Shipshewana is calling!!

There’s a Quilt Festival coming up in Shipshewana, and I plan to go.  And I’m hoping some of my internet friends will join me on what promises to be a fun day for all.  What’s the attraction?

• A shop hop featuring 8 quilt shops in a 30 mile radius of Shipshewana
• Two, count ‘em, 2, yes, I said two quilt shows.   You know how I am about quilt shows—I love ‘em!!  I went to one of the quilt shows last year, and blogged about it here.  It was a wonderful quilt show.
• There is a Quilt Garden Tour going on in Northern Indiana.  They’ve planted many gardens in the shape of quilts or quilt blocks.  I plan to hit as many quilt garden spots along the route as we can fit in.  Here’s a site that did a story about the planting of the quilt gardens (the Quilt Garden Tour site may be having server problems.)
• Lunch at Essenhaus, featuring good Amish food, a quilt shop and several other cute shops.
• Shopping in the famous Shipshewana where we’ll find 4 of the quilt shops on the shop hop, the quilt show, and many other wonderful, quaint shops.
• You can read more about the Shipshewana Quilt Festival 2010 here.  They also have several workshops with some pretty famous names, some book signings, etc.  The festival runs from June 23rd – June 26th.

So, here’s the plan (so far, but I’m open to suggestions).  I’m taking Friday, June 25th off from work to go to the events.  (I’ll need the weekend to recover from the trip).  I plan to map out the Shop Hop route along with the quilt shows and quilt gardens.  I would love to get a group to ride together, caravan, meet up along various spots on the route, and/or have lunch together.  I’d love to meet up with anyone who would like to go to any or all of the above events.   I think we’d have an awesome time!  If you are interested, please email me and let me know what part you are interested in doing or if you have any other ideas.  I can coordinate rides, where we can meet up, or other details of our fun adventure.

You know you want to go, so what are you waiting for?  Granny Lyn, Rhoda, Pam??  Other Michigan peeps?  Anyone from Ohio or Indiana?  Send me an email!!

Dexter Quilt Show

First, I want to thank everyone for their well wishes on my health.  The shingles rash is healing with the help of some steroids, although the hot flashes from the steroids are still working overtime.

It was a humid, rainy weekend.  Perfect for going to a quilt show or two.  Mom and I went to the quilt show in Dexter on Saturday and enjoyed our lunch in a nice smoke-free bar (thanks to the new Michigan law banning smoking in restaurants that went into effect on Saturday).  Although I love going to quilt shows, and appreciate the amount of work that goes into putting one together, I have to say that quilt shows in churches are not my favorite venue.  I prefer to see the full size quilts, and be able to look at them up close rather than having them draped over church pews that you have to view from the aisle in rather dim lighting.  This show was more about older quilts, and had a collection of older Sunbonnet Sue quilts.  There was also an exhibition of someone who must have been a treasured member of the guild or church who had several beautiful quilts that were all hand made.

  This was one of them, apparently the quilter’s first quilt!!

This was another one, in the most beautiful shade of soft yellow

This one was cute, an entire quilt made about weight loss

  

Sunbonnet Sue

I love the typical Amish colors in this one

I did make it to the Midland quilt show, so I’ll get those pictures in the next blog.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. 

Some eye candy!

I had an unexpected treat today.  I found out that Black Sheep Weaver’s Fiber Art Guild was throwing their 6th Annual Spring Fling.  I’d heard of this group, but had never attended any of their shows.  DH was working so I took a little drive to the show.  Boy, was I glad I went.  This is a talented group of artists that had something for everyone.  There were paintings, beautiful photography, a little pottery, jewelry, a few quilts, silk scarves and purses, and of course, lots of beautiful fiber art.   Everything was very presented very beautifully in an old, former church building.

This was an amazing 3-D picture made of beautiful brown fibers.  There was a similar picture that I didn’t get of a beautiful horse.

This was a gorgeous woven piece (so tall).

Another woven piece.  The colors are beautiful.

 

This shawl had a lot of texture.  It looks so light and lacy.

I love the blue colors in this sweater.

A lovely quilt

Cute!

This scarf was so soft!!  I can’t imagine how this is knitted (I assume it was knitted?)

Some pretty hand dyed yarn

I was so tempted to buy one of these scarves, especially the $10-$12 ones in the middle.  I’m kicking myself for not buying a scarf.  I don’t know how they can sell them for such a low price!

Love the owl!

Leave ‘em with a smile.

At this point, the batteries in my camera died or I’d have more pictures to show you.   I did manage to buy a couple of gifts for my new niece that should be born in the next few weeks, but I can’t show those to you quite yet.

Hope you enjoyed the show!

It’s been a while…

I’ve been fighting a cold all week, my 2nd one in a month.  Thought it was allergies, but the lack of energy and body aches convinced me it was another cold.  Ughhh.  So, I took Friday off and just slept a lot this weekend.  I am finally feeling better, well-rested and ready to start a new week.  I did actually get a little quilting in.  I sewed a few rows on my New York Beauty quilt.  One more row to sew and then I can start sewing the rows together.  I am very pleased with how it is turning out.

A few weeks ago, I went to my first quilt show of the year.  It was one of those beautiful spring days with lots of sunshine.  A little cold, but warm enough to walk around downtown Marshall where the quilt show was held.  Here are some of the  pictures.  Sorry for the quality of the pictures. I forgot my camera and had to use the phone camera.


It is unusual to see this pattern in black and white, but I like it.

There were several antique quilts

  

 I had seen this quilt at another show, and I was glad to see it again.

These ducks are so cute!

 I love the colors in this one.

   

This was my favorite quilt.  Sorry it is so blurry.  

 

This picture shows the detail that went into this quilt. 

A quilt how wouldn’t be complete without a cat quilt!

   

I love these hats

This one made me smile!

Hope you enjoyed the show.

Kalamazoo Quilt Show #3

I found this post that I had done but never posted.  No matter, it’s never to late to show quilts from a quilt show.

This 3-D baby quilt was adorable.

Nice fall quilt.

I like the background and border.

Interesting use of hand dyed fabrics

Very pretty.

 

Love the ric-rac.

I like the use of ties in this Bowtie pattern, especially the border.

Bought the Convergence book, it’s on my list

I like the fish

Hope you enjoyed the show.  Unfortunately, I don’t see any more shows on the calendar until late winter, so I guess I’ll have to get back to those UFO’s.  Got a deadline to finish them by January 1st.

Karen

Kalamazoo Quilt Show #2

Here are some more pictures from the Kalamazoo quilt show.  I love landscape quilts

These were pretty creative.

This one was a miniature, about 12-15” tall.

Of course, I had to get several pictures of a cat quilt.

Hope you enjoyed the show.   I still have more pictures that I'll show later..
Karen