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Thursday, July 21, 2011

It’s a Show & Tell Thursday!


This morning I’m off on a journey to Storm Lake,Iowa!

I’m Spending a few HOT July Days with the Iowa Quilter’s Guild and we plan to stay OUT of the heat, stay in and SEW! We’ve got a Pineapple Blossom Workshop on Friday, a lecture and trunkshow on Friday night, and a My Blue Heaven workshop on Saturday.

I’ll be picked up about 4pm in Des Moines, and then I’ll be seeing plenty of corn Beautiful Iowa Scenery on our 170 mile drive all the way to Storm Lake!

170 miles?!? When I looked on the map, it didn’t look THAT far!

stormlake

I mean, I take THIS many turns to get from my house to the grocery store…and it’s only 3.5 miles! I can already say for Iowa --- you have very straight roads, and no diagonal short cuts to get from here to there..LOL Does this remind you of your old etch-a-sketch? It does me!

Never fear, I’ll have hexagons to keep me company all the way. And lots of corn scenery to keep me company! :cD

I’m hoping the weather holds out…I just did some checking and whooooooeeee! Thunderstorms. Let’s hope everything goes well! I’ve got the trunk show quilts wrapped in plastic just in case! Looks like the rain could be the thing that breaks the heat wave that the Midwest has been dealing with this week.

stormlakeweather1

So onto our Show and Tell Thursday, shall we? It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these, and I think it’s time!

Today’s special guest is Andi L!

Andi sent me a few emails with her pictures attached and they are so bright and colorful I’d just love to share them here with you.

A bit of background from Andi:

I grew up in Italy and Germany, came to the US for college and, like many others, never left :-)

I'm a working mother of two, a 9-year old boy and a 7-year old girl, and live in the suburbs of Boston.

When my first child was born, I stopped working and took up home dec sewing as a hobby (I had never seen a sewing machine before in my life). Soon after, a friend bought me a book about quilting, and after that, I was hooked. That was in 2004.

Several years and projects later, a local quilter (who was working on Cathedral Stars at the time) told me about your website. I read your Scrap Users' System and knew this was the solution I had been looking for for my scraps.

Thanks to your system, I have completed most of the mysteries you have published, all with fabrics already in my stash. I have made several of your other quilt patterns as well without buying one piece of fabric. I have applied your concept of 'if I run out of one fabric, I substitute another' to almost every quilt I have made since then. At this point, I have friends who drop off large bags of their scraps on my door step, knowing that I will find a good home for them! :-)

Here is Andi’s Christmas Lights quilt! She writes:

In your quilt, you used one red for the hourglass block and one green for the star points- I didn't have yardage, so I used scraps and strips. Believe it or not, initially I worried this might be 'too scrappy'. Then I looked at the quilt from 10 feet away and could see that it was actually very cohesive. In fact, it looked great - so, I'm glad I took the plunge and used up my green and red scraps.

andidoubledelight1

Andi has been a glutton for punishement for a long time….she’s also got a gorgeous Double Delight! ((I can’t get enough pink, can you?!)) About this quilt she says:

My friend Christine and I each made this quilt. It was a lot of work, but it was soooo worth it. This quilt sits on my bed right now :-)

And here is her Oklahoma Backroads, hanging over a wall railing! What I love about scrappy multicolored quilts, is that you can pull ANY color out of the center, use that for your border, and that is the color that takes over. Did you notice how she also did her block corners in orange so that those big red squares really become a design element? Great quilt, Andi!

Andi writes:

When I laid the blocks out on my design wall, I found my eyes needed a resting point - so I made two opposing corner squares of each block from the same fabric (orange).

anditrips around the world

This is one of my favorite scrap patterns of all time! It uses EVERYTHING! This is Scrappy Trips, and if you don’t believe me that even hideous fabrics can look good….GIVE it a TRY! All of these patterns are free on my website!

Andi’s comments:

My daughter wanted me to make her a quilt and picked several strips from my 2" bin - when I sewed them together to make the first block, the combination of fabrics looked so good, I knew I had to make more blocks right away. As I kept going, no matter what fabrics I pulled, they all looked great in that block setting - I just could not go wrong! This quilt took less than a week to make, quilting and binding included. The backing was pieced out of scraps - it looks like a quilt in its own right.

How about a close up of some of Andi’s fabrics?

The more you throw in, the more you mix it up, the better it looks! Anything Goes!

Carolina Crossroads

Here is her wonderful Carolina Crossroads quilt! Andi says:

Once again, a lot of work, but it makes my top 3 quilts in terms of how much joy making the quilt brought me. This was a fantastic project!!!

I love the quilting on this one…and the gorgeous colors of the fabrics. It is just scrumptious! But you know how I feel about orange, right? ;cD YUMMY!

Thanks for sharing your quilts, Andi! They are terrific..((And I bet they didn’t barely make a dent in the scraps either, am I right!?))

Happy Thursday, Everyone!

17 comments:

pcflamingo said...

Wow! What an impressive assortment of quilts! I especially like Andi's interpretation of Carolina Crossroads. The cool blues and greens with the warm pinks and oranges is JUST right.

Mary said...

Andi sure puts me to shame. I'd have to show the tote with my Double Delight in pieces in it and Notebook where I printed out the patterns for RRCB and the others for my show and tell. I'll be heading to the thrift store for shirtings and cutting scraps for the Leader/Ender "bowtie" Project after seeing Kathie Hollands post this morning. Remind me it's not a race, please???

Robert said...

Love the quilts.

Hope you see other crops in Iowa - soybeans and windmills. The windmills seem to be sprouting up all over, just miles and miles of them. Interesting scenery. (Maybe would be a great new quilt - Corn, Beans and Windmills.)

Wish I was coming to sew and listen to you; and visit my alma mater - great institution.

Sure wish you could see other spots - West Bend's Grotto of the Redemption, the Iowa Great Lakes and the home of Wells Blue Bunny ice cream in LeMar's. Enjoy your trip. Robert, from northern IA.

Janet O. said...

Now I have added Carolina Crossroads and Double Delight to my "HAVE TO MAKE" list (not just want to). I will never live long enough! Andi has done a wonderful job--I am impressed. Great work--you would never guess that she had not been quilting for decades (like some of us). : )
Safe journey, Bonnie. I'll be praying that those thunderstorms don't interrupt the flow of electricity (and hence the air conditioning).

Lee Prairie Designs said...

Love all the quilts!

Welcome to "Iowa" are proud of our state! Hope you have time to visit a very quaint Dutch Iowa town called "Pella" so much history and a wonderful quilt shop VandeLunes Quilt Shop---imagine that!! Linda has over 6,000 bolts of fabulous fabrics and more!

Have a wonderful time and stay cool!
:)Carolyn

http://thankfullga447 said...

I drove through IOWA yesterday and the corn looks fantastic. I wish I could be there to see you but the class was booked and couldn't make the lecture. I dropped off at Pella, IA (too far for you) has the best bakery for miles and states around. I did get to stop at the LQS and brought material.

Sandra Kaye said...

Hey Bonnie , love the show n tell. I have a strippy trip almost topped. I will be sure and show it to you. Have a super day. Sandie

Anonymous said...

Thanks for showing Andi's lovely quilts. Just the pick-me-up this quilter needed this morning!

Robert was right - you'll see as many wind turbines as you will cornfields. They call it 'Storm Lake' for a reason - the wind never stops blowing. My husband's whole family is from Sac City nearby, and it's a lovely area. Not as dramatic as the scenery you just left behind in Oregon, but just as peaceful.

By the way, that kitten at the top is...well, disturbing. LOL! :)

Leah Shannon

Lois Arnold said...

Andi's quilts are lovely. I wish you could go to the East side of Iowa, it is totally different. We spent 10 years in Dubuque which is right on the Mississippi River. When the streets are named Bluff and Air Hill, etc., you know it's NOT flat and straight! Dubuque is a lovely city with lots of Victorian architecture to see. Maybe next trip you can see Eastern Iowa.

Anonymous said...

Andi's quilts are beautiful. Such wonderful use of color. Thanks.

Brenda said...

Those quilts are BEAUTIFUL!!! Andi, you have done a fantastic job and this post was a quilt show in itself!! thank-you so much for the insperation and showing us what a little playing with scraps can do!! Just beautiful!! Thanks Bonnie for sharing her email with us so we could see her work too!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks Bonnie and Andi for the quilt show. Great work Andi. It's good to see other's "take" on the same pattern. Good luck on weather holding. TX is just too hot to travel just yet. Remember??
Stephani in TX
Tomazec@aol.com

YankeeQuilter said...

Love Andi's quilts! Such a fun post...

enjoy your trip!

Jeanne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jeanne said...

Great quilts! Thanks for showing them.

farmersdotter said...

Wish I could make it to Storm Lake or you could make it to Southwest Iowa to see me! I know you would love all my antiques and vintage fabrics, quilts, etc. Maybe we can meet up someday! I'll have a booth at the AQS in Des Moines this fall, if you're coming to that.
Brenda....the Farmer's Dotter
farmersdotter@frontiernet.net

Beth said...

Bonnie, thanks for sharing all of those wonderful quilts. Andi wow! Everyone of them is just fantastic. I really need to get going on my RRCB again. :)

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