Road to California 2001

(For more information about the Road to California show itself, click here.)
 

Click on any of the thumbnails below to expand the pictures.
 
 

My first class, "Twisted Star" by Judy Niemeyer
I signed up for this class on Wednesday and Thursday of the conference.  Here are some of the quilts that Judy brought to the conference; she had them on display in our classroom.  The first quilt is the "Twisted Star" quilt.  She is also teaching the "Wedding Star" quilt, which is the one on the right.  The center quilt is a new one, "Starburst", that she hopes will be coming out in February.  Judy's website can be reached by clicking here.

Judy's demonstration of her fast machine appliqué method for the flowers in the borders of the quilt.
 
 
 

My "Twisted Star" blocks
I decided to make my quilt with fabrics that were opposite in value to the one on the front of Judy's pattern.  I also decided to make it very scrappy.  I have probably close to 100 fabrics cut out for this quilt.  Each triangular shaped block has 42 pieces.

 
The Last Supper Quilt
I hope I don't get in trouble for posting this picture.  It is so awesome.  It was made by Don Locke, and I was lucky enough to get to sit next to him and his wife at the faculty preview luncheon on Wednesday.  He knows the exact number of pieces in the quilt (I can only remember that it's over 51,000) and each piece is only 1/2" square.

Closeup of the Last Supper Quilt
Here is a closeup of Jesus in the quilt.  You can see some of the detail of the quilting.  I was talking with Mr. Locke, and he saw my quilt, and I told him how much thread I used in the quilting.  He and his wife said that they know a lot of details about the quilt but never thought to tally up how much thread was in it!!

Jennifer Chiaverini and her son Nicholas
Where quilters gather in great numbers, they shop!  And, if they're lucky, they get to meet famous authors, such as quilt novelist Jennifer Chiaverini.  She and I have exchanged emails once in a while, and we both subscribe to the RCTQ newsgroup, so she knew who I was when I introduced myself.  Isn't Nicholas cute?

Judging results
This is me with my quilt "Diamonds in the Rough", which was awarded the "Excellence in Machine Quilting" award!  Heck, I was just happy it was accepted in the show, and thought I'd be really happy if it happened to place in its category!  They were supposed to call the 1st place and above winners on Wednesday evening; when I didn't get a call, I thought, Oh well, it didn't win first place...  I took a break from my class on Thursday and snuck in to the exhibition hall while they were setting up the displays -- I asked them how my quilt did, they told me "Excellence in Machine Quilting", and then the lady told me that it was chosen over Ricky Tims' "Songe d'Automne" for this award!  I ran back to my classroom and called Teresa  who had made me swear to call her as soon as I found out how the quilt did.  She wasn't answering her phone, so I called my parents instead, and of course everyone in the class overheard me so we had a little celebration!

(By the way, wanna see my ribbon?  *grin*)

(If you want to see more detail about my "Diamonds in the Rough" quilt, click here.)

The winners were treated to a wine and cheese celebration on Saturday evening of the conference.  This was held after the exhibition hall was closed for the evening.  We got to meet the sponsors of our awards (mine was P&B Textiles), and we were taken into the exhibition hall to have our pictures taken with our sponsors in front of our winning entries.  The show coordinators had removed all of the tape barriers, that they put in front of the entries to keep people from getting too close, so while all the pictures were being taken, we were able to get up close to the winning entries.  Here are just a few of the pictures I took:

Best of Show
"California Chardonnay"
by Jan Rashid
Wow, now I really know I've got a long ways to go with appliqué!
 

Best Pictorial
"Over the River and Through the Woods"
by Nancy Brown

Outstanding Miniature Quilt
"The Bouquet"
by Jessie Harrison
This quilt is about 12" long.  Incredible!

The rest of the winners can be seen on Road to California's website.  My quilt is on page 3 of the site.
 
 

Margaret Miller at the faculty preview
I also got to meet Margaret Miller at the faculty preview luncheon.  She was really funny.... The lady next to her at the table introduced us....  The lady next ot me at the table was also in the "Twisted Star" class, and immediately piped in, "Lori's quilt won the machine quilting award", and then Margaret replied, "Yes, and I was the judge that made that possible!!"  I thanked her, and then asked her when she wanted me to pay her off....

In this picture, Margaret is showing some of the quilts that she's teaching at the conference.

  The RCTQ contingent
I bailed out of my class early at lunchtime on Saturday to meet up with some people from the R.C.T.Q. newsgroup.  I had never met any of them in person before but boy, did we have fun!  In the back row are Judy (Queenmaeve), Sue in Burbank (Mother of the Queen of the Universe), Karen Johnson, and Judy's friend (sorry, I did catch her name but can't for the life of me remember it now).  Standing in front are Bev (the Queen's future mother-in-law), Ronni from Nuevo, and Jeri Cota.  Seated in front are Marque (Unstitcher) and Lorilynn King.  You'll note that the M&M's and the peanut brittle are nowhere in sight....
 
 

Tea Time Lone Star class, by Jan P. Krentz

The second class I took was also a two-day class.  I had always liked Lone Star quilts, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to start one!  Rather than violate whatever copyrights Jan may have on her quilts, I'll just point you to her website, in particular, her picture of her sample quilt.  Be sure to check out some of her other quilts, they're wonderful.  And, if you ever have an opportunity to take a class from her, do it; her visual aids are outstanding and she is a really fun teacher!

  Using mirrors
Jan had us work on mock-ups of our Lone Stars before coming to class the first day.  Using mirrors really helped us get a feel for whether the fabric combinations we selected would work!  The first picture shows the mock-up with the mirrors.  The second one shows the first diamond that I made, and how the mirrors can be used to get an indication of what the whole star will look like.

  My star, so far...
Here's what my star looked like at the beginning of the second day of the class.
 

  Adding background and borders
I found a really nice bit of ribbon at the merchant's mall that really goes well with my fabrics. Here, some of the diamonds of the star are shown with the background fabric, and some possibilities for border treatments are shown as well.

For this quilt, I'm still deciding whether to do teapots in the background squares at all....  I may just have lots of butterflies flying all over Texas!