Panel Magic

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One of the things that I was looking for when in Paducah was a quilt panel or two.  You know the panels that have a printed motif that can either be small motifs, stripe like motifs, block motifs or full sized motifs that go across the width of fabric.  I don’t normally buy panels but have a special reason now.  Last spring a friend and I attended National Quilters Day event at the International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln where we spent the day full of fun interesting lectures and looking at beautiful quilts. 

One of the lectures we attended was given by a lovely woman from Lincoln and was on using panels to make interesting beautiful quilts.  She had lots of ideas on using panels in interesting ways….more, much more than just slapping borders on them. 

My friend and I talked about this for a while and got the idea that this would make a great challenge so we volunteered to be in charge of the challenge for the next year in our local guild.  We will be working up a set of rules for guild members to follow but basically we will have the members choose some sort of pre-printed panel and to come up with some way of using that panel in a quilted piece in an interesting way using piecing, applique or some other way of treating the panel. 

I’m not sure yet what I want to do with these panels but should work on them over the summer so I have something to show as an idea next fall.

Later…Lynn

Kaleidoscope Christmas

This Christmas quilt was made in 1992 and I use it mostly as a table topper but do have the sleeves attached in case I want to hang it on a wall. I started it in a class taught by Brenda Groelz many years ago at our guild. We were to purchase 7 pillow panels, stacked 6 of the panels then cut them in the kaleidoscope design then sewed the 6 sections that were alike back together. Very similar to the stack and whack patterns of today. The center block is the 7th uncut panel.

Point to point measurement is 36"

The small borders around each block came from the original pillow panel fabric as did the light colored holly outside border. I machine quilted this piece and have used it somewhere in my home at Christmas time since then.

Two friends and I went to a tour of homes yesterday that the my daughter's church sponsored. The tour included only 3 homes, but wow, what homes they were.

One was right along the Platte river with views of the river from several rooms in the house. One house was built near a lake and the other just behind it. All three large homes were decorated for Christmas and were absolutely beautiful. Not one of the homes had a sewing room though. Our opinion was we would have taken over the balcony in the really large home on the river for our sewing studio as it had a nice view of the river and was very light and cheery and we would have found a nice room in each of the other homes for a sewing space too. It is hard to imagine not having a sewing space in your home as it is a necessity for us. They all had the steam rooms, hot tubs, multiple bathrooms and many TVs but no dedicated sewing rooms that we could see anyway - so sad.

We all agreed the homes were lovely but we would have to definitely make some changes if we lived in any of them.

Was a nice afternoon spent with friends topped off with a quick trip to JoAnns and Dairy Queen for a Blizzard for the trip home.

Lynn