Quilt shows — from a distance

I must confess I have spent the last few days stalking Instagram and Google for images from Quiltcon 2016, in particular hoping to find pics of my Masquerade quilt.  Not finding any, I reached out to a couple of on-line friends for help.  Leanne (who blogs at she can quilt) was gracious enough to send two photos:

Thanks so much Leanne!

What I have found online are images of fantastic quilts from the show, and of people who seem to be having a great time.  Savannah is not so far away from me, so I am hoping I might make it next year.

While searching, I ran across a blog post at The Plaid Portico which has an image of my original New Star Rising quilt.  Apparently this quilt was on display at Quilt Market in Houston last fall, and I didn't even know about it until now.  (The quilt was shown — and sold — at Quiltcon 2013, so it is good to "see" it again.)

(EDIT: Of course, immediately after publishing this post, I ran across this!)

Picnic Placemats

After making a table runner with Melody Miller's Picnic fabric, and a quilt, I used my scraps to make a set of placemats.

I started with a 12" economy block for the center.  To make these blocks, I drafted the design on freezer paper and used the "paperless" paper piecing method.  This is my first time to use this method, and I found it very helpful, especially for large, simple blocks like this.  I added 3" HSTs and 3"x6" flying geese to either side to bring the placemats to 12"x18".

Since I was working with scraps, I did not have a clear plan from the start. I hoped to make at least four placemats, but with some variations in fabric placements I was able to make a total of 6.

You can see in the last one that I also had to vary the binding fabric.

The quilting gave me a chance to practice FMQ on my new machine (a Janome 8900).  I used a ruler for the center squares and large triangles.

I'm linking up with crazy mom quilts for Finish It Up Friday.