EPP Bowls

Currently a furor on FB...EPP bowls.

First, Pirate posted one that she did and it was gorgeous. She posted the vendor she got the pattern from, Cake and Ale, and a bunch of us ordered the same bowl. I ordered a couple of others too.

Here is my first 'DOOM Dish'. DOOM stands for 'Didn't Organize, Only Moved'. I have lots of DOOM piles. This will make a DOOM pile that is contained, and movable.  

Edge treatment - I do ladder stitching on the edges

The underside of the dish

Another view of the edging - I am proud to say, my stitching does not show!

The inside of the bowl. The fabric was a bit loose, so I sprayed just the inside with Magic Sizing and when it was dry, the fabric both had shrunk AND was adhered to the paper plate that used as the templates for the bowl. Yippie!

BUT...it seems like its not really getting to live up to its name!

I used it for corraling my little tools in my recent class - there is a wee tomato pincushion in there and I stuck the tape dispenser and the the scissors in when I started sewing. I had a wheel of pins in there too.

This isn't my first 3 dimensional EPP object...

This was an attempt to make a bowl that I did many, many years ago.. it typically holds yarn balls. It has one layer of Peltex...and that was a BEAR to stich thru. The top edges are kind of moldable - I have them curved out.

Back

The seams overlapped - getting the needle in there was really hard!

And the hexies that this bowl were made of are ALL the same size as the DOOM dish's center!

More from Road To CA Quilt Show 2024

I went to Party Time again this year.. this used to be a really fun party, and you got a lot of value in the give-aways. One year everyone got a baby quilt batting as they went out the door. The prize table had lots and lots of fabric and tools and other goodies.

This year, not so much. I think they didn't get as many donation items from the vendors - and there were not as many vendors and a few of the big names were not there this year - it only took me a little more than 2 hours to go thru the vendor mall - at the hey-day before Covid, they had an extra tent outside the Convention Center stuffed to the gills with vendors. They didn't have the prize table - if a table won one of the games a 'walker' brought a bag with enough items for the table right to the table - no choosing. 

Probably won't do Party Time next year - its late at night and I was TOTALLY exhausted by the time the party started. 

The tool bag is ok - I stuck the popper on my phone - not sure I like it, but it is interesting.
Needed a new seam ripper! The nail file is glass - I have a small one I got years ago - they last for a lonnnggggg time.

Thank goodness I thought ahead and brought my camp stool - a lot of ladies thought that was really smart and they are thinking of bringing one next year! I got the idea from an ad were they put a backpack around a camp stool and advertised it- I looked at ordering one, but it wouldn't have gotten here before the show.  And the one I have is really light, so carrying it was not a problem. I made the strap out of a strip of fabric - I love that fabric, but I only had that one strip!

I sat down quite a bit. I stuffed the camp stool in one of the past Road To CA bags (I inked what was just plain canvas with InkTense pencils and water.) so I could wear it over my shoulder - DH came up with the idea to put it upside down with the legs pointing up. It worked!

One thing different they did this year was have the vendor mall open on preview night. That probably helped the vendors a lot! Though, unless folks were ready for it, they might not have brought funds!

The quilts, except for the major prize winners and a couple of exhibits (Cherrywood Challenge) and one other if I recall, were all in the ballroom. It was dim in there with spot lights on the quilts and there was gentleman playing an electric piano - he is terrific (but I wondered why he played the 'Go to Sleep Lullaby"!!!) 

Road To CA Quilt Show 2024

I went to the Road to CA Quilt Show again this year...first time since Covid. I used to go every year.

The highlight of the show was seeing fellow Valley of the Sun Retreater Kathi's Tropical Dreams quilt that Ami, also a Valley of the Sun Retreater,  quilted and it's ribbon!

and yes.. it WAS dark in that room with spotlights from the floor...not my favorite way of presenting quilts, but evidently done on purpose...yuck!

This was another one that was splendid:

You can follow Road to California Quilters Conference & Showcase on FB to see LOTS of pictures of the winners. They haven't posted this year's winners yet on their website.

I took a  half -day class from Grace Errea - Randomly Pieced Backgrounds... evidently my distaste for patchwork carried over to this technique...sigh.. I did so many things wrong - only got TWO blocks done and a bunch of...well.. not so good chain pieced pieces.

My workstation - Moore's Sewing Machines supplied the Juki..its a good machine and I didn't break the thread!!! (I had one class where I was fighting the machine every seam I sewed)

Grace explaining the technique

I think I would be able to do this better if I didn't do her chain piecing but built it one block at a time(less chance of getting every single freaken one in the chain wrong, like I did :(  ) I will try it again at home! Here are the two blocks I got done in class

But.. you end up with a cool background. Grace's eye for color is terrific and her samples are really interesting! I finished my piece at home. The gal sitting next to me in class said I should put a chicken on it..we will see!

I will try again. Here is my second set of fabrics - but Grace said we shouldn't have seams in our pieces to try this technique...but now that I think about it, I could have just cut the pattern pieces on that fabric after I cut all the rest of them - and that is what I will do with these fabrics. Might put some koi fish on this one!

 The blue arrow is pointing to the seam

After my class, I went to a lecture from a wool vendor. They had some really cute stuff. I ended up buying one of their kits to make a pillow. They have a sew-along for the month of Feb - a new video each day. That will be fun. I love the design on the pillow! Only thing I wanted to change is the background. DH is not fond of black. But I didn't find any pieces in my wool collection I liked any better, so black it is.

Then, on to see the quilts and the vendor mall.
I stimulated the economy a bit - got a bunch of FQs from a new vendor...some really cool pieces! Here is my haul 

One of the vendors intrigued me - CutterPiller. They make lighted boards that have a translucent cutting mat over the light. But, the price was out of my budget. So I ordered a small translucent mat from Amazon that will go over my LightUp Pad.