Hello Quilt Con! My name is Stitching and Bacon

I often like to start a blog post by stating where I am located while I am typing these words. Usually it is some tiny little town in a generic hotel room for work and sometimes I am at my desk at home in North Carolina.

Today, I am in a plane over the earth on my way to Austin, Texas. I am going to QUILT CON! 

Pause for a second, can I say that again? I am going to Quilt Con. I can hardly believe it. This is such a huge treat for me. It has been planned for months and it is finally here.  It feels like Christmas, Hannukah, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Easter, and my birthday all rolled into one.

Okay, now that I am sort of over that. Are you going to Quilt Con? Can we meet? I am going to have buttons to trade or just give you.

I am going to start this epic blog post by telling you the ways you can find me at Quilt Con.

Firstly, I am taking two classes. Victoria Findley Wolf’s Modern String of Florid Blooms and Yoshiko Jinzenji’s Sheer Fabrics—Silhouette Pillow. I am also volunteering on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday as a classroom assistant and in the lecture hall.

I have two quilts in the show. Please visit them!

You may remember Fade to Black. I love this quilt. More information about this quilt here.

The quilt you may not have seen is Paint Chip.  This quilt deserves its own blog post so I am going to keep this brief here. Rainbows make me happy and this quilt makes me so happy… This quilt feels like it brings its own sunshine.

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I am going to be honest about this, I was nervous to share these quilts and tell you I have quilts in the show. There was so much chatter on the Internet about getting into the show and or not getting into the show. I don’t want to seem like I am too modest or brag too much. It is a hard line to tow sometimes.

Okay, off this subject. Talking about these things is hard for me.

I thought I would give you some fun facts about myself! I love lists!

1. Despite my blog name and adorable pig. I am allergic to mammal meat. So, I can’t eat bacon. It is an allergy from ticks, the moral of this story is that bug spray is good and I miss bacon.

2. For my day job, I am an archaeologist. This is not unrelated to fact one.  I travel a ton for work.

3. I grew up in the Portland, Oregon, which is where my parents still live. I moved to Colorado when I was 18 to go to college. I met my husband in college and then I followed him to North Carolina. Until I did that, I swore I would never move for a man. I have never ever regretted my decision to 

move.

4. I am addicted to Pilates and Barre. I try to go to at least 4 classes a week when I am home.

5. My house is under 900 square feet and we have 12 quilts in our living room.

6.  I love to cook. My husband and I cook dinner together almost every night.

7. My favorite colors are blue, pink, and I love everything with cats on it. I am also super into kitsch.

I hope we get to meet at Quilt Con if you are going. If not, I promise to recap as much as I can. You should follow me on instagram (@stitchingandbacon) for the play-by-play.

Love you all friends! I hope you are having a great week!

Blue is a Happy Color Scrappy Quilt

I had trouble naming this quilt. I mean, it is just a quilt. It was not hard to make, I didn't spend a long time debating my fabric choices or patterns. But, I did enjoy every second I worked on this project. Sometimes just a quilt is just what you need.

We have had a tough couple of months in Bacon casa. No babies (at least ones that belong to us) or divorces, but life is full of ups and downs. Sometimes when you are THINKING so hard about everything in your life you need to enter your sewing room and not think at all. This is a project born out of my desire to meditatively cut fabric apart and sew it together. This is also a project born out of the fact that I could not close either of my two (two!) blue scrap bins. My two low volume scrap bins were also not closing anymore. My color choices were made for me.

Blue is also my favorite. A happy color for me.

I knew I needed something simple and I also needed to use small pieces (scraps, amiright). I did make some rules for myself. The best meditation is done within constraints. I could not cut yardage. In a pinch, I was allowed to use fat quarters. I was not allowed to think about placement. I cut. I sewed. I pressed. It took me less than a week to make this top.

My instagram friends and my husband both convinced me that bigger is better. So this is twin sized. I also decided I needed some quilts that fit beds.

I didn't want to think about quilting either. I also think this quilt demanded simplicity so I went for straight lines in a crosshatch. I didn't mark, just eyeballed the lines using the quilt.  I tried to play with thread color switching between blue and white Aurifil, but you can barely tell.

One of the best things about scrappy quilts are the little nuggets from other projects you find. There are gnomes, cats (so many cats), frogs, dots, bridges, birds. text, bicycles, metallics, flowers, and deer... to name a few. Did I mention this project had very few rules?

Just in case you want to make your own scrappy Irish chain (did I mention that this is an Irish chain?) here are some stats. I cut 2.5" squares for each of the nine patch blocks. The large low volume squares are 6.5" (unfinished). Each block is 6" square finished. It is 11 squares across and 15 squares tall (measuring 66" by 90", taller than my 6'1'' quilt holder).

So, my first true finish of 2015. I started on new years and had the whole thing done in January. Just blogging now. New years resolution is going well.

Sew Joy my friends.

I love you all and I promise life is going okay. I promise you I have some fun stuff planned. I am heading to Quilt Con in 11 days (!). I have a post planned about my quilts that are going to be hanging in the show and I have a fun blog hop coming up sewing with some gorgeous bright and happy Gina Martin fabrics.

Cheers! Let me know if you are coming to Quilt Con in Austin. I would love to meet everyone. I can be a little introverted, but I know that we will be friends because we all love quilting and fabric.

Quilt Stats:
Name: Blue is a Happy Color
Size: 66" by 90"
Fabric: Way too many to name, all the girls are here... the backing is Carolyn Friedlander's Widescreen in Yarrow (by Robert Kaufman)
Quilting: Straight line cross hatch with my trusty Aurifil in white and blue.
Finished: January 2015

PS - These photos were all taken at the Mast Farm Inn, Banner Elk, NC. Derek and I took a mini weekend vacation there this weekend to hike in the mountains and curl up by the fire. It is a charming, small (and romantic) inn, which I would highly recommend to my local (and not so local peeps) looking for a unique getaway.  We stayed in a renovated woodworking building, which was completely luxurious.