August 30, 2017

Kimberbell "Jingle All the Way" Class Two

The next class I will be teaching at Quilts and Lace is the second Jingle All The Way installment.  It will be on September 12 at 10:00.  The blocks I will be demonstrating will be the snow globes, the Jingle All the Way blocks, and the peppermint blocks.

The snow globes are adorable.  They are done in applique but before the last fabric, which is vinyl, is tacked down, you place a little teaspoon of beads, sequins, or glitter snowflakes on top of the design.  You can see here in my samples what they look like.


Gingerbread Snow Globe

Candy Cane Snow Globe

Tree Snow Globe


Gingerbread Snow Globe 2

I used little round sequins and snowflake shaped sequins that I had bought from Stampin Up inside of them.

I had a little bit of trouble with the Jingle All the Way design.  My thread kept breaking when it was stitching out the decorative tack down stitches around the appliqued letters, but I think that might be resolved with using a different stabilizer.


Jingle all the way

Then last up for this months class will be the peppermints.  We will need a total of five of them.  Here are a few.

Peppermints

I already have the front of the quilt stitched together and it is turning out very cute.

Next month we will work on the little houses, the Dec 25 block, and the holly berries. 








August 17, 2017

Quilt Competition Update

I know that I am a little overdue for an update on the three quilt competitions that I planned to enter this year.  I thought now would be a good time to let you know which two quilts have been completed and entries sent in,  and what progress I have made on the third one.  If you forgot what the three competitions were you can catch up here.  I also did an update here.  Make sure you read all the way through, there is an exciting announcement near the bottom of this post!

The Kaffe Fassett "I am an Artisan" quilt challenge for the International Quilt Festival in Houston was completed and entered first.  I still can't show you a picture of the final quilt because the winners will not be announced until October.  On July 7th I received a letter which stated:


Dear Cherri Kincaid,

Congratulations on your quilt Blue Plate Special being selected for inclusion in the special exhibit I Am an Artisan Challenge.

This was super exciting since it was the first quilt contest I have entered other than the Hoffman Challenge.  I will just have to be patient until October!  I did think maybe another small sneak peek would be ok.


Next I thought I would update you on my progress with the Moda Bella Solids competition.  They asked that we use an original design and that we use all the twelve solid colors of fabrics that they picked, and nothing else.  That by itself was a challenge!  The quilt that I designed has a total of 80 blocks.  All 80 blocks were stitched on my trusty Babylock embroidery machine.  As of today, I have sewn all the blocks together, made and attached a border, made a back with the leftover fabrics, and I have it almost quilted.  Remember this quilt is 72 inches by 90 inches!  It is the largest quilt I have ever made and it weighs a ton.  Quilting it is going to give me great arm and shoulder muscles.  I won't be able to show you this quilt either since it hasn't been submitted to the competition yet, but I do think you should get a little peek of it also! 

Sew Cute!

Last but in no way the least, is the Hoffman Challenge.  I love entering this contest every year.  I am not positive, but I think I have entered it at least six years.  I have been very lucky that every quilt I have entered, except one, has been selected to travel for a year to different quilt shows and locations all over the US. 

This years entry was one of my favorites, I just loved that one whole row of those little shirts.  I think they made the whole quilt, they were just that cute.  I have to thank both Chantell and Mia for their contributions of designs.  They both did an excellent job of digitizing exactly the designs that I needed to accomplish the final design of the quilt.

On July 14th I received this letter:


Dear  Cherri,

Thank you for entering our 2017 Hoffman Fabric Mastery Challenge.
We have completed our initial jury selection and would like to include your piece(s) for the next step of our challenge.  This includes the physical judging to decide if your piece will travel in the Mastery Hoffman Challenge Shows beginning September 2017 and continuing through September 2018
We have determined that we would like to see and consider the following pieces presented by you.

1.         Aloha Hoffman

Exciting right?  So one of the reasons that I waited until today to write this post is because they let us know on Facebook that they would be announcing the winners Aug 16th on their web page.  I thought it would be fun to see if my name showed up as a winner. 

Since the judging is over I believe its ok to show you some pictures of the finished quilt.  First is a picture of the whole quilt.

Aloha Hoffman

Here is a close up of some of the blocks:


See those little shirts?  The collars and pockets are '3-D'.  Sew cute!  As you can tell I was going for a Hawaiian theme for the quilt.  That is why I titled it Aloha Hoffman.  All of the embroidery designs are applique and if you look closely you can see where the 'challenge' fabric has been used.

So?  Did you go look?  Did you see?  I won the Hoffman Choice award!!!!  You have to scroll down just a little, but there it is!  For some reason they moved it from the applique category to the pieced category, but that is ok with me! 

Now for the really exciting news!  I received a letter from the home office of Hoffman fabrics.  Walter Hoffman fell in love with my quilt and when he found out that it was for sale he bought it!  So not only did I finally win a prize, I won an even bigger prize.  Can you imagine?  My quilt is going to have a "forever" home at the Hoffman Fabric Office in Mission Viejo in California!!!!  I have seen some pictures of Mr. Hoffman and he is always wearing a Hawaiian shirt.  I am thinking those little shirts are the reason he loved my quilt!

Now I have known for about a week that I won, but this morning when I went to see it "in print",  I found out that my friend Sally Dorer also won the same prize in a different category!  Super excited for her also.  Here is a picture of her quilt.  It's under the Mixed Technique category.  Yes, I have some really talented friends!


Who Spilled the Paints?




August 01, 2017

Kimberbell Christmas "Jingle All The Way" Quilt

For my next teaching project at Quilts and Lace I decided to make the Machine Embroidery version of the new "Jingle All The Way" quilt from Kimberbell.  I will be using a fabric line called Jingle Birds by Keiki for Moda fabrics. 

The quilt is very cute and in Kimberbells usual style, it includes lots of different techniques that adorn the quilt with dimensional decorations.  Included are dimensional gift tags, ribbons, buttons, chenille flocked trees, vinyl snow globes, and even little fringe wreaths.  Here is a picture from the front of the instruction book.




Here are just a few samples of fabric from Jingle Birds that I will be using:



I will be breaking up the different blocks of the quilt into several classes.  The first one is August 15 which I will be demonstrating how to make the applique candy cane blocks, the Chenille Trees and the stockings with a Chenille cuff.

The Chenille trees are made in the usual applique technique until the last step.  You then add three layers of the same fabric on top of the already appliqued tree and the embroidery machine adds the 'chenille stitches'.  You then remove the basting stitches and with a fine tip pair of scissors, lift the top three layers of fabric and cut a straight line between the channels of stitching.

Here is a picture showing the applique finished but the top fabrics for the Chenille haven't been added yet.


And here is what it looks like with the Chenille layers added and cut and then the edges frayed.


How cute is that?  The next block I will be demonstrating is the stockings with the Chenille cuff.  It is done just like the trees, but just the cuff has the extra three layers of fabric added and then cut and frayed.


And the last block that we will work on in class will be the Candy Canes.  Pretty simple straight forward applique.


Per the pattern instructions, I made four of the Chenille tree blocks, two of the stockings with a Chenille cuff blocks, and two of the candy cane blocks.  A good start!  I really think it is turning out nice with these fabrics.  The blues, reds, and greys look really great together.

Next month I will be working on the peppermint twists, The appliqued Jingle All The Way signs, and the snow globes.