4 A Very Belated Quiltcon Post.

Well it's only like two months later, but I wanted to share a little bit about my time at Quiltcon. I was so excited to go to Austin for the show and hang out with some of my friends! I got to spend the week with my friend Laurie and her adorable cats, which was really fun!

One thing I was most excited about was being able to see my Woodcut Quilt hanging in the show. I've never submitted a quilt to a show before so I was really happy when it was accepted. It was fun to walk the floor and see it hanging there!

I had one other quilt at the show as well, hanging in the Cotton & Steel booth!  I was able to use their new Tinsel collection coming out this summer to stitch up this Christmas quilt before I left!

Rashida kindly stood with me so I didn't have to stand by myself for a photo again :) It was so nice to see her and the rest of the C&S ladies!

I was able to take two really great classes while I was there. The first was a natural dyeing class with Maura Ambrose of Folk Fibers, who makes the most amazing quilts, all hand dyed and hand quilted! Maura explained the process of mixing up natural dye baths, and then dyed some different fabrics for us using Osage Orange tree bark and Cochineal.

 She brought her beautiful hand dyed silks as well for us to look at. The color spectrum is so pretty!

She also brought her swatch books, with lots of swatches of different fabrics and gorgeous little paintings of each plant.

 We all got to do a bit of shibori dyeing with indigo at the end of the class which is always fun!

 I was able to do a bit of yarn dyeing too so I came home with some pretty souvenirs!

The last class I took was Monoprinting with Lizzy House. I have never done any monoprinting before so I was looking forward to learning, and Lizzy is a really great teacher!  Here she is laying out all of her amazing monoprints at the beginning of class.

Monoprinting is a really fun process, but kind of messy, so I didn't get many photos! Here's one of the prints I worked on during the class.

Here are all my prints together. One major struggle for me was the colors. We couldn't mix them just for ease of the workshop and they were all very primary, which was a bit out of my comfort zone! I had to keep reminding myself that it's just practice :)

I was very happy with my class choices this year, although I kind of wish I had taken a sewing class too! Maybe next year. I am looking forward to practicing both of these techniques a little more after taking classes on them. 

Overall, Quiltcon was really amazing! A little bit draining as I am pretty introverted, but it's nice to put myself out there sometimes. The quilt show was the most inspiring part for me, but I'll spare you the photos of everyone's quilts as I'm sure you've seen them all a million times by now. You can see them all on the Modern Quilt Guild blog if you haven't seen them yet. They are all beautiful and make me want to sew a billion new quilts!

9 chalet sewing.

Last weekend I took a trip down to Madison and Mt. Horeb to meet up for a weekend of sewing with a few friends.

Jeni, Jacey, Deedee, Faith, Anna and I rented out a beautiful chalet in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin and spent our days sewing, shopping, eating, and dyeing fabric!   

I was very inspired just being in the chalet, the inside was so beautiful and the view outside was pretty great too.

I finished quilting my Indian Summer quilt while I was there.  I'm usually not the best at actually sewing during retreats, but it felt good to get something done this time.

I also started working on a project for a new tutorial, which should be finished soon.

It was so nice to just sit around, chatting and sewing with friends.  I don't get to do that very often!

We ate a ton of really delicious food while we were there, including gigantic pretzels for dinner at The Grumpy Troll.

We went to The Coopers Tavern in downtown Madison and had the most delicious Belgian frites with garlic aioli.

Deedee is an amazing cook, and made us fancy breakfasts every morning.  She also made an iced mocha cheesecake that was to die for!

Anna made Italian sodas and even brought cute paper straws for us!

We stopped at Jeni's apartment a few times to visit her bunny George.  It was fun to see her cute apartment and her sewing room!  We joked that it felt like we were stepping into her blog!

Back at the chalet, we tried out indigo dyeing for the first time.  I only dyed a few things, but everyone's pieces were really successful.  Here's my favorite of Jeni's pieces, which she made by tying rocks into the fabric before dyeing it.  I made a little video of the reveal on IG which was kind of fun.

 Here are all of our dyed pieces together!

Overall, it was just a really relaxing and fun weekend.  It's so nice to get together with friends!  I'm very grateful to have all of these girls so close to me (and Jacey, who was willing to make the trip up from Texas!)

Photo by Faith

We didn't think to take photos at the chalet until it was all cleaned up, and at that point, Anna and Faith had already left.  Thankfully Faith had taken a picture of all of us at The Sewcial Lounge!

By the end of the trip, we already decided that we'll be coming back again next year!  I'm already looking forward to it :)