Recent adventures: En route to Quilt Con Part 2

The next day we had an early flight at 6am to Salt Lake City. Our plan was to spend the day there with Anna, a friend I have known online for some years and whom I was lucky enough to meet up with at Sewing Summit.  She is a beautiful, amazing woman and I was so excited to be able to meet up with her again.  She met us at the airport and had taken the day off work to spend with us.

A beautiful day in SLC...look at that dusting of snow on the mountains.

First stop was  Pine Needles. This was the first shop we went to at Sewing Summit so I had to take Rachel here as we just have nothing like this in NZ.  I think she experienced the same  "OMG" feeling that I did when she walked in as well!!

Wonderland!

Rachel hoarding fabrics again!

Loved this little Carolyn Friedlander quilt.

Holly, the owner of the shop

Excuse the bags...but I was up at 3am! (me, Anna and Rachel)

We then had a wander around Gardner Village...such a quaint wee village with lots of interesting shops. We looked and we all bought something.

Fab little candy store...Bought some taffy here

And some gorgeous Alpaca yarn here

Look at this yumminess

And then we headed back to SLC to grab some lunch and to wander around a bit. First stop of course was the beautiful temple.  I learnt such a lot at the information centre here and Anna was a fantastic guide!

Next stop was Tiffany's where we all tried on the most expensive ring in the shop at USD$102,000. Unfortunately, or fortunately for him, I didn't know my husband's credit card details off by heart :)

One beautiful ring!!

Goodbye SLC

It was an amazing day and we had a fabulous time with Anna.  Hopefully, one day she will make it to NZ and I can return the favor. 

We arrived in Austin, TX at around midnight and Amanda (our tour guide from San Francisco haha) was waiting for us there, so we all headed into our hotel together to dream about Quilt Con the next day!!!

Recent adventures including San Francisco & Quilt Con: Part 1

Last month I was lucky enough to travel to San Francisco and then onto Austin, TX for Quilt Con.  I went with a good friend of mine Rachel of Wooden Spoon Quilts. We decided that we would have 5 days in San Francisco on the way to Austin and then we could head straight home with all our purchases and fun things from Quilt Con!

Leaving Auckland Airport

To be honest I was dreading the flights. We had gotten cheap tickets, but it meant we had to fly to Sydney first (3 hours), then LA (14 hours) then to San Francisco (1.5 hrs) all with a couple of hours stopover in each place. I think it worked out to be about 26 hours!  However, it wasn't that bad and I managed to sleep most of the way much to Rachel's disgust!

We were meeting Anne  and Adrianne in San Francisco as they had the same idea as us about having a wee holiday first before getting to Quilt Con. We arrived mid morning so spent the first day  exploring, just wandering around and taking in the sights. I love San Francisco, but Rachel had never been there so of course we had to check out Britex Fabrics

The next day Amanda from Everyday Fray took us on  tour of some of the fabric shops in the Bay Area.  We had been looking forward to visiting The Intrepid Thread since we had started planning this holiday, so this was first on the agenda.

Adrianne, Rachel (clutching her Marsala) and Anne from Play Crafts

Anne from Play Crafts  lives reasonably close to here, so she met us there. I think we were all too busy oohing and aahing over the fabrics to really spend a lot of time talking but we all managed to catch up in greater depth at Quilt Con.  I think I may have spent a wee bit here ;)

Amanda, Anne, me, Anne, Rachel and Adrianne

Then it was off to Jo-Anns for a quick splurge on the Denyse Schmidt fabrics and quilting notions. It was the President's Day sale, so most things had 30-40% off. Score!!   We then headed to Berkeley (Amanda's stomping ground) for a late lunch and then onto Stone Mountain and Daughters. Another great store and so different to The Intrepid Thread.  I didn't buy much here, mainly because I had bought so much at The Intrepid thread!!

Amanda very kindly took us on a wee tour of Berkeley and the university. Such a fun vibe to this place. I could easily live there. And then it was back to the hotel, exhausted, but enough time to spread all our fabrics out and ooh and aaah again!!

Our collective purchases!!

The next day we decided to take in Fisherman's Wharf and catch the cable car back.  It was a beautiful day...so hot and summery even though it was only February.

Alcatraz in the background.

The famous seals of Pier 39

Anne, me and Rachel enjoying Ben and Jerry's

OMG, I love this chocolate.   

About to catch the cable car from Ghirardelli Square

Rachel, Anne, me and Adrianne on the cable car

The next day Rachel and I headed to The Mission District to explore. We had no idea where to get breakfast so I nabbed a couple of local boys and asked them for recommendations. They recommended the Mission Beach Cafe. What we didn't realise was that it was President's Day and half of San Francisco also wanted to dine here that day. The owner told us it would be a 15 minute wait so we thought "cool" and joined the line up. An hour and a half later we finally got seated, but boy was it worth the wait! Amazing food!! 

Mission Beach Cafe

Brunch...crab benedict with hollandaise, avocado and these amazing potatoes

 And then we carried on walking and taking in the sights...San Francisco is a hilly city with amazing views from so many places.

The Mission Dolores (oldest mission church in San Francisco)

Dolores Park looking back towards the city

Walking up the hill from The Mission to the Castro

Gorgeous old houses in the Castro

More Castro houses

We then headed over to the Golden Gate Bridge but the famous San Francisco fog had come in by this stage so we didn't see anything of the bridge.  However, the sun was casting a lovely light through the fog over the city and Alcatraz.

The Palace of Fine Arts

After a day of walking and exploring we were exhausted so settled for a hotel meal to end of the day.

We left SF for Salt lake City the next morning and then onto Austin....Part 2 to follow

Scrappy AMH pillow

Well, Christmas has been and gone, and it is nearly 2015! I haven't done much sewing this past month. It's been more of a get-in-the-garden kind of month and catching up with friends kind of month.  I managed to finish my Sew Sew Modern swap items, but I will save that for the next post.

 I also finished a pillow.  I bought Diane's Celestial Star pattern a while ago. I love this pattern. It gives you so many options and she includes some printouts as well for you to color and  to help you decide on a layout. There are so many variations that you can do with it.

I made this for a person in our online quilting community who, unfortunately, didn't receive her swap item for whatever reason.  She is always so kind and giving of her own time and stash that I really wanted to do something for her to show my appreciation for everything she does. Plus, I have nearly been the non-recipient on a couple of occasions and its horrible watching everyone get their swap packages and yours never comes. I was lucky enough to get both mine very, very late, but it does leave a sour taste.

So I know she likes Anna Maria Horner and scrappy so out came my AMH stash (and I must admit I love her new Honor Roll range). I started piecing.

I quilted it with straight lines coming out from the centre of the star so it looks like the star is radiating.  I used Mimosa for the binding which matched the tealy-turquoise in Honor Roll perfectly.

For the back I used Hand Drawn Garden as it incorporated most of the colors from the front. I only had a FQ and it wasn't quite big enough so I added a border in colours to match.

I love how this has turned out and want to make one for myself now.

Adorn Mini Quilt finished

I signed up for the Instagram Mini Swap a few months ago. I haven't made many minis. Actually I have only made one, but now that I have my own sewing room instead of a closet, I am wanting more things to hang on the walls.  My partner, unfortunately, has not been an active member of the group. In fact, she has only posted once and that was a mosaic that was reposted from someone else.  This made it quite hard to figure out what she might like.  She did have Camille Roskelly's Adorn pillow in her mosaic, so I decided I would do make that. Her colours in the mosaic were quite Christmassy.

I selected a lovely stack of greens, reds and aquas and set about making some strip sets, then used my equilateral triangle to cut out the 12 shapes. It didn't take long at all to do and I used a lovely soft grey that I had picked up in Salt Lake City a year ago for the background.

I decided to straight line quilt it and radiate it from the centre of the star. I have Jacquie Gering's Creative Quilting with Your Walking Foot class and she has lots of handy hints and tips in this class.

I used painter's tape to ensure my lines were straight. It doesn't leave any sticky residue. I did try my Hera marker, but I couldn't see the lines very well on the grey. I used my favourite light grey Aurifil 2600 for quilting.

For the binding I chose a Ruby print which I thought went really well with the colours in the star.

And for the back... a Tula print

  

Just have to add my label and I can post it off this week. I hope she likes it.

Two in One Pouch

I have always admired Svetlana's  (of S.o.t.a.k Handmade) work and she has just released her first PDF pattern. I grabbed it while she had a reduced price of $6 as I thought it would make a nice extra gift for my pillow partner.  I whipped one up yesterday and  I say whipped one up as it only took me an afternoon.  My partner likes purples and pinks and jewel tones so I went with a Japanese linen, some Cotton and Steel and a low volume print I got in Westwood Acres Inside Voices club.

It's a great pattern to follow. Lots of pics and the instructions for the most part are very clear.  I love photos when I am making something as I just "get it" that way rather than trying to read a pattern.

My first boo-boo. I didn't read the pattern clearly and sewed the tab into the lining....

And then it was time to add the inside ...See that cute wee pincushion up the top. That is the one Sami sent me. I just adore the colours in it.

And flipped over to true other side. You can see the pincushion better in this pic.

And all completed...

A peek inside ...I used 2 different colours for the zippers to jizz it up a little.

I hope my partner likes it. It's heading off tomorrow to her.