It's Blue Times Three

The Pensacola Quilt Show is in full swing, and I can share the results for my quilts.  Organic Pink Pickles has done it again.  It won a blue ribbon AND it was awarded Best of Show!  This is the first year our guild has ever awarded a best of show ribbon. I was completely surprised and I am humbled to be the winner of this award.  

This quilt has had such an incredible journey since it became the grand prize winner of the NYC MQG DWR Challenge, was published in Modern Patchwork and spent a year traveling the country.  It came back home and now has become a winner again.  It really has been a wonderful experience. 

I spent a lot of time on the floor talking to visitors and sharing this special quilt.

I also entered another quilt, the Dresden Star.

This one I called More Flowers for Nana Girl and it's also wearing blue!!  It's been so exciting and there's still one more day. 

This is such a sweet happy quilt.

It's been a great day, happy stitching.

Karen 

From Student to Teacher

Last Saturday I had the privilege to spend the day with some of the members of the Covington County Quilters Guild up in Andalusia, AL.  We spent the day in a workshop learning the pickle dish block.

And I'm sad to say I do not have a single picture from our day to share!! (These are from my workshop a few months ago.)

My students got to choose between making either Organic Pink Pickles or Purple Pickles.  There was a lot of purple, cheddar, pink, brown, batiks and B&W going on.  They all finished at least one block and I hope I made some PP pickle dish fanatics. 

 Today I'm putting what I preached into practice.  This is actually a hand drawn pattern.  It seems to be adequate since I'm only doing one arc.

I'm making this arc for a current project.

This is my second try.  The one on top just completely disappeared into the background.  After finishing it and appliquing it to the background I could tell it was not working.  So I decided to use the actual background fabrics instead of the yellow. I think I'll be much happier.  It's a good thing these don't take long. 

And speaking of being the student, my project from Jane Sassaman's class is still living on my design wall.  Jane said the yellow didn't go, so I took it out and now I'm stuck here.  I'll be making a few more rays and putting them in the upper corner.  This may take me a while.

I will share some student work when I get pictures ☺️. 

Happy stitching today,

Karen 

Teaching at the Flying Needles Retreat

It's almost hard to see me - I'm surrounded by Pickles - Pink and Purple!!  What fun I had as I spent two days at the Flying Needles Quilt Retreat in Niceville, FL and had the privilege of  teaching a wonderful group of women.  A special thanks goes to my host Kathy, who was also the Chairman of the quilt show and retreat.  Needless to say, she was so busy I didn't even get her picture.  But I want to share a few pictures of the classes.  

The first class I taught was this log cabin variation.  The committe had seen a picture of the quilt and asked if I could teach it.  I designed it using EQ7 -it's based on an Accuquilt pattern.

We were at the Northwest Florida State College.  I had a small classroom and a full class but we made it work and had a blast.  We had several mother and daughter sets which was very fun.

Below is a picture of the West Virginia group.  They were so productive and helpful - thanks for the tips!

I loved seeing everyone's color choices.  They made fun of me when they kept hearing me say "Oh, that's my favorite color" each time I saw their fabic choices.  But their projects were all so pretty and so different.  

Isn't it fun to see everyone's strips laid out?  They had quite an assembly line going.

My class helper Shirlee was so busy and I somehow missed getting a picture of her - sorry Shirlee.

On Saturday, I taught a class on Pink Pickles.  I made the class sample Purple Pickles last fall using some different techniques so they could get idea possibilites.

This class worked very hard as they chose which colors would go where and then learned the paper piecing technique. 

We spent a lot of time discussing different setting options.

How I loved spending the day seeing Pink Pickles hanging in the room.

Here are 9 of the 10 blocks done - I was so prould of all their hard work.

My friend Janan sent this picture of me teaching - I sure hope I was saying something important LOL!!

A big thank you to all my students - you were great sports and I hope you learned a lot.

Happy Stitching,

Karen

A Fun Surprise

Five weeks have passed since I started this post but part of starting a new year is not procrastinating on certain things so I'm finishing it. (I've also got a few more in Draft that I'll get to shortly).  Back in November I got an email from a blogger friend  Teresa Marler letting me know that she has seen Organic Pink Pickles in this magazine and wondered if I'd seen it  yet.

Needless to say I had not and I was sooo excited.  I managed to get a peek at the magazine when I was in JoAnn's before Christmas.  Always a thrill..... it never.gets.old.

I'm off to plan a new baby quilt - pure joy!  Hope I can find the perfect fabrics.  And to start off this new year - it's going to be a modern quilt!!  Eeek, I hope I'm not going to the 'Bright Side" LOL!!

Happy stitching,

Karen

Bordered, Basted and Ready to Quilt

In the end, Purple Pickles got a border.  I really struggled with whether to leave it or whether to add a border.  After a trip to my LQS, I found this fabric and my decision was made.

It's got a black background and the exact two shades of warm and cool purple swirls. I added a small black border and a piping of lime green that has tiny black swirls.

Here you can see the quilt without the border.  I just felt that it needed a little extra "weight" to it as I was using some pretty dark colors.  Seeing it with the border added, this now looks totally unfinished to me.

Here is the final version.  I took it ouside to get a better picture and the center still looks washed out to me.  I will start with an allover stitch in the ditch and then hope for some inspiration.

It's a gorgeous day in Northwest Florida today, hope it is where you are too.

Karen

Atlanta Quilt Live Recap

This past week has been so busy, but I wanted to share a little of my trip to Atlanta last weekend.  It started Thursday night when I took a class with Victoria Findlay Wolfe.  What a fun evening.  Victoria and I have been blogger friends for a couple of years, so it was a blast to finally meet in person. The class was called "Playing with Miniatures" and we learned how to make these little blocks.  I was kind of busy chatting so I didn't finish my block :).  But I did get the center done - the ones on the left were extras.

To put it in perspective, these little darlings finish at 1"!!  

We got a little class kit with 2 pieces of fabric and some scraps.  My pieces were red and purple which I think will be cute.

I have promised myself to finish this and not let it sit in a drawer.  

Victoria had several samples for us to see.

I like this single row set in a square.

One of the students actually finished her center block, the red looked really good with the drab olive color.

The next day it was time to see the quilts and enjoy the exhibit.  My sister and I had so much fun.

Victoria did a quilt walk and spent time discussing the quilts in the DWR exhibit. Here she is with her tractor DWR quilt.  

Here we are in front of Organic Pink Pickles.  It looked so pretty hanging and Victoria let me talk about it to the group.

Here I am in front of my QN 45 challenge quilt "Dahlia Revisited".  This exhibit was really something.  I had not seen pictures of the quilts so I didn't really know what the other quilts looked like.  They were gorgeous and I felt very humbled to have placed in the top 5.  This quilt will be back home soon, I don't think they are travelling anywhere else.

Some of you may recognize this red quilt.  If you looked closely at the work, you could probably guess.  It's made by Sharon Schamber.

Sharon had an exhibit there also and her daughter Cristy Fincher led the quilt walk.  She told stories about growing up as Sharon's daughter and shared about Sharon's evolution as a quilter.  I have seen some of Sharon's quilts in person before.  They are so incredible, she has set the bar very high.

Driving over 750 miles is not something I would want to do often, but it was so worth it to see not only my quilts but all the other quilts in the many different exhibits.  There was so much inspiration.

Happy stitching,

Karen

Mini Pickle Dish

My 16 blocks are done and are now waiting for me to find a border.  I really like how this turned out.

It's always hard when I'm just getting started making units to imagine what it will look like.

Even when all the arcs were done, it was hard to picture it.

And then at this stage, when it seems finished, I know how different it will look with a border and binding and how much it will change with the quilting.

I'll try and get some outdoor pictures soon, the colors really sing in this one.

Happy stitching,

Karen

A New Pickle Dish Project

I shared this picture last week in a blog post.  It's my new Pickle Dish project using green, purple and black & white.  I'm trying to use all stash fabric but I may need to supplement a few new pieces (darn LOL).

For those of you who follow me on IG  - you  may have seen this picture last week - the start of my new quilt.  I have made some serious progress since then.  All the paper piecing is done.

This is going to be a small project, it's actually a class sample for a class I'm teaching next February based on my quilt "Organic Pink Pickles".

This quilt only has 16 blocks, so there are only 32 arcs.  It seems easy after working on Pink Pickles last year which was so much bigger.

I designed this project in EQ7 and I've already changed the colors slightly.  I started in the center and am working my way out to check the colors and balance.  I like the warm purple center and the green outer corners.  The B&W dotty Kauffman fabric is a little bit of a stretch for me but I'm pretty sure it's going to work.  I'm trying to stretch those "modern" muscles with a traditional pattern.

I don't have a huge collection of cool purple fabric, so I'm auditioning the pieces I have.  I think they will work. 

It's fun to make small projects where every decision doesn't require two days of studying the design wall, leaving the room, coming back, checking again, etc., etc. LOL.  I know you all know what I'm talking about :).  

Having fun this afternoon - hope you're stitching something fun too.

Karen