Sample Spree and Set up

Set up is really fascinating. The whole convention center looks like a bomb went off, there's quilts and packing material and huge crates and props and just crap everywhere and in the morning the crews have the carpets down and it all looks amazing.

Not having my camera with me on the first day really threw me off. I did take some photos with Elizabeth's camera and she'll be blogging those. So here's Gina's booth over at The Threaded Pear. I had every intention of going back there and somehow never made it. Their booth was darling. They have a lot of cheery patterns, very hip. Like Gina and Stephanie. Jan Lutz, who designs their apron line, has some wonderful patterns as well. They had great samples at Sample Spree. Gina was packing her camera, I hope they documented it.

This is over at Holly's booth, Lakehouse Dry Goods. She's got a bunch of people contributing designs to show off her incredible lines of fabric. She's outdone herself with Cherry Baby and the new colors of her hydrangea line.

Here's the lines out front of sample spree. I'm all about sneaking in but Elizabeth is a big baby when it comes to that. Thankfully we got in legit this time, helping Holly's crew get their stuff upstairs.

My pictures are all over the place aren't they? Feel free to cringe over it. Here's Brenda and her friend Jeree. Jeree totally CRACKS ME UP. Anyway, Brenda had the back of Holly's booth to display her lovely quilts, so head over to her blog and check her photos. She has more booth photos that are so much better than mine.
This is how Holly makes all the cute tags.. one stamp at a time! I just loved how they looked sitting there.
Hmm. Purses.
Here's Gina unloading her batch of quilts for Holly. I love her cute raw edge applique quilts.

Check out that crate. Brenda gave us a ride to dinner one night and took us out back where all the crates are stored. I love knowing more about how things work.

Up at sample spree Brenda and Jean are getting to work setting up. They completely sold out of charm packs. Glad I got mine.
Robin was there with her mom. Her fabrics are so wonderful. She's now got a distributor in NZ!!! She's another famous person we know.
Ok, more pictures coming up. Go check out Elizabeth's blog.. she's got photos too. Ask her about her sweat shop. I hope some of those photos turn out.

Let's Get This Party Started

This is what it looked like when Elizabeth came and picked me up on Thursday for our flight! Spooky huh?

It was still dark when we got on the plane, our flight left right on time at 6am. We like to get our show on the road with the first flight of the day, that hopefully limits the chances of our luggage getting lost and gives us half a day to have some fun before the work begins. It's all fun, but we like a little pre-market fun.

The plane flew southward and you could see the smoke on the horizon. My heart goes out to all the people who have lost everything.

We had a great flight, got our luggage and headed out in our rental car to Old Town Spring. Had lunch at Guadalupe's (Guadalajara?) just as we'd hoped. Man was it ever good. No pictures of Spring this time, I was driving and just not comfortable trying to figure out where to go and shoot photos all at the same time. Texas was showing us some lovely weather too.

Back at the Hyatt, and really all over the downtown area, there was an amazing thing going on,Monarch butterflies flying all over between the buildings. I could see a lot of them from the hotel room window at the end of the day, the sun shining through their amazing wings like stained glass.

It's really all a blur tonight, I'm exhausted. Lots of people are posting photos, so check here, and here and here. Over the next few days Elizabeth and I will be showing off our photos as well. You may have seen photos at Cheryl's... I guess this is when I confess... I somehow managed to leave my camera battery at the hotel the first day. I KNOW. COULD I BE ANY WORSE??? I totally missed the photo op moment with Cheryl , Roseann and also Amy who came by. Plus just a whole day of pictures. I did day one on Elizabeth's camera.. so she can share those photos.

Thanks for taking me with you Elizabeth!!! I had a wonderful time.. Stay tuned, I'll be collecting my thoughts and photos on the show and the people and the parties.. not to mention CELEBS.

To Market To Market

Tomorrow morning pre-crack of dawn Elizabeth and I will be on our way to the airport. I. CANNOT. WAIT. I'm feeling really excited about going all of a sudden. I can't wait to see Julie on Friday, this guy on the news and this on a plate before me!

I also can't wait to see my bloggy friends (in no particular order) Brenda, Anne, Holly, Jennifer, Heidi, Roseann, Amy, Mary, Cheryl, Tara, Joanna, Gina, Tammy,Cyndi and of course tons of people without blogs who are just as fun and exciting!!! (if I left you off the list I'm sorry, I am all over the map today!)

I have my camera packed and plan on taking lots of pictures, so see you when I get back!!!

The Count Down

Just a few days now till we leave for quilt market. Busy days. Everyone is saying how busy it seems this year, I wonder what's different about it? This is just my third market as a Trusty Sidekick, so I'm not sure, but yeah, even I'm busier. Of course it doesn't take much for me to be busier.

I've been making a lot of drives across town to drop off and pick up. Maybe Elizabeth will show some stuff soon. I've sewn a lot of bindings and taken a lot of pictures.

Saturday I went over for pictures of something, I don't even remember. I've been trying to photograph things in what I thought was my happy bright sunny room, but it turns out I live in a shadow filled dungeon. Very Dark Shadows it seems. I look at the screen filled with tiny postage stamp sized photos and its like shots of a log cabin quilt set in the Sunshine and Shadows setting. Half of each photo in the shadow. Just enough that you don't really see it with the naked eye, so subtle. At this point I'm sure my neighbors are guessing I'm shooting porn when they look out the kitchen window. I have paper across one part of the window, and about 4 lamps at varying heights and I'm holding a floor lamp without the shade up over my head with one hand and taking a picture with the other. Crazy.

Here are some scenes from Elizabeth's work table on Saturday. I see a vintage French button, vintage flowers, yo-yo's, tags, covered buttons. She's got some goodies up her sleeve let me tell you.

All Will Be Revealed

Well that sounded a lot more exciting that it turned out to be, right?

Thanks for all the wonderful iron comments and emails. While I was blissfully enjoying quilt shows and dreamy 100 calorie packs all the while pondering which iron to get, Bret just went out and returned the iron and got another one. Just that easy! And it turns out to be a keeper, it's all steamy and hot, just how I like it. Rowenta. Professional. I want to iron like the pro's you know?




Take it to the Extreme my friends!

PIQF- The Quilts

Finally, I have the quilts ready. I'm just going to let them speak for themselves, they're all so lovely. I believe that I have all the names correct, but if not, my apologies. I tried to make sure that I had the proper information to credit each quilt artist. This is just a tiny little selection of quilts, and trying to get a good photo is hard, the lighting isn't optimal and of course it's swarming with people there.

Our friend Sherry's quilt! Woo hoo Sherry!

Checkerboards and Chocolate Stars by Mary Kay Davis. She's also in the Neutrals book, and she's using her leftovers here! Nice work!

Feather Fulfillment by Judy Ohrt of Marysville.

Shooting the Metolus by Robin Ryan of Bend, Oregon. She won the wallhanging competition for best machine workmanship. I just loved these fish. This is on of two fish quilts I saw by Robin.

This piece was by Jennifer Mann of Oakland. The center black and white portion was made from one black and white African animal print.


Barbara Hillman, Pittsburg, CA.. After the Rain. I loved the bee on this quilt, it was dimensional and kind of fuzzy. Very cool.


I love the story of this quilt. You should be able to enlarge that photo to read about it.

This piece was really amazing. This is the back.

This is the front. The front is much more black looking when I see it with my eyeballs, but the camera really picks up the thread colors. Isn't that interesting? It was quite black, at least to me anyway. Renee Haddidin won First Place in Traditional Quilts for her entry Sugar and Spice.
Judy Mathieson won First Place Innovative for her Expanding Star. She's the queen of Mariner's Compass style blocks!!
Table Scraps by Roberta Walker. She says that the quilting is done with a darning needle and cotton knitting yarn. Wow.
Baskets, I love baskets. Jan Soules, Baskets 101.

Halloween Haunts by Nadine Kirk

Jody Rusconi, Running with Scissors. She got a kick start, she says, from Jean Wells at Asilomar. Jody, it did make me smile!

This sweet otter quilt is by Kathy McNeil. It's called Finder's Keepers. I loved this quilt, I tried for some close ups, there is netting and shiny threads, but my pictures didn't turn out. Really lovely.

So that my friends, is my visit to PIQF.

The PIQF Meet and Greet!

Yesterday I went with Sandy to PIQF! We do this every PIQF, go on Thursday morning and stay till we feel like leaving. Sandy is right on top of things and already has her PIQF report up and available. Sorry, I'm too lazy for that.

Anyway, glad we went yesterday because today is a nice rainy day, a perfect day to stay home and do stuff around here, like that machine quilting for Elizabeth. Sandy has a nice picture of Elizabeth's new Block of the Month that was displayed in the In Between Stitches booth. And speaking of the booth, I ran into Carol there. You might remember Carol from previous posts, she's our friend from the shop.

That Carol, she's always having a good time!

This is Carol by the sample she made for the shop, its on the chair and it's from Brenda's book Comfort and Joy.

Ran into Gina at her Cranberry Quiltworks Booth! That was a surprise, I forgot she was going to be there. Gina is always having fun and sharing her enthusiasm.

Here's the Diane and Patsy (I'm not sure on this, can't quite read the name, my pictures are just not that clear) from Diane Weber's Sew Biz. Check out that LakeHouse Day-Z quilt in the background.

This is Marlene and I. I was trying for that myspace style photo you take yourself! We would cross paths at the center of each aisle. Mar has also got her PIQF report up as well. You people as so energetic!

Ran into Joanna as well! She and her babe were having so much fun!

Here's my friend Karen with her friends Rose and Gretta. They were having a lot of fun. Karen's fav purchase was a wallhanging kit with Liberty of London fabrics and a Wizard of Oz Door hanger saying the Witch is In. Well if the Witch is Karen, we know it's the Good Witch because she's so sweet!

Hey, its Peggy! It was a treat to see her. Now, if I could only remember what the heck I wanted to ask her. I was thinking of her the other day and had no way to contact her. She tells me now she's just learning to make the perfect pants and sewing up a storm.

It was great fun! I love seeing my quilty friends in a venue we all love. Quilts on my next post so stay tuned!

Fall and Friends

The lovely fall weather continues, it's still warmish but the nights are chilly and the days are filled with amazing clouds. When I'm out driving here and there I can't help but have my camera at the ready, I could look at big fat puffy clouds all day. I love the way the white ones look like they're always moving, rolling across the sky. On this day I was at the market and it rained on just my car. Weirdest thing ever.

My search for a new iron continues. Bret picked up a new Rowenta at Costco on the way home.. naturally our local Costco doesn't carry them. It seemed leaky but I needed an iron so was using it thinking it would clear up. Oh I'm a dreamer. Just as I was about to lay my iron down on a piece of white fabric belonging to someone else he says gee, what's that all over your new iron?

RUSTY CRAP that's what it was. That wouldn't clean off.

On a happier note, Monica sent me some Amish Bread starter and Saturday it was finally time to bake! Does that look yumilicious or what? It was quite tasty. Thank you Monica.

Ok my little friends, it's back to work. My slave driving boss has me ironing up a storm but I do it gladly. My old Norelco iron from the back of the laundry room cupboard is treating me like the strap ironing queen I am! Have a lovely day!!!

Hey, here's an after thought! If you're a quilter and have an iron you love, let me know. I've tried a few different kinds. I want a nice slick sole plate. I did hear that the classic Black and Decker model was nice, and true it is, but its sole plate is rough and doesn't glide smoothly for piecing tiny things. I had one that I ended up passing on to someone else.