Quilting In the Garden

September is a very quilt-y month for me. The weekend after my guild's quilt show (post for 9/19/17) and the same weekend as the Pleasanton Craft Fair (post for 10/3/17) my local nursery Alden Lane Nursery, hosted their annual outdoor Quilting in the Garden show. At Alden Lane, the quilts are hung on clothes lines strung between four-hundred-year old oak trees. They are put up by nursery staff and guild volunteers Saturday morning, taken down Saturday evening so as not to be exposed overnight, then put up again on Sunday morning and taken down one last time on Sunday evening. 

I was part of the Saturday take down; it is a lot of fun. Over the years of this annual event, the nursery has developed and fine tuned the process down to a science. With many hands, the raising and lowering of the quilts works as a well oiled machine. There are pulley and rope tenders, clothes pin attacher and removers, clothespin distribution and collection managers, quilt folders, baggers, labelers and pullers of the fleet of wagons that traverse the aisles of the garden outdoor area. 

Here is just a handful of my favorites sights from the show of close to 300 quilts on display. The quilts are by local artists and, in 2017, by Featured Artist Edydta Sitar, Guest Artist Debby Schnable, with Special Guests Alex Anderson and Jennifer Sampou. Here I am at the entry which sports a mini-pumpkin patch and quilts from some of the local artists.

Although not a quilt, I love this whimsical, welcoming cow at the entry.

Number 177 is a precision pieced Edyta Sitar creation. The mottled shadowing of the oak leaves from the tree branches do not lend themselves to awesome photos but they do create an inspirational outdoor ambience that is further enhanced as the breeze blows and the quilts flutter in gentle undulations.

I particularly liked the colors in Number 193, another Edyta Sitar quilt.

Notice how her background fabric was a subtle stripe, one that she was careful to consistently orient throughout.

You can never go wrong with a the color scheme of Number 91 Living in the Moment Blue and Yellow.

Number 33 was titled Triangle Bubble Dance. I am more of a traditionalist than a modern quilter but the asymmetry of this one drew me in.

I loved the bright colors of Number 13 titled 30 Spools of Thread.  Most of all, the dappled leaf shadows and arching branches of the old oaks represent the feel of the show.

I toured the show, making no purchases from the vendors. Then I sat down for my two hour time slot where I was a volunteer for my guild, selling tickets for our fund raising opportunity quilt. That was all well and good except that our booth was right next to the Sandy Klop booth of American Jane fabrics. Even though I had made purchases the previous day at the Pleasanton Craft Fair (10/3/17 post), I bought an eight piece stack of half yards of her pinstripes from the new line titled Merry-Go-Round. Aren't the colors luscious? I also find good stripes hard to come by so this was a serrendipitous find!

It had been a pleasant afternoon. I helped with the Saturday evening quilt take down. Then I waved bye to the friendly scarecrow as I exited. You can watch the 2015 YouTube video for a more extensive overview of the annual Alden Lane Nursery event Quilting in the Garden. I am linking up now with Let's Bee Social #197.

Pleasanton Purchasing Potpourri

Less than a week after my guild’s Saturday/Sunday quilt show there was a quilt, craft, and sewing festival in Pleasanton, the town next to me. I went alone on Friday, September 22nd so I cannot blame anyone for enabling my spending. But since nobody was there to curtail my impulse purchases, I did buy a few items in the couple hours I spent there. Other than a soft spot for panels, previously unrecognized, my selections were pretty much uncorrelated with each other.

There was this small wall hanging of a deer displayed such that it caught my eye.

I bought the source panel of four animals and a 42 - 5" square charm pack of 25 coordinated prints to make some pillows for Christmas. The selvage of the panel reads Merrily by Gingiber ZEST FOR YOUR NEST for Moda. I do think the deer is my favorite but the other three critters are close contenders. Shall I make two or four pillows? Decisions, decisions. Two are easier to store and four are more fun to display. 

Courtesy of the Fat Quarter Shop, here is an image of the prints within the charm pack. I thought I might use the darker ones as pillow borders or corner stones.

I must have still been in a winter frame of mind because I also bought these six fat quarters - priced inexpensively at $1.75 each. My favorites were the two white background ones across from each other horizontally in the middle, but I just had to get the snowflakes and gridded squares that coordinated so well.

Here is my previously unrecognized panel fondness rearing its head. This panel will look cute cut apart as individual prints for my laundry room. The border of puffy round sheep on the clothes lines is pretty precious, also.

The square for the hens on the washing and sewing machine is enlarged to show off the whimsy. Note that those puffy round sheep are hiding in the dryer set on wool and the washer set on gentle.

This peacock panel called to me. Why it did, once I returned home, I could not recall. Impulse buy. Purely impulse. I think my daughter-in-law had peacock themed decor at one point but has moved on to a yellow theme so I am behind the times. What more can I say...? Perhaps if I have missed the boat, I will make it up as a community quilt, well-purposed to practice my FMQ. It is not quite 45" square so I will need to come up with a top and bottom border of some sort.

This partial panel of an elephant and a hippo was on clearance. This panel is from the Baby Gone Wild fabric line by Masha D'yans. More pillows? They'd need to be 18" to 20" square. I bought this panel ot two images because somewhere in my stash I have a panel of smaller images each about 5" to 6" square as I remember, in the same soft watercolor palette that will make a nice baby quilt. I went to fetch it to take a photo for this blog but alas, I could not find it. It must have moved while I was not looking. Hmmm. I could not find it on the internet either. I know I was not dreaming!

It hard to tell from the photo but I bought the upper red fabric because of its unusual tone - it stood out from neighboring reds. It is sort of a raspberry red - not primary, not cherry - just an odd hue that will either be just perfect for something or not fit with anything. There is one yard. I could not resist the lower green fabric with milk bottles. I will find a place for this droll one yard piece eventually.

Yes, I did indeed buy another fabric doll panel by Stacy Hsu called Just Another Walk in the Woods. The dolls remind me of Hansel and Gretel. I have made up her Lil Red doll and her mermaid dolls (5/20/17 post), her super heroes (4/14/17 post), eight dolls in total. I've bought Stacy Hsu's bunnies and farm animals panels which I have yet to make up (5/17/17 post) and her Howdy cowgirl/cowboy that I have yet to make up. Surely I cannot allow a gap in the collection and so my backlog of panels to be completed continues to grow. I am getting good at these, so one week I will launch a marathon.

I do not drink coffee (but I love the smell) and my house is certainly not decorated in brown tones, so why on earth did I buy this panel? Weakness. And I liked richness of the colors. Placemats. They will be placemats. Or perhaps mug rugs. But who needs twelve mug rugs? I'll figure it out. Eventually.

I liked this pattern and you cannot go wrong for $0.95. It has a very unique construction method that forms four blocks at a time.

I got this to add to the license plate collection that borders the wall of my sewing room near the ceiling. I only buy the plate if I have purchased something from the store, even if only at a show and I have not been at the store itself. Actually some vendors do shows only and have no brick and mortar establishment.

These cheery flannel snowmen will be used for burp cloths for a winter baby. It is a demonstrated fact that I do make burp cloths.

These buttons were cute. So I bought them.

This post is to document and share my purchases (mainly with my daughter who lives in another state). It think it also hints to me that maybe I should not go shopping alone. There were no HUGE purchases but the quantity of these tiny unrelated ones do give me pause for thought. I think I had fun. Uh, oh. I know I had fun! For more fun, I am linking up now with Let's Bee Social #197.