A New Career?

Thanks to a member of my quilt guild who seems to be buddies with the Mancuso brothers, we get to volunteer to help out at PIQF (Pacifc International Quilt Fest) in Santa Clara.  This year I signed on to be a scribe for the judges.  It was so much fun and I learned a lot.  I was assigned to work with Frieda Andersen and we worked with another judge, Jennie Reyment to view the 92 quilts in the Wall Quilts category.  The Mancuso brothers even treated everyone to lunch.  Here I am with judge, Frieda.  I didn't make any decisions.  I just took down notes. 

The judging took place on Wednesday.  I went back down to the show on Friday morning to help sell raffle tickets for my guild, Amador Valley Quilters, raffle quilt.  At noon, I took a break, ate lunch and then toured the vendors.  I had already seen the quilts on Wednesday.  And then..............I met with several ladies and our "quilt diva", Karen to get ready to model for the garment fashion show to be held that evening.  What fun!  A little back stage look at modeling.  It was my first time, but thanks to veteran "model/volunteers of every size", I caught on to the routine and survived.  I intended to take more pictures but the time flew by as we rushed back and forth changing clothes. 

First up were the Cherrywood designs.  I really liked this jacket.

A glimpse into the dressing room that 4 of us shared along with our dresser/pressers and garments

We all called this "Little Red Riding Hood".  I had to be careful not to trip over the cape.

Another glimpse of the backside of the cape along with my dresser, Karen. 

The evening was quite fun and interesting.  If given the opportunity, I might sign up again.  Several of our model/volunteers have been doing the show for years.  There was lots of laughs going on.  One more life experience to add to my resume.

Just A Little Fall Fun

I didn't have anything to work on at Quiltinators last Monday so I brought along some fabric stash and began making strip sets.  Then I cut them into 2 1/2" strip squares.  I wasn't sure that my funky strip sets and squares were going to work well in some sort of order for a quilt top.  But I've played around with them and come up with: 

The dark squares are daisies on black.

I think this will work.  It has Fall/Halloween colors and if you study it closely, there is a repeating pattern in the rows.  I have plenty of fabric for wide borders so I'll make this the center.  

Next a sneak peak of a project that I'll eventually be putting up for a blog hop called Holiday Lane Pillow.  I'm only going to put a sneak peak here.  I don't have an assigned day for the official unveiling yet AND I still need to embellish and put the pillow together.

And that's what I've been working on lately.