And Another Sneak Peak!

I have three more blocks that can either go in the front or on the back of this one...also need to add a wide border but I want to think on it for a short while. I sewed at June's today for the first time in forever and really had fun catching up with her!

Sneak Peak at Quilt History BOM 2009

This is what I am working on today. Am going to June's to work on it in a short bit. This is my Quilt History BOM from last year and that first block is from the year before...I started in Nov. 2008...I have a few blocks I don't like and they will be in the back, replaced by the two from the year before which turned out better! I just laid it on the border fabric..busy enough? I like it though!

Sunday Best Flimsy is Done

I had a short shift at work today and was in a great mood...wound up with a difficult caller. It has absolutely ruined my day. I am tired of rude people who don't appreciate that interpreters work hard and are doing the best they can. I don't read minds (but believe me I come damn close sometimes) and I treat everyone with respect and expect that back from those I work with. Yelling at me (even in sign) does NOT improve my interpreting skills. And I am nationally certified and good at what I do. So this caller got to me and I can't shake it off....after some wine, some crying and general crankiness I got up and put the rest of this top together.

This is quilt number 102. I am very happy to have my February Schnibbles flimsy done. Make sure you check out the parade the end of the month and see everyone's!

Suns Game and Sunday Best Schnibble

This is how close we were to the game...row four! It was unbelievable...so much was going on all the time there was never a chance to get bored. I had actually never even watched a professional basketball team prior to this (and only a few years ago when my daughter was on the high school dance team that I actually watched basketball all the way through!) so this was quite the experience.

Last night I got lucky and got off work early (but as a freelancer I still get paid!) and so I pieced the Sunday Best Schnibble blocks together and added the first border and cornerstones. I also pieced the five inch strips together but haven't cut them in half or added them to the quilt so in the pic it is just put up in the wall and I cropped out half the strip. I don't think this one is my favorite, but it is alright. Hoping it will grow on me a bit more. It was easy enough to make so I liked that part! While I was sewing away Kathy cut the strips in cream, black and red for Tara's Day and Night quilt. I can now start sewing on that anytime and if no time can take it to camp in April!

And here is Kathy and I at the game. See my new haircut, yippee I needed it. Kathy's niece cut it and I really like it! Oh, and even better was that the Suns won!

I work a short shift today at my other job and then hopefully I will be finishing up Sunday Best!

Sunday Best Schnibbles Starts to Come Together

The blocks are done for my Sunday Best Schnibbles. This one has been going together rather quickly and I mainly used some civil war fabric that I had here from a kit I am no longer interested in doing. I added in a few scraps left over from my Double Delight and even managed to get one bow in here from the fabric I just got seeing Margo.
We are going to the Suns' game in a few (my first professional basketball game ever!) and so this is as far as it is making it today, but the blocks and border will go together quite easily later this week (hopefully!).

We got these awesome tickets due to a generous co-worker of Kathy's who wasn't able to use them today. Yipee!

Mosaic Star Take Two, Make that Three!

So one of my astute readers emailed me to tell me that there was an oops on my block! You can see here on the left side that I have turned the center piece...so this morning I carefully ripped it out and Y seamed it bakc in. I was quite proud of how it turned out...until...

I noticed that the error was actually in the larger center portion and so now I had to take out the two double pieces on both sides of the center. Hence actually making more work for myself than what I had to start with!

So because I am stubborn I took those two pieces out and then decide to retake the middle part off and piece it all together and put it back as one unit. So FINALLY I have a good block. (And if you see anything wrong with it, please don't tell me, LOL).

So here is an updated picture of the first six blocks with the Mosaic Star looking as it should! Thanks again to my astute reader...I might not have noticed til the full quilt was together!

Amy's BOM 2010 Done for February!

Well these three blocks were a bit more challenging for me and they aren't perfect, but I enjoyed making them and forcing myself to try some new things so...thanks Amy for that! This first block pictured is Mosaic Star. The next one is Blackford's Beauty and earlier today I showed you Florida's Key West which you can see in the third picture along with last month's blocks.

It is looking very patriotic too--perfect for President's Day! It's not too late to get in on this if you feel the need, check out Amy's cool button in my sidebar to get to her directions for these blocks.

Madeline Schnibbles and Florida Key BOM

My Valentine's Day gifts...and a Vera Bradley bag I didn't put in the picture. I am one lucky lady! You can see that I hadn't hand sewed the binding on in the first picture, but got it done while watching Grey's Anatomy on TIVO in the second picture.Also whipped up Amy's Passions BOM for Feb. This actually went together okay once we got the templates to size...however you can see my edges don't all line up and if I trim it, it will be small. Will deal with that later or maybe even try another one later on, but I like the block!

Off to work for a bit then I hope to sew after!

Margo Krager's 19th Century Fabrics Lecture

Today I went to Zoe's Trunk Quilt Shop for a very special Valentine's Day treat! Margo Krager who is one of the top authorities on vintage textiles in the country was a guest lecturer! She designs reproduction fabrics and has researched textiles for more than fifteen years. This is the first lecture of this type I have ever attended and it was really interesting. Many ladies showed up and it was a success all around! Margo is a wealth of knowledge and you can tap into too because she has a blog!
http://cottonopia.blogspot.com/ I am looking forward to reading more of it and I hope she doesn't mind that I borrowed a few of her pictures that have to do with the lecture I heard today. They are on her blog with more explanation and I really encourage you to go over to it and see it in its entirety if this interests you at all.
Margo told us all about her second time through college and love of history especially as it relates to textiles. She was very enthusiastic and loves the hunt of information and research (as I do!) and I could have listened to her all day despite the not so comfortable chairs! She told us of her amazing thirty year birthday present of a book she calls the Dargate book (it was traced back to an aution at the Dargate Auction House) and the subsequent career she has had reproducing some of the fabric in the book. The book has TONS of little swatches as you can see from Margo Krager's c. 1830 Dargate book with early double pinks. This is just two pages of this huge book and we actually got to see the original book and were treated to a look at each and every page! Margo says the book contains approximately 1750 fabric swatches of circa 1830 dressgoods. The colors and detail are amazing, absolutely unbelievable.

Now that I know the process that Margo goes through in order to recreate these fabrics I plan to buy some of them. She showed us a powerpoint and actual swatches of the original and the reproduction as well as sketches and everything. She works with people all the way to Korea to get these made and I want to support her efforts and enjoy the beautiful fabric.
She also told us her next line of fabric will be another line of reproduction fabrics called Little Pink Stars. It will be made with a new company--Blue Hill Fabrics. She told us the inspiration for the line is a quilt made byher friend Bette Faries. Bette has been collecting antique fabric and has been recycling it into an entirely hand pieced and hand quilted huge quilt. The stars are mostly pink with a few other browns, indigos, and tans and are very small. The background fabric is not antique but all the stars are antique fabrics circa 1840 to the end of the century. This picture doesn't even BEGIN to do this quilt justice.

Here is a close up (again from Margo's blog) I am not sure the measurements of these stars but they are around the size of the palm of my hand I would say. I will be buying this fabric, this pattern, anything related! I am sold. ReproductionFabrics.com is Margo's online store if you get the bug as I have...

And just to make the day sweeter I was pleasantly suprised that we got two handouts and a fabulous "Paisley Royale Strippy Quilt" pattern as well as fabric gifts from Margo and from Mary who owns the store. The other nice thing was that I knew at least ten of the gals that were there from one quilt thing or another and I made friends with a few more....and if you are interested in the pattern I also found it online at http://www.baumtextile.com/projects/pdf/paisley_royale_strippy_quilt.pdf Happy Valentine's Day!

Out of Africa

My family all met up and went to Out of Africa today. My favorite part was feeding the giraffes. Right after eating my carrot I got this picture of the friendly fellow...I love it!

The next best part was watching Tiger Splash. It was really cool to see tigers acting a lot like kitties! They really seem to like it at this zoo which was refreshing to see. The habitats are really big and set up natural like. Tons of room for the animals.
This is Boom Boom the rhino...he didn't want to get up and say hi but we all couldn't believe that he has ten acres to roam on if he wants...the rhino at the other zoo we went to didn't have but a half a football field. This place is what zoos should be like as far as I am concerned.

My mom, sister, brother, and stepdad with my nephew Ben downfront. Sam's gf had wandered down the path and since I am taking the picture the two of us weren't in it, but it is like herding cats to get all of us together looking the same direction so this will have to do for the group shot!
So no sewing happened today at all, but last night I did get two more bindings made and ready for when the NYE Mystery quilts come back quilted and Kathy helped me to draft Amy's BOM pattern and cut out all three of them. I did get some of two of them sewed as she was cutting, so she could subcut, but none are done yet. I will be amazed if I can pull off these three blocks as they look a bit more complicated than those I would pick!

Finally Some Sewing and Cutting...

I finally got into the sewing room this afternoon and made some progress! These blocks are for the quiltalong I am participating in! I thought February being Valentine's month I would do them in pink! Again the goal is to make six and I made more than that...these go together really quickly and since I have no idea what I am going to do with them I am just enjoying whipping a few up each month. Eventually a quilt or two will come together from them. So cross one thing of my to do list!

Kathy joined me and kindly cut up my Sunday Best Schnibbles, so I will be able to get to sewing that hopefully this weekend! I am using some civil war repro fabric that I had bought as part of a kit in Chicago at the quilt show...I long ago ran out of interest to do the pattern I got free with the kit so I can't wait to see what this one looks like in the fabric which I love!

Made two kerchiefs from the Mickey Mouse fabric to take to Disneyland too! Kathy and I tried them on several different ways and cracked ourselves up!

I also worked on my Quiltz Mystery quilt...I got all of these blocks done and put together but I just couldn't motivate myself to finish up the last few blocks...I don't care for the method of making the flying geese..ugh! They just don't come up very good...so...

Kathy cut borders and I sewed them on and used four of my leftover half square triangle blocks at the corners which I really happen to like! This added enough size that I think Ayla (who is six) will be quite happy with it! And I can cross it off my list too! Can you tell I always have a list in my head?

We did attempt to cut out the BOM for Amy's Passions 2010 but apparently when I printed from the website MUCH of the directions did not print. I was going nuts thinking why did Amy leave out so much info (haha--she didn't!) so I decided I would go look and see if I had missed something and VIOLA half the stuff didn't print, but enough did to fool me into thinking I had it all! I cut and pasted it all into Word and then printed and had no problem. So will try to get to at least one of those this weekend too!

Valentine's Day Swap and a Ribbon for Cindy Lou Who!

Every month the NewQuiltingClub has a finished projects contest, and for January I won with my Cindy Lou Who Schnibbles! I have only won twice in a the few years I have been entering, so it is an honor. The competition is often stiff and I was a bit disspointed when my Double Delight didn't win several months ago...but it is a winner in my book. So imagine my suprise when the gals voted for this little quilt! The blue ribbon below is sent to me from Jan from the group for this quilt and I will most likely put it on the back of the quilt. I will have to post a picture of my first win and ribbon too, it is from just before I started blogging!

The same group did a Valentine bag swap and Jan sent me this cute bag (we all used the same pattern, free online) in reds, whites and blacks. I got a chocolate doggie and a case for glasses..which I can really use! Thanks Jan! I love it!
Not much sewing happening this week, working too much, but hoping to get some cutting done tonight!

Schnibbles Quilted!!!!

Ros posted picture of Madeline and Picnic...I haven't seen them yet, but WOW I am loving them!

Planning for Disneyland!

Here I am (with Rosey coming in the shot) with the two bags and hat I made for when we go to Disneyland the end of March. I found some fabric for 2.50 a yard and couldn't resist buying enough to make some stuff to take.

This bag is in Bonnie K. Hunter's first book (Lucy's Shopping Bag) except that I made the handle a bit differently.

This is the same bag, this time I made the handle the way Lucy explained, but I made it twice as long so it could really be over the shoulder.

This hat is Amy Butler's pattern. I think I will buy a black grossgrain ribbon to tie around it and it will be all set! We have the kids' flight paid for and the hotel and tickets bought so come Hell or high water, we are going to Disneyland for the very first time! None of us have ever been there and we will have five night and four plus days to experience it all!

Hannah's Birthday Quilt/Carolina Christmas is Done, DONE!

Here is Hannah's Birthday quilt...all bound and labeled! Took an indoor picture at night and this one is HUGE so it isn't easy to get a picture of but it is already in the box ready to go to Hannah for her 20th birthday next week. I know she will love it and I am hoping she sends me back some pictures of it with her after she gets it.
Ros Atwood did the quilting and it is magnificent! Dogwood flowers all around on it...the perfect touch for this. Kathy even said she wished we weren't giving this one away. I am especially happy with the pieced border...it fit together exactly as it was supposed to and looks fantastic! I am already looking forward to the next Bonnie K. Hunter mystery! (It is an illness I guess!)

Don't Miss the Parade Folks!

Check out Sherri's and Sinta's blog to see the Parade of Schnibbles. This month's pattern was "Madeline." Mine is at Ros' waiting for its turn to be quilted! The new pattern is Sunday Best which looks a bit simpler than the last few! Yippee! Not sure which colorway or line I will use to make this one, but it is on my to do list for February...

...along with Amy's BOM http://skattebo-skattebo.blogspot.com/2010/01/2010-bom-february-posted.html which she talked about on her blog and refers the downloadable file she made. This BOM has three blocks!...also need to work on the Quiltz Mystery quilts and my Quilt History BOM sashing and borders and such...so needless to say I have plenty to do! I love it!