October 31, 2017

Blue Plate Special - 'I Am An Artisan' Quilt Contest

The day has finally arrived!  I can now share with you what has been happening with my quilt entry in the Kaffe Fassett  'I Am An Artisan' contest.  Here is a picture of the whole quilt that I can now share.

Blue Plate Special
First it was an honor just to have my quilt picked as a finalist.  I found out that they actually had 14 finalists instead of the 12 they originally announced they would select.  I am guessing they had a pretty hard time deciding which ones to select since there were so many awesome quilts to choose from.  Since I was picked as a finalist, I knew that my quilt would be hanging at the Houston Quilt Market in late October, and the Houston Quilt show in early November.  I was beyond excited just with that news.

Then I received an email from the girls organizing the contest and they asked if I would mind shipping my quilt a little early.  They had been approached by the folks at the International Quilt Festival Quilt Scene magazine who wanted to pick one of the quilts from the contest to highlight in an article in the 2017 issue of the magazine.  The article was about some of the special exhibits that would be showing at the festival this year. I am not sure how many of the fourteen quilts were mailed to them.  I was not told who they picked, I think they wanted it to be a surprise.  And what a surprise it was, they picked mine!!!

Blue Plate Special Article
Quilt Festival Magazine
This was all very exciting, but I still had to wait to hear when they were going to award the ribbons.  It had been mentioned that Kaffe Fassett would be picking the first place winner and the Honorable Mention quilt at the show.  I had also been told that they were going to pick the Viewers choice award from votes at the show and votes from a Facebook post where anyone could vote.  All very exciting, and they finally chose all three yesterday.  I was amazed and excited to hear that I had won the Viewers Choice Award!!!!!  How awesome is that?

Quilt with Ribbon
I of course have to thank my friends Chantell and Mia for their wonderful help with the embroidery designs.  Chantell is a genius with digitizing in the hoop quilt blocks and Mia is an amazing artist who drew and digitized the 'Blue Plate' embroidery designs that I used in the blue blocks.  Here is a close-up of some of the different blocks that I stitched with my Babylock Destiny machine.

Close Up of Blue Plate Special
Each and everyone of the designs are an absolutely perfect match at enhancing the amazing fabrics of the 'I Am An Artisan' line that Kaffe Fassett designed for Free Spirit fabrics.  I couldn't be happier with the results.  I think it is one spectacular quilt and I am beyond words to express my happiness at both having a winning quilt and being published in such a great magazine! 

Thank you Free Spirit Fabrics, thank you Kaffe Fassett for your inspirational fabrics, thank you to everyone at the Quilt Festival Quilt Scene magazine for choosing my quilt, thank you Chantell and Mia, and thank you to everyone who supports and encourages me, you keep me enthused and help me keep creating and moving forward.


October 04, 2017

Jingle All the Way Finish

I finally finished the Kimberbell Jingle All the Way Christmas quilt!  Every time I thought I was all done, I would realize that there was just one more thing that needed to be worked on.  But I think the end results are super cute and its going to be very hard to turn it over to Beth at Quilts and Lace to be hung up in the shop.

Here is a picture of the whole quilt:

Jingle All the Way Quilt

Here is a close up of the little houses, and no they are not really lights even though they look like it.  Just the magic of using flash photography!  The pattern had little mylar lights that you could stitch out, but they would have been too fragile to withstand hanging up where they would be touched constantly.

Little Houses

Next I will just show you lots of different parts of the quilt including the packages and tags, the trees, and the snow globes.






I quilted it several different ways.  I used some machine embroidery stipple designs in different sizes that Chantell provided, I also used some machine embroidered Christmas designs from Anita Goodesign, and I also free motioned with my Babylock sewing machine around all of the applique designs. 

It has been a lot of fun stitching and sewing this project!  I was also showing off my progress on a Kimberbell Facebook Group called Kimberbellas and Fellas.  They are giving prizes away each Monday I think through Nov 1.  I won a couple of weeks ago and I got to pick out a prize.  I chose Happy Everything Pocket tags.  I can't wait to get started with them.  I received it in the mail today. Sew much fun!