AQS Quilt Stars Trunk Show with Karen Marchetti

hello everyone and welcome to another episode of aqs quilt stars trunk shows i am so excited to be coming from quilt city usa that's paducah kentucky to share a wonderful trunk show with my friend aqs teacher aqs contestant often aqs winner karen marchetti karen it's so good to see you how are you i'm good how are you oh i'm great i'm jealous of you because you're in florida and i'm in kentucky we just had like eight inches of snow here how is the weather where you are uh it's hot it's always hot i could use some of that right now i think well i'm really excited to be talking with you and i want to tell everyone at home and you as well that we are happy to be partnering with our wonderful sponsor today and that's gamel gamble quilting systems is here to support your trunk show and to support aqs and we are so excited we couldn't be doing this without them later on in the episode they're going to run a little commercial and we're going to announce a giveaway so you can win a wonderful prize and i'll give you a hint it's something that everyone who's a quilter needs and it's valued at 349 dollars so stay tuned about halfway through we're going to tell you how to enter to win that but for now let's go ahead and get started karen um can you talk about the first quilt that you have up right now yeah the first one which will probably stay up the whole time because it's big and heavy is andromeda crossing and it's 83 inches square and um i did ice thighs with cindy lobeck and i we did all these crazy folds so that's what the dyes are made from and then i cut them up and she said everybody's afraid to cut them up and i said why it's just fabric cut it up so that's that's what's starting the pieces and this quilt just grew and grew because it was only supposed to be 60 by 60 but there was just too much good fabric so it just kept getting bigger i love that it's so unique and beautiful and the ice dyed fabric really really shines there um something i've noticed about your quilts is that you implore and employ a variety of different techniques and so we've got the ice dying and you're known as a long arm quilter and so can you tell me what it is about trying all the different techniques do you just do it so that you don't get bored or are you just trying to learn new things like um what compels you to try all those different things i have intention to use so i can i i have an idea for a quilt and by the time i start on it it's like it totally changes halfway through and then changes again at the end just because there's so much that i want to try and like oh i should use that on this quilt let's try this and 90 of the time it works i love that 90 is a great percentage because when i try new things i mean 60 of the time it works so you're doing great with 90 it'll come together that's right and can you explain the word um andromeda crossing the title um where did that come from well um my friend i this quote had no name well i should say i had like 35 names because i couldn't find one that fit and one of my friends was over and she said oh it looks like you know a galaxy and i went really so then i started researching different galaxies and andromeda came up and i found the picture and it was all purples and browns and i'm like that's it and the crossing is just because there's a big x through it that's great yeah i love that i love that it's unique and it does look like a galaxy i really enjoy that quilt and i've gotten to see it in person a couple times and i miss seeing your quilts in person but i know i am so ready to get quilt show started up again you don't realize how important it is for your soul until you've gone a while without them yes yes well um okay i think i'm ready to see the next quilt all right i mean my husband this my husband joe some people know him out there in the world hi joe thanks for your help today welcome so um i i the first two are just everyday quotes because nobody believes that i make everyday quilts but i do they just don't get out in the world much so this is just a real quick christmas quilt i threw together it just comes out the christmas time gets thrown on the couch it gets well used i like that i'm glad you're showing us every the everyday quilts that a lot of us make at home because i know that um one thing i've heard from people all over will say oh well i'm a quilt artist or i'm a i'm a quilter but you know i'm a quilter but i don't i'm not good enough to enter my quilts in a show or it's not special enough and we all make some full quilts sometimes it doesn't have to be you know a best of show winner so enter your quilts for sure when we come back with shows definitely any of your quotes because there's one later in this pile that was supposed to be an everyday quilt and i let it out into the competition world and it did very well so even everyday quilts are good enough for show that's absolutely right and if nobody entered if everyone thought that they weren't good enough to enter we wouldn't have quilt shows so enter your work and something that you might think might just be run-of-the-mill could be really really special to other people it can be it can be so some of them i like to play on the back of my quilts that's why he was asking if you want to see the back but that's not a special back some of my backs are really fun well good i'm excited to see them this is another everyday quilt oh i love that blue it's really striking yeah well it pulled the blue out of this fabric and i like the blue better now so if you got it okay so just another everyday quilt lives on the back of the couch i think we all have our favorite quilts because when we come out to watch movies and stuff it's like grab whichever quilt you want first that's absolutely right yeah i have several um different blankets that i have on the back of my couch but one of them i just kind of wash over and over and keep there so it's important that we have our special quilts and you so you got that blue out of that other fabric that you and you liked this you liked the pattern fabric at first and now you like the blue better is that what you were saying i love this one i start when i thought you know when picked out my fabrics and then i found the blue to pull that blue out but the blue is what jumps down into first yeah it does and it translates beautifully over zoom too because it's so bright and lovely that's just an everyday one i love it yep i think everyday quilts are special because those are the quilts that we wrap ourselves up in and those are the quilts that we have on our beds and so i i'm a big fan of the everyday quilts they get the love the competition gets packed away so this was another one that was supposed to be an everyday quilt until i quilted it and i hope you can see that on camera can you bring it a little bit closer i might be able to see better and if not we will oh yeah oh my god it was going to be an everyday quilt and then i did the quilting plan and i went oh this has to go out in the competition world and it did really well it did and i'm i love muted colors so when you see more of my house quilts they're much more muted and dull whereas i do other colors in my competition pieces i would have never guessed that about you because your competition pieces the colors are so wild and out there and but i'm like you i love those gorgeous muted neutral tones it's what i have all over my house and the quilting on that is extraordinary do you um do you mark everything out like how do you plan it out when you quilt so on these um all the all the little football shapes i did make a stencil with just the spine shape so that way i only had to trace the spine and it looks like it's mirror image but if you go through and count all the feather petals they don't match but the the straight spine and the mirror image it tricks your brain into thinking it's exactly the same wow that is really really cool and um for those of you at home if you can't see the quilting that well right now um we'll get a picture from karen of an up-close quilting so you can see it as well so i think that's so lovely thank you and a great example of how an everyday quilt you know something that you're just making from a pattern or something that might not take you that long to to piece or can be made really really special oh yeah and that happens like you you put all of your heart and soul on a quilt and in the end you're like yeah it's all right and then another quilt you'll throw together and it turns out to be your favorite there's no rhyme or reason with it that's right so this quilt is the thing with feathers and everybody thinks it's really small but it's about 70 wide that's you know it looks like a quilt if you were just to see a photo of it you would assume that that was a wall quilt but it is not it's pretty big i mean these birds they're huge but on this um i traced my hand the shadow of my hand and that's how i got the the hand reaching and these are all painted with shiva pink sticks and appliqued and then i inked the letters on and then i just had major fun with the quilting and this one went together in less than a week oh my gosh that's amazing i love the painted birds and the different techniques you used and they really stand out against the background and the background looks like a cloudy sky to me yeah that's exactly what i wanted it i wanted the birds and the and the reaching to be the hope from the poem that's lovely so so what about the poem um made you want to make a quilt like that or where how did you first encounter the poem well um this was originally for a challenge that was for i think the challenge was flight or fly something like that and i i'm going i know what has to be birds because i love doing birds they're just fun with the feathers and the colors so then at the time my son's girlfriend said well the thing was feathers and i said what thing with fantasy he's like the poem emily dickinson's mom the thing with feathers so that's how it all came together that's perfect yeah and then you've got feathers quilted into the quilt yes and the feathers are actually stitched with a really pale variegated thread where everything else is just the dull gray because i wanted that to be the hope that's lovely i love the whole concept of that quilt thank you yeah that's a heavy one you gotta rest those arms we're all getting heavy i told you they were going to get heavy he didn't believe me they do when you've been holding up quilts for a little bit yeah okay and so karen do you do all your quilting on a gamble machine every bit of it is on a gamma um i have an elevate which is computerized but that's only for like customer edged edges and all of these are totally hand guided because i can't give up that much control you and me both i'm very like that this was my first modern quilt and um my friend jody robinson who's a very well-known modern quilter said you should do a modern quilt and i'm like oh that's so not me okay but i i love a good challenge because there's that competition factor so i made this and um it did okay out in the competition world you know nowhere near what jody does but it did good so um then i decided to make a this is glacier one i made a glacier two and there's a glacier three plan because i said if i'm gonna do something out of my comfort zone i'm gonna do a series just to get it out of my system this was the first one and it's just improvisational pieced i just cut pieces sewed them together and they landed where they landed i love that one too i mean i they're every one of your quilts is so unique like if you just looked at them all together you would never go oh well that's karen that's karen that's karen because they're all so different um could you hold that one a little bit closer too so we can get a better look at the quilting in the white background and the the quilting is kind of like how i think it's just mishmash there's no pattern there's no just wherever it lands oh i just love the details that you've used and and it does it looks very um very cohesive but also improvisational and so you've done a great job of just making the eye flow from one pattern to the other and one from one place to the other that's a really unique quilt and yeah like i said i would have never guessed it's yours but it's lovely and and we know jody and jody's taught for us before and yeah her quilts are wonderful too so i'm glad that she encouraged you to make that series yeah well here's part two all right number three hasn't been born yet it's still coming wow oh so you've kind of done a different thing here where it looks like the piece parts makes more of the background and then you've got this quilted white fabric in the in the center it's really nice i wanted it to look like the cracking of the glacier like when it caps off it absolutely does that's what i got from it when i first looked at it it was the cracking and the distress of it and so you're working on part three when do you expect that to be finished oh probably sometime next year well i can't wait to see it i i you know even if it's out of your system these quilts work really well you should continue to make modern quilts if you feel like that's something you'd like to do yeah and maybe every now and then they do go together like like modern quilts go together much quicker than like an applique quilt i'm pretty amazed at that sure because you know one of the hallmarks of the modern quilts is maybe a more simplistic background a more simplistic style but you know it doesn't mean that there's less technique involved or that there's less work involved because the work involved in these modern quilts that we've seen are just really outstanding and you can tell that all of the quilting that you've done in that is takes plenty of work and expertise so it's just a lot of fun to look at i have to laugh because um i always say i'm a fluffy quilter like i don't really like straight lines doing these modern quilts forces me out of that comfort zone because i have to be perfectly straight every single line there's no mistakes no messing up because that's all there is is just the straight lines that's right and your quilts when i think about your quilts i think about how they're very organic and they have those curves and those rounded pieces and so i think that's part of the reason why those quilts are really striking to me is because they don't necessarily fit into that image but i'll encourage everyone who's watching it home to try something new because just because you've done something for a long time doesn't mean that you can't try something else and be really successful at it most definitely most definitely all right what's next this is my bridge quilt this is um trent makes bridge in trenton new jersey and because i'm originally from jersey we've done a lot of fishing under this bridge but um this was actually just featured in the joint the delaware delaware river joint commission toll bridge commission it's a long title but it was just featured in their annual report and it was really neat because they didn't realize that it was a quilt they thought it was a painting oh wow well you know it looks like a painting for those out there who aren't really familiar with how complex and how beautiful a quilt can be of course they would think it was a painting but um you know you've employed all kinds of different techniques here you've got i'm i'm thinking you've got some applique for the bridges can you tell us a little bit about your process on this one it's it's very unique yeah all the bridges are um one whole piece that's appliqued down well there's a dark green and a light green so two pieces there the gray is another piece um the brickwork are separate pieces which i painted and then you know applique them down and the concrete work the same thing i painted just plain fabric and then appliqued it down hardest part on this was i originally wanted to just do this with just thread but the blue fabric was so deep and intense that the thread just it didn't even show so then i had to go back with some luminaire paint and paint the neon reflections well the reflections are really stunning they look absolutely real and i think that really makes the quilt come alive because if it were just the blue water there it wouldn't be quite so dynamic so i i think that the paint worked great yeah and they came the the bridge commission changes the colors of the neon on the side so like at st patrick's day the water looks green and valentine's day they do it pinkish red so it the water changes depending on what season it is or holiday what a cool tribute and i've um myself self hung this one before and seen it in person it was part of our guilt challenge the ultimate guild challenge in grand rapids and that's something really special we do at just the grand rapids quilt show and hopefully we'll be back there um in 2022 but if you're part of a guild and you have a guild group challenge you can enter that in the ultimate guild challenge and so there at the show we have um each guild will submit eight quilts and then you'll get to look at all of those eight in each group and re-award one one guild um the prizes so i i was really happy to see that one here today i really enjoyed it when i saw it in person um and so i want to thank you so much for what we've seen so far i cannot wait to see what else you have and i want to just take a little break here to hear a word from our sponsor who is gamble gamel is going to be giving away a professional bobbin winder which is a great tool for everyone who is a quilter and it makes perfect bobbins with wonderful even stitches and so let's hear a word from gail [Music] today i get to show you gamma's new professional bobbin winder this little machine kicks out absolutely perfect bobbins every single time it's quiet it's simple to use and it's built to last forever obviously one of the things you need for perfect stitches is a perfect bobbin and this machine delivers one every single time check out how evenly this bobbin is wound and the thread tension on this bobbin is perfectly consistent from the first stitch to the last [Music] thank you so much to our sponsor gamel everyone who's watching be sure to go to quiltweek.com trunk show so that you can enter for your chance to win that professional bob and winder now back to karen i am so excited to see everything else you have to show us so let's just hop right into it what's next um this is my quote lucy who amazingly is another um another grand rapids contestant and winner so lift her up just a little bit she is incredible she is the spitting image of lucille ball and i used to watch i love lucy um on nick at night growing up i loved it so much and so it's just nostalgic for me what made you want to make that quilt this was my challenge for famous female faces in my art group and i was like i'm doing lucy i don't care what you're all doing i'm doing lucy so i found this image and i enlarged it and the weird thing is when you look at her from the side her eyes kind of look to the side so it's kind of weird you know when you're when you walk up on an angle but when you walk straight up to her it's just i don't know it just catches you she pulls you right in she absolutely does and sometimes it's hard over zoom to really get the essence of of an of a quilt because you're looking at art across the internet but i mean the second you pulled her up it looks like she's looking right into my soul she's making eye contact with me so i just i just am really stunned and again just a totally different um technique a totally different quilt than some of the others can you tell us a little bit um you said you blew up the photo and then after that what was your process to create lucy it's seven layers of raw edge fusible because i divided the picture into seven different values well i did a picture with black and white so i divided it into seven different color levels so that each purple represents one one of those colors and it just goes from dark to light i got a bundle of cherry wood which if you're ever doing this technique cherrywood makes the dyed bundles that go one through eight it's perfect so yeah oh it's just lovely and can we get a little bit of a closer look at the heart there i see a heart but i i just did loose seat i hope you do oh my gosh yeah the quilting there is lovely and that's so cool yep i love lucy i love the lucy quilt thank you i love the lucy quilt too if if i hung that up in my house i would like i couldn't walk by it at night though you know like those eyes that hit you and you'd think it was a person that's why whenever you do an actual figure they say to go really small or really big not to make it true to size because that it freaks people out you know absolutely it would so this is trippy which is another one of my group challenges oh my gosh i mean that just jumps out and it's i love the colors and i just love the swirls tell us about my hand through this just on you know pencil sketch and i loved it i'm probably gonna remake it so i loved it in in just pencil sketch so maybe like shades of greys or black paint i want to do that but um i had to be different because i'm so monochromatic all my friends said no dude my friends he's the first one that said it needs to be bright and then when i colored it out with markers and i showed my husband and the group they're like oh you have to do it right so that's how this happens and that's all black mice handmade bias tape and i'd make so much of it and i think i was done and i put it on the quote i'm like nah i still have i don't know 900 yards to go like oh no i need more bias tape so is it painted are is it how is that um these are raw edged and then i covered my edges with the bias wow all the pieces down with the ovaries and the unders and it was like putting together a puzzle yeah i bet it was especially with trying to do something so complex and you can see and i almost tried to trace it with my mouse and then i realized that's not going to translate to anybody but if you follow the big black swirl there in the center it goes under the purple and then over the purple and then under and through the center it's just i think for me it would have been very difficult to find out how to really make that follow itself and you've just done a spectacular job thank you thank you and so what's why are you going to remake this one if i might ask what's making i want to see it in the monochromatic like i did with my pencil sketch that's right okay i think it's small though yeah i know i don't know if i would be up to doing that whole size again you hear what he just said he said i'd make it bigger oh okay yeah i'd be like sure you can this is my monochromatic world this is um dance in the rain which started as the center was originally uh ricky tim's cool kaleidoscope and i had sewn it together i'm like yes okay but i'd want more so then i deconstructed it i took it all apart and just went down to just the original slices and then added all kinds of applique and then because it's six-sided i have two different borders the top and bottom are one one border and the sides are a different border i this this quilt is stunning i'm the same way i love grays i have to be really careful to not just have everything in my house be gray so i have to put pops of color but it's just so lovely and the muted colors even make it more striking because it reminds me of a snowflake or it's just dynamic and lovely i'm really happy to see it and i i'm excited to hopefully maybe see that one in person sometime yeah and i'll show the back because the back was dyed specifically for this oh my gosh you can really see the quilting i like to have fun with the backs so the whole thing is reflected in the back that's so neat yeah i wanted a spiral die to pull like the whole thing together that's right and it almost just looks like a totally different whole cloth quilt on the back yeah that's one thing that we always have trouble with that shows is because the way we hang them unfortunately you can't see the backs and we have people we'll we'll be getting a text that goes oh no you know we're trying to keep a quilt from falling down because we've poured some some very sweet person has tried to look at the back and i'm i understand i also want to see the back so maybe someday we can come up with a way so that everybody can look at the backs as well because that's really long all of them yeah because well some some are like i just chunk the backs and other ones i have a lot of fun on the backs yeah definitely yeah so this is another aqs alumni i recognize this this is god's eye i used to go to summer camp all the time and you remember those little yarn things you made with the popsicle sticks i absolutely do reminded me of so that i'm like how are they called my mother's like they were called god's eye i'm like oh that's the quilt then that's perfect it reminds me of that and i remember one christmas as a kid i made about 40 of those from everyone i knew oh my gosh the quilting is stunning the glittery is actually couched while i candlelight which i i originally stitched it in gold and there was not enough contrast at all so i went and manually couched all the coppery bronze color over top of everything and then went through and did my background pills wow that quilt is stunning and the colors just really pop and it's so interesting to me that you prefer muted colors because these quilts would not suggest that at all right this is actually um an armani silk that dead linkler had died for me is it harder to quilt on silk or what do you find mistakes sure and and the couching let me ask you really quick about the couching on that do you do that on the machine or how exactly does that work because i know a lot of people are getting on the machine but manually so i had an open toe foot and i had i literally i take a stitch and move the fabric and take a stitch and move the thread back and forth over top of it so it's like a tiny little zigzag wow well every every quilt you bring out is like my new favorite but this one this one it just photos don't do it justice and i know that zoom probably isn't either but looking at that quilting um up close is just really really nice all right so i i've seen so many that i just want to hang up in my house i can't wait to see what's next so next this is called just the two of us this is all silk dupioni that um so there's the background is one piece the dock is another piece that i painted the concrete is another piece and then each pelican is several pieces so um they're all painted each and every feather is individually painted on one big piece of dupioni wow and so this is different because this is a pictorial quilt um what made you want to make something like this these guys are so cute i really like that i took a photo we were out fishing and i took a photograph of these two pelicans on the dock so i just wanted to make just like because i don't know fishing is a big part of our lives and a lot of times i get bored because of my attention problems so i'll go follow the pelicans or go wander off it was really cool because they were just sitting there on the dock and when i walked up the one stood up like oh no we have to leave oh you know yeah we have to get out of here yeah so i i just wanted to make a picture of them that's a great memory quilt for being out and fishing and i'm just like you i'll get distracted and follow the wildlife and the the attention to detail on those little feathers i can't imagine how long that took you to to put together well i get kind of ocd so like i'll just start painting and the next thing i know he's like are we having dinner and i'm like yeah i'm right on that you're like what day is it i understand so this was another challenge this is called stella luminosa and the challenge was we had to use at least one lemay and lemay is not your friend at all so i used two colors the pink and the turquoise because i found that silk that striped green and pink is actually a silk and it had the turquoise and the pink in it so i used that as my my theme and i just added all the lemay in so then after i had it pieced there just wasn't enough so then i quilted the border wow i i feel like i'm being a bad interviewer because i keep saying the same things but the colors here are again so striking the pink is the very first thing i noticed and i feel like when i would be looking at that fabric and looking at the lemay you would never think okay i'm going to put this in a quilt because it's just it's very bright it's very hard to work with i imagine and yet it comes together so nicely and it does it reminds me of of a star stellar luminosa and and the quilting on the outside what kind of thread did you use to to make that beautiful pink color so this is it's a thicker thread i don't maybe it might have been almost 12 weight i'm not sure i don't remember but i just went back and forth back and forth like in a bean stitch kind of thing so it was really bright and i actually catch some of it on my domestic around all the pieces that's really nice and so you work on the domestic machine too sometimes then sometimes if like especially if it's a piece this size sure yeah you get a much thicker stitch quicker than on the long arm that makes sense yeah so this is true colors and um the center is the marsha mccloskey mexican pinwheel star which i should have known because the book is called um really hard stars that you can't make or something something like that that's not the exact title but it's true because i did this centerpiece three times i couldn't get it to fit so i said i'm good at apple k so the very center is appliqued because i could not make it work and then i just added some simple bars in the same colors a couple more stars and a bunch of little circles and the quilting became the star on this one but this has a horror story and you can you can put your arms down a little hundreds long i wanted everything to be perfectly mirror image which also is not me i like i like mistakes i put mistakes in all my quilts but i wanted all the feathers to be perfect so i this only quilt ever that i marked every feather on here and um i used the new timmy pen which was a water soluble white and it looked great it came off it looks great and then i took a picture with a flash and you could see every line the pen had some sort of mica in it oh no so um the quilt was then renamed true colors also known as white lines oh my gosh two weeks i covered all of the black in shiva paint sticks with a black pet you know black i painted the whole quilt black and i swear people that know the story just want to see this in person so they can take a picture with flash because you can still see some of the lines even through the paint bless your heart i think there would have been a lot of swearing on my end a lot of pulling your hair out it was it was doing a show so it's like it has to go out the door because there's little rules with if you don't show up you don't get to compete for the next two years so it was going out the door it was going no matter what can we get a closer look at this one too so we can see the quilting sure bring that in it totally comes to life because the black um over zoom hides it a little bit but when you bring it up close it's just so dynamic and i love the sparkles that you've got in there too oh yeah the little crystals i put crystals on everything i love the back of this because it's bright orange oh there it is yeah totally different yeah that had some surprise and that probably orange is not the best color on camera either but yeah i like to have fun with them yeah i think that's fun because you can do kind of whatever you want on the back it doesn't necessarily have to go but you can make it thematic in however way you like yeah and a lot of it's fun when you surprise the judges because when they flip it over they're like oh cool and we add that to the critique so it's fun to see that somebody noticed your right back or something yeah for sure all right this is the last big one he's gonna be happy i know last heavier one yes so this is one of my very favorites this is wanderlust and it has been in tons of advertising and this one has to get remade too because my original plan this was all woven through the pieces and the center was woven and i couldn't get it to work so i said just making an applique again hey you got to do it works yeah got it you got to make it work so there's tons of crystals on this one manually couched as well there's all gold thread around the quilting elements because i love quilting feathers and this one doesn't have a single feather on it and i laughed because they kind of look like deer antlers because my husband was out hunting he goes hunting he would go up north hunting for a month or so at a time and i was missing him so i added all these little deer antlers in there that's so sweet yeah and so you can always remember the tie when you made it i i love that quilt bright yellow oh bright yellow and the quilting again comes through so well yeah wow yeah that one is just so royal looking like it belongs to hang up in a castle or something i love the gold and it's so nice and so remind me again how it was different from your original you wanted to do more weaving through and everything so you're going to try that again yeah i'm going to make it probably smaller again i wanted all these colors to to weave through this center well the way it turned out is really really nice and i love the applique on there and that's a reminder to everybody else too if you're doing something and if it's even if it's not going exactly as planned you know you can do what makes it work and it has come out so lovely yes and that's that's how the name came to be because everybody's like how did it get wanderlust i said because the entire code i kept saying i wonder if this will work i wonder if it's gonna work so you really are saying wonderlust i love that well that's so nice and i'm just enjoying this i'm so enjoying talking to you and seeing all these quilts and you know in the past when i see one of your quilts at the show it's always like oh let's look at the new one karen made and now seeing them all together one after the other it's just such a thrill well it was even fun because i keep them all they're all packed in tubs airtight we live in a hurricane state so you have to know what can be watertight what has to stay watertight so they're usually sealed up in tubs once they're done competing so when i was pulling them all out i'm like oh look at you that's right i haven't seen this one in a while this was another one of my challenges for the group this is called the choice and it was a door challenge so um i'm one of those people that will try anything you can't tell me it's wrong so both doors are white fabric and um this one i just i used like a paint wash i made i mean paint real thin with water and painted it on but this one i wanted it to look different because this is the dream store not the reality door so i even did like tea dyes i got tons of tea bags soaked them put them down so i could get the darker areas yeah that was a lot of fun how cool yeah i would have never guessed that they were white fabrics to start out with yeah the whole thing is white fabric and i love that concept oh the quilting again is lovely oh the pebbles are really neat they're on on the um bricks it makes it look realistic and the wood grain yeah and then there's little little dreams peeking out in this in the glitter fabric and the glitter threads oh yeah i see those it's whimsical and beautiful all right so um what's next i i i just feel like i'm so stunned by all the different colors and this eye candy that i'm getting fed so this is thought process oh wow and oh so much went wrong with this club um i purchased a painted a painted fat quarter is what it was somebody i'm tattooing over she saw lots of things and then i curved pieced it to black satin and then um i'm a impulsive quilter so i had no black batting and now i have to remember this is sateen so i went ahead and quilted it anyway and all you could see were the holes and the white batting coming through oh no so i painted it well then it looked dingy so then it gets better then i spritzed it with bleach that's where the little red dots come from oh my gosh yeah different dingy now and then i soaked it in some um i must ammonia vinegar to stop the bleaching accident action but then um for some reason something's still wrong with the back oh the bleach came through maybe so then i had to spray paint with upholstery the back this used to be a bright turquoise so i used upholstery spray paint oh my gosh to the front so i had to add more highlights and then you couldn't see any of my feathers so i painted those with a little glistening like a glitter so soft pink but the best part of this is it did win me um the najc award of merit and i'm like oh good because it was all that work hopefully it was worth something oh wow it looks so cool up close and just the different swirls and the different colors and that's hilarious to me because you know when you say when you list your techniques as you have to do when you enter a quilt it's like applique or thread painting and so you had to be like upholstery spray paint i spritzed it with bleach but i would have never guessed the bleach is it just makes it look like a really dynamic background there yeah yeah it was funny because i was you know i text my friend i'm like i'm going to try this and i'm like stop i'm like no it'll work it'll work it'll be fine yeah i think a lot of us would be too afraid to do that but it turned out really well and and i want to comment on it's called thought process and so you've got everything going on in the box and then it all spills out there onto the to the into the open i think that's really cool yeah that's pretty much how i think that's what it looks like in my brain and how funny that thought process is the one that you had to go okay and now we're gonna retry it this way and now we're gonna retry it this way i think that's really apt to a lot of our thought processes yeah so this is bend and it says in a strong wind bend a little and your leaves will stay with you um my creative writing teacher wrote this in my yearbook and i've just always loved that quote so i made a little droopy tree with some leaves that's such a good not only is that a really beautiful quilt it's just a really good kind of mantra for us to keep in mind especially during this wild time is just to be as flexible as we can and sometimes things have to be a little weird but it it works out and that's just really nice it almost looks like um you can see the wind you've quilted the wind into it yes that's what i call wind that background well that comes through absolutely and it works so nicely with the theme i can see the growing pile of quilts back there and all the fun ones you've gotten to look at from here to there it's perfect so this is down the rabbit hole oh my gosh it's one piece of white fabric um i i drew as a doodle or a zentangle whatever you want to call them i drew one on a little post-it note so i enlarged it and this is all inked this is over 60 hours of an ink pen drawing on the fabric and then then i pulled it in white thread and black thread wow and it looks so clean it doesn't look like you've sat there with a pen because i would imagine that that wouldn't look as solid as it looks but it just looks so nice yeah it's the pen i use which was a pentel fabric gel pen and they don't make them anymore it's just existing stock so every time i see a dozen for sale for way more than they should be i buy them you you buy them up i don't blame you and the quilting that you did in there um did you kind of plan that out or did you just sort of go with how it how it worked with the sort of zentangle style i i worked it from the zentangle style but then like i would have to remember because like the loop starts here and curls back into the center so whatever i filled over here i had to go ahead and finish that whole thing before i forgot oh that's right so so you were actually paying attention to the continuity i feel like if it were me i'd be like well we're doing something else in this section but it makes it cohesive and really nice i so i karen i think the thing that i'm taking away most from this is that you must never get bored because all of your techniques are different all of your quilts are different and unique yeah and i just get a thought and that's usually my next quilt so it's whatever whatever i'm thinking about or if a friend says hey i tried this i have to somehow incorporate that in and then try it too and if you're going to try something you might as well make something from it that's right yeah and it kind of encourages me and hopefully everyone else to just kind of try something new and even if it doesn't turn out quite as nicely as karen's did you could still try a new technique or just a new project and it keeps us from getting so bored and stuck in what we always do and well i share most of my mistakes so i figured why not like i made the mistake i'm not going to hide it and if i can benefit somebody else to get through a big problem like that or persevere through it might as well that's right and i know your students and i know everyone appreciates that because when we share our mistakes it makes everything else a lot less scary for other people it's only fabric i know where they sell more there you go it's only fabric i know where they sell more straight from karen's mouth so this is a big bed quilt i made this for my son it's huge wow yeah it is pretty awesome on it so i hope you can see it it this has been well laundered so it may not be as um crisp and clean as it once was yeah i can see the quilting it's really beautiful and because when you first look at it i mean it just seems like a really lovely kind of simple quilt and then when you bring that forward the quilting just really makes it special so does your son was those are those the colors that he enjoys or what made you go with that you can tell he's definitely a quilter's child he's an adult now but because um i made him an onion quilt you know the blue the spanish onion quilts well i made him one of those and he's like i don't like it i want a different one and you're like okay so he he really likes that turquoisey blue color so i said okay this is your quilt if you don't like it i'm done that's right so i have two little more pieces and these are just um little art quilts that i've done this is my mermaid you want to take it up there and she's curved pieced and appliqued and painted and crystals oh wow i love the shell and the crystals and the swirls and the water i mean the way you've complemented the actual design and the theme with the quilting is so nice here yeah well that's why i said i'm like if they're if they're mermaids down there i think they have really long flowing hair i think they sit on seashells you know it's just have fun yeah that's right and once again crystals i love the crystals i love anything where light reflects so crystals are just make my day and this is a quilt i made called hope gross and this is actually from a photo a famous photographer oh i can't think of his name oh he's european so he took this photo of a little little daisy weed growing in the street and in the photo there's a street car there's all people walking down the street and i emailed him and i said can i can i make this into a quilt and he said well what do your quotes look like so of course i sent all my pictures of my quotes to him first and he said sure i said but i'm only using this little piece of your photo so um he just wanted to see it after it was done and that's not most things with copyright you have to get permission like you have to email these people to use their photos you can't just say i'm gonna make a quote of this photo so i just wanted to show that that was what i got from it that that little flower growing in the middle of the street i love that one and that's a perfect place to end because a lot of us are looking for a place to find hope right now and it's a really good reflection of that and again just such a unique quilt and and i never get bored of looking at your stuff it's i'm just so excited and so happy to talk with you and i want to thank you for this wonderful trunk show it's been so nice not only to see your quilts but to catch up with you and i want to thank this wonderful strong man over here hold up all these quilts you've done a wonderful job all of these things are family affairs and that's one thing i love about sharing with our quilters over zoom gaml we want to thank our sponsor gamble again who has um so graciously take made this trunk show possible don't forget to go to quiltweek.com trunk show to enter for that professional bobbin winder valued at 349 karen you said that you were hoping to get one of those pretty soon yourself yeah i have to get one um i i actually tested it out last time i was at gambling i'm like oh i want one that's right so and you you need one at home too so be sure to go enter that just thanks again karen it's been so much fun i i just really appreciate talking with you and it's just been so nice looking at your quilts thank you liz thanks for having me uh well you enjoy the rest of your day and everybody out there watching i hope that this has brought you a little bit of quilty inspiration made you want to go out and try something new again just like karen try all the different techniques you're going to find something you love and it's time to just try it don't be afraid thanks so much it's been wonderful and we'll see you hopefully pretty soon at a quilt show in person

Channel: quilttv

Views: 3,395

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

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

Id: 51Fr9t0gtTg

Length: 48min 4sec (2884 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021