Kristin Shields Quiltmaker

Unplanned Show and Tell

At the March meeting of the Mt Bachelor Quilters' Guild, I was suprised to find some of my work on display.  Joanne brought her wonderful SOQS 2013 block contest quilt.  She got my trailer block and it was very nice to see how it turned out!

Our speaker was award winning framer, Myrna Dow, owner of High Desert Frameworks.  Myrna does all sorts of charitable work in our community, including framing over 80 fabric postcards for the Wish Upon a Card project for the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show.  Last summer she bought one of my small fiber pieces for herself and this was the first I got see of it since.  Myrna framed it beautifully!  What a treat it is to see your work once it's gone out into the world!

Love in Bloom :: The Language of Flowers Quilt Reveal

Ta-da!  Love in Bloom is finished, just in time for quilt collection tomorrow.  Our guild show is on Saturday and it is our plan every year to have that be the debut display for our book quilts.  Last night was the quilt reveal meeting.  Our quilts this year are inspired by The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.  More on that below.

I had lots of fun with the embroidery here.  The story is set in San Francisco, so I wanted to have the bridge, the city and the flower fields on the other side of the bay. Not realistic, but that's okay.  It's folk art!

The city wouldn't be complete without some city buildings, a few painted ladies and a cable car.

The flower fields are signified with tiny french knots and the bay seemed a little lonely, so I added the sailboat.  The border is full of flowers that I'm calling dahlias. In the language of flowers, dahlias are for dignity.  

Below are the quilts from last night's reveal.  We have twelve members and 10 of us managed to make enough headway to get ours nearly done by last night.  The other two are encouraged to keep on going, but finishing a quilt each year is not the point.  The point is the friendships we've created.

Jane Davis and her lovely flowers in a vase.  The red flowers are created with wool applique.

Cindy O'Neal and her incredible portrait quilt.  Cindy is getting really good with the portraits.  Look for more fabulous-ness from her!

Janelle Rebick's quilt includes the thread painted bee.  So wonderful!

Betty Geintke's quilt has incredible silk work. It shines from within.

Martha Sander's daisies literally leap off the quilt.  This is going to be fabulous!

Sally Black's flowers were inspired by the design on her i-Phone cover!

Sandie Woodbeck's lovely flower basket was finished despite some recent health challenges. Isn't it pretty!

Susan Mondry's Language of Flowers was made with a vintage linen that had some flowers and their meanings- pretty cool!  She added some sweet patchwork and more vintage linens.

Wanda Barkhurst made this incredible quilt with fused bits of fabric that are 1/2" square, I believe.  She embellished her work with hundreds of beads and the cool looking fence.

And this is me.  My quilt was not quite done last night.  I'm so glad it's ready now though.  If you are in the area, the Mt Bachelor Quilters' Guild Quilt Show in the Park is this Saturday, 10-4 in Pioneer Park in Bend.  Hope to see you there!

Girlfriends

Our guild retweet (thanks Mom!) was so much fun.  Most of the ladies will remain nameless to protect the innocent, but I don't think my girlfriend Erin would mind me sharing her photo.  She was hard at work finishing her son's quilt that was started at a retreat several years ago.  We had our snacks and required reading (mostly Gwen Marston!).  Happy smiles when the top was done!  

I worked on this project (Girlfriends) first of all.  In preparation of the retreat I went to my UFO stash and looked for things to bring.  These two birdie blocks were done and ready for something (anything, really).  I decided to do a medallion quilt, a la Gwen Marston.  First I added the wild print border.

Then I made a bunch of little 4" liberated shoo fly blocks.  I made over 20 of these, not knowing for sure what I was going to do with them.

I thought about them going all the way around, but then realized that there needed to be another border between the shoo fly blocks and the wild print.

I made some wildly bright string borders of mostly Kaffe Fasset prints.  Then I realized that it was mashing up the wild border print.  So, I needed something in between.  I almost thought I didn't have anything when I found some of the solid green.  

That was just the thing.  At this point I decided the thing was getting to be too wide, so I added the shoo fly blocks to just the top and bottom.  it's not done yet though.  I want to add one more border and bring in some more green.  Then I think it will be off to a machine quilter to finish so I can get on with other things.

We had three days of nearly non stop sewing, meals that magically appeared, door prizes and games. I worked on two other projects, but will reveal them in time.  Meanwhile, I may or may not confirm that we had a humping iron (oh the hilarity of a pop up iron gone crazy), several versions of the chicken dance and a world class jump roping demonstration among the entertainment.  What a great weekend with my girlfriends!

Mountain Meadow Quilt Guild

So, this post has some photos that aren't the best, but absolutely essential to show.  You see, I had my first paid speaking gig the other day at the Mountain Meadow Quilt Guild in Sunriver.  I think my hands were shaky and I still have a hard time getting a good exposure in a large, dimly lit room, but it's proof!  For a person who has been terribly shy in her life, I think I did all right in front of the crowd.  They were incredibly supportive.  I should have taken a photo of the huge pile of quilts I brought.  I called my presentation The Evolution of a Liberated Quiltmaker.  I showed my very first quilt and my most recent quilt and many in between!

I love all the smiling faces here.  I got lots of good questions and had fun telling the quilt stories.  I hope to do it again sometime.  This fall I plan to begin teaching and we'll see where it goes from there!

A little something for the shop

Iris Dreams is part of a series I did last month.  It all started with a challenge posed by the members of the Central Oregon Modern Quilt Guild, of which I'm a member.  The purple print fabric was chosen from a basket of fat quarters that we all picked out.  I didn't know if I'd join the challenge, but at the last minute saw in my mind exactly what I wanted to do.  This isn't it!  Sorry to tease, but I realized I don't have photos of the challenge quilt yet.  After making that one, a housetop variation, I had fabric left over and a strong desire to continue with those colors and fabrics.  I did several smaller (mini) quilts, two of which will go to AAQI eventually, this one, plus one more small one for another challenge.  I'll have to post about that later. 

This piece is in my Etsy shop right now!  Speaking of the shop, it's pretty bare at the moment, one reason to put in this piece.  I am getting ready for the Sisters Fiber Art Stroll on July 8.  I will be demonstrating hand stitching techniques and will be selling many of the items from my shop- ornaments, small art pieces and brooches.  I will also be selling small packs of my hand dyed fabrics (various fibers and textures), and greeting cards I had made from photos of my slow cloth pieces (by Moo.com).  I've got a few new slow cloth art pieces as well as the ones in the shop which will disappear from the shop for the day.  All items left over after the Fiber Arts Stroll will be back in the shop as soon as I can get them up again.  

I've got quite a bit of work to do to get ready for that and I'm working on my Mt Bachelor Quilters' Guild challenge quilt and my Undercover Quilters Book Club quilt!  The Sisters Quilt Show is fast approaching.  I've already delivered 5 quilts- 3 for the show, one sponsor quilt and a quilt for the special exhibit at the Sisters Library.  I have one more to deliver.  It's my block contest quilt from the blocks I won last year.  It's at the quilter's and I'm really hoping she calls soon because I've got to bind it and get it into them by July 7.  Oh my, life is full.  It's all good.  Ta-ta for now!

Community Quilt #2 for 2011

This quilt should look rather familiar.  I won these strips of fabric at the guild Christmas party last year.  I like them, but they're not my style so much.  I decided to use them for a community quilt a long time ago and just got around to it.  First I sewed up all the strips.  They were the width of the fabric- about 42", but then I cut off two 5 inch wide strips to make Daria's little quilt.  The rest were simply backed and quilted to make a nice sized baby quilt (approximately 32 x 42 inches).

I hunted around in the stash for a suitable backing and found this great stripe that I had gotten on clearance. I added a bit of Kaffe Fassett Aboriginal Dots for the filler and the binding.  Voila!  A quick quilt that will warm a new local baby some day soon.  The guild retreat starts tomorrow, so things will be quiet here for a few days. I'll come back with photos and news of new quilts and all the fun!

Community Quilt #1 for 2011

Once I got the blocks sent off to Kaite, I still had several more in these kid prints.  I kept going until I had the 35 needed for another quilt and got this put together in a weekend.  This went last night to my guild meeting for donation to the community quilts program.  I have enough blocks for one more of these quilt as you go quilts, though I'm not sure when I'll have it done.  I've got a busy couple of weeks coming up.  The back is nearly as delightful as the front!

Good news: the blocks were received by Kaite today.  It's always a relief when a package makes it halfway around the world intact.  I also received a special something in the mail from Kaite, but that deserves its own post.

Asian Style

This one was also donated to the guild last night.  I hope it's off to a good home.  These photos were taken yesterday just before the storm rolled in.  Today, it's been snowing off and on all day.  That's life in Central Oregon.  Tomorrow we head off over the mountains for our last college trip!

Scrappy Coins

I do like this one a lot.  It's a bit hard to see it go.  It will be so easy to make another one some day though.  Look at that backing fabric!   I really love this one, which was on clearance at one of the quilt shops.  I have a bit more, maybe it could go on the front of a scrappy coins quilt....

15 handles and easy squares

I'm finishing up the bindings on the first three community quilts, but managed to get the baskets pieced.  Then I looked at the rest of the pile of scrappy "blanks".  I ended up cutting them into 9.5" squares, easy peasy.  I chose that size because I have a square ruler in that size and it makes it really quick to cut out.  I used up some of this blue that I had originally bought for Whimsy and never used.  These won't make it to the guild meeting tonight, but they are for the community quilts program, so hopefully they'll be done by December's meeting.  I still have another quilt's worth of these 9.5" blocks too!  Don't even get me started on the full to bursting scrap bin again.  Oh my, it never ends does it!  I guess that's the fun of quilting!