This is the second year, in a row, that the American Quilt Society has brought one of their shows to my home town, Grand Rapids, MI. I had quite the treat to meet up with one of my online friends and hand quilters, Tim Latimer from Timquilts.com. Tim walked away with the blue ribbon for the Best Hand Workmanship Award for his Tree of Life, wholecloth quilt, that he designed and so meticulously quilted.

Hard to believe but this quilt is even more beautiful in person, but it is. It is not trapunto, this is just very heavily quilted using a wool batting. He also used a few different colors of thread to give it even more depth and dimension. It is so hard to appreciate the work that went into this beauty from a photograph.

As I told Tim, I’ve never used colored threads to hand quilt with. I am a either a white or cream-colored thread kind of girl. Also, his quilting is the first I’ve ever paid attention to that used stippling as an over all pattern. So many machine quilters are stippling, but hand quilters? I am on it, now!

Is that not the most lovely thing you’ve ever seen? I’m not talking the ribbon. It is lovely, but that piece of art?!

Are you a hand quilter? Obviously, if you are here, you realize hand quilting is my preferred method. Often I have felt like a dinosaur because you rarely see or hear of hand quilters anymore. Everyone either has a longarm machine or has a longarm-er they go to or are learning to do free style machine quilting on their home machine. Even the quilt shows are primarily machine quilted. If you are a hand quilter, do you sometimes get the feeling you are the only one out there? Want to meet others? I’ve got the place for you. I first met Caron at her website Celebrate Hand Quilting. After gathering hand quilters there, from around the world, she added another version on Facebook, of all places. https://www.facebook.com/groups/handquilting/ It is a closed group, so you’ll need an invite to join in on the fun. You can request one over there, this is where I met Tim, Wendi, Andrea, Patti, Judy, Janet, and…. It’s a Virtual Quilt Guild where you will be heartily welcomed. Maybe someday you’ll even get to meet up with your new online friends, too!

Recently, Caron, who stated this fine group posted a map for everyone to add their location pin to. As of right now there are 976 handquilters listed from all around the world. Maybe there is one in your neighborhood, too?

If you are interested in handquilting, come on over. There are so many experts to answer questions, get feedback and inspiration from. There are also a lot of beginners asking fantastic questions that we are all learning from. Different people learn in different ways because we are from all over the globe so there is always an interesting subject to learn about. When you surround yourself with so many like-minded people you begin to feel that you are the norm and that others are missing out! I can’t understand why everyone doesn’t hand quilt!

Wednesday is especially fun. It’s Show and Tell day. This week’s theme is Back to School. Quilts about school, quilts started in classes, quilts that taught you something? Anything is game.

Hope to see you there!

As for what I’m working on this week? Besides getting in lots of snuggles from our new grand daughter I’m playing with a new line of fabric I discovered at the AQS quilt show.

I can’t believe I have never run in Marcia Derse fabrics before now. I am in love! I stood around and drooled over all the fabrics until I was brain fried. I finally settled on two different pre-cut groupings. I believe these actually came from a variety of her past lines. Apparently Marcia usually shows her fabrics at these quilt shows but from what I understand she is moving from one fabric company, to another, and is soon coming out with a new line, so she wasn’t there herself. I guess her fabrics are really hard to come by? I learned all this from Janine Burke of BlueUnderground Studios. I also found lots of great new, modern quilt ideas and patterns from Janine’s booth and books she co-authors with Amy Walsh. What an interesting person with quite the eye for color, Janine is. I can’t wait to see her first line of fabric expected to be coming out soon!

Are you familiar with these fabric or quilt design lines?
Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur in more ways than one!

Linking up with:
Fabric Tuesday
WIP Wednesday