Lenore Crawford in Millington

Lenore Crawford was our guest speaker at the Millington Quilt Club Invitational last Wednesday. She shared her techniques and then showed us some of her beautiful art quilts. The first style of work she did was watercolor using 2 inch squares.



Later she added applique to the watercolor quilts.



Most of the work she showed us involved fusing and fabric painting. The painting was a small part of the work and mainly involved highlighting or adding a tiny detail, like the fuzz on the stem of a poppy. Lenore is the lady on the left. Club member, Julie helped display Lenore's gorgeous quilts..

In the below photo, Lenore showed us the same quilt with different backgrounds.

Lenore said she had many scraps from making watercolor quilts so she shedded them. She then made quilts by placing the shreds under tulle and then stitching and adding touches of paint. The two photos below are examples of this technique.

I learned a lot listening to her speak and seeing her quilts was like looking at art in a museum.

Happy Halloween!

The pillow above started out as a sweatshirt. I didn't like the way the sweatshirt fit when I was done putting on the applique. It seemed like a waste not to use the applique.

The computer will not cooperate with me in uploading the rest of my photos from the Invitational. I will try again another day. I think the weather seems to affect our service, of course, our provider doesn't agree.

Millington Quilt Club Invitational

On Wednesday the Millington Quilt Club had it's Invitational. Lenore Crawford spoke to the guests and then lunch was served. The club member's quilts, wall hangings, bags and items of clothing were on display before and after the presentation and luncheon. We had wall hangings and table runners in the room where lunch was served.

One of our members, Julie made some beautiful fall cakes which we served for dessert. My photo of the table doesn't show the cakes off well.

Lenore Crawford's presentation was in the church which is attracted to the room where we ate and hold our monthly meetings. Members draped their quilts over the pews which were going to be empty.

Quilted items were also on display in the entry to the church.

This is our president, Julie welcoming everyone to the Invitational.

This is Carole, she was chairperson of the Invitational. She is introducing our speaker, Lenore Crawford.

I will post pictures of Lenore and her work in my next post.

New York Weekend

I have some more photos from our shopping in the garment district of NYC. The picture below is Ang amid the trims in one shop. I've never seen so many colors and sizes of ric rac in one place.



More trims in another shop.



The collection of beaded fringe was so colorful, I had to photograph it.



These are the trims I purchased with crazy quilting in mind.



I bought some fabric to make a vest. The shop I found this paisley fabric did not have prices on their fabric. When I asked the price....$10 a yard. When I buy fabric locally, it is carefully measured and then cut straight on a flat table. In this store, the salesman laid the fabric next to a yard stick and cut the fabric with scissors with one end of the bolt on the floor. The price when I checked out....$10. No sales tax????



I bought this fabric in another shop. I want to test the vest pattern before making a crazy quilt vest. Again I had to ask the price...$10. This time the salesman didn't even measure, just held the fabric out an arm's length and cut the fabric in the aisle. When I looked a little questioning about the length, he showed me that I had more than a yard, using a yardstick that was on top of some fabric. Well, one end was over a yard but the other end was a lot shorter. Again when I checked out the cost was exactly $10, no tax?

On Saturday, Ang and I went to the Museum of Arts and Design. They would not allow photos so all I have is a picture of the pin that came with the entrance fee. We saw a lot of detailed paper art. Part of Madeleine Albright's pin collection was on display. I thought I have a lot of pins but she had 200 in the display. I read she wore different pins depending on where and whom she was meeting with. The pin display drew a large crowd.

I had a great time in NYC and I'm happy I got to help Ang shop for her wedding dress.

Say Yes to the Dress

I spent the weekend in New York City. I went there to help my daughter, Angela, shop for her wedding dress. The photo below is looking out the window of the last place we shopped for the dress. Ang is going back later this week to order a dress she liked from this designer. It isn't one of the dresses in the photo. She picked a classic dress with simple lines because she plans to design and create a necklace to wear with the dress. I'm sure she is going to look stunning, of course I'm not at all biased.



We had quite a bit of time between appointments at bridal shops, so we did some shopping. We were near the garment district, so we were near my favorite type of stores. This is Ang in front of one of our stops.




Below is a typical tourist photo in the garment district, I'm easily impressed by tall buildings.





Ang lives in Brooklyn. This is a photo of a shop in her neighborhood. I think the small shops with produce and flowers outside are very charming.




Since the computer is still not up to speed, I will do another post later with more of NYC.

Thumb Winter Wonderland Shop Hop

Our computer has been ill. My husband, Tom, has been doctoring it all week. I'm so glad he understands how the computer works and is willing to spend the time involved in diagnosing and treating it. He's not sure he has all the bugs out yet, but at least it's running again.

Last Thursday I went on a bus tour of the Thumb Winter Wonderland Shop Hop. We started in Millington. Our first stop was in Elkton at the Backstreet Quilt Shop. Our next stop was The Corner Store in Harbor Beach. At lunch time we were in Marlette at Sisters in Quilting. Most of the shops had snacks for us, in Marlette they furnished lunch for their shoppers. Our fourth stop was in Imlay City at The Pincushion. We made an unscheduled shop in Davison at Linda's Quilt Shop. About 5pm we arrived back in Millington at My Lil' Quilt Shop. There Connie had supper ready for us. The shops on the tour all gave us a 20% discount and some goodies, for example fat quarters, a Christmas ornament and a tape measure. The stores had gotten together and designed a winter quilt. Each store gave us their part of the pattern. Except for spending too much, we all had a great time.

The photos below show some of my purchases. I bought these three fabrics to make myself a smock style apron.



These two fabrics are intended for another apron. The pattern I plan to use is reversible, so one fabric will be on one side and the other on the back.



I was happy to find the fabric below, I'm thinking it could be part of a tote bag in the future.



Excuse my bad photo, this is a pattern for mini wall hangings. I just couldn't resist buying it.