My Christmas

We had a quiet Christmas, although I fixed a lot more food than necessary for just 5 people. We put up the big tree this year.

I got lots of good gifts this year. A TV, DVD player and CD player for my quilting studio from Paul. Dora got me a rolling case for my sewing machine and Mark got me the latest Harry Potter movie.

I'm really happy with my presents.

Memory Board

My daughter asked me if I had a gift for her friend, Ginger. I sometimes make quilts or other gifts for her friends and I had mentioned something about making a yellow and black GA Tech quilt and adding appropriate embellishments. What gave me the idea was an UFO project that a friend of mine found when she was going through her mother's things and asked me if I would like it. Well I attempted to finish the quilt, but things just didn't go quite as I hoped.

The one on the right is the UFO. It came with lots of black and yellow rectangles to finish it. The edges are a little ruffly and the pattern is off. I decided to start from scratch (the one on the left). As you can see, my pattern got off too, plus I added a nice little curve. I have yet to figure out what to do with this mess. I got so discouraged, I just wadded everything up and stuffed it in a bag and forgot about it. So when Dora asked about Ginger's gift and she needed it by Friday when her and Ginger were meeting for lunch. I had to come up with something quick to make. Thursday morning at my Paradise Piecers Bee meeting I saw a memory board and thought, perfect! What was even better, Dora could make it. That afternoon we made a quick run to Hobby Lobby for supplies and came home with a yd of GA Tech fabric, black ribbon and a good sized artists canvass, the kind that is stretched over a wood frame. I already had scrap batting and buttons.

Ginger with her GA Tech memory board. The canvass worked great as a base. Dora was able to staple the the fabric and ribbon to the frame and then was able to sew the buttons on, right through the canvass.

Ginger and Dora at Applebees where we ate a very late lunch or early supper. My husband got a gift card as a gift from his boss and I kind of confiscated it and took the girls out to lunch.

December Events

I've had a busy month and Christmas isn't even here yet! Sandra's grandmother died and she asked me to ride to Michigan with her for the funeral. I said yes because I have family in the area. We left Thursday morning, Dec. 6 and drove straight through. It was around 10:00p.m. when we arrived at a friend of hers home in Granger IN. On Friday, we went to see my sister-in-law, Pat. It's been probably 15 years since I've seen any of my family.

Friday evening, my niece, Kathy came and got me and I spent the night with them. She lives about 10 miles from where we were staying. On Saturday, we had a mini reunion with my sister and 5 of her children. Two couldn't make it. We got together at another niece's, Pam in La Port, IN. One great niece and several of my great, great nieces and nephews were there. It sure was nice to see my family again.

We left Saturday around 3:30p.m. to get ahead of the ice storm that was expected to arrived around midnight. We were actually heading into the freezing rain, but figured the roads would be clear as long as traffic was on the roads. We spent the night at a Red Roof Inn south of Indianapolis just south of the bad weather. It was raining the next morning when we left, but not freezing. We drove in rain and fog nearly all the way to Tennessee. We stopped at a Russell Stover store in Tennessee and bought candy. We made it back home around 7:00p.m.

Then the Christmas parties began. On the 11th AQG had there Christmas lunch. Our exchange gift was pincushions. I received a nice home made one. I was very pleased. On the 13th the Paradise Piecers had there Christmas Lunch and gift exchange at the Tea Garden. We exchanged 5 fat quarters and an odd block. I got a very nice variety of FQs and a pretty block. On the 14th the Needle Turners had lunch after our meeting at Applebees. We arrived around 20 till noon, hoping to get ahead of the lunch crowd. Another larger Christmas party arrived ahead of us and we had a very long wait on our sandwiches/salads and soup. Our lunch was the managers treat. the 18th EVQG had there Christmas dinner and we exchanged winter themed fabric and a recipe. I also passed out the gifts I made for my Needle Turners Bee. I didn't have them done on Friday.

I made my bee members each a steno pad cover complete with pad and pen. I learned how to make them at a mini demo day that AQG had in Nov. I also made coasters and learned the freezer paper piecing technique. There was also a demo on decorating tea towels. All in all, it was a fun and productive day.

I think I did very well this Christmas. Top row: Pincushion from AQG, door stop and cookie mix in a jar from the Needle Turners. Middle row: fat quarters from the Paradise Piecers exchanged. Bottom row: fabric from EVQG.

Catching Up and Sew-In

It's been a while since I last posted. I don't know where to begin, or more likely I don't even remember what I've been up to the last four months. I remember being sick with a bad cold that lasted around three weeks. Didn't think I was ever going to get over it. My new quilt studio is nearly complete. Just a few more things to go, like the design wall, shelves in the storage closet and a bookcase for all my quilting books.

This is a picture looking into the studio from my husband's room. He had to have a room too. He hopes to get a pool table to go in his. Right now it is pretty well empty.

For a while I didn't quilt as much as I'd liked to have. I was busy painting so DH could get the floors put down, and then busy moving in. I think I need more cabinet space, I still have a lot of stuff that I haven't found a place for.

I finished the half log cabin top that I worked on at the EVQG July quilt camp. In fact it is on the frame now. I don't know if you can tell in the picture or not.

This picture doesn't do it justice. I'm still trying to think of a name for it. To me it looks like beacons of light shining out of the darkness.

The spring and fall EVQG quilt camps and an AQG sew-in I worked on my scrappy star top. I finally completed it this past week-end.

I think it turned out pretty good. I'm happy with it. I just hope it's not too wide to go on my frame.

AQG had another one day sew-in last Friday. I worked on my "Pink" top, or that is how I think of it. I had all my prep work done ahead so I could spend the day making the blocks and sewing them into rows. I got four rows done. Unfortunately I turned one of the blocks sideways. I got that straightened out and the top is now finished.

Dora thinks it is awesome and has laid claim to it. I'm quite pleased with it myself.

There are lots of woods around us and lots of deer. They usually can be seen around dusk but seldom during the day and even more rare, where I can see them from my front porch.

She stood across the street for a long time while I took pictures and than she turned around and went back into the woods.

Fabric Dying

Dora dyed about 5-3/4yd of fabric Wednesday afternoon. Here is a picture of her efforts.





Yesterday we took everything out of the wrappings and dried the fabric on the fence. The fabric we dyed using the Shibori wrapping method didn't turn out well, as the pictures below show. So I still don't have any fabric for my borders. The green is too much green and the other pieces that turned out aren't big enough. I need at least a yard to do the 5" borders. I might could figure out something for doing a pieced border, but I'm just not feeling that creative at the moment.
The larger piece of fabric on the left is the one I had hoped to use. The pieces on the right are the ones that are too green. I really like the bottom half of the two center pieces. It is a shame the dye didn't penetrate all the layers of cloth. Those two were done on the pole, the one on the left was done on the larger cylinder.


Here are the rest of the fabrics. The small pieces in the center are our mop rags. The solid green is the one that was in the jar. I stopped by Hobby Lobby after the Needle Turners Bee meeting and bought some more airbrush paint for dying. They were out of the forest green and gold that I wanted, so had to get some other shades. Maybe we can mix the colors and get something close to the colors I'm wanting. I got a package of 6, black, white, green, blue, yellow and red and used my 40% off coupon. Got another bottle of fuchsia, but had to get sunrise yellow, which is way to oranegy, instead of the goldish color I wanted. Maybe it will tone down with some yellow or white added to it. I bought some white Kona cotton to try dying and see how that does. Being the stubborn person I am and because I like the looks of the way the Shibori wrap method looked. I will probably try it again and try to get a better saturation of the dye into the fabric. Now to get Dora scheduled for another dying attempt. Hope things go better this time.

Tuesday Guild

Yesterday was the regular monthly meeting of AQG. Our program was member showcase quilts. 3 members showed off some of their quilts. It was nice. I didn't take any pictures, but did get a few pictures of Show 'N Tell.

I thought this top of Jan's was so cute. She makes some really fun quilts in bright colors.

I love this fabric line and just had to take a picture.

This is my friend, Sandra's (on the left) quilt. It is a wedding present that the couple have been waiting a good year and a half for. These aren't Sandra's colors and she had a hard time making a quilt using all neutral colors. It took her 6 months just to collect enough fabric.

I'm still working on my challenge quilt. I've gotten six more blocks made and have the parts for two more cut out.

I'm getting curious to see how this is going to turn out. I've got a colored diagram that I made of the quilt, but it really is hard to tell what it will look like, besides, I've changed some of the colors.

I've decided to try dying fabric for the borders of my roosting round robin. Dora is supposed to come over in a little bit and help me. Think we'll try the Shibori Wrapping Technique this time. We are using Createx Airbrush paint for the dying medium and use direct dying method. Hope I get some pretty fabric.

Trip to Hancocks a total disaster!

I never got there. My truck decided to be mean to me again and just stopped running. The fuel pump went out, leaving me stranded half on the road and half off on the Rome bypass. I was almost there. I had to get it towed back to Cartersville to Raymond's house. He'll fix it for me. I'll go to Advance Auto Parts in the morning and get the fuel pump. You would think the fuel pump would have at least waited until after I went to Hancock's and was on my way home to stop working. Now I'll have to use the money I was going to spend on fabric to pay to get it fixed. It will probably be awhile now before my Roosting Round Robin gets finished.

On a happier note, I finished a few more blocks for my challenge quilt.

Challenge Quilt

I've been working on my challenge quilt for the Etowah Valley Quilt Guild challenge. I've made 10 blocks so far and have lots more to go. The quilt will be 65" x 85". I decided to do a good sized quilt this year instead of the wall hangings I've been doing in the past.

The fabric in the center of the stars in the middle row is our challenge fabric. The 3 Sister's Choice blocks on the bottom row are the challenge blocks. Plus we had to beg, barter, or steal some fabric from 3 of our quilting friends. I think I have all 3 of those fabrics in these blocks. So if worse comes to worse, and I don't get finished, I can put these 10 blocks together and still meet the rules of the challenge. I wanted to make my blocks with bright colors on a black background. Several years ago I was collecting a block of the month posted on the Internet done that way and it really caught my eye. I'm not sure were the pattern is right now and doubt that it had any Sister's Choice blocks in it. I decided to just make up my own layout.

June UFO

I finished my Bonny Baskets top. So now I'm caught up on my UFO list for this year. I'm supposed to be doing one a month and kind of got behind. July's UFO isn't exactly an UFO, but rather a project with a dead line. It is my challenge quilt for the Etowah Valley Quilt guild and needs to be completed by the third Tuesday of August when we show off our quilts.




Bonny Baskets was the 2004 block of the month at jeanneraecrafts.com

Explosion of Ugliness

I finally got the applique border on my roosting round robin that I'm doing with the Allatoona quilt guild. My daring eldest son has named it "Explosion of Ugliness". I resent that! Although I will admit it is not turning out quite like I envisioned.

I have one more border to add. It is one of "my choice". I have no earthly idea what to add. All I have are fat quarters that may or may not match well and scraps from the other borders. I'm using batiks and hand dyes and trying to use fabric from my stash. I didn't want to have to buy any fabric for it. Hancock Fabrics has batiks on sale, 50% off, 60% off on July 6th-8th. Right now it is mighty tempting. Maybe I could find something to pull this mess altogether.

I've also finished up my April and May UFO's. Better late than never.

April's is above. It is a Christmas panel that I've had for several years. I finally add a couple of borders and quilted it. May's is my very first T-Shirt quilt. It just needed the binding put on. I had commissioned to make one for a client and thought it might be nice if I had a little experience under my belt before I did theirs. So I used some of my old shirts to practice with. I made two before I tackled the customer's quilt.

I wonder if I could finish my "Bonny Baskets" top before the end of the month for my June UFO. I wonder what I did with those blocks and the fabric to finish the top. I really need to get started on my challenge quilt for the Etowah Valley guild. It is due at the Aug. meeting. It will be my July UFO. It is not really an UFO, but the UFO Challenge is with an on-line group that I'm in and they allowed us to but current projects on the list this year. I find the challenge helps to at least get a few of my UFOs done that might otherwise not get completed.

Quilt Camp and Mother's Day

Quilt Camp

Last week The EVQG had quilt camp at the Civic Center. We had lots of fun. There were several class, plus we worked on our own projects. I wish now that I would have signed up for the tote bag made from the pet screen and the bucket cover classes. I did do the other tote bag class. There was also a class for a very cute, but quick and easy quilt.

This is the tote bag that I made on Thursday. It went together real easy compared to some that I've made. I may still try to make the bag from the pet screen. I bought some Friday when we were in Lowe's, but I got the insect screen. I haven't unwrapped the roll yet, but am hoping it will work just as good. I'd better make it pretty soon, before I forget what it is supposed to look like. It will pretty well be my way, anyway, as I don't have the directions. I also bought the Simplicity pattern for the bucket cover Friday. I'm wanting to make the 5 gal. size. I didn't realize that it was included in the pattern, if I had, I might have signed up for the class. The ones the ladies made in class were for the 5 qt. bucket.

The main project that I worked on at quilt camp, were these little bags for the Civil Air Patrol. I made around 40 of them.

I did managed to start a scrappy star quilt that will be a wedding present.

Mother's Day

I got this red basket filled with fabric and a hand made card from my daughter for Mother's Day. She scanned some floral fabric I have in my stash and printed it out and then cut out the flowers, rescanned it and printed it out on the card stock.

Roosting Robin - Triangle border

The triangle border is now on my RRR. I'm not sure I like the little applique heart Flowers in the corners. I ran out of green and had to think of something for the corners. I've just got a few narrow short strips left to use for the leaves on the next border, which is applique. Think I'll do a vine with heart shaped flowers.

I got the community service quilts for EVQG back Thursday. I still haven't put the binding on them. Maybe I can find time today to start them.

Community Service Projects

I've been working on a couple of community service quilts for EVQG this morning. I used some duck panels that were donated to our guild. As I haven't had much time for quilting this past month, I decided the easier the better, so I used Anita Grossman Solomon's pattern "Super-Sized Nine Patch". It is a free pattern on the Quiltmaker Magazine web site. I still need to get the backings ready and fix my binding strips. With any luck, I will make contact with the machine quilter tomorrow and give them to her to quilt. They need to be turned in at the May guild meeting. Think I'll use that same pattern to make baby quilts for next years community service project. If I follow her directions, I can get 3 crib quilts from 3 - 1yd pieces of co-ordinating fabrics.

March UFO

I finally finished my March UFO. It is a Christmas panel. All I did was ad the green outer border, quilt and bind it. No big deal and shouldn't have taken all month to finish. I've just been so busy I haven't had time for quilting. The 21st Sandra and I went to the quilt show at the library in Rome. We enjoyed seeing the quilts. It was a small show, but there were some nice quilts. Afterwards we went to Hancocks. I found a nice light background fabric and a few fat quarters. To day I went to Hobby Lobby and got some Kona red. I was out of solid red. For some reason, I seem to use a lot of red. The Quilt Station is having a big sale, so I went down there this afternoon. I got a couple more pieces of light background at 30% off , 30 fat quarters for $30 and a book "Traditions with a Twist".

Tuesday was the Roosting Round Robin. I already had it turned on point. Next month we do a triangle border. I don't think I'd like a saw tooth or flying geese border with my center. I'm thinking more a ribbon type border. I looked through some of my border books and found a chevron border that I think will look nice. Hope I will be able to work on it next week. I also need to decide which UFO to work on in April. Something that won't be too time consuming in case I have another month like this month. If I get done early, I can always get a head start on May's UFO.

Week-end project

Last week-end one of the on-line groups I'm a member of had a week-end workshop. We worked on the "Wicked Easy" quilt. It is a free pattern at byannie.com. I made two tops over the week-end and made a third one this week. One is a crib size shown on the left, and another is a twin size. shown below.

The top on the right is the one I made this week. I made it from the left over pieces from the other two, plus a few I had to cut to have enough.

This one will be a community service quilt for EVQG.

Roosting Round Robin

Tuesday was the first meeting of the AQG Roosting Robin. I had my center done, although it didn't have to be done until March 27th when we add a couple of narrow borders and set our blocks on point. I was so excited about it that I did mine already. That just gives me more time to decide what to do for the triangle border.

I'm not sure if I like the bright setting triangles. I'm thinking it will look better once I get the next border on. I had a little miss-hap with the iron when I was pressing the first border. The water spewed out of the iron and caused the red to run onto the border fabric. I had to take one of the triangles off and then replace the border on one side. The red is one of my hand dyed fabrics. I Thought I had rinsed them out good and heat set the color in. I guess the color ran because the water in the iron was so hot.

This 'N That, My Week

Tuesday I went to the AQG meeting. We are starting a Roosting Round Robin that we will be working on each month. I think I know what I'm going to do for my center block. Now to see if I can get it done by the 27th. So, this months program was Round Robins and we were to bring any RRs that we had done. I took 3, one is one that I'm currently involved in with one of my Bee's, the Paradise Piecers. The other 2 are from several years ago that I did with an on line group I was in.

This RR had a winter theme. This was a fall theme. I've never finished it.

This one I didn't take to guild. It is a Row Robin I did with another on line group I was in. I haven't finished it either. I want to add another row. The row I made is the next to last row. I machine appliqued mine with invisible thread. Everyone else did hand applique. I really enjoyed working on every one's. Everybody had a different theme for their top.

I'm enjoying the RR I'm currently involved in. There are 8 of us, so our tops will be quite large. I think there are three more rounds to go, and will probably be next January before they make their way back home. We have 3 months to do each round.

Today the Paradise Piecers had their weekly meeting. We had a nice time, chatting and sewing. I worked on hand sewing down the binding on a quilt. I didn't get it done, so think I will take it for my project tomorrow when my other bee, The Needle Turners, meet. It is an applique bee and we meet once or twice a month. I have enough applique projects to last me several years.

Scrap Quilt

I finished this scrap quilt over the week-end. I call it "Abstract Squares". It is the first quilt on the Grace frame. I used my Bernina to quilt it as that is all I have to use. It did pretty good. It sure made the quilting process a lot easier. I look forward to quilting many more quilts on it. Maybe I will even get good at it.

Retreat over all too soon

I had a great time at the retreat, but it was over all to soon. I did get all the blocks made for the top I was working on. See the photo on the left. Today I've been working on putting the blocks together. I still have the borders to put on. The pattern is a Debbie Mumm pattern from a 1998 quilting magazine. Of course it called for a Debbie Mumm Santa panel and her fabrics. I used a SSI panel I found a year or so ago and fabric I had. So far I think it looks just as good as the one in the magazine.

On the right is a picture of some of the goodies we got at retreat. I think the tote bag is so cute.

AQG Redtop Retreat

Today was the first day of our quilting retreat. We started an hour later than planned, due to the sleet and rain we had early this morning. I had a nice time. Didn't get as much sewing done as I would have liked, though. I had 72 half square triangles to trim up. That took me awhile. We had fun decorating hats. We were all given the cutes tote bags filled with goodies. At supper, there was a tea cup, napkin and coaster on the table for each of us. We had a really good first day. There were also prizes given out. I didn't win anything, but there are still two more days to go. I took some pictures with my camera phone. It doesn't take the best pictures, but it is something to remember day.

These were taken at super. We're wearing our hats.

Community Service Project

the AQG had a community service project day on Tuesday. I was going to go, but decided with retreat starting Thursday, that was too much "gadding about". The block they are using for the project this time is like one I made several years ago. I alternated the "Crazy Nine-Patch" and "Stack 'N Slash" Star blocks in a quilt. I call it "State of Mind". See it on the left. I have no idea where I might have put the 9-patch pattern at, so, as it was a free pattern on the web, I decided to search the web for it. I was able to find one. The pattern says to use 9 squares of fabric, which makes 9 blocks. Of course I wanted 12 blocks, so I stacked 12 squares, which throws things off a little when it comes time to rotate the pieces. It was OK the first two cuts. I did get the top put together.

Now I need to make a couple more. I have another community service project I'd like to make it for, plus my daughter liked it too, and wants me to make her one.