Retreat Report: Quilt Con 2013

In the three weeks since last I blogged: (1) I went to QuiltCon (yay!) (2) I returned home from QuiltCon to a very sick boyfriend who had an emergency appendectomy that night.  (Yuck!) But he's okay! (Yay!) (3) I had a grueling week at work due to (a) it just being the time of year where a lot is going on; (b) chaos on the homefront due to emergency surgery; (c) needing to prepare at work for a my absence --a vacation that I might or might not be going on, depending on the pace of the boyfriend's recovery. (4) I went on a weeklong cruise of the Caribbean   (Yuck:  I'm just not into this sort of manufactured vacation + I can't tolerate much heat or sun or sunscreen + oh my god all the people all the time.  Yay: the boyfriend was happy + his family is fun + I really need to relax and not complain about being a guest on a luxury cruise). What. a. month. Some thoughts: ** Who is this handsome minutes before having their appendix out?  Ridiculous. ** If you saw this quilt in person, you probably noticed that the quilting has tension issues.  Quilting is my growth area for sure, but I'm just not one to undo and redo things.  I mean, it's a blanket and I had fun making it.  And I learned from making it.  Anyway, I do wish that I had put some note about the quilting in the description or maybe called the quilt "Tension Issues" just so that people knew that I knew it's not "right." I'm so happy with good enough.  It seems like lots of folks aren't, and I want to talk about that.  Is there a "right" amount of concern over craftsmanship? I figure as long as you think about it and work on improving, that's good. ** "Is it okay to make a quilt just to amuse yourself?"  I actually found myself asking a friend this at QuiltCon.  Because I'm planning a quilt based on The Nanny. The fabric is piled up. The plan is in my brain. A variation on the X and + quilt. It's probably going to be hideous, but I will love it. It's going to have voice boxes sewn into it, with Fran's laugh and Fran's voice and maybe the theme song.  I'm going to see if I can get the quilting to look like her hair. Anyway, wasn't my question silly?  Of course it is okay to make a quilt just for a laugh. ** Denyse Schmidt.  Her first book really started it for me.  And by "it" I mean being truly passionate about quilts.  It was such a pleasure to see her quilts in person.  There are so many little things that pictures have a hard time capturing.  Do you see the red quilting thread and the slight changes in the saturation of the purple?  These quilts are an absolute feast. I also got to take Denyse's improv class.  Which was awesome.  Because while I'm totes comfy with improv, I loved seeing her process and hearing her words. I learned a lot, as it turns out, and have more options and ways of seeing things now. And at lunch that day, I ran into Denyse on the show floor, right by my quilt and I was so chuffed to show it to her. The Conversation Quilt was selected for the "Best of QuiltCon" traveling quilt show, so if you weren't at QuiltCon but are going to be at HMQS in Salt Lake City, or Sisters in Sisters, Oregon or Patchwork Europe in France, look for it there! ** This was my favorite quilt in the show, The Big O by Latifah Saafir (co-founder of The Modern Quilt Guild, she blogs (rarely) at The Quilt Engineer). I got to say "hi" to Latifah at QuiltCon only so briefly and tell her how much I love her work. ** If there's one thing I could change about my time in Austin, it would be to have more time to just hang out with people--old friends and new. ** I also took a printing class with Lotta Jansdotter and a class on piecing curves with Sherri Lynn Wood.  I loved them both and really hope to have the opportunity to take more classes in the future. Learning and working in community is so much fun.   ** Cabela's has a pretty wide selction of UPF clothes (sunscreen clothes) that are okay looking.  And you can wear them on an excursion to Chichen Itza and be okay even in the blazing sun, even when dork dancing at the Temple of 1000 Columns. ** Zoltar! Zoltar predicts that the coming month will be much more relaxed!