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.