I Presented! And I'm Quilting.

The past several days were fairly busy. On Saturday, I helped members of our Central Florida MQG make badge holders. That was fun, and kept me on my toes too!

On Monday I went to Ormond Beach, about 1 hour 45 minutes east of us - Atlantic side of Florida - to Racing Fingers Quilt Guild. Their 60-plus members requested a program on modern quilting, and I was happy to fill the bill. Plans were made back in February.

"What is Modern Quilting?" is a 93-slide presentation that begins with how the modern quilting movement began, from social media, and fabrics to aesthetics and techniques seen in modern quilts. Of course, I talked about QuiltCon too, and what a great show it is. Gosh, it's easy to share with quilters what I'm enthused about.

Following my presentation, I gave a trunk show with 12 of my modern quilts. I could have taken along a lot more quilts, but I was cognizant of staying within my allotted one-hour time frame!

It was nice to have a reason to see some of these quilts again. They are usually stored in pillowcases the top of our closet!

This is "Ad Libbing," made by Lora Douglas and me in 2014. It was juried into QuiltCon 2015 in Austin, Texas, and received third place at the Daytona Beach AQS show in 2016.

"Shapes" is a favorite, made for the QuiltCon 2015 Bias Tape Challenge. It too was juried into the show. Both "Ad Libbing" and "Shapes" are double-batted with Quilter's Dream polyester and wool. They're both domestic machine quilted by me.

It was nice to share several of my most recent finishes too. This one is "Spin Art," inspired by Christina Cameli, and made with Painter's Palette Solids using a 9 degree ruler.

What better audience to see my Florida quilt?!  By the way, see how the photographer captured me in this photo? The halo? (It's probably an air vent.) Proof that I really am an angel!

It's a lot of work to prep for a program, but definitely worth it! I talked with several quilters who were very interested in modern and asked many questions. One of them later commented on my Instagram feed, "Thanks for coming. I think I'm a modern quilter and I didn't even know it!" Ahhh... that's music to my ears.

At home, I've continued to hand quilt. The timing of this quilt has worked out well as my Bernina was picked up Tuesday for servicing. Yes you heard that right. A tech comes to my house to pick up my Bernina, and then delivers it when it's done!

So this is progress over the past few days. All the circles are hand quilted now.

Currently I'm finishing-up straight line quilting in the vertical strips of the background.

The quilt will end up about 36" X 48". A nice size for a baby gift. I've begun to ponder a name for all those burnt orange and white circles. I've come up with "O-O Orange."

Once the binding is machine-sewn to the quilt top, I plan to do this (below). See the hand-stitched binding? Hand quilting to secure the binding seems appropriate for this particular quilt, don't ya think?

CREDIT: The above picture is from ShannonFraserDesigns Instagram feed, and am sharing it with her permission. She has some pretty stuff if you'd like to check out her blog too. 

Now I want to leave you with a funny. One of my students shared this with me a long time ago, and I came across it again. It's a classic, to share with your quilt-y sew-y friends.

I said to him:

"I don't ever want to be kept alive, dependent on a machine and fluids from a bottle."

He got up, unplugged my Bernina, and poured out all my wine.

Linda