Kansas City

This past week I had the opportunity to go to Kansas City. Boy, it is AWESOME there. I met up with a new friend, Joann. Joann is a quilter extraordinaire. She took me around town to visit three really cool quilt shops. First up was Quilter's Station. That shop had more fabric than any shop I've ever been in, with the exception of The Fabric Shack in Waynesville Ohio. I am so happy to report Quilter's Station now carries ReannaLily Designs patterns. (hooray!) Next stop, Prairie Point Quilt Shop this shop was smaller and beautiful inside. Great floor samples of the quilt patterns and classes. The last stop was my new favorite quilt shop- Harper's Fabric and Quilt. This shop was young and hip and modern. In fact, I hear its the meeting place for the KC Modern Quilt Guild. The shop was laid out very open and clean, not jumbled or knick-knacky. I met lovely ladies there, too. Joann's art quilt guild meets there, too. Excellent shop.

After all the super fun shop-hopping, we ended up at the art guild's installation at Lenexa City Hall. Its a small art quilt show with amazing pieces hanging throughout the halls. You've got to stop by and see it, if you are in the Kansas City area. I have pictures from the show, which I'll post as soon as I can get them off the "back up" camera.

I knew Joann was an art quilter, of course, so I took my portrait quilt to her to see if she had any ideas on how to quilt it. Thank goodness- she sure did! The ideas were great, I only lack the skill. I started practicing this afternoon.

The above picture is my test sample for the hair. I had to lay a photoshop filter on the image, so you could see the blue thread. I also tried making different sized pebble quilting.

Next up the ribbed collar of the t-shirt he was wearing the portrait and another pebble test. I tried three different sizes of meandering too. I wonder if I snapped a photo of each three sizes?

Hum... I don't think you can see all the meandering sizes- but there's a big overview of this "lets see if I can pull off the quilting" sample. I really like the small sized pebbles better than the larger ones... they only take 15x longer to make... ;)

need.more.practice.

Very inspiring weekend. Thanks so much for the tour, Joann!!! I had a blast.

Kansas City