Kristin Shields Quiltmaker

QuiltCon 2015 :: 1

QuiltCon 2015 in Austin, Texas was a blast!  It was a very busy 4 days for the show and one extra day of shopping in Austin.  My plan for reporting on this trip is to go in mostly chronological order and grouping photos in a way that makes sense to me.  All of the photos for these posts will be clickable if you want to see more detail.  Also, my photos don't represent the whole show (how could they?), but they are a taste of what appealed to me at the time.  

Above is my official PDX selfie.  I'm glad I got there before the carpet disappears.  I left Bend on Wednesday morning and flew through Portland and Seattle to Austin.  Along the way I met up with my travel buddy, Marion.  There were also 5 others from the Central Oregon Modern Quilt Guild who traveled to Austin. Thursday morning dawned beautifully. Unfortunately, this was the last we saw of the sun.  The rest of the days in Austin were very grey.  Our hotel room (Hyatt Place) looked out over the convention center and faced east to the rising sun.

We got to our hotel at 7 pm on Wednesday night, too late to register.  So on Thursday morning we waited in a rather long line while some computer issues were worked out.  We got our name tags and a huge goody bag!

The first event on our schedule was the MQG Awards Ceremony.  The ballroom was surrounded by many of the QuiltCon charity quilts, made from MQG's around the world.  There were more in the other ballroom too.

Unfortunately, the convention center did not have the lecture set up finished and the ceremony started about 45 minutes late.  When it did start, Jacquie Gering had no sound system and the power point didn't start working until nearly the end.  That was very disappointing, but I mostly felt bad for the winners who really didn't get their due.  Below, Jacquie shows everyone how to do the "matchstick quilting" dance.

This is our Central Oregon Modern Quilt Guild charity quilt.  We did liberated houses in this alternate grid format.  All the COMQG peeps who made it to the show are in the photo above: Susan, Kayla, Christy, Lindsey, me and Erin!The charity quilts were really wonderful.  Unfortunately, they weren't labeled with the guild name, so I don't know which guilds made which.  Next time I'll be showing quilts from the Quilt Show floor!  Enjoy!

The Wayward Jungle Crow

The Wayward Jungle Crow
2015
23 x 27
Hand dyed fabric and thread, commercial fabric, vintage linens, old wool shirt, machine pieced, hand appliqued, hand embroidered, hand and machine quilted.
Inspired by A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.

I've posted lots of closeups so you can see the stitching.  My hand embroidery includes a lot of backstitching.  I did fly stitch on the tail.  

The bird includes and is surrounded by spirals.  The spirals represent the Pacific gyres that are talked about quite a bit in the book, plus they are fun to do!

The fabrics include several vintage linens, including the edge of a fine linen tablecloth (above) that was overdyed in indigo and walnut.  I laid the whole piece over the darker blue you can see below, and tacked the whole edge down.  I employed Jude Hill's invisible basting stitch quite a bit on this piece, so occasionally you'll see tiny stitches that show through.  On the right is the piece of a heavy linen table cloth that was overdyed in indigo.  I left the fringe hanging down.

The top piece is from an old Pendleton wool shirt gifted to me by a friend.  I machine quilted spirals and stars into it, then went over the stars with some embroidery thread and a backstitch to create the white star outlines.

The stars in the middle are created with liberated piecing.  I tried a lot of stitching here that I learned from Jude Hill.  The satin stitched points, satin stitched star and black and white star tails are all ideas from Jude.  

This piece was really fun to do.  I decided to bite the bullet and machine quilt it last weekend.  Good choice, actually, cause I had no idea I'd have the flu by Tuesday.  I've been very sick all week.  Both of the guys caught it too, so we've laid low all week and I haven't done any sewing at all.  I am resting a lot and trying to get healthy before I leave for QuiltCon on Wednesday.  I'm a whole lot better, but still get pretty tired.  I am glad this one is done though.  I have a few more finishes to show (small things), but don't know if I'll get to them before I leave.  In the meantime, I have started something for another challenge.  You can see photos of that in my Instagram feed.

If you are also traveling to QuiltCon say hello!  I will be Instagramming while I'm in Austin, but won't do blog posts until I get back.  I am taking my big camera though, so I hope to get some great photos to share!

Celia's Raven

Celia's Raven
2015
43 x 46
Inspired by The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Celia's Raven is done over 6 months early!  I am so excited about that.  No more sweating the summer over a book quilt.  Anyway, I love how the raven came out though it's hard to see the stitching unless you are in the right light.

I chose to keep the machine quilting fairly simple.  I added some lines of stitch to represent the face, but didn't try to add anything for an eye, for instance.The other quilting really doesn't show too much with so much pattern going on.  

The back is also simple, but I followed my rule about making the back fun and indicative of what's on the front.  I bought that circus tent fabric just especially for the back of this quilt and I was pleasantly surprised to find the raven fabric in the stash.  

I don't normally show my labels, but I did here because I wanted to show the book quote that inspired this quilt.  "In the blink of an eye folds of silk are glossy black feathers, and it is impossible to pinpoint the moment when it is fully raven and no longer cloth".