IQFOI Pineapple Blossom Class Supply List!

International Quilt Festival of Ireland!

Pineapple Blossom Workshop Supply List



Large quilt with 36 blocks

Lap quilt with 20 blocks.

This quilt is related more towards the "geese in the corner" style of log cabin, than it is a true pineapple block, because the triangle corners are only sewn to two opposite diagonal sides. It still has that pineapple punch though, and it works up into a pretty quilt!

The block logs are cut from 2" scrap strips I already had waiting for me in the 2" scrap strip bin, and the pineapple corners are cut from 3.5" light strips.

Please keep in mind that this is a "scrap quilt" workshop and you are meant to use your stash! Since our scraps are all different shapes, lengths and sizes, fabric amounts are guestimates, no exact yardage is given.


Pattern:
Each student must come to class with the Pineapple Blossom pattern printed from the Quiltville.com website. The pattern is found at http://quiltville.com/pineappleblossompf.html
This helps keep workshop prices down. Please be aware of any students who might not have printer access, making sure that everyone in class has a copy.

Machines will be provided for this class.



Please bring the following:

Thread, scissors, seam ripper, pins and any other notions you usually sew with.
Rotary cutter, small mat and ruler. 

Mechanical pencil for marking lines on fabric.

Fabric supplies:
Approximately 3 yards of dark/medium scraps cut into 2" strips.

For this workshop we will start with 20 blocks. You can make the quilt as big as you want, but we will start with 20 blocks!

From your 2" strips please have ready the following:
40 2"X 3.5" rectangles
80 2" X 6.5" rectangles
40 2" X 9.5" rectangles.

From 3.5" light strips cut:

100 3.5" squares light (block center and pineapple corners) These may be the same throughout the whole quilt, scrappy through the whole quilt, or you can match them in each block as I did above. All 5 squares in each block are the same, but differ from block to block.

If you have any questions about the supply list or instructions, please don't hesitate to email me at Quiltville@gmail.com! I really look forward to this workshop with you!

And the quilts go to........

And the winners are!!

The star quilt went to Marie and the pineapple blossom went to Andre!

This was SO much fun to do. It is just amazing how good it feels when someone's name is called and they are so shocked because they never win anything :c)

Again, I had a couple of people ask me if I would sell the quilts, and I said that although I quilt tops that other people had pieced, and I can charge a fee for that, I don't make quilts to sell from start to finish. They had a hard time understanding why, and I guess because if I do...I lose the joy of giving something like this. It becomes a "JOB"....instead of an expression of myself.

Not to mention that if I were to sell, I'd need to make more than a dollar an hour (I don't think people understand the time and the cost involved in quilting)....and selling for any price seems to devalue the worth of the quilt in the first place.

I'd rather give, because in giving I receive so much more than I ever could in selling.

And the world may never understand, but that's okay with me :c)

Oh, btw....I ACED the exam today with 100%! Only one more to go. That's tomorrows final practical hands on exam in neuromuscular therapy. By this time tomorrow I'll be DONE DONE DONE!!! Waahooooo!

Bonnie

On the way out the door...

I'm on my way out the door, but I wanted to post the pics I just took before I went...I had to empty the camera anyway so there will be room for more shots later :c)

Shots of the random ohio stars, and pineapple blossom quilts, all bound and ready....and a close up shot of the label on the back. I didn't give myself much margin between them when I printed them out, so it was a close call getting the borders sewn around them before stitching to the back, some of the letters are a bit cropped, but too bad....today is the day!

Bonnie

Up with the birds....studying...

Finals today and tomorrow. I'm sure you are tired of hearing me count down, but I can't help it!

I've got the 'drawing' quilts all bound and labeled, just need to wrap them. I wanted to get pics of them finished, and it's still dark..so I'm waiting for things to lighten up a bit before I take them this morning. I like taking pics outside, the light is always better. I'm taking my camera so I can get pics of the 'winners' and their new quilts :c)

We bit the bullet and switched from Bellsouth to Vonage and now have the phone running through the cable internet we already had. What a DEAL. $28 bucks a month, tons of extras included, no more getting the bill hiked up with all the federal taxes and fees for this and that....it saves about $25 a month on our phone bill, It was always around $50 and we never even used our phone for long distance, we use our cells!

So now...cha ching...it's $28! Good bye Bellsouth! And it's free long distance calling all the time! I would have given up the land line all together, but I need it for running customer's visa/mc cards....I'm tickled about taking my business away from Bellsouth, or any of the other rip-off phone companies. And there is an incentive.....if I refer someone and they switch to Vonage, I get 2 months free service...so consider this a shameless plug if you have cable inet and hate your phone company for gouging you! (And say you were referred by me!)

Oh, Oscar must have been up on the cupboards again last night...heard a bang in the middle of the night and one of the enamelware pots was on the kitchen floor...fell from the top of the fridge. Naughty cat. I spose I might just have to move stuff out of his way so we aren't woken by things that go BANG in the night with him trying to get up there..... *yawn*

Bonnie

"Ain't No Mountain High Enough...."

I came into the kitchen while on the phone and found Oscar at the top of the tall kitchen cupboards looking for respite! He'd never been up THERE before, that I know of anyway...the only way he could have gotten up there was to jump to the counter top, up to the top of the fridge, and then to the top of the cupboard. It's quite a way up there, as you can tell from the top of the fridge beneath!

Most people have to worry about the dust bunnies on the tops of their fridges...by the looks of it I'm going to have to worry about hairballs instead! :c)

Bonnie

Kitty Comforts????

How can this be comfortable?!? I came downstairs to get something to drink, and found Oscar in the desk letter file thingy...WEIRD CAT I tell you! He just looked at me with his shifty eyes as if to say "So? You got a problem with this? Can't you see I'm sleeping?"

It just made me chuckle and I wanted to share it with you :c)

It's another beautiful fall morning in SC. DH and son went deer hunting. No....scratch that...they went deer watching. Maybe they are more like Oscar than I am because they seem to LIKE sitting in trees doing nothing? But I think it's great that they are spending father/son time together.

Down to the nitty gritty here! 2 finals to go. Parents come in on thursday evening. Jeff's got a doc appt thursday afternoon after school to get the pins out of his hand. It's going to be a crazy schedule this week, so any house cleaning to get things ready has to happen between now and wednesday night....Never DID get the carpets clean. I decided I don't care. The walls that definately need painting? I'm not going to care about those either. If they don't like it here they are welcome to go down to the Amerisuites! I'll just do the best I can....however, I opened the fridge this morning, and then quickly moved the 'cleaning out the fridge' project to the top of my cleaning list!

Yesterday a friend and I met for lunch, and then went to the fairgrounds for the annual holiday arts/crafts festival thing. Can you believe that there was NOTHING quilty there? Alot of basket makers...I mean ALOT....every time we turned the corner. I love hand made baskets, and that is something that I want to learn to do.

I however LOVE the booths that have musicians selling their own CD's. There was one guy playing hammered dulcimer....and he had a celtic CD that was awesome, so I bought that...and then around the corner was another gal, a harpist (not a harpy, just a harpist!) and her CD's were wonderful too, so I bought two of those......these are for my massage music collection. I've always loved this kind of music though.....I play it all the time, even before I started school because I love stuff without lyrics...just instrumental. It leaves time for thoughts in my head. I love to sing along to stuff with words, but if I'm singing, I'm not thinking, and that can cause problems! *LOL*

Okay, back to the cleaning and quilting...and hopefully a trek through the woods at Harbison State Forrest again. It's going to warm up today and the colors are just brilliant! That might be my lunch hour treat :c)

Bonnie

My friend Lucy is nearly onboard!

I am SO SO excited! I have a wonderful quilting friend, Lucy, who lives in Haarlem in The Netherlands. She is an AWESOME quilter, and she works at a quilt shop in Haarlem called Irma's Sampler. Those of you who have been quilting for a long time might be familiar with a book by the same name...a book written by Irma herself! Well Lucy works there and is teaching classes there and does FABULOUS quilts, some in dutch fabrics which I have fallen in love with!

Lucy's blog address is http://lucyquilting.blogspot.com/ and I want you to all go over there and encourage her to post more of her gorgeous work! She has uploaded one pic of the latest quilt...she just finished the top and is starting on the quilting, and will be teaching this class at Irma's hopefully in the near future.

I'm sure I can twist her arm to be part of Quilt Mavericks with your encouragement!

Bonnie

It's November!

Halloween passed here as mostly uneventful. A few little gremlins walking the streets with their parents, but we don't get alot of trick or treat action in our little corner, kind of a long dark culdesac, and there aren't many 'littles' at this end of the neighborhood.

I spent yesterday piecing the second student quilt for the giveaway next week. I did have 20 of these pineapple blossom blocks done, it wasn't quite enough for a lap quilt, but the thought occured to me if I added sashings, and cornerstones...that it would be big enough for the center. By the time I added borders it was just right! All that is left to do is quilt and bind it.

I've noticed something lately....not that it bothers me, but very seldom do I do fancy pieced borders! Maybe it's because the middles are so busy that I need something just to frame it in and stop the busy-ness..but also I think that by the time I am in a crunch to finish a quilt, I just don't want to put more time into the borders! *LOL* I have done some with braided borders, lots of 1/2 square triangle borders, and dog-tooth borders with equilateral triangles, and I love how they look, but unless it is really a quilt that cries out for more piecing in the border, I'm happy with the formula of either a 1 1/2", 2", or 2.5" cut strip for the inner border and then something 5" to 6" wide for the outer border to frame everything. Some Amish quilts I've done 8" borders on so I can do really fancy quilting in there, but most of the time, it's a 5" cut.

Do you find yourself in a border rut? I'm curious if many find themselves like me.

I also tend to like a contrasting binding when binding a quilt. Even if it's in the same color family as the border, I rarely bind the quilt in the same fabric as the border because it just doesn't show. How bout you guys? Contrasting binding, or binding from the same fabric as the border?

At 11:45 I have a dentist appt to fix a molar that a piece broke off of....it's not bad enough to need a crown, but it has made the space between it and the next molar big enough that food gets in there and I'm forever toothpicking it out, so it will be nice to have that space smaller.

Yesterday the weather was so nice that at about 2:30 I took buddy the golden retriever and we went to Harbison state forest to go hiking the trails. We did between 4 and 5 miles I think..the loop takes about 1 1/2 hours to do and of course it is more uphill than downhill...ask me how this is possible! It was great enjoying the sights and smells of the forest. We even saw a deer bounding through...Buddy wanted to take off after him, but a quick jerk on the leash made him give up that idea quickly.

Bonnie

Quilt progress! Just binding left..

Trying to upload 3 pics at once! Other people seem to be able to do multiple pics in a post, but I've never been able to get them the way I want before!

Here are shots of my Random Ohio Stars quilt..all that is left to do is the binding and I hope to do that tonight. I played with borders and decided on blue....green was too green, as there are alot of green stars already in the quilt. Remember, these large blocks were gifted to me by friends on an email list, and they didn't know what each other would send, but I guess they all thought green and cheddar (which I love....so it is kinda funny!) Blue just seemed to even out everything. I tried green in the borders and it was too overwhelmingly green. Red made it look like a christmas quilt...so I went with the medium blue inner border and the indigo outer border and I like how it cooled everything down.

I have one more quilt to do for the drawing next week. Gotta dig through some UFO blocks and see what I want to finish. There is a psuedo-pinapple I know I started...it uses 2" strips, and then you sew 3.5" triangles across the digaonal on the corners to give it the pineapple-geese-in-the-corners look. I need 20 12" blocks or so to make a lap size so I think that's a good candidate to work with.

I recieved an email asking me to display some of my quilts in the state guild show....It's a month long show at the Aiken historical museum, and I guess because my quilts 'look old'..they think they would be a great addition to the museum. Isn't that great? Usually stuff is pretty contemporary, at least the last show I attended was, so I guess they are trying to even out the displays a bit. I'll take some over there this afternoon. Aiken is a bit over an hour drive, so that will take up most of what I am going to do this afternoon.

Bonnie

So you want to see the quilts?

I swiped the pics from Kim's blog at dogquilter.blogspot.com. She remembered her camera....I didn't! The Irish Chain was the best machine quilting award with the faux trapunto, and the ocean waves was the best piecing award. What was funny with the ocean waves was the fact that while they were hanging the quilt, they found a PIN quilted inside! OH MY!! Luckily they were able to get the shaft out and separated it from the ball, but now there is a pin head ball floating around in the inside of the quilt, completely encapsulated inside a feather. :cD

Back in the Saddle...Again!

I must be crazy with all that is going on....but you know for the last two terms, I've presented graduates at school with lap quilts. The last term I took all the graduate's names and had someone draw two names to "win" the quilts. So here I am with my own graduating class and it's been eatting at me that I don't have anything for my OWN class! What can I do quickly and clear out some UFO blocks at the same time?

I recieved these 12" Ohio Star blocks when I moved here to SC from an online email list that I am on. I had toyed with the idea of making 6" blocks to go in with the 12" blocks and started making them, but to make it bed sized I was going to have to make a bunch more 12" blocks, and oodles of 6" blocks.....I got started, but it of course got way-laid as I got interested in things that were more interesting.. :c)

This morning I pulled these out...this is how many 12" Ohio stars were already done, and I also had a stack of the 6" ohio stars, and even the shirting alternate plain blocks were cut. I just started laying them out on the floor. I think if I add borders I can quilt this simply, with some all over design and it would be perfect for a graduation quilt for one of my classmates! I've got some other blocks I can also dig through to come up with another one, or I can always throw together a lap sized Yellow Brick Road in no-time flat and that will clear out some fun fabrics and I'll be able to carry on the tradition of graduation-quilt-giving with my OWN class.

Bonnie

Show Ribbons...

I wanted to post a pic of the show ribbons....they are SO great. I can't believe the amount of work that went into these, it was way above and beyond what you normally see for show ribbons. They are machine embroidered with the guild name..Pieceful Hearts Quilters, and that is inset into a pieced dresden heart block, which is the guild's logo. It's funny, because the guild name tag is ALSO this same pieced dresden heart, and instead of name tag, because of it's size...it is known as the official 'Breast Plate'. *LOL* Down the center streamer of the ribbon is the award. Mine were "Best Machine Quilting" and "Best Piecing"

Two weeks from friday!!

I'm still counting down to Nov 11th....Graduation day!

This last weekend was the North Augusta quilt show....I won two ribbons! I got best machine quilting, and best machine piecing on two different quilts. I was quite pleased and amazed because they were both traditional quilts, and the guild shows in the past have really leaned more heavily towards awarding the more arty and contemporary quilts the big awards like that.

My new love is my MP3 player! I should have gotten one with more storage space on it, but I never thought that I'd want more than 5 or 6 hours worth of playing time. I've been getting books on CD at the library and putting them onto my MP3 player! DH is teasing me about always having those things in my ears now.......when I take the dog for a walk, or do things like mop the floor, vaccum....I am listening to the books on CD! Awesome. I'm getting down towards the end of "The Davinci Code" And I love how the guy who's narrating it does it with all different accents for all the different charactors. It's definately more fun than trying to read it myself.

Today I'm getting my HAIR CUT. I haven't had a hair cut or style really in years and years. It's just been long and tied back. A gal I go to school with is also a hair dresser, and she begged me to let her play with my hair and update my look a bit, so I'm game. I'm just feeling the need to try something a bit different in that department, but nothing too drastic. Maybe a bit of highlights and some layers. I also want to check out a new make-up line or something. Update my colors in that department too.

I'm in the last compartment of muscles that I need to memorize the origins and insertions to. I see the finish line ahead of me as soon as I get these 15 muscles memorized......YES! Talk about light at the end of the tunnel. The test on them is wednesday, and I took the muscles and broke them down into groups and am concentrating on one group at a time and then will put the groups together and test myself on them all before the test wednesday. It's a 'blank paper' test.....all you get is blank paper and a pen or pencil. The instructor orally gives you the name of the muscle, one at a time, and you have to write the name down, and then write the origin and insertion. Then the part I hate.....he shuffles the papers around, hands them back randomly and we have to 'grade' our fellow student's papers. These 'blank paper' tests are 10% of the test grade for the chapter....So either this 'blank paper' test can HELP your test grade, or HURT it, depending on how you do. Talk about stress. Major. But this is it....the last 'blank paper' test I'll have to take!

Bonnie

A bit faded, but fun!

Here is a pic of a Halloween Kaleidoscope I made several years ago. I chose the kaleidoscope pattern because just the shape of the pieces reminded me of candy corn! It was made for a guild challenge....there is a blue halloween print in there that has pumpkins and owls and spooky trees and leaves, and the challenge was to use it in a quilt. I love the interplay with kaleidoscope patterns, they just keep your eyes moving back and forth and over the quilt.

The other halloween fabrics inlude candy corn (outer border) witches, brooms, bats, ghosts and haunted houses, black cats, crescent moons with witch sillouettes flying across them, spiders and spider webs! The back is also a halloween print with ghosts, bats, pumpkins, cats and big purple letters that say BOO....with spooky eyes where the holes in the B's and O's are :c)

Jeff's surgery was last friday. Everything went fine, but they did have to open up the hand to pin the bones back in place. He's been a real trooper about it, the funniest thing being the fact that he can't get that arm wet, so I have had to bathe him in my big garden tub! Of course this means that he was taking a bath in his SHORTS because heaven forbid a 15 yr old be seen by his mother, or his father for that matter....

Since getting him home I have been cramming on school work, and trying to get caught up on customer quilts that really seem to pile up this time of the year. Even if I've scheduled them what I thought was far enough apart, never fear, when you are scheduling something several months in advace, it never fails that life is going to take turns that you can in no way expect. The machine can break down, kids get sick or need surgery, you end up having to go out of town, or spend 3 weeks quilting refugee quilts because you feel that is more important than anything. Throw my own school into the mix and it's been a very tough year to keep to a schedule!

One lady who's quilts were a few weeks late told me "I thought you were a professional business woman" when I told her what was going on in my life and that her quilts would be delayed a bit longer. I decided right then to send her quilts back to her so she could find someone else more to her liking. A quilt for her wall (that had already waited over 30 years) didn't seem as important to me as quilts for refugees. And maybe I was wrong in making that decision, but I have to go with my heart. I'm not a machine, and quilting isn't a matter of pushing the button to start the machine, and let it quilt itself while I go do everything else that needs doing down here. I know there are people with Statler Stitchers who do just that....computer program quilting where they can push a button and go do something else until a bobbin runs out, but that's just not how my quilting goes. And I guess I can't please everyone all the time. That is a hard fact of life to face when I try so desparately hard to do that...please everyone all the time.

After today I have only FOUR WEEKS of school left!! Whhhheeeeeehha! But in those 4 weeks are going to be alot of pressure, tension, stress and EXAMS out of my ears as this all wraps up. My Dad and Step Mom are coming to town for my graduation, and being as I haven't seen my Dad in a few years (relationship strain, but working on it) I have that hanging over my head too. Carpets need cleaned desparately!! How do I fit that in? Does anyone have any recommendations besides renting the "rug doctor"?? Anyone have their own machine that would be worth purchasing? Or should I just call Stanley Steamer and pay a fortune but have someone else do it for me??

Fall weather has finally come to SC this past week and it has been AWESOME being able to walk outside without sweating up a storm. I've been able to move my walk/jogging to mid-afternoon which works better for me in my schedule....this is definately my favorite time of the year!

Bonnie