a sneak peek..

a sneak peek as to what I've been doing......

Well, I've got the second dress done in the series of embroidery that I'm doing. I only work on it during a few TV shows that I watch--American Idol and House. I like CSI, Without A Trace too, but forget to watch them.














For the next Quilt 24 Challenge, we have to do a Medallion Quilt. I have come up with a dozen designs and could never decide what I wanted to do. I finally decided to do an hand applique center...so here it is, all basted and ready to applique. I hope to get it done tonight during my quilt group.







This is one of the borders for my medallion quilt above...it only used 1 1/2" squares from each of my FQ's! At this rate, I'm going to get 20 quilts out of all those FQ's. This is quilt #2.










This was a storage room, that was full from floor to ceiling of stuff! To name a few things: 5 sets of metal bed frames??? A twin headboard/footboard set of my husbands, a picket fence, a box of books, 7 Cabbage Patch dolls, a kitchen play center and boxes of dishes, play food,etc., a miniature kitchen cupboard that my Dad made for ME when I was a little girl, boxes of games, clothes, a laundry hamper from my girls younger years and many more odd and end things. I should have taken a picture. It was a mess, and filthy! The walls were dirty and dusty. I turned it into my Quilting Supplies closet
and will store all my batting, quilts to be quilted, threads, and stencils/templates for my HQ16.


I just love the colors! Lime green and aqua...it looks so fresh and clean. And hopefully ALL my supplies can be easily found now and I can see what I have. I do know that I will not need to buy batting for a LONG, LONG time! :) I found all sorts of batting for all types of needs. You don't even see all the batting--that big bin below the W&N batting roll, is full of packaged batting and I need one more bin like it to hold the rest!

Busy as a Bee

I don't know, maybe it's the spring trying to greet us, but there are quite a few out there that have gotten into the "spring cleaning" mode, myself included. I decided that I couldn't go any farther without stopping to regroup, reorganize, de-clutter, purge, paint, donate and shore up the studio. With the exception of about an hour a day for my daily sewing--the Calendar Quilt, my Heartstrings blocks, my Quilt 24 Challenge--I've been buzzing around like a little worker bee to the tune of almost 12-14 hours a DAY! It's coming along. I didn't have the nerve to post my mess like Nancy did :) (thanks for the encouragement though!) I hid a LOT behind curtains and closed doors, but now everything will be presentable instead of being shown with a precursory statement of "excuse the mess"!

I am doing a little bit of sewing--but it's been piecemeal on about 5 different projects. I'll share pictures tomorrow. After I paint that one door pink............

**************Gratitudes***************

1. a chance to enjoy spring all over again!

2. the awesome paint choices we have today

3. oatmeal raisin cookies

Stained Glass and other ramblings...

I taught a Stained Glass class over the weekend. I had given my sample away, thinking I wouldn't teach it again. So, I had to make another one. I used my own hand dyed fabric for the flower and literally SCRAPS for the leaves. I was at my Friday night Quilt group and I'm normally not a dumpster diver (I figure all my friends KEEP all their trimmings, etc), but I noticed the trash can had USUABLE scraps! I couldn't believe it! Those kind of scraps are what made my Stained Glass! It's a darn sickness I tell ya. I spend over half my time making quilts from little bits of fabrics, when I have a closet FULL of FQ's and yardage. I just need to sew faster and sleep less. It would be hard to clean less because that's not on top of the list anymore (well, having a cleaning lady twice a month does force us to keep things picked up!) and my cooking is down to a bare minimum. A grilled meat, big yummy salad or soup. Quick and nutritious. Today I do have something in the crockpot--even better! Whoa--how did I get to talking about tonight's dinner? LOL My point....I had a great class and it is SO fun to see beginning quilter's make something that they are 'sure' they cannot do. They all completed their tops and they looked great. They were a bunch of happy campers. I wish I had taken my camera.

***********************Gratitudes*********************

1. A bright sunny day (not warm--but we see sun!)

2. An awesome Praise Worship service at church last night

3. Seeing smiles on quilters after learning a new technique successfully

Dabbling in Embroidery

I decided to make the plunge into the embroidery world, doing it by hand! If you look close, you will DEFINITELY see that it's not by machine! LOL I've never done embroidery and am kind of just winging it. I'm probably doing it all wrong, but that's okay. I found these darling 50's dresses done in pink and black with a little accent of green and I couldn't resist. They were part of the free series on The Bobby Sox Company site. I love her site--if you have a chance to go look, check out her darling sewing room. Oh, if only mine looked so good! She has a new free series on there now with alphabets.

I'm hoping that this will be my Friday night Quilt Group take along project. I get tired of lugging my machine and all the stuff. My Dear Jane project can get a big tedious at times and is sometimes hard to travel with and not lose pieces. I prefer hand quilting in a frame (yeah, like I have anything in the frame at the moment!), so I thought maybe this would be a good idea and I could certainly get one done in a month. So, we'll see how it goes!

Thanks for all the comments on Brianna and her creativity! That was the first time we had met,but I see more get togethers in the future. I think her Mom and older sister want to join in too! I think next time we ought to work on a quilt of her own, to take home with her.

Gratitudes:

1. It's April, so spring is around the corner!

2. Being able to try new things

3. the new Cinnamon Melts at McDonald's :)

Encouraging young quilters

This is for Brianna (sorry if I spelled your name wrong!). Brianna and her sister Abby, came over today with their Dad to discuss some business. Well, it wasn't a short meeting as it turned out. We were showing them the studio and somehow we ended up in my "reading room" that has a design wall in it. While the men were talking, I showed her how the blocks were put up on the wall, and then my husband told her that she should design her own. Remember my mystery quilt from late last year? Anyway, I didn't get it assembled and then had to take it off the wall for something else. I pinned them all in rows and then the rows got messed up! so I was going to have to re-do the layout anyway.

So Brianna went to town...she laid all the blocks out herself. She had no idea what I had planned, and created her own design. I kind of like it! I taught her how to squint her eyes so she could see the subtle lines the neutral squares were creating. She spent a long time arranging them and I had to help her put up the last row because she couldn't reach it. Great job, Brianna! And she is only 8! This is the first time she was around a quilter--but I think she wants to come back. :) I think I hear the rumblings of a beginning quilter. I told her that I thought she might be old enough to start sewing a little bit on the sewing machine. Gotta grab them young!

Back to normal?

So, am I Back to normal? Well, I'm home now and busy as ever, so yes, I guess I'm back to normal for me! I sure am paying the price for being gone so long! And I didn't get my taxes done before I left :( So...I'm stuck at the computer. But I had to take a break to finish my Quilt 24 Challenge's first quilt. It was due by April 1. We had a meeting that day, so we REALLY had to have it done! Okay, not really--we are really challenging ourselves, so if we don't get things done, it's our own loss. But it's nice to have deadlines. So, while adjusting to being back in my own time zone, I sewed in the wee hours of the mornings to finish about 4 hours before our meeting!

This is my first quilt--(which was to be a twin quilt, according to our challenge rules) and you'll recognize it as Judy L's "Gratitude" pattern! I figured I might as well kill 2 birds with one stone, although I didn't follow her one hour a day. It was more like ...sew like a banshee during a retreat on the blocks and sew like mad during the middle of the night! But hey, it worked and it's done. I can't tell if my eyes are blurry (it's 1 AM here), or it was a blurry picture..the blocks look a bit blurry to me. At our meeting, it was really great to see everyone's quilts--they were all so different but beautiful! I think we all are enjoying the challenge it gives us to be very creative with our fabric. I can't wait until next month.

Our next quilt is to be a medallion quilt and I designed my own, so am now working about 1/2 hour a day on those. I'd MUCH rather work on those than my books/taxes so I have to limit myself until I get them done.

Thank you all so much for bearing with me while I posted mostly non-quilt related posts about my trips. Not only am I sharing my adventures with you, I'm really recording them for me. I hope that if they bored you, you went on. I do enjoy looking at other's pictures of where they live, they visit, their kids along with the quilts.

By the way, did you see the new "The Quilt Show" with Ricky Tims and Alex Anderson? Ricky said that quilters do have other lives! :) How many of you signed up for the series? I read somewhere (I forget now where) that they pay for cable and weren't going to pay for more shows. Well, my feeling is that all the good quilt shows are gone (from my area at least) and for the price of less than 2 yards of fabric, I can watch quilt shows for year, at my convenience. And they are close to an hour long! There are a few ads, but very short ones...not annoying long ones that last longer than the show segments! So....what are your thoughts? If you are against it, why? If you did subscribe, did you like the first shows? Just curious....

*******************

Gratitudes:

1. Taxes--hate to do them, but love the freedoms we have because of them

2. Fun challenges to keep us inspired

3. Pansies