New York Travel Time

Over the weekend, Mom and I packed up the car and headed to the Jamestown, NY area (near Chautauqua). We were invited to come and do a couple workshops with one of the local guilds and have a little trunk show too!

 On the first day, we started with Mom teaching the Cactus Flower Tablerunner by Judy Niemeyer. The girls did an amazing job learning the paper piecing technique!

You can see the evidence by the organized piles and the intent concentration. :)

Progress was being made by all!

It was a nice sized group and everyone was using completely different fabrics. 

 Here's a little more evidence to prove how much work was accomplished!

 And here's some sample blocks that were made at the end of the day. This one was bright batiks...

 There were some primitive Civil War type prints.

And even a Christmas version!

 Kim was our wonderful host and at the meeting that night she showed off her blocks and the pattern that we made.

  The girls that made it to the meeting after class showed off their blocks too!

It was so neat to see them all come together and how different all of the fabrics were.

This is a great group and we had a fun time. Later that night we headed over to the B&B to crash before my class the next day. I'll be back tomorrow to post pictures!

Cactus Flower Table Runner

Mom and I have been working diligently on making all sorts of samples of the Judy Niemeyer patterns we carry at the shop. I'm still working on my Bali Wedding Star, but it's not my main focus at the moment so progress has been slow, but I did manage to finish up this beauty:

 This is one of the kits we made at Cottonpickers for the Cactus Flower pattern. Mom is working on the other one and as soon as we get it finished I'll show it to you too. When we chose these fabrics, we knew we wanted to make a kit or two and I took one look at the batiks on the shelf and four of these fabrics were sitting right next to each other begging to be used.

There are actually three different fabrics in the spokes of the sunburst, but they are so gradual it doesn't show immediately. I think they show more on Mom's version (it's burgundy and green and tan = awesome). 

 I quilted this with two different colors of green. I used a fine light green thread for the lighter fabrics and a lime green that I love for the spokes and the setting triangles.

 I used the same lime green for the back and it works so well with this cyan Bella Solid. It really shows the quilting and gives it just a bit of flare that it would not have had if I used a matching thread.

 Hardly at all do I mismatch the thread, but this combo works so well together I had to. Plus this design is so playful it can handle it.

Yay! I finished something and it's bound and everything! I hate to say that hasn't been happening much in the past few months, but I'm really trying to focus on reorganizing me and my time. It's not been easy so far, but I'm really trying to put balance into this crazy life I'm in. Hope to show more finished projects here in the future. Come back tomorrow for a recap of the Glacier Star quilts I've shown you, it'll be exciting!

Cactus Flower Progress

I've taken a small break from my Bali Wedding Star to work on new patterns and smaller projects that are needed sooner. The Cactus Flower pattern from Quiltworx is one of those smaller projects. I have all of my larger spike pieces done and trimmed, now I need to make the center sections and put this top together.

I haven't been able to show much of what I've been working on, and even though this isn't complete, I thought you all might like a small glimpse of it.

As I continue to work on this quilt I will show the progress. It's coming along nicely!