Saturday, July 24, 2010

Colors

I'm going to the Long Beach quilt festival! I'm going to the Long Beach quilt festival! ~~~ la~ la~ la~!

Marcy is taking me! We're going to meet up with my Takumi and his girl friend (all these non quilters! What will they do?) and we'll spend the day browsing around.

I have been a quilter for nearly 25 years. I fell in love with quilts when I was a college student and won a bed size quilt at a quilt raffle. I dabbled in piecing on my own until Takumi was born. I joined a 4 person quilting class for 6 months before Leiya entered the world. I started making raffle quilts for the kindergarten when Takumi was four. I have visited local quilt shows in my mother's neighborhood twice during the summers when I was back in California (won another quilt raffle!) and I took a quick whirl around the Tokyo quilt festival 10 years ago with a couple of non-quilting friends but I consider this the first real quilt show I'll ever have attended. I'm so excited!

So. What would you suggest I see or look for? What should I buy? Remember limited cash, limited luggage space. Someone mentioned an applique pressing sheet. What is that? Are there any absolutely fantastic quilting tools that you use that might not be found at JoAnn's?

I hope to meet up with a couple blogging friends who are making it a day at the quilt show too.

In the meantime, I have been making more Alabama Beauty blocks. Yes, I did tell you that I hadn't brought the templates with me. Well, I went on the Internet and found the pattern again and made new templates. I had picked up two batik pieces and had some scraps from the backing project and I even bought some black to make a couple black cats in a quilt someday. I've exhausted the combinations of those fabrics though so I'll be looking for some new colors to add tomorrow.

Speaking of colors. Look at the beautiful peacock feather Kiana and I found on one of our morning walks. And we found the peacock too! Occasionally peacocks will perch in the neighboring trees on their way to somewhere... I know one home that has quite a few peacocks strutting around their yard and I think the peacocks that visit us must be theirs. They call out from the highest trees "Help! Help!" which jolts visiting friends to think that something must be very wrong nearby.

Anyway,we went close up to take this picture and the very tame peacock posed and then went on his way... leaving behind a peacock feather!

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