I’ve discovered the secret to making quilts quickly: Just don’t sleep (or at least not too much anyway). But you’d better finish them in a few days, because you wouldn’t want to sew through your fingers or anything like that from lack of sleep. I’m going to make this post quick as well because it’s time for me to catch up on my ZZZZZs.
Last week I attended an excellent CBQ workshop with Patricia Beaver on redwork. I was particularly thrilled because I’ve never done this type of embroidery before and I’d always had the impression that there was some sort of trick to it, kind of like doing French knots. This is my class practice piece (it’s from a BHG pattern found in their Two Color Quilts book). I turned it into a little wall hanging … quilted, bound, and everything by the next morning. My head is positively spinning with ideas I want to explore. Patricia Beaver gave an inspiring trunk show the next morning with a mixture of vintage quilts and ones she made as well. Above is an interesting vintage cross stitch quilt (bed-size). Wow! That is a lot of X’s. From a distance you can see how closely it resembles appliqué. Finally is my October baskets quilt top which I made over the long weekend. Now I’m ahead of schedule for several weeks, since I don’t have to show this top until the meeting at the end of September. I could even quilt and bind it by then if I wanted to, but I’ve got other deadlines to focus on.

Patricia Beaver introduced me to crayon quilts as well, which are tons of fun and very addicting. I’ve been working on a crayon and embroidery quilt project and have one block completed. My daughter Annika made a few crayon blocks as well. If you want to try your hand at crayon quilts, Prang 100% soybean crayons are the ones to look for. I would give you Patricia’s website, but it’s not live yet. She has a lot of really neat vintage patterns, supplies, several different trunk shows, as well as embroidery and crayon quilt workshops.

happy quilting! And thanks as well for all the advice on quilting those large quilt tops. It really is a whole different world from quilting miniatures and small wall hangings, with a completely different set of considerations.