Swan boat and other Quilt Market antics

As promised, here’s Stitch editor Amber Eden and me in the swan-boat centerpiece of the Michael Miller booth at Spring Quilt Market in Portland. Fortunately it’s only a still shot, as my dismount was less than elegant. I bumped into Amber on her way in, and we had a great time checking out new fabrics together.

Market was a great reminder that the people I work with over phone and e-mail do actually exist in the real world! Here’s fellow Stitch contributing editor Linzee Kull McCray on the left with friends Jenny Gordy, Codi Josephson, and Greta Songe.

Days at Market are long, with parties going into the night after the convention itself closes. At the Portland Modern Quilt Guild’s event at Modern Domestic, I had the chance to meet Susan Beal, another Stitch contributing editor, who’s lucky enough to call Portland home. (Incidentally, at the same party, wearing the necktie I appliquéd for Stitch with Style scored me a dinner invite with the riotous trio of Rachel, Angela, and Gretchen—hi guys!)

You wouldn’t know it from the size of the convention hall, but the quilting/sewing industry is a small world—Linzee interviewed me for American Patchwork & Quilting many moons ago, I worked as a freelance editor on Susan’s book Modern Log Cabin Quilting, and now we’re all hooked up with Stitch. But I never would have expected to hear my name called across the floor by a family friend I hadn’t seen in at least 15 years—she was lending a hand with her sister’s booth, Eazy Peazy Quilts.

Meeting and catching up with people was half the fun—the other half was all the new fabric and tools being shown! I’m salivating for the Charley Harper line coming this fall from Birch Fabrics. I’ve put some other lines I’m looking forward to up on Flickr if you want a sneak peek of your own. I should have taken more photos of people and fabrics, but there were so many shiny, distracting things to see!

Spring Quilt Market

So much to see at International Quilt Market in Portland, Oregon! Lots of tasty fabrics, all the big quilt industry stars, and laughs with quilters from all over. Today's the last day, so I'll post some more photos when I get home - including one in a swan boat on the show floor...seriously.

Appliqué retreat at Lake Tahoe

I spent last week at Sandra Mollon’s Appliqué Academy up at Lake Tahoe, and while we didn’t get up to quite the same chair-trolley antics as last year, the Mother was along this time so my quilting friends got a firsthand view of the tree from which the apple fell.

The Valentine, Halloween, and fruit blocks are the work of fellow retreat-goers, while the wild colors on the left, of course, are what I was working on—some peacocks for my next quilt pattern.

It was great having a chance to sew with the Mother rather than trying to describe our respective projects down the phone—and speaking of which, do you want to see what she was working on at the retreat?

I showed my stuff first ’cause hers kind of puts it to shame, no? The way she shades the petals with fussy-cut fabric is incredible, and these blocks (along with the seven others that will make up the quilt) are of her own design, based on Chinese embroideries. While waiting for a flight delay, we hurriedly got her set up on Flickr and a blog of her own—stop by The Happy Appliquer and let her know you want to see more! She’s as prolific as she is talented with appliqué, so I’m sure it’ll be a good read as long as I haven’t totally confused her with the rushed explanation of the computery stuff.

Thanks for coming out, Mom, and thanks Sandra for another great retreat!

Hippo quilt finished!

I was binding on the plane and then on the entire train journey from London up to Grasmere (where the quilt fended off anyone who might have snagged the open seat beside me), but I managed to get the quilt done just in time! Megan seemed very pleased with it, and it was not the only hippo-related item in her wedding booty—so my fears that perhaps her fascination had faded were assuaged!

A sunny day somehow got sandwiched in between clouds and rain in the Lake District, which made the wedding even nicer. And it was lovely to catch up with my English friends, of course—and to give my binding fingers a rest!

(You can see the quilting better in this photo.)

The back

The label

Considering the rush, I'm happy with how it turned out, and more importantly I'm glad Megs and Neil liked it too. Worth every stitch!

Hippo quilt update

Sorry, no photos, as I'm getting my bits together to head to the airport for my friend's wedding. The hippos are all quilted—just in diagonal channels, but I'm happy with how it turned out. Only hand-sewing the binding remains, so I'll be that bizarre character needling away at a hippo-covered blanket in the airport terminal. Say hello if you run into such a creature—it'll be nicer than the inevitable stares!

Fichu: if you want it, he's got it

The other day I reaped the rewards of fabric tourism as the Other’s friend Lydia introduced me to Fichu, which she claimed was the best fabric shop in Berlin. It's not only that; it's like a parallel universe where no fabric ever dies—floor to ceiling stacks of vintage fabric from any period you could imagine, many still on the bolt and available in whatever amount you need. (And in this parallel universe, there must not be fire marshals.) A cotton avalanche seemed imminent and in place of aisles there were a couple paths carved through the stacks, so browsing was a little tricky. Instead, you just had to let the shopkeeper know what you were looking for, and chances are he could unearth it from whatever magic rabbit hole he had at the back of the shop.

He was what really made the stop worthwhile. He’s been selling textiles for many moons, and seemed to know just about everything about them (the Berlin office of Christie’s uses him as an expert). I thought I was being clever by asking of a large-scale Finnish print was Marimekko—“Everyone knows only Marimekko,” he sighed somewhat jokingly. Keep thy cleverness to thyself, Feed Dog.

I was of course mostly looking for midcentury fabric; he noted that it’s almost always people from English-speaking countries who are looking for retro prints. Australians in particular, he said; their population didn’t boom until the Fifties, so they don’t have much native midcentury design. Germans, he said, like Op-Art and Seventies design theoretically, but “for someone else” rather than in their own homes.

It was a shame I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, because I’m sure it would have been there. I ended up buying half a metre of two fabrics—an indulgence, but worth it for the experience, which was more like visiting a museum than shopping.

Update: Here's the fabric I bought (click to zoom).

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with them, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Greetings from Germany

Hello from Berlin, where the Other and I are staying with a very generous friend of his. So generous, in fact, that she gave us these lovely vintage Bavarian tea towels.

They’re 100 percent linen and she reckons they’re from the mid-1960s, though they were fresh out of the original package yesterday. The colours are splendid—very vibrant, since the towels haven’t been used—and pink and orange is a particular favourite of the Other. Could make for quite a nice appliqué design, eh?

Fabric shopping in Berlin has so far yielded little; the impressive craft section at KaDeWe had a decent amount of quilting fabric (though we'd been explicitly told by someone upstairs that there was no patchwork fabric to be had in the whole store), but most was imported from America and thus 1) nothing new, and 2) inflated in price, even without figuring in exchange rates. There was, however, a flurry of childlike excitement when we discovered some German quilting magazines (from earlier this year—still looking for more current issues). I’m looking at the pictures and marking pages for the Other to translate—it was only a matter of time before I inducted him into my quilting sweatshop somehow. Bwa ha ha!

In the continuing adventures of Manquilter Misunderstood by World at Large, we also stopped by Knopfloch (“buttonhole”), a pretty basic craft shop in Alexanderplatz. When told I was looking for quilting fabric, a woman working in the shop proceeded to gesture at the bits of fabric in some sample quilts to describe to me what patchwork was. It was a valiant attempt at education and at English, but there’s just something a little silly about someone straining their communicative faculties to express what someone else already knows. I guess in any language male + quilting = clueless. And to be fair, the level of my German puts my cluefulness rather in question.

More shops further afield, so stay tuned.