FIRST DAY OF QUILTCON 2023

 I spent my first day at Quiltcon 2023 in the Small World Workshop with Tara Faughnan.  Quiltcon is being held in a building right next to the hotel.  It was about a 10 minute walk.  Some of the signage left a bit to be desired though.  It was a winding path up stairs, down escalators, down long hallways and through lobbies and more escalators, turn here, turn there.  Follow the crowd.

It was a super workshop.  I loved every minute.  The nuggets of information from Tara were coming almost faster than I could write them down.  

When people asked me after what I thought of the class, my response was, "It changed my life."  And I meant it.  It has.

Wow.

And, the other great thing in this workshop was I finally met some friends I've only known on zoom.  We hugged - it was great.  Ethylene and I agreed to make one section of Small World every day for the #100dayproject.  We're already behind since that started a few days ago.  I'll have some catching up to do when I get home.

Afterwards, Ethylene and I walked through the show a bit.  She left me alone for a few minutes and I went into the Vendor Mall.  I broke my vow to not buy any fabrics.  I couldn't help myself!  I don't get a chance to buy African fabrics very often - and it was only 4 FQs.

Then we went looking for my quilt, Blissfully.

Later, a lot of us from Brave Patch meet for dinner at Sweet Georgia's Juke Joint, a short walk from the hotel.  It was fun meeting everyone, but difficult to talk - the music was too loud.

DAY 3 + MORE

 Here is my little sketch inspired by the prompt 'Rainbow' for #30daysketchbookchallenge.  It kinda got away from me.

Then I finally packaged up Blissfully, took it to the post office and sent it on it's way to Austin to be in Quiltcon 2023 in Atlanta. 

                                     Good luck Blissfully!

And, I made the first 6" charm block for Art East Quilting's Mini Block Sampler.  There will be one block every Monday - 48 blocks.  I'm using the stack of hand-dyed fat quarters by Jane Sassaman that I've been hoarding.  I added a white with black squiggle lines for the background.

BLISSFULLY DONE AND MORE

 I finished the quilting on Blissfully - it's done and off the machine.  It looks great.  I love this quilt.

Now I have to decide whether it wants binding or facing?  Hmmm.

After that, I went to work on the Dancing quilt.  I'm trying to work out how to sew everything together.  I should just be making pieces that fit in between and connect things.  But, I'm making more components, too.  It might be getting a little too busy.  Or not.

DANCE STEPS

 I've been working on the Dancing With the Wall quilt - sewing things together and trying to figure it out.

I attended the first Brave Patch Friday morning Sew-in.  It started at 5:30am here.  That was a little early.

I completely changed the arrangement at the end of the day.  

I'm not sure - I might change it back.

LOADED THURSDAY

 I finally loaded the Blissfully quilt onto the longarm.  It just barely fits - but, it fits.

I thought I wanted to quilt it with a reddish thread, but it turns out it wanted to be quilted with a gold colored thread.

I also thought I was going to put some circles in the lines, but that didn't work out.  With the quilt completely covering the frame, it would have been very difficult to stop and disconnect the channel locks to insert a circle.  So I think I'll add them after all of the straight lines are done.  Maybe, I'll quilt them with a 'big stitch'.

STRIPS RE-DO

 I took apart a section of the Skinny Inset Strips quilt, now named Blissfully.  I wanted to tone down some of the lightest values.

It's now back together looking even better.