Trinkets 1

I may have posted earlier that I was smitten by the Trinkets pattern but not by the color scheme it features. I had a collection of Kona half-yards I'd bought a while back without a plan, and I decided they would do nicely for this project.

My love affair (on-again/off-again) with cat bathing paper piecing is well-known locally. Recent p-p projects have gone effortlessly and I've become complacently confident. Yesterday I began the Trinkets. 

Hah!

I certainly didn't expect the struggles I had with some of them. Thinking it over carefully this morning provided the answer: The last several p-p projects have been pieces that were all the same. It was easy to determine a standard shape or strip. With these guys, it's more challenging.

So, I'm not quite a dozen in (there are 40 blocks total) and unsure how I'm feeling about it all. The blue X (block 1-C) is not as precise as I'd like. Part of the reason is that the p-p construction method eliminates seam nesting. Nonetheless, I'll press on.

(See what I did there?)

Mancuso Lancaster Show May 2019

My friend Bobbi and I went out to the new Mancuso Show in Lancaster today. It's a relatively easy drive, made all the better by Bobbi's choice to take Rte 30 for much of it. We arrived a little before eleven o'clock.

The show itself was really good. Lots of pretty quilts, lots of big pretty quilts. Yes, there were many of the kinds of things that don't interest me, i.e., thread painting, intricate machine quilting, that kind of thing. But there were plenty of nice big pieced quilts. There was a fine assortment of vendors, some of the ones we usually find at big shows and some different ones. I went without a shopping list and bought only about eight fat quarters.

The venue was another story. The show was held at the old Lancaster Host, recently acquired by Wyndham and in the process of being remodeled. Bobbi, who knows things, told me that Mancuso had been promised everything would be done in time. Being married to an architect, I have a pretty good idea how realistic those promises are. It wasn't Mancuso's fault. It wasn't Wyndham's fault. It prolly wasn't even the contractors' faults. Construction delays happen.

Consequently, parking was problematic because of all of the equipment needed for construction. The floor in the Lampeter exhibition hall was irregular, patched, taped-down cords all over, areas where it felt as though carpet had been placed over open spaces (not huge ones, just enough to be alarming). It was very, very crowded with narrow spaces between booths. Vendors were kind of somehow mixed in with quilts. It wasn't a place you would want to be if a fire broke out. Signage was poor. The ladies room on the main level had five stalls, none of them handicapped, and of the five only three were working. Downstairs, where there were fewer people looking at the exhibits there (due to the signage problem), there were plenty of working toilets. The exhibit space downstairs was great. The old Tennis Courts area was also still being remodeled, but the floor was more stable, there was much more light than there used to be, and there was more space to move around. Nice bathrooms there, too.

Will I go back next year? You bet I will. It was a very good show with excellent vendors. And in a year the hotel should be humming.

Here are the photos I took of quilts I liked:

Quilts From Winter of 2019: Part Three of Three

This queen-size quilt is made entirely from 2-1/2 inch squares of Liberty and is a reminder of our trip last autumn to Great Britain. I bought some fabric packs at Liberty of London and added them to the few pieces I already had. The quilt is from a pattern called Mazed, by Kristy Daum.