Erin Underwood Quilts

Just got back from a weekend of teaching and quilting with Mid-Appalachian Quilters. This wonderful event is put on by a group of dedicated volunteers and held at Mount St. Mary’s College in Emmittsburg Maryland every year. I had lots of fun meeting new friends and spending time with old ones!  If you are on Facebook, check them out. New photos are up with all the weekend shenanigans!

There was a myriad of national teachers there  with all sorts of great new techniques and patterns. Loved Linda Hahn’s ( Frog Hollow Designs) New York Beauty.Check out her  book “New York Beauty Simplified” and see what I mean.

Then there was Michele Scott – the Pieceful Quilter, who taught bobbin quilting.   Her Sunday fabric painting class spent the day outside and when we had lunch together, she had a red streak running through her blond hair that wasn’t there at breakfast. Now there’s a woman who really gets into her work!

And I’m not sure that Linda M Poole ever slept! If she wasn’t teaching, she was cutting up fabric orders from her latest fabric line. Check out her blog to get a glimmer into how her mind creates such beautiful fabrics and quilts.

Paula Golden presented a lecture on Color – How to Make Your Quilts Sing and well as taught the mathematically endowed how to draft there very own mariner’s compass! We slipped away for bit of Chinese food one night and enjoyed it by the fountain – much more peaceful than braving the busy cafeteria!

Deloa Jones dragged her long arms all the way from Michigan to offer long arm classes. Check out her talents and inventive mind on You-Tube. She’s got a great array of videos demonstrating some of her new tools that really make long-arm quilting a bit more successful! If you would like a little quilt show, click here. Her work is absolutely outstanding!

The list goes on… Merry May and her Mystery Quilts, Jeannette Pie of Easy as Pie Designs. You may know her Talking Quilts. The list goes on and on. I’ll try to tell you more about who was there later. Right now, with all these links, you’ll be so deeply woven into the internet wonderland you may not get anything else done today!!

They say there’s nothing better than Maryland’s Blue Crabs in the summer! Here’s my version of this indigenous treat!

Its a little less messy this way!  Pattern available here.

Doing an Art Quilt Exhibition is a very different thing for me. But we’ve had our opening – and the show hangs til August 12th at the Elkton Station Gallery.

Here we all are – Pictured are Barbara Tinsman, myself, Karen Schueler (wonderful paintings on silk!), Ginny Abrams and Ruth Oatman (still life and landscapes created with fabric!). Mickey Irr (weaving) was unable to attend. We are an eclectic group of fiber artists, to say the least, but the great differences in our styles make for an interesting display of creativity! If you are in the area, I hope you get a chance to stop by and see the show!

Midnight Flight!

These fanciful geese are finished and heading out to a Fiber Arts Show.  Its the Summer Sampler Fiber Artisans Show at the Elkton Station Gallery, Cecil College; 107 Railroad Avenue, Elkton, Maryland.

I had a lot of fun with these feathered friends. The white areas of the quilt were created using shadow-trapunto. Each goose is made out of a white craft felt. Some have more than one layer to add dimension to the wings however I’m not really sure that layering made a difference. Then the geese were applied to a dark blue fabric and covered with a layer of sheer white Batiste fabric. The quilting was completed using a variety of decorative blue threads with occasionally using two threads at once in the needle to enhance color blending.

There is a beaded fringe across the bottom edge. I found those blue “feather” shaped beads while this quilt was still a WIMM (Work In My Mind), You just never know when you collect fabric and beads and such for a quilt if all those collected things will work in the finished product. It was a pleasant surprise to see that those very expensive beads would enhance the quilt and get to stay! If you like to see this quilt in more detail, click here.

Just adding a little bit of beaded fringe now – took lots of thought and planning and a little ripping off and starting over but I think its going to be a nice compliment to this Midnight Flight quilt.

I have to say I did my first knife-edged binding and really like the look of it. It was much easier that I thought it would be and the technique I used gives a nice finished edge to the corners. I’ll have to share it with you when I’ve got more time. Still have lots of beading to do right now! I’ll let you know when its finished!

Got an art opening coming up in June and I need one more piece for the show – so I got started on this one that has been together in my head for quite a while.

First the grunt work – drawing and trips to Staples to blow them all up to the same size.

Then the bones of the quilt. the geese are felt, some are two or three layers thick. I’m hoping for some layered dimension when finished but not sure I’ll get the results in the end.

Its on the machine now, got a layer of batiste on top – and quilting has begun. Two threads in the needle, both sulky, one a silver and the other one is a sort of white shimmery thread, not quite metallic.

On Friday night, I ran out of the silver thread shortly after these two were stitched. Can’t find this in town on Saturday so it requires a trip to JoAnn’s, a 30 minute drive.  It’ll have to wait til Monday so meanwhile, I did this.

Cushions and pillow for the porch swing! There’s even cording on the seat cushion! Back to my roots a bit for this job but OH, what a great porch swing!

Monday came, went to JoAnn’s,  got thread and spent lots of money outfitting my daughter for her internship on the way there and back. So technically,that spool of thread cost a lot of money! But the last goose is feathered!

Now its time to fill in the background – more to come!

You know when you are told not to use canned air to clean out your machine, they really mean it!

My machine was making very loud grinding noises last month so I took it upon myself to see what’s what. I squirted oil here and there and still the noise. So I took off the bottom plate of the machine  – cause that’s where the noise was coming from, or so I thought – and look what I found! Years of thread and lint that I had blown into the bottom of the machine! It was firmly entrenched in every gear and moving mechanical thing under there.

I dilgently and carefully cleaned out the lint – I don’t recommend this for the mechanically intimidated – and put the machine back together sans on screw. It rolled away never to be seen again. Upon starting up the machine again – still grinding!

OK – this means there was something seriously wrong with the poor machine. So I took it into the shop –   something I was avoiding with a vengeance because I didn’t want to be relegated to sewing on my “other” machine for the duration of the repair visit. Luckily, I have an “in” with the service tech and he looked at my machine while I waited. Much to my embarrassment,  he called me back to his office for a diagnosis and sitting there on his repair bench beside my machine was about a 1/2 inch length of a broken needle tip and several strands of decorative thread that I hadn’t used in years!!!! Ah – hah! The source of the grinding!

Apparently I had blown (through my  consistent  use of canned air) the needle tip and the pretty threads all the way over to the flywheel side of the machine and these pesky little pieces of debris got caught up in the belt! Not exactly where I heard the grinding noise coming from but its not grinding any more and I’m not blowing air any more either! Lesson learned!

This fellow, Dusty Farrell, has taken several awards at the MQX 2011 show this past week. He is very talented and has a few videos out there for all of us to drool over.  http://www.youtube.com/user/countrystitchin#p/u/15/fo4NhBsCCe0 He is going to be something to watch! Lots of innovative quilting ideas. Enjoy!

The local quilt shop here in Elkton,  My Favorite Quilt Shop, is having an interesting program on Saturday, April  30th.  And I quote…

“Come meet Vic Dadika and Shirley Mandler from Northcott Fabrics who will have samples of the newest fabrics to be shown at Spring Quilt Market. Attendees will have the opportunity to pre-order fabrics before anyone else has seen them! Fee: $20 includes a box  lunch. This is an all day event and requires registration. Seating is limited V-I-C also stands for Very Important Customers!.”

This could be an interesting afternoon – think I’ll check it out! Click on the link to My Favorite Quilt Shop if you are interested too!

Lately I have had to spend big bucks replenishing my thread stash and as I am perusing spool after spool of this and that brand, type and color, I remain ultimately confused. I am sure I am not the first to admit that I don’t know enough about thread. Luckily, someone else does and stuff about needles too! Check out these links at Superior Threads.  Cindy Needham is a wealth of information – very basic too – Stuff I can understand and retain! Then there is a plethora of more info here – Thread Therapy. I’ve seen some of Superior’s  videos on The Quilt Show too. Although that is a subscription site, there a lot of FREE content too!

So I hope you spend some time surfing these links – lots of good information on them and one is never too old to learn!