath. In short, QuiltCon was awesome. I'm both inspired and overwhelmed. So. Much. Awesome.

I flew down to Pasadena on Wednesday, checked into the hotel, checked into the conference and grabbed dinner. I proceeded to take 21 hours of workshops over the next three days, plus attending one panel, viewing the whole show and visiting vendor booths. My sister joined me on Friday, when I only had one 3-hour workshop. I left Sunday morning to fly home in time to spend a lovely afternoon with the kiddos, lego shopping and eating out. Did I mention that I'm still tired?

As QuiltCon approached I worried that I hadn't left myself any time for socializing. All three evenings I was in workshops, so there was no option for dinner meet-ups. Luckily I ended up in workshops with some members of my Modern Quilt Guild, as well as a couple quilt blogger friends who I hadn't yet met in real life. It was nice to get to know people a little better as well as meet some new friends, but I will definitely not be over-scheduling myself to this degree next time I make it to QuiltCon. I think I missed a lot of great stuff in the lecture and panel offerings, too. I've caught bits of a couple lectures through social media which I've enjoyed. That said, the workshops were great. I started fun new projects and learned some new skills. More on that soon, plus an opportunity to win some of my QuiltCon swag (so be sure you're following the blog so you don't miss those posts!). For now, check out the QuiltCon 2016 winners.

I'm linking up to the Week 3 Progress linkup for the 4x7 Sewing Challenge.

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This week Trina picked Lorinda's photo of Skywalker. Since I've used green the past two weeks I wanted to avoid that obvious color. I also wanted to avoid brown (sorry, Skywalker!) since I have an aversion to it in quilts. That left me with limited options and I decided to go for this greyscale palette. You could easily add a color (like green), because I think pretty much anything works with a black and white palette.

I created my palette with Palette Builder 2.1 by Play Crafts.

I love that my fabric picks feature two Alison Glass fabrics (love her work!) and two from Karen's Blueberry Park line (every time I see these I wonder why I don't own more of them!). The Kite Tails fabric reminded me of a country fence. I chose Bergen for the natural shapes and the Grow and Dalmatian prints for their representations of nature. I especially like the butterflies in Grow (again, why don't I own this!?). :-) I think a solid white could be used instead of Ink to give the eye more of a place to rest.

Solids:
Kona White
Kona Ash
Kona Steel
Kona Coal
Kona Charcoal
Kona Black

Prints:
Ink in White by Alison Glass, Andover Fabrics
Kite Tails in Silver by Karen Lewis, Robert Kaufman
Grow in Andesite by Alison Glass, Andover Fabrics
Bergen in Slate by Lotta Jansdotter, Wyndham Fabrics
Painters Canvas in Black by Laura Gunn, Michael Miller
Dalmatian in Black by Karen Lewis, Robert Kaufman

Check out the other palettes this week at:

See other palettes on Instagram at #colorplayfriday.

If you'd like to participate in Color Play Friday you can visit In An Otter Life or Laurel, Poppy and Pine for the rules, their contact information, and next week's photo.

Thanks for visiting!

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Week two of my 4x7 Sewing Challenge isn't as flashy as the first. I cut out fabric for the next four blocks. That was 228 pieces. Okay, a few of the background pieces were cut from previous blocks. Still. It's kind of amazing how much time all that pressing and cutting took. I did start sewing, but since I'm working assembly line style there isn't much to show for it. Here are the piles.

In order to keep track of the placement of my pieces for my scrappy background, I lay all the pieces out and photograph each block. As I piece my units together for each block I go back to the photos to make sure everything is ending up where I wanted it.

I have a giant pile to assembly line chain piece. For the many places that I'm sewing a square to a corner of a square or piecing a square to a rectangle for a flying geese unit I like to sew a second seam 1/2" from the first so that when I trim off my extra triangles, they are already pieced into HSTs.

In week three, I've already fallen off the sewing wagon. So far, my selfing "sewing" time this week has been spent prepping for QuiltCon. Certainly my 21 hours of class over the next three days will catch me back up. Once I'm home I'll get back to sewing my Swoon blocks. It would be awesome to get these four blocks done by the end of the month.

I fly down to QuiltCon in Pasadena, CA today. Are you going? What are you most excited about? I'm taking five workshops and if my head isn't spinning too much from all that info, I hope to connect with some quilters in real life. Unfortunately, as a QuiltCon newbie, I scheduled three of my workshops in the evening, so dinner meet-ups are out for me. Note to self for future years. ;-)

Last night I showed off my fabric pulls for my QuiltCon workshops on a Periscope broadcast. You can view the video on my katch account or through Periscope during the 24-hour replay window (I'm @sarahgoer there).

I'm linking up to the Week 2 Progress linkup for the 4x7 Sewing Challenge.