Tote & Gloat

Tote and Gloat is the annual event that Rose City Quilters hold in May. This year it is Saturday 9th May. The day starts at 8:30am and you can enjoy shopping with the merchants or looking at the Guest Exhibitions. At 10am everyone takes a seat and the huge Show and Tell starts, everyone attending is encouraged to bring quilts to share at this show and tell and if quilts are finished and have a velcro sleeve they are hung to view again. Over the lunchtime you get to go up close and have another look at the quilts hung and , of course, check out the merchants again as well as have lunch. After lunch the guest speaker is Kay Haerland from Australia. She will be bringing lots of quilts to show us and talking about her quilting life. Check out her website and see how interesting she is. Then it is the drawing of raffles and awarding of prizes for Rose City Quilter members who entered the challenges and the day finishes at 4pm.  What a fabulous day, immersed in quilting and sharing with likeminded people. There are still tickets available - either from me or from Rose City Quilters, P O Box 892, Palmerston North 4443 enclosing $15 per ticket and an SAE for returning them to you.
I will be there as a merchant and look forward to seeing you and your quilts.
Dianne

Tote and Gloat and a mini tutorial on painted wholecloth miniature quilt

Doesn't time fly by when you are busy - I haven't blogged for the last few weeks as I have been very busy organising the tour of Cindy Needham from California to Palmerston North NZ for our local Tote & gloat show as well as trying to get a challenge done.
Cindy was fabulous - such a generous and giving tutor. Her lecture at Tote & Gloat and the 3 classes she did for Rose City Quilters were wonderful. Everyone who attended the classes thought she was one of the best tutors they had ever had. A big Thank You to Cindy for coming to visit us.
For the challenge I made a wholecloth quilt. The challenge theme was "Inspired by a Paper Napkin (serviette)". My mother gave me this paper napkin, it was just so elegant. I drafted up a variation of the pattern in the napkin and then decided how to make the quilt. I chose to do a miniature only 12" square. I decided to make this using white batik fabric, pure silk thread and a #60 needle. I quilted the design first and then went back and coloured in the 'applique' areas with a black Pigma Pen.
Here it is in steps -

I used a Frixion black (heat erase) pen to mark the design then machine quilted the 'applique' areas and started to colour them in to see if it would work. Then I machine quilted the entire background area. Using the small needle and silk thread means you can quilt very tiny stitches.

This is kind of scary because you have to stay in the lines, if it goes over you can't remove the pen. So just fudge it and make a slightly larger line outside the quilting stitches.

Yay, it looks good. Now how to edge it??? I decided to make the edges wavy and to face it as I do not like the look of an extra binding on it.

I was very pleased with the way it turned out, and I won a Merit Ribbon so I am very pleased.Dianne