At our last quilting guild meeting, quilt artist Linda Schmidt came for a visit and it was simply fabulous! She brought dozens of quilts to talk about and gave us some insight into how she creates her works.

One of my favorite thing about Linda’s quilts was that she said she likes to make the backs as interesting as the fronts. All of her designs were original creations and she’s won many major awards for her quilts.

After viewing quilts of this caliber at Road to California last month, I felt right at home with Linda showing us her amazing work. Everyone around me kept saying, “I could never do that!” I had quite a different reaction. Mine was, “I can’t wait to follow in her footsteps!”

Lord of the Rings Quilt

This was my favorite quilt that she displayed. She told us how she made it for her teenage son. She created the middle part of the quilt, showed it to him and his response was, “Where’s the rest of the story?” So she created the individual scenes as side borders. It was truly a work of art.

What I desire for Valentine’s Day is more time to quilt! I recently helped my quilting guild, the Desert Quilters of Nevada with a quilt challenge. The rules were simple: take a piece of Challenge Fabric and create a quilt with the theme “What Your Heart Desires”. I provided the fabric (red Hoffman Cardinal batik) and helped organize the hanging, count the ballots, and present the winners.  Each of the members of the guild got to vote for their favorite quilts and winners were selected based who received the most votes in their category: pieced, applique, mixed, group, mini, etc.

This is the quilt I put together for my quilt circle, Rainbows. Each member submitted a heart block and I added novelty fabrics surrounding each representing what they desired. Themes were things like more time, money, happiness, sleep, travel, chocolate!, peace, tranquility, wisdom, good health, fabric & thread, etc. Although we didn’t win, we sure had fun trying!

Below are just a few of the quilts other guild members made. I am amazed all the talent we have in our group. They never cease to inspire me! Click each picture for a larger image.

Such beauty and workmanship!

Here’s a group shot of our quilting guild. We have big events each calendar quarter.

Ballot Counting

Finalizing the Winners

It sure was fun to be behind the scenes and  see all the work that goes into running a successful quilting event.  With the help of several members, we got the ballots counted in record time. Each winner received a gift certificate valid at the quilt shop of her choice (including mine!)

On my next blog post, I’ll write about the special guest speaker we had and show some of her beautiful quilts!

Last but not least in my Road to California excursion, I want to share with you just a few pictures of the many beautiful quilts I was able to experience. Of course, there is no substitute for seeing them in person. The details, exquisite quilting and gorgeous embellishment can only be hinted at here. I encourage you to attend as many quilt shows as you can and look for inspiration wherever you can find it! All pictures were taken by me and posted with permission of Road to California for personal enjoyment only.

This is called The Gossip Garden by Debbie Martinez of Hobart, Indiana. I absolutely love the mouth pieces. It reminds me of a fabric I have in my stash! Debbi states, “There are many ways gossip circulates and there are many symbolizations of gossip in this quilt.”

This quilt, Bright Baja Bugs, was part of a youth exhibit of quilts all made by students aged 8-17. I’m really partial to fun, bright quilts. How fantastic to get a jump start on creativity so early! This one was made by Jordan Phillips from California, age 14. My husband drove a Baja in high school, but never one that looked like this!

Although you cannot see all the wonderful quilting in the picture, this quilt really spoke to me. It was heavily quilted and hung perfectly straight. It took over 120 hours just for the quilting! This is absolutely what an award-winning quilt should be. It’s entitled, “Dresden’s Dilemma” by Deborah Poole and Sharon Del Pino of Shelley, Idaho.

I thought it was very interesting to see the same quilt design interpreted in two different color schemes. These were both fantastic and all of the individual designs were done with machine embroidery using Sarah Vedeler’s digitized designs. The bright one, “Bedazzlder” was made by Lisa Sipes of Colby, Kansas and the muted one, “Go! Be Dazzled” by Sandy Lawrence of Phonix, Arizona.

This quilt took my breath away! It’s called “Venetian Menagerie”. Yes, it’s all one quilt depicting a menagerie of exotic masks and oddities seen on an evening stroll in Venice by quilt artist Melissa Sobotka of Richardson, Texas. She made it from batiks with fusible applique. My kind of quilt!

I should be able to post the rest of my Road to California quilt pictures in my next blog entry, so stay tuned!

I want to share with you the story of the Tie quilt that I helped orchestrate for a very special person I know from church. He served as a stake president for our church for 9 years and his term of service was up last summer. This quilt is special not only for the person who received it but also for the men represented by the ties on the quilt and the story of togetherness that the quilt created.

My dear friend Alberta from church had the idea to give a quilt to the outgoing stake president, made up of 68 ties from all the men that served with him during his 9 year tenure. These were counselors, bishops and council members, many of whom had moved out of town and had to be tracked down again. (My husband Jason’s tie is in there, too but now I can’t remember which one it is!!)

We took all the ties and formed them into a circular Dresden Plate design.
I had nearly gotten it all quilted when I decided it looked all wrong. The ties curved too much and the circle did not look like a nice flat circle – there were too many ties so it bunched up too much. I had not figured out the math ahead of time – I thought I could just sew them all together and they’d magically create a circle. The pictures in this post all show the corrected finished quilt – I was too traumatized to take any “before” pictures!

After much agonizing, I had to take it all apart and start over. This was on a Tuesday afternoon and the quilt needed to be finished for a presentation on Friday of the same week. I told Jason about the problem and he figured out the correct math for me, based on number of ties, the circumference of a circle, and the length and width of the ties. I then enlisted lots of women from my ward and they helped me for 3 days solid, nearly round the clock to finish it. We had to unpick every single tie, recut them all, resew and quilt them down. We finished it just in time and it was very well received. We even finished the binding by hand and it was nearly queen sized when done.

This quilt really helped me learn the value of advanced planning and the very true saying “measure twice, cut once!”

This project was completed last summer but it wasn’t until our church fair last week, when I was able to get the quilt and the former stake president in the room with me to take a picture.  It was the most spiritual experience I’ve ever had making a quilt!

For the community fair that my church hosted recently, several of the church members got together to make and donate quilts representing their congregations.

When the idea was first introduced to me, my immediate thought was to make a quilt of the beautiful LDS Temple here in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I gathered a few sewers together from my ward and we set to work!

After the fair, we gave the quilt to the Stake President and it is now hanging in his office.

On Fridays we usually try to reward our kids with a fun outing or some extra free time if they’ve finished their chores and homework for the week. Well, I got MY chores done early today so I got to have my friend over to play…

Tamara has been bitten by the quilting bug so I’m helping her make a quilt. She cut out and sewed this pretty green and brown quilt top over the last month or so, then came over to my house so I could help her baste it. Next, I’ll show her how to machine quilt it and then bind it.

As a true quilt-aholic, she also brought over her adorable Abby Bag that she managed to whip together in a few hours in between taking care of her husband and kids (whom I thank for allowing her to get away and hang out with me for the afternoon!) Her bag is the one one the right and mine’s the one on the left. Do we have great taste or what??