Community Service Day at Allatoona

We spent the day on Tuesday cutting kits for community service quilts. We have a lot of fabric that has been donated and decided that if it was cut into kits, our members would be more likely to take a kit and make a quilt.

As usual, Barb had everything organized so well. We had a basic pattern drawn up in EQ6 to show several sizes of quilts from small baby quilts to large lap sized quilts for older children.

The fabrics were a somewhat strange collection but we only needed 4 fabrics for each kit and we found that we could find enough fabrics that went together so that they should be attractive quilts when finished.

Mary and I decided to cut together and managed to make kits for 4 quilts. Mary fussy cut an interesting civil war fabric for the squares for a quilt - it should be appreciated by an older boy. We also used farm fabric for one kit and a Hawaiian print for another.

The highlight of the day was lunch. Barb's husband made a large pot of sloppy joe's and lots of people brought other snacks. I took a loaf of pumpkin bread that had turned out really good.

FiberArtBee Meeting today

The FiberArtBee had gone somewhat dormant recently. We hadn't met in several months. Since we have a Yahoo group, we have decided to try to get things organized again. We met at Sharon's house and dyed fabric. Sharon is an expert dyer and gave us lots of tips. I ended up with 8 pieces of fabric that look real interesting. They are still in baggies and I can't rinse them until Sunday but am anxious to see how they turn out.

This is such a wonderful group of talented women. We have decided that each of us will lead one months workshop. We will arrange the program, decide on the location - I am looking forward to it. I signed up for April so I have time to think of a cool project.

Quilt for Betty

The above is a quilt that my Piecemakers bee made for Betty. She has been a member of the bee previously but had dropped out this last year. Just before the quilt show, her house burned to the ground. Since our exchange this last year was the house blocks, it seemed only right to make a quilt for her. Some of us had extra blocks or made one for her. We ended up with 16 blocks.

At our last meeting, we cut sashing and got the center of the top together. Danielle is going to do some applique on the borders. The borders are another black and white print - this time being mostly white. Not sure what she is going to add but it will look great!

Pam is going to quilt it on her longarm and we hope that Betty will rejoin the group and will be at the Christmas party in December. If she doesn't feel she can rejoin, we will get the quilt to her anyway.


We were short one block so at the meeting, Linda, Michelle and I cut and pieced an extra block. It is the one you can't see well on the lower right.

For 2008, our exchange will be different. We each chose a block to make for everyone. At the Christmas party we will supply each person with a square of fabric for them to use to make our blocks. Each of us will end up with a sampler quilt with some of our selected fabric in each block.

I went to a meeting today with the judging chair and the quilt show chair for our next quilt show which will be in 2009. It is so great to have a quilt show chair so early. I have agreed to be the judging chair for the next show - should be fun and challenging. We have our first steering committee meeting on Monday.

Angels Among Us

This was/is a block of the month from Tiny Stitches that I finished custom quilting late last week. The pattern is from Nancy Halverson and makes up into a very cute quilt. Some of the blocks already had buttons on it and they all have embroidery. The applique was done using fusible and a buttonhole/blanket stitch.

Since the owner of the quilt is going to give it to her mother, I did lots of quilting on it. The blocks are stippled in the background, and then each border and sashing was done with a different pattern. It turned out very nice and Maetha was happy with it - so was I.

I am currently working on another quilt for the shop and it is also heavily quilted. I still have a couple of days more of work but hope to get it done by the weekend.

Quilts hanging at the Quilt Shop

We had a staff meeting at the quilt shop tonight so I thought I would post a couple of pictures of my quilts hanging there. Both of the quilts were shown at the quilt show last month and I just finished teaching a class on the 4-patch kaleidoscope that is the second picture. Each of the five students used a different fabric and I forgot to take my camera to class.

Since I offer a quilting discount to students who make a quilt in one of my classes, I will probably see at least a few of the quilts again and hopefully will get pictures of them at that time. The way that this pattern works up with different fabrics is amazing. If you are interested in the pattern, it can be purchased at my sister's website which is Two Wacky Women . The pattern is the third one on this page.

I spent the rest of the day quilting on a very cute Angels Among Us quilt. I will try to get a photo of it tomorrow.

Quilt Show Pictures

Here are a couple of pictures of the guild demo area from the quilt show. I was in charge of this area and had a lot of fun doing it.
I brought rocking chairs from home, including my porch rockers. I also had a small floor frame with a preprinted wholecloth on it for visitors to try quilting. I brought my antique late 1800's crazy quilt and hung it in the middle of the area. I also brought quilts for the backs of the chairs and a small table and floor lamp. It looked very homey.

We had tables on each end of the area for information and demos. The most popular demo was when a guild member brought a hand crank machine. It seems like the men are fastinated by the hand crank. Also popular was the featherweight. I covered the tables with more quilts and my Y2K Christmas Hexagon quilt was very popular. I used 2000 1-inch hexagons and put it together all by hand in a traditional English Paper Piecing manner. It is a great quilt and I love having it on my bed for the month of December.
I can't find a photo of it on my computer but here is a link to my webshots where there are a couple of photos of it.

I taught a purse class tonight and some very cute purses were being made. I love teaching at the quilt shop - quilters are so much fun.

Guacamole Quilt

I am working on a quilt for Tiny Stitches It is a sample for the shop so we can make kits available, plus I am planning on teaching it in a class. It is made from the beautiful Ramblin Rose fabric by Marti Michell. This fabric is used for a BOM that we have at the shop called Ramblin Rose meets Jamestown and the link above shows you her latest book called Kaleidoscope ABCs. The quilt I am making is on the cover of the book and is called Ramblin Rose with Guacamole and Extra Salsa on the Side. Quite a long name for a beautiful quilt.

This first photo is of the focus kaleidoscope blocks. These took me most of a day to cut and complete. This quilt requires a design board or in my case a design tablecloth that I can spread out on the floor. The guild had a one day retreat late last month and this is what I finished on that day, along with getting all the other pieces cut, which was a major job in itself.

Here is the quilt after laying out some of the alternate blocks. The next step is to add the guacamole (the green triangles) to each of the alternate blocks. The salsa on the side is the pink/read small triangles that fill out the alternate kaleidoscope blocks. I am working on them, in between guild meetings and quilting on customer quilts.

I am currently in the middle of quilting the Angels Among Us quilt for Tiny Stitches. It is a fun, fusible applique and embroidery quilt and I am custom quilting it.

Spent the morning at a guild meeting. The President called this morning and since she was not feeling well, I ran the meeting. Everything went smoothly and we had a great show and tell session with our challenge quilts. Unfortunately, I did not finish mine but many others did. The challenge this time, was to use a specific block (log cabin, pinwheel, sawtooth star, bears paw, Dutchman's puzzle or churn dash). They were assigned a block by having them numbered and they rolled a die to select the one they had to use. This block needed to be used at least once in their quilt. In addition to the block, they needed to use a stripe and some kind of embellishment. We saw crystals, rickrack, buttons, embroidery, dimensional applique and probably some others that I can't remember now.

Everyone seems to enjoy the challenges we have done. Time to start thinking about the next one.

I am back!

Sorry I have not been posting but I got a new car, lost my camera again - this time for good and bought a new one. I took two longarm classes out at the Gammill dealer's studio with Jamie Wallen. He is great and I learned a lot.


We did one day of what he calls Mystical Cotton Tracks. Lots of freehand overalls and his wonderful flurry of angels. We spent a long time drawing and drawing. He really pushes you to fill sketch pads with designs and then they come much easier when you get on the machine. He is right.

The next day, we did a day of thread painting using the sketch pads again and the longarm. It was great and really fun. I actually did a great dragonfly! The way he described it - it was easy.