Tag Archives: La Passacaglia

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This past week my family was in New Mexico for the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. My sister and brother-in-law have been a couple times, and it sounded like a great experience. We decided we'd meet there for this year's Fiesta. Bonus! Balloons and baby nephew! Here are a few highlights from the photos I took.

 

Shopping

While I was in town for the Fiesta, I visited Hip Stitch, a lovely quilt shop located conveniently a mile down the street from my hotel. The kids and I had a great time. They each had $10 to spend and were able to spend nearly every penny. They both decided on some hot air balloon fabric. I'm counting on one of them being willing to give me a small piece to make myself a hot air balloon mini quilt to remember the trip, since I didn't seem to win the awesome quilt being raffled off at the Fiesta (see below). They each got yardage of these crazy sushi making cats. No idea what their plans are for that one! My daughter also picked up a little of the Schmitties in dusty blue, from Cotton and Steel's Cat Lady line.

I had no problem finding a lot of fabric I like in the shop, and since we were shopping on my birthday, I got 20% off my entire purchase! What a lovely surprise. My mom had given me some money to spend on my trip and I found the perfect souvenirs, FABRIC! Oh, I also bought a Zirkel. Thanks, Mom! I picked a couple from Tula Pink's Slow and Steady, and a few that will work in my Swoon project, including my first cut of Moda Grunge. I couldn't resist taking the last two yards from the bolt of the rainbow fabric. Never pass up a good rainbow fabric!

Additionally, we did a day trip to Santa Fe. (Non-sewing related side note: If you're ever in Santa Fe, check out Meow Wolf! So much fun!) We stumbled across the Quilt Fiesta, a small quilt show put on by Northern New Mexico Quilt Guild. So I got to do a little more fabric shopping. ;-)

 

Beautiful Quilts

It was such a nice surprise to run across the Quilt Fiesta. Here are a few of my favorite quilts from the show.

Purple Rain by Deb Martinez
Artists' Description: The quilt used up so many of my scraps! The back used even more. Just working through my stash.
Inspiration: Pattern - Patternworks - Japanese Windows

 

Dancing Duo by Donna La Bombard, quilted by Tessa Atwood
Artists' Description: My parents were dancing at my mother's 85th birthday party when I took a photograph. Some of the material in her shirt comes from what she was wearing that day.
Inspiration: Adapted from family photo

 

Under the Sea* by Susan Kayar
Artists' Description: I started with the kit for Underwater Rhapsody by Barbara Jones (AQS) but switched early on to using marine biology textbooks and dive buddies' photos of real fish plus my own fabrics.
Inspiration: Adapted from Underwater Rhapsody by Barbara Jones

*I was unable to get a full shot of the quilt, so this is just the lower half.

 

Nambe Rainbow by Judy Johnson
Artists' Description: I wanted to use my scraps to make a quilt in rainbow colors. I chose a diagonal uneven strip block and an off center barn-raising layout just because I like it.
Inspiration: Original

 

Lone Star by Carol Naranjo, quilted by Millie Young
Artists' Description: My design comes from the Easy Lone Star class taught by Patty Bailey at SFQ in 2014. This is the third quilt I've ever made after learning patchwork and rail fence at SFQ.
Inspiration: class by Patsy Bailey

 

giraffe quilt by Lynne Horpedahl
This quilt was part of a Contemporary Quilting display. I really wanted to take him home with me! :-)

 

Plus, here's the amazing opportunity quilt from the New Mexico Quilters' Association. Some lucky winner got to bring it home from the Balloon Fiesta on Sunday.

 

La Passacaglia

Since I was traveling, I brought along my La Passacaglia project. I need a better storage/travel solution. What do you keep your EPP stuff in? I mostly only worked on it on the airplanes, but I did make some progress and those picky little triangles are growing on me.

 

Improv Curves

I missed my sewing machine while I was away and dove right into my first attempt at improv curves when I got home. I am in love! Here's my first piece.

 

Now that I'm home from vacation, it's time to clean the sewing room and reassess what my priorities are. My Q4 goal post is in draft form, so that'll be up soon. Mostly I'm just overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done around the house as well as all the things sneaking up on my calendar.

Thank you for visiting! I'm linking up to Needle and Thread Thursday and Midweek Makers.

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Some weeks I look back on what I accomplished and I am surprised that I did so much. This is one of those weeks. Kids being back in school and a mostly unscheduled long weekend led to a lot of sewing progress for me.

 

Mysterious Things

Last Thursday the first sewing instructions came out for the Meadow Mystery quilt, by Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs. I managed to finish up my cutting that day, but I haven't yet started the piecing. I have all month to get it done and still be on track, so I've been working on some other projects first. Instagram and Facebook are filled with beautiful versions of the first blocks.

 

Things I Put in the Mail

Yesterday, on the sixth day of the month, I shipped all my bee blocks for the month! This is unheard of. I sent two for my Do. Good Stitches group and one for Shirley in my Bee Hive swarm. Plus the two bonus blocks that I showed you on Monday for my friend Mary. It's so nice to have the monthly commitment already checked off. Sometimes I get them sewn early in the month, but then I usually don't manage to get them out the door until the end of the month.

 

Kid Things

My daughter is making progress on her second quilt. Just like my son's second project, she chose to make a doll quilt. Her's is for a friend. I love that she has been coming into the sewing room to play with her fabric, neatly arranging it on the floor. Over the weekend, I consulted with her on her plan and cut her strips of fabric for her. She pieced them with supervision from me and is so proud that she finished her quilt top in one day. ;-) She raided my remnant binding box to choose something for her quilt and settled on a purple, with a scrappy low volume white to go with it since the purple piece isn't big enough for the entire quilt. She's pinned the purple up on the design wall with her quilt top. (In the first picture you can see a peek of the kitty fabric she's chosen for the backing.)

 

Slow Stitching Things

I get up at 5:30am now. I'm just over a week into this new routine. It means I go to bed at 9:30pm sharp these days, but the kids don't get up until 7:00am so I get a fair amount of time to myself in the mornings. I am not inherently a morning person, but I think this is working. Over the weekend I kept up my schedule, since I figure that's easier than sleeping in on some days. This meant even more time to myself since nobody else in the house had anything to get up early for. I've used this time in a variety of ways, but I spent one of those weekend mornings making progress on my La Passacaglia project. I was halfway through connecting the pentagons, and I finished that step and attached them to the center section. 20 pieces down, 70 to go in this first rosette. Now I need to prep a bunch of itty bitty triangles to make the ten stars that go around this section.

 

Things I Can't Really Show You

Secret sewing is exciting, but it's so hard not to share. Luckily, I have a few friends who I can text pictures to when I'm itching to share but can't post publicly yet. The first project is a quilt that I've finished the top for. I'll be able to show it off once I've given the gift. The second secret project is my Nine-Patch Challenge quilt for Quilt Con that I've finished drafting in Illustrator (with Daisy's help). I've actually designed two versions. I think I'll piece the easier one first and then I'll decide if I want to try to tackle the harder one. My next steps on this project include deciding what colors I want to use and  how to go about piecing the trickier parts.

 

Things That Are Colorful

I love color and I find inspirations in a variety of places. This week presented two color palettes that stood out to me. First, as I'm working on chipping away at pre-washing and putting away my summer fabric acquisitions I stumbled across this palette of solids that reminds me of a vibrant sunset. I have some improv piecing in mind for these lovelies.

My second palette came from a more surprising location, my dishwasher. I opened the dishwasher to find these colorful cups in a line in this order. Deciding I liked them well enough to keep the colors in mind for a future project, I snapped a quick picture. (Don't you just love that awesome 80's tile!?)

These palettes are both particularly interesting to me, because I generally gravitate to the cool colors. I'll have to finish a bunch of other projects before I can dive into these, but I'm keeping them in mind for when I "need" a new project.

Thank you for visiting! I'm linking up to Midweek Makers, Let's Bee Social and Needle and Thread Thursday.