Lowell Quilt Festival 2011

My SIL, Melissa, is visiting from Texas this week. Although she is really busy with work and school, she does enjoy sewing and has made a few quilts in the past couple of years. She brought Gregory a quilt she made and he loves it- I will post that tomorrow.

Anyway, some of our activities so far have centered around sewing. Today we went to the Lowell Quilt show. I was excited to show her a quilt made by a fellow Boston Modern guild member: Jen Boucher. I am so happy for Jen! I have seen quite a lot of progress on this quilt and to see her win a blue ribbon for the Best Wall Quilt is simply AWESOME! You can see more of Jen's work on her blog: A Quilting Jewel. (Incidentally, this quilt has hundreds and hundreds of crystals on it!) Of course, I had to take a picture of this interesting use of hexagons:

This quilt was my favorite - probably since I seem to have a thing for trees. I wrote down the name of the pattern and I am going to try to find it and do this someday in modern fabrics.

I have been doing a little sewing while Melissa is here. I whipped together my first dresden plate in about 10 minutes. I am telling you - once you have the "prep work" of making all of the fan blades, these things fly out of your machine in no time.

Melissa also requested that we make a trip to Marden's in Maine while she's here. We went straight from the airport! I was really thrilled with what I got:

The Maryoshka doll piece is made by Hallmark (who knew they made fabric?!), the woodgrain is a Timeless treasure print, and the red print is a perfect backing for the girl quilt I am planning for my friend. The two KJR finds were from Lowell show today - I was ecstatic to find them because they are literally both my most favorite prints from that collection and I had very little!