AQS Quilt Stars Trunk Show: Pat Holly

hello everybody i am so excited to be coming from quilt city usa for a very special quilt stars trunk show we are so glad to have a sponsor for this event handy quilter is our sponsor and they have so graciously donated a machine that we're going to talk about about halfway through here so stay tuned and you'll find out how to win that machine so they're going to give one away throughout this month you don't want to miss it if you might not know this yet but handy quilter is not just in the long arm business they make home machines as well and this is one that you're going to have a chance to get into your own hands so stay tuned for that first though let's get started and introduce our guest today pat holly pat it is so exciting to be able to talk with you and to see you today and to get a look at your beautiful quilts um since the first time i saw your quilts i think the first maybe the second year i worked for aqs in my current role you won best of show with turkish treasures and since then i've been a fan girl of yours so i'm so excited to see what you have to have to show us well thank you liz um it's so nice and thank you aqs for asking me to do this it's been so lovely to to pull out my quilts and think about what i wanted to share with everyone i want to thank my husband jack mazda who's the cameraman back there and then i have a special helper who um you may know my sister's spoon nickels and you'll get to see her thank you thank you and this is lily my cat she might be coming in and out you know yes they love the quilts um all right so shall we get started well thanks to all the special helpers and yeah let's get started okay so the first quote i want to show you is um i did this isn't my first quilt but it's one of my early quilts i think it was finished in 1990 and it's called paducah baskets and i wanted to share this because i this brings back so many great memories of attending the quilt show in paducah and our group of friends would all go down together and we'd have so much fun and we'd have show and tell every night to show off all the goodies we bought and then i think soon i'd even come up with this idea i don't know but we decided i mean we was so excited getting ready to come down to paducah that we would have activities so one of them was to have a little quilt challenge and somebody picked out one of the fabrics in this and we all made a quilt and this is hand pieced and hand quilted so i do know how to do that and then i think sue was the judge right we decided we needed to have our own best of show what what is great is that everybody got best of show we all got riddles oh i love that i was going to say i love that quilt because the hand quilting and the hand piecing and it just really feels like a home in kentucky to me so the fact that it's paducah baskets you know i was born and raised here in kentucky and grew up with some quilts from from kentucky family members and that really brings the essence of that to life so that's what's really special for me to see oh cool thank you so another fun project that our group would do is we would make vests i'm sure you've seen those ladies groups of ladies that the quilts showed all the matching things and we thought that was really a good idea so um here's some of the ones that i made and i like i like the idea of doing best because you can make a small version of you know try out a technique this one is a feather star little feather star this one has a crazy bird on the front of it this one is with this those lovely little reproduction 1930s and gracie's fabrics and i i actually think i wore this one of the years at one duster show and then this one this was a fabric line from one of our favorite vendors at the rotary club schoolhouse quilts and judy rothermill was the designer and this line was called peppermint sassafras and i somewhere i have a picture of our little group of maybe eight ladies that we all made different vests using that fabric we went over to the rotary and have to show her what we made so excited what a cute idea to try out like something new that maybe you're not sure you want to do for a whole quilt but then you can make it you know into a fun vest and show your enthusiasm when you go to a show or just sit in it in your living room and watch a movie whatever you know everybody who's out there right now and uh you know you're having to get your quilt content from an online media i think you should put your vest on right now when you watch this drunk show put it pull it out of the closet we might as well yeah so i kind of organized my quilts into little groups so this first group is quotes that we've i made um that were in for a book so this was one of our early books that i did with my sister sue and it was amish quilting designs and this one i think it's amish night hedge maybe something like that and it was made up quite a while ago and i it's interesting pulling these out and looking at them now comparing our our idea of quilting has kind of changed and this is pretty simply quilted but perfectly adequate i mean there's plenty of quilting your quilt daddy will tell you how far apart you need your quilting lines so maybe two inches apart so there's like now we would probably fill in with stippling and do all other this is perfectly adequate and very typical of honesty so when we were we were researching quilting designs for this book i like to collect quilting books and um we pulled out all my amish books all my cool engagement calendars and actually got magnifying glasses and looked at the quilting designs and then drew them so that's how we did our research this here's another one from that this is the cover the cover quilt that's on amish bars oh that's lovely i love those colors we just they just vibrate they do the um the thing that is a little bit different like an amish culture probably wouldn't use a contrasting color thread and that was when we were first starting the machine quilt we were trying to imitate or make it look like it was hand quilted and then we got to a point where well now wait a minute i want my cool team to show off so i use contrasting threads so you can really see the clothing and challenging to use well it is every little mistake shows but beautifully quilted yes you're right and it is beautifully quilted and what's interesting is you're right about how um the quilting styles have changed over time because now something like that i mean every single little inch would be filled but this it i mean it's beautiful and you can look at you can see the vines on there and you can see and appreciate those lines i think it's really lovely thank you um the next couple are from a book assuming i did together our raw edge stitch draw edge machine applique and this one also the machine applique is done with a heavier thread so again instead of trying to disguise the machine stitches i think we should be proud and show them off absolutely you absolutely should show them off and there's so many things that you can do with those stitches too you know a lot of us are afraid to try them so here's our little book that we did with aqs i was looking at our shop today to see what we had of yours up there and i noticed that we've got that book and this is a great little segue i'd let people know that aqs members can get any of your books patterns um whatever on shop aqs.com for 20 off and we're running a membership drive right now where you can get a membership to aqs for 20 and with that you get a twenty dollar gift card and a free gift so it's paying for itself you get all kinds of member only content discounts on these books and pat i did a impulse buy today and i bought this which is your a miniature world coloring book and i and i saw it and i thought you know sometimes we bring books up like for research to look through and i thought no i want to color this for real and take this home and it's just so cool and i can't wait to uh get some of my 20 20 anxiety out on just coloring these pages so i'm really really looking forward to it and that's available on shop aqs.com as well great great um here is another quote from our book this one was called 21 birds and i actually made it for my daughter the year she turned 21 and this was fun it has this fun loopy edge to it this this is a quote i made um our friend gwen marston lovely gwen asked me to make a quilt for one of her books and her idea was she had researched these um embroidery designs old old embroidery designs and she wanted me to use them as quilting designs and then she said then you can do whatever else you want so i love doing crazy birds so i called this one checkerboard chicks yeah who's going to show you that how long did you take to collect all those different fabrics they're all so unique and pretty well who knows who knows maybe they were in a closet you don't know right so this is this is and that's a that's awesome so this next group i called fun projects because they were all things that um had a little project idea in mind and this first quilt is i call it indigo pines because the black is called pine bur and uh we like to have sometimes little hand projects to carry around if you're going on a trip and you're sitting in the car so these the nine pine bird blocks were all hand pieced by me and it was just a fun little project to carry around and then i came home and sewed them together and then add the machine applique around the borders that's lovely i love all the different borders you have on there they're you know they yeah it makes it more fun because sometimes you get bored with doing the same thing over and over and that way every border was a new little a little design right a new thing to try and do you often do hand piecing do you always have something with you that you like to piece while you're kind of sitting at the dmv or or whatever not not so much anymore but not so much anymore that's understandable yeah so this one the block is called litha's fan and what's fun is our mother's name was liga these are handpieced and they're using old fabrics that i bought at an antique deal so that's kind of a fun thing to think about you can find little scraps of fabric and make your own pattern the butterflies were another little um stack of antique things that i bought at a i'm a quilt dealer i particularly like the rick rack a little rickrack inserted in there i do too it gives it so much liveliness yeah i think that's great advice for folks who are out there looking for fabric of course if they're like me they have at least a couple tubs of fabric that they still haven't used but but if you find something special at you know an antique shop that can be used you're bringing new life to an old thing and you think you know who's seen this before it's really special i like that yeah yeah all right this was a particularly fun project so um they're good um my both of my daughters kindergarten teacher his name was named sue nicholson now how is that confusing and she was a quilter when we moved to the town where muskegon um i remember going to me my daughter was just starting kindergarten we picked a meet the new teacher and i saw her name and i realized i'd seen it on a brochure for classes and she was a quilter so when i walked into the room i said hi my daughter's going to be your best but i'm a quilter and she was so excited for her when she retired and since we lived in the same town for many years i knew there were children already who had had her in the elementary school in the middle school in the high school so i broke one of my friends and we went to those schools and sat and tried to get as many signatures of students that had her for kindergarten teacher and then i put it together that is so special what a thoughtful gift i know that she must cherish that yes and i bet that the kids were really confused about sue and sue well they didn't know but it was it's over the years there's been confusion about wait is that your sister right right yeah this quilt i called it beaver island beauties and this remember the fad for round robins the center block is my block and then there there were i don't know one two three seven five six or seven of us that participated so you passed it around and each person added a border and um i actually started hand quilting this that was yours so did that order um well there's a really pretty label oh yeah i can tell that one's your border because it's applique on there so nicely yeah there's a little and i had i made the little fork or the label to be passed along so everybody signed it as they they finished their border i love that that quilt really shines out to me because those colors are my colors and they're so nice and what if we need to get back to round robin's because i i can do like a part of a quilt but then i never finish it but then i could send it to some friends yeah it's it's a fun that's a fun idea absolutely this quilt is called circle around the stars and this was actually made into a pattern so we did some patterns with joan wolfram's pattern company yes was one of them with joan that's lovely again do you find yourselves uh pat pulled toward those warmer colors or did you just happen to to use those right then because i noticed that a couple in a row are are those very bright warm jewelry yeah i i i just like color you know yeah i think you try to pick things that are unexpected yeah that makes sense yeah that makes a lot of sense all right so and this is this is a big quilt okay we need our stools okay and this this quilt has been on beds and it's been loved and i called it it's a simple quilt really because the actual block is very simple it's that little square there um but i also learned about naming quilts and it's kind of an awkward name so i've learned to name quotes things that i want to be able to say because sometimes i'm saying them over and over so now i just call it simple quote i comment on this quilt um two things um so i believe that pat originally was going to do an applique border yes and it became very busy um with the piecing and you took your applique design and used it for the quilting motif on the border which is i think a great idea and beautiful that is and this was a we call it a cover girl with the old magazine called lace circle patchwork quilts um it was in i think 93 or something yeah so yeah that quilt is so interesting because you say it's a simple quilt and i understand that the block itself is simple but it creates such a kaleidoscope effect with the different fabrics you've used and i mean i could look at it for hours i think and not quite get a hold on it i would call it kind of a scrap quilt i mean they're you know not every patch is different but there's a lot of live fan which and i i like that because i see that in old auntie quotes and we love being in auntie clothes okay so this is another group okay this is a special group these are quotes that sue and i have made together oh cool i can't wait some day we're going to finish the very first one yeah yeah um and i think it was on a cruelty free i was hand holding it quilting so this is really the first duo quilt that we needed it's called blackbird's fly oh my goodness that's just strikingly beautiful this in 1996 and 96.61 uh third place oh this one yeah it was our first i think ribbon winner and yeah and this was that they had the executive inn and the award ceremony was in the ballroom they had a dinner it was just it's like winning miss america oh i know i'm sure and and to see something like that that's so bright and everything and yeah it was made in 1996 but i think it it's still perfectly relevant today and it was uh inspired by an antique quilt um and we shared in you know the the so did the applique blocks i did these pieced rings um still did a lot of the most of the cool thing i think well and what's neat about that dark sashing is those applique blocks look at least on the screen like they're floating out from there that was a really cool use of color there and this is another example of how quilting has changed um in 2020 the quilts that when awards are much more elaborately quilted but this was really innovative um for that time frame to even have machine quilting on it so yeah yeah how long have the two of you been quilting together from the very first close so so like the late 70s yeah because i made a baby quote for sue's daughter who was born in 78. yeah yeah that's kind of a fun yeah yeah and that's about when we started yeah just got you into it okay so we don't have this quilt but we don't have this small but you can oh i know that one so this was when our quote won best of show the beatles quilt yes and that was that that was your first best of show together it was and we were so shocked so definitely [Music] you know and then they open the curtain when they announce it they have it on stage you know we had my group of friends from muskegon and her group of friends from ann arbor and they were all screaming and clapping so there you go how special to be there and last year i had what i will consider to be one of the highlights of my career was when we had for the uh aqs 35th anniversary we were able to show the 35 best of show winners from the past 35 years and so i got to touch the beatles quilt and i think a couple others of your quilts um and and hang them and display them and what an honor to actually get to you know i know people say that kind of thing all the time but it really was an honor to have them say okay well liz you're in charge of hanging these and you know get the help you need and let's get them up and it's just so special to be able to be up close and personal and be trusted with them you know so it i really really enjoyed that okay so um since that quilt was to the museum we decided to make a smaller version and we called it the baby beetles floor that's so cool i had no idea about the baby beetles quilt that is an unknown i love it and it really reflects the spirit of that one and this book got to travel to um england we did a trip to england after the beatles school won so we thought well we need to have something we can show so it went to liverpool and it was outside the cavern club those are all beatles things i don't know no i i promise i'm familiar i went through a beatles phase when i was like 14 and listen to not nothing but so oh good so and i i oftentimes people will ask you know what the what this what the beatles quote is all about and we early on had a friend at one of the retreats that we used to attend asked if it was where's the bug quilt we were making but it is where's the bug quilt that's hilarious did you all i mean did you grow up listening to the beatles together was that a big deal in your lives we knew every album when they came out we had to run out and buy it i mean oh yeah yeah there are i graduated high school 71 and they broke up in 1970 so it was my whole middle school i promise we're not going to break out into song you're allowed i'll sing with so you is a quilt that we made together and we called it new york state of mind because the center pieced areas like the new york beauty block and it was for a an exhibit called companions and choices and we were approached by rod buffing ron buffington who was a watercolor artist that also liked to incorporate fabric in his watercolors so it was just a really cool he did a watercolor design we sort of told him vaguely what we were doing and gave him pieces of the fabric and then he went away and did his version and we did ours and then they were displayed together wow and you know i really am drawn to is the way you've got like on the i'll say on the points on in the center you've got that other band of dark fabric around those those red points um and it and it changes it oh yeah where pointing it sort of changes the the look of that and it makes it into something a little bit different i'm really intrigued by that and so so pat as a rule do you do most of the piecing when you do the two together and uh and sue do you do most of the applique or do you just mix it up i mean i kind of do the precision piecing but i did this top applique in the four corners and sue did the side borders and the bottom and then i think so the answer is you're both great at everything well yeah i think definitely i think that's what makes our joint quote so successful is that we're equally capable of doing absolutely that that's such an honor to be able to just chat with you guys and and see what you've made together here's another one this one's called jubilee album and we were asked to do a um walk of the month for the phone supporter magazine so this was intermittent in like 2003 and then yeah that era and i i think i did most of the baskets and i where i got the ideas for these baskets is looking at antique quilts which we learned we learned that from our friend glenn she was always inspired by old quilts so and it's a really cool um you know kind of a patriotic kind of a color scheme which is i think really cool yeah yeah but it really brings a very clean and crisp patriotic color scheme i like that one a lot but then because it was for a magazine they wanted to see it in different color ways so we put together this oh my gosh okay i like this one too yeah yeah how lovely i love this this sashing fabric is that very just like it's variegated on its own oh this yeah it's a it's a cheek it's a batik that's beautiful for some reason but that seemed to fit in there yeah have you all considered or have you already done a book or taught on color because i can tell you have a great grasp on how how colors go together well we haven't we haven't done that that's a good suggestion listen people are really really interested in that now because they want to know how to make colors work and how to make values work and i can tell you've got that down we both went to art school so i think you know i actually studied color theory and color which helps but but what i learned from that is it's all about seeing it's all about seeing the colors how they work together so a lot of times what i suggest to quilters that are intimidated by that is get a beautiful piece of fabric that has lots of um coordinating colors and then use that to choose the colors to go with it and you're kind of giving the fabric company the right first choice of you know these all go great together and then um and then sometimes i do that and i don't even use the fabric you just use it it's inspiration yes so that's a good tip yeah that is a really good tip and i found with just about anything observing other ways that people have done it well and kind of taking that in helps you to learn a lot as well all right so this quilt is called we called it the anniversary world and um this aqs asked former best of show winners to display a quilt for one of the anniversaries so this is we and since we didn't have anything already made we had to make a quilt and this was designed based on an antique quill that's where i kind of got the color ideas and why the sashing bars are different colors that's how it was in the antique look and then i wanted to do something flat around the edge so i kind of came up with this little loopy design it's kind of right at the beginning of when you started to see these unique edges so that was that um what would you call it pioneer i'm serious i'm really a pioneer because now most of the winning quilts at our shows have edges treatments on there like that that's really neat which i think is great because i think it it's it gives another detail that makes a quilt it's very special exclamation point it does but you know what it's hard to pin ribbons on them and they always tend to win i never thought of it that's okay we'll let everyone keep making their beautiful edge treatment this is the this is the last cool dinner joint quilt group um this is called tf10b oh i recognize this beautiful quilt there we go yeah yeah so this quilt is not typical of how we do our joint quilts because i need the top myself and i started this four block applique design at a workshop i would go every year to beaver island to gwen marston's clover streets and the theme that year was four block applique and i designed one and i had seen a quilt some of my travels at a you know one of those old houses that you could tour and all i saw was like a little little tiny bit of it but it had these soft colors and the applique design so from there i designed the regular coil and then this also has it's the fun little tabs on the edges yes i was going to mention that i've always been a fan of this quilt these are like my colors they're so calming to me and beautiful and yes aqs has this pattern on shop aqs if you're interested in making it yourself and i think that it's it's striking and it's something that you could do over time or you could make maybe one of the applique blocks and then put a border on it just make a little wall hanging with one block and the other thing i want to mention is i on purpose left this big open border because i told sue i want her to quilt it to death [Laughter] how nice that's a beautiful beautiful quilt well thank you so much for showing us those two groups i can't wait to see what else you have like i said it's such an honor to be able to watch and chat with you all and um really quickly though i want to do two things like i said that t 10b and others of your books and patterns are available on shop aqs but we have a very special sponsor and that is handy quilter handy quilter is providing a hq stitch 510 sewing machine as a giveaway and so they're going to give away this machine to somebody who watches this video so make sure um that you're watching and that you go online click the link in the description to register and then at the end of the month they'll give that away and this machine is valued at 1 495 and it's a piecing and quilting workhorse and so you might not know this but handy quilter makes more than long arm machines they make home sewing machines too and that's what this is you'll have it's a high speed straight stitch machine with a nine by six workspace it does up to sixteen hundred stitches per minute and it has all the things that make uh sewing easier for you which is the automatic thread cutter an easily an easy needle threader and an ergonomic knee presser foot lift so that you can just lift with your knee on your presser foot and not have to be digging around in that so let's hear a word from our sponsor handy quilter hi i'm christina whitney a studio educator with handy quilter join us for the hq watch and learn quilting show on tuesdays at noon mountain time on facebook live we will talk about different quilting techniques give you inspiration discuss new tools share some ideas and much more join us on facebook.com handyquilter well thank you so much to handy quilter and thank you all of you for coming back be sure to check back and after this video go and enter online to win that machine and to learn more at hqstitch.com but for now i'm getting very excited to see what pat has to show us so pat can you show us what you've gotten in your next group yeah so the next group is going to be small quilts and miniatures but first we want to just remind you of a couple of our group quilts that sue and i made together that won some awards and we don't have them because they're in the museum this is the space quote and that won the machine workmanship award yeah 2004 in 2004 and then the other one that won a machine workmanship was a quote called the two of us and this was designed as a block of the month for for the ricky and ricky tims and alex anderson's cool show i recognize this one as well and and i there's another one where the color just is strikes me it's really lovely it's a nice mix okay so now i'm going to show the small some small quilts and miniature quilts and this first little group is a while ago in michigan there's a group of quilters that got together and did a sort of a challenge every year and it was called the michigan quilt artist invitational and i could sue participated in it and i participated so these are some of my quotes and the cool thing about these is that they are all the same size they're 20 by 24 and again does that small size allows you to kind of experiment with things that maybe you don't just want to try out before you use them on a big quilt and this first one the theme was the article zoo so like an art animal article i love zoo mine was a bird and i called him elberg victorious like al albert and victoria oh my goodness i love him he was really i attribute this to a lot of what i'm doing now it is the first time i tried using my decorative stitches on my sewing machine to embellish the background before i put the cool the applique on and i this was after the beatles quilt had won so i had a little bit of money and i bought one of those nice lovely fancy sewing machines that had tons of decorative stitches and i wanted to come up with an idea that allowed me use those decorative stitches in a meaningful way like having me there's a reason why they're there and i noticed looking at antique quilts and textiles from all around the world often there's something interesting happening in the background and that's where i came up with the idea so well and it's it's a really great advice to tell folks out there who are working on something new or maybe are kind of bored with what you're working on is to just try something else like you get something else try something that you might have been interested in or pull out those decorative stitches that we're all terrified of that you don't have to be afraid of them they're there for a reason and you can do some really cool stuff with it yes all right so the next year the the theme was quotable quilts and at the time that i was working on this i was researching things for the uh the space quote that i we just showed you and i was reading a book called flight that was written by one of the flight directors at nasa but i contributed it as an eagle crazy how lovely his wings look like they are made of gold the way that shines is really beautiful the background is embellished with decorative stitches okay the next tier it was east east meets west so kind of asian inspired so this is my little crane so lovely and on this one i didn't even use decorative stitches for the background i just used i i just used a straight stitch that's what i was looking at is it variegated thread nope it's just i changed the color of thread okay when i changed the lines yeah you could that it really stands out and it makes it very so effective that even just simple stitches can be so well and you know i was talking with um susan cleveland uh not too long ago and she does a similar technique where she will quilt a background how she wants it and then go and put the applique on on top of it so that you like you're saying you create a new piece of fabric from which to add everything else so i think you two are on to something yeah okay then this year the theme was garden party and i called this the bird bath oh my gosh i absolutely adore this quilt i i immediately you showed me that and i thought okay what wall can i put that on in my house i just i just love designing all those fun birds that's so fun this one my label doesn't say what the theme was but it was had something to do with being down under because it's about australia okay so i was inspired by the little dot paintings that they do the dream those tiny applicate circles they are all cut out there i did not use a punch i did not stitch around all of them but in the quilting i stitched through them so that it held them down but there's almost a mosaic sort of technique with a mix between that and a an applique technique that's really really cool and it shows the the look of the aboriginal art comes through in a really cool way yeah i just love it i love them um all right so this is the last of those and the theme was out of this world which i was really excited because i love science fiction so i kind of went through my mind and kind of imagine a scene on a different planet and that i call this sky flyers so those are oh my gosh i i can see the galaxy down there i can see a sun or a star and i can see the flyers that is so cool i create the craters i'm into science fiction too we could talk doctor who someday or something but i love that okay now i'm going to start going through the miniatures and um the first one i'm going to show is kind of the first one i made so if you think about a miniature quilt you should be able to look at that quilt and not really know the size of this so it could be a big quilt or a small coat so that's why i just kind of call this a small quote that's incredible this the stitching in the applique and the the lines the decorative stitches in the background everything about it is so precise but in such a small package and uh pat you've won best miniature at paducah uh four times is that correct i have yes okay so this little one was made in 2001 so it's kind of my tribute to the 911. oh that's lovely and how how did you quilt that there's like a little feather on the side that really stands out it's a really beautiful quilting there in the border this was another cute little these are displayed at paducah my favorite ones are the ones that look like somebody had a handful of jewels and just put them out in a basket those i love those colors so this one is really truly a miniature look if you saw a picture of this you could think it was a full-sized coil that's absolutely right rose and it's this one's 17 by 17 inches so that's kind of big this one is called tapestry like a tapestry and this actually won second place and i was so excited to have um my machine applicate miniature win an award because the miniature category is so competitive and it's every possible technique every style like i just was so excited to get ribbon it's you have to know that all of these quilts that you're showing me are like my style and i'm coveting them and which is a sin in the coloring book where i got my ideas for the drawings and the coloring book i went through all my designs of these miniature quilts and made them into a square but there are you can use those as little patterns good i will i will look at your quilts and color them like your quilts and put them on my wall this one is called himalayan garden and it won best miniature and i this was the second time i won best miniature the first time i it's it's in the museum but i kept this one because i just i loved it so much yes yeah and it's this one is 12 by 12 inches so that's that's pretty little let me ask you a question um so himalayan garden i'm seeing some influences um there and and i mentioned another one of your quilts that will i guess show a picture of um in a little bit but have you traveled to to those areas or or you know eastern areas that really inspire you yes i i love i'm very interested in india and indian designs and i had a lot of books about india and then i finally was able to go to india i've been here twice and just the inspiration there is amazing well i can definitely tell there's some indian influence in your quilts and i love oh there's some more i love that it's brought out this one is pink elephants and after i was winning best miniature and you know wanting to give my quotes to the museum i decided to make two at the same time so the one that i entered in the show pink elephants two won best miniature and it's in the museum and now i have pink elephants that keep and actually this one is for my daughter tammy she loves elephants so eventually this will be hers that's a good you know you have to know and listen i don't mean this in any kind of like conceited way whatsoever but like you have to be like okay this is good i'm going to make a backup i think that's smart it doesn't take that much longer to do it okay and if not you've got two you know yeah um this was a little quilt i made this is again a second one the first one i made as a gift our little quilt group here in ann arbor does a gift exchange at christmas so i made one of these for as my for my person and i loved it so much i made it again oh how beautiful christmas rose so you say it doesn't take that long to make one of those but to me it would take forever to try to get you know everything so intricately done how long does it take for you just on average like from the beginning conception of it to finishing a miniature quilt so i'm sure if you know if i work on it pretty steadily i would say a month or six weeks yeah very cool tomorrow as i do all my own drawing and designing so this is another one that's tiny tigers and tiny tigers two is in the museum one best miniature look at the little look at the little pendants at the bottom i like those oh cool and this was this one's for my daughter alyssa who likes tigers so essentially they'll go to her um so here's another just a little quilt and it was a a chin spur that i got the idea from some chintz fabric how did you do the background on that one that's the same things it's it's stitched so i draw guidelines and then stitch along the way you the way you curved it or i guess it's not a curve it's a straight line but it made it so dimensional just by that choice this one is called bombay blue birch and elephants so another from indian inspired blues are so rich i know i talk about i've been talking about color a lot but the blues really stand out so here's one so after india i got to go to turkey i was going to say that one's totally different so um and this was another uh group that sue and i worked with was a the um ami sims had a was an alzheimer's uh project so we made quilts and they were auctioned and then the money went to alzheimer's research and i named this fear empty spaces and i i learned that in in turkey our guide talked about you know if you look at the designs in turkish tiles and buildings every square inch is covered with something and he said it's it's it's something in a different language but it translates to fear of empty spaces like they don't want any empty space and i thought that was so appropriate for the alzheimer's because they the empty spaces that grow in their minds i don't know but anyway um and this one was called tiny turkish treasures i was gonna i i do recognize that but not the tiny one yeah it's a tightest part of my big quote um and this was a fun one this is a and again a second one i made for one of our friends who loved halloween oh my gosh i've got halloween it is still september i've got little halloween stickers on my office door i'm so about it so i love that quilt it's now for halloween um okay the last two miniatures so sue is in the quilt group that we're all in together she's been in it for 40 years and when i moved to ann arbor i joined up with her and one year i had her as my person so i made her a quilt and it's called a few of our favorite quilts something we love to do is look at the quilt engagement calendars and i remember there was something that she always said i want to make that one i want to make that one so i kind of took ideas from several quilts how cool that one seems like it took a lot of intricate work on all those little tiny pieces it's lovely it's lovely and a wonderful gift and then i drew her name again last year and so how do i get in on this uh because i need to know yeah and i i thought i was trying what am i gonna make for her this year and i thought oh our lovely friend gwen had just passed away so i thought i'm gonna make a quilt in honor of gwen so i called this remembering gwen and these are some of the quilts right from some of her quilt designs that she had made that's such a beautiful tribute to her and she was such a big loss to the whole quilting community yeah and then you are you mentioned the book yeah we met so what i want to show you is um so this quilt for this drawing i actually made it to a little quilt oh my gosh or you could do that i could do that i love that yeah i'm telling you i'm going to color it exactly the way and pretend that i have it the quilt in my house and then here's another one a cool little elephant i like that we we're elephant fans in my family too that's what's wild to me is that they match exactly like they're the same size you i mean i guess i knew that they were going to be but you think of a quilt being shrunk down you did a tracing of that and used it to you could make my enlarge you could enlarge it yes and so pat you're going to show us some of your uh award-winning quilts is that right yes i know so we were talking so many of them are at the museum and and we thought oh shoot we could have just gone down the street and tried to get those quilts but they probably wouldn't have just given to me so so but i'd love i'd love to see what you have and i know that we have pictures that we can show everyone to okay so this one won best ball at the spring paducah show and again i i chose to keep it it's called imagining india and i designed this before i had a chance to go to india and i had a lot of books about indian indian art and textiles and then after i did this i was able to actually go to india i like that it's called imagining india because it's what you expect and what you hope to find how wonderful it would be also and this is something that i have um so i've embellished the backgrounds but the next thing i've added are little trims so these are purchased trims that i've added to them so first we collect fabric and then we collect thread then we add trims and then we add tapes and the next one i designed after after i went to india so this one is called saffron splendor oh it's the color of saffron yeah this one best of show in at the grand rapids aqs show and i got my first place at the spring paducah so again all silk fabric yeah and can you show us i'm looking at the um like the piping or the binding and it's reflective it's a yes it's a trim it's a trim oh that's you know it brings such a special sparkle to it that was a really really interesting design choice and it pulls in the sparkles from the birds and everything as well yeah and um so i have a couple other quotes that won best of show basic peacock which is also kind of an indian inspired and then my most recent one turkish treasures that has a beautiful scarf that goes along with turkish treasures so i designed this scarf it's just beautiful okay i was gonna say where can i get the scarf on your website my website peter george's pink elephants elephants.net okay so when you see an order come through this afternoon that's me it's scarf weather season oh definitely well so do you have um you know we've seen so many different techniques and i i've seen that you use several different borders you do precision piece borders hand applique borders you try um edge treatments you've learned so much over the years is there any technique and and this can go for both of you i'll ask you pat first and ask sue is there something that is your favorite that you always look forward to doing this one thing well i love designing that's that's i love drawing and designing but the machine applique i just love doing that oh yeah my answer would be i love the quilting i love machine quilting and i love designing for quilting and just once i get to the machine and start doing that quilting i just didn't have a nice boat so well i think it's so special and so fortunate that all of us have a passion for a certain thing like mine is more for color and and for trying out different different colors and doing the designing like you said and you know i i know friends who absolutely love to sit and do paper piecing which is not my thing but like good for them and so you know how grateful i am that quilters all over the world have their passions and that we can put them all together and be inspired from one another and make beautiful things so we have one little thing that is our latest joint effort so in 2014 um gwen decided to retire from teaching her quilt retreats and she asked if we wanted to take them over so we have been doing quilt retreats now for six six years could have been ourselves seven yeah and we just want to show you a few quotes from there and um what are you what this the next year's topic for oh great we i think one of our most successful show or topics was trip around the world so this is a quote sunni yeah so each year we have a topic and then we explore that in depth and then do all of your students make a trip around the world quilt because that's the theme yeah yes pretty much if they want we're we're not you know if they want to do something else we do we can do independence um but most of the time this was we we have yeah everybody that's the that was one of the project quotes they could do so a little um easy trip around the world this one's a little a little more complicated but it's the same basic term oh yeah this one people made so many different color variations it was so cool to see those come together would you call this and that one is another one that really glows because of the different um the different values of the colors that you've used this is a different version so it's kind of set on point but it's still around the world that's the fun thing about trip around the world there's so many variations it's like a lot of cabin there's so many variations well and in some traditional trip around the world you know there's one block that's just off do you all do that um not on purpose i call this one fancy trip around the world but it was inspired by an antique quilt it's just little those are three winners recorded and are they all on point i can't tell from here this one is um no they're all sets oh great yeah i can imagine that took a lot of time and patience and maybe some tweezers it's a really cool technique because it's a gridded and it's um all done off of a chart so it makes you can do anything you can do a face if you wanted to it's good to know yeah so this is another one i did i called the antique trip around the world because it was again inspired by an antique this was this was in one of our shows wasn't it i remember the last question the last one last two was it yeah lovely yeah because i remember um we were all looking for if there was a block that was not the right color because we thought you know there's a traditional thing let's see if we can find it but i don't think we found anything so our theme for this year and for next year will be sampler quotes so this is a free form liberated version of a sampler quote that i made up on beaver island when yeah just i was we were doing this three piecing and i said oh can i do a feathered star there's another star here somewhere there's a little dresden play and just no pattern just cutting gosh and after this year isn't that all what we're going to need we're going to need some free form creativity you know get it out there and make something beautiful and this is a version of a sampler it's a feathered star sampling that i made and worked on for a long time so each of the feather stars i drafted different those are my colors too i love the the gray and the greens that could be a christmas quilt if you if you wanted it to be yes yeah oh sure right and then the last one so this is a debut this is a debut yes our sampler quilt that will be for for the next retreat and we'll pattern this and people can make parts of it or the whole thing so and it's called michigan oh michigan medley it's absolutely beautiful and it it you know scratches that itch that i have for tradition but done in a different way and and i love that about your quilts is that you know some things are very traditional or traditional elements and that's comforting to us i think but then you you can create them in a way that's exciting and new i'm really excited about this it allows us to teach the things that we love machine applique precision piecing machine quilting so it's a nice sampler of techniques also yeah yes your students will will leave with a wealth of knowledge after working on that quilt yes i think that's that's it i did want to mention my website but we did that and the scarf and the coloring book to make you ask yeah well i'll just do let me do a little thing and i will thank you all and um and uh even if if jack if you're able to prop up the camera you can get in we can thank all three of you oh yeah he's he's we got him perfect okay thank you honey thank you well pat i just want to say thank you it has been such a joy to look at your quilts and to look at the quilts that you've made with your sister sue and so thank you sue and jack for being such great helpers today you know quilting is a family affair we we love to see everyone's families and cats as we're looking at the quilts where are they they're not interested anymore because there are no more quilts that's hilarious well tell us one more time your website so that people can check that out okay elephants.net pink dash elephants.net great and also we'll mention shopaqs.com because we've got some patterns in your books and i want to end by saying another thank you to our sponsor for this trunk show handy quilter and handy quilter is making machines that you can sew on in your home home domestic machines the hq stitch 510 which is valued at nearly fifteen hundred dollars is available for you to get just as a giveaway for watching this video so make sure you go down to the link put in your information and register to win that wonderful machine yes let's do it and thank you so much again pat it has been an absolute joy and i look forward to when i can see you in person again and maybe we can all have a dinner in paducah i would love that so much great thank you so much thank you you all have a good rest of your day bye bye

Channel: quilttv

Views: 1,999

Rating: 4.9148936 out of 5

Keywords: AQS, QuiltWeek, Quilt, Week, American Quilter, Quilt Show, Paducah, American Quilters Society, Quilting, sewing, pat holly

Id: Uu7hB5DCd1Y

Length: 58min 45sec (3525 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020