I have been busy in the sewing room working to get ready for the quilt show. I got a couple more small doll quilts finished and also quilted a couple of larger quilts here at home. I am finishing the last binding today I hope and then they can get washed so they are ready for the show.
Doing the machine quilting here at home on my Pfaff 1222 I realized that I really prefer quilting on a stationary machine and moving the quilt sandwich instead of having the sandwich stationary and moving the machine. I feel like I have more control. The Pfaff has a fairly large throat (8") so as long as I am careful I can quilt even a king size quilt. My husband is looking for a machine with a larger throat that might be suitable. Possibly a commercial type machine but it needs to be capable of free motion quilting and have a walking foot for straight line or gently curved quilting. If anyone knows of such a machine please leave a comment and let me know.
Today I am hoping to sort through all the quilts I have here for the show and start getting printed labels made for display purposes. I will try to take some pictures - at least of some of my recent finishes.
I have been thinking about ways to display the quilts at the show since we don't have the stands that most quilt shows use. Some suggestions include, a quilt frame standing on end (I think we will have two), my q-snap quilting frame, ladders, chairs, rocking chairs, sewing machine cabinets, and drying racks. Does anyone out there have any other ideas?
In other news, my son is home for spring break which is very nice but also dangerous - he and his sister are reverting back to childhood and start wrestling on the furniture so I have to threaten them every so often so all the furniture isn't broken this week. Their older sister and her two little ones will arrive on Wednesday to help with the quilt show - I hope the house can withstand the fun that will ensue!
Over the last two days I have done the cutting for the wedding quilt for June. One thousand eight hundred squares. I hope I did it right because I don't want to have to go buy more fabric. This quilt will be in neutrals and reds and should end up quite stunning. I have lots of neutrals so I cut enough of the neutral pieces to make a twin size quilt with the same pattern. But instead of reds I use a different color or maybe just scrappy. 
I volunteered to make a quilt with a class of 1st - 3rd graders for their school's auction fundraiser. The teacher kind of wanted pictures but I just don't want to put the effort into making a quilt with pictures because I am not convinced it will hold up to use and it is hard to get the general public to bid on a quilt that is so personalized. So, when I came across a tutorial somewhere on the web for raw edge applique I decided that was the way to go. 
My first project was getting the quilting done on "Balloon Ride over the Palouse." The top itself was finished several months ago after I finished my granddaughter's baby quilt. I was playing around with a new (to me) technique for improvisational curved piecing. It did such a great job on those hills! I then added a paper-pieced hot air balloon and used the leftovers from the mitered baby quilt border to make a frame. I have really grown to love the Palouse area of Washington State. I've made a lot of trips to this region since we first took our daughter over to WSU for her freshman year in the fall of 2001. I love seeing the changes in the scenery at different times of the year and even from week to week. 
After I got the binding on the balloon quilt I did the quilting on my Mini Quilt in a Bag 2 - Simply Charming quilt. For this round my partner sent me a charm pack of fabric and I was supposed to use at least a small piece of each fabric in a quilt top. The charm pack she chose had something like 40 different fabrics in it so she told me I didn't have to use them all in the quilt but I used all but one, I think (it was a very light tan that just didn't have enough contrast with the muslin I used). They didn't all make it into the top but I used some of the larger prints for the back. I ended up just turning the back over the front for the binding. I think it turned out really great, in fact, I am hoping my partner won't mind getting her little quilt a week or so late so I can hang it in the quilt show at our church. 