Special Projects Day

We had special projects day. I posted a few photos a couple of days ago of some of the projects so these are just the ones that you haven't already seen. Andrea made gift bags. They are so cute!

This first one was made out of white felt and was a very nice snowman. She used a plate as a template for the head and added a handle.

The next one is a Santa bag. It doesn't have a handle but one could easily be added.

This was my favorite one. It is perfect for a book. It is made like an envelope and decorated with a button and a tassel.

This is a simple bag made like a pillowcase. She added the ties in the side seam so they won't get lost after opening.

Lisa taught a rice pillow that can be heated in the microwave. Here is the rice filled pillow. This is the inside - like a pillow form. It is made from muslin and the rice is sewn in. After making this, you then make a slip cover with a zipper out of fleece. Turned out great.

We also showed how to do simple gift tags and I demonstrated a luggage tag. I want to make several of them as little gifts. They are easy and quick and will be great to make your bag stand out when you travel.

Beyond Beginners

We decided today that we were going to go vote. They opened up several more early voting places this week. People have been waiting 2 or more hours in line to vote the last couple of weeks so we thought it would be a good idea to go today. Well - it was a bad idea. The government center closest to us had a backup of traffic almost a mile long just trying to get near the building. We gave up and came home. Just heard on the news that over 20 percent of the registered voters have already voted here. They expect that 30 percent will have voted by the time election day comes around.

Another thing on my list was to get a flu shot - I went to Walgreens where they have a nurse practitioner who can give shots. Here in Georgia this year, you have to have a prescription to get a shot, instead of being able to get one at any Pharmacy. I had to wait for 45 minutes but I had my book with me that I was planning on reading in the voting line so I passed the time and got the flu shot out of the way.

This evening I taught my monthly Beyond Beginners class.

We were working on paper piecing. The above is Lorie's blocks and Stephanie's is below.

This next quilt top is last month's project from Lorie.

This last one is Stephanie's from the first class. I love the colors she choose.

We have one more class in this series and will be doing curved piecing in that class. Should be fun.

Halloween Swaps Recieved

I was in two different Halloween swaps this year. Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of what I sent but both of them have received the packages and seem to enjoy.

This first package was from Mary Lou Weidman's Yahoo group. Janice sent it to me.

Look at all the interesting things in the package. First there is a wonderful table runner that she made. I absolutely love the bright colors. There are also some Halloween socks, towels, a little statue, note cards , a witch pin and some other wonderful things.

The above is from another swap that was coordinated by Susan. My swap partner wrapped everything so nice.

Here is what was inside the package. Lots of cute Halloween stuff and a wonderful little quilt. The colors are even better on it in person.

Special Projects day at Guild

Tuesday will be special projects day at guild. We will be showing how to make gift bags, rice neck pillow, luggage tags, gift tags and possibly a couple of other small projects.

Lisa will be showing how to make this rice pillow that can be heated in the microwave. She is using fleece as the cover so it should be cozy.

Michelle will be making gift tags. Simple but quite nice.

Andrea will be making gift bags - several different kinds. She didn't have a photo available but I am sure I will get some on Tuesday

Here is the luggage tag I made. It took a couple of tries to get the measurements right but I think it looks pretty good now. It fits a standard sized business card. I think these will be fun gifts to make.

Fiber Art Fusion Round Robins

I had two different round robin pieces to work on. The person I pass to has been very busy and has been out of town working. She is going to pick up both of these pieces today at the quilt shop and then we will be back on track. I think there are only two more to work on - one in November and one in December. We should get our finished art back in January.



The rules are few - start with a 9x12 piece of firm interfacing like Timtex and cover with fabric. After that, anything goes!



This is Sharon's piece. It has a lot of dimension to it. I added the buttons on the flower up in the top left corner.

This second one is Margaret's. There are seven circles on it so I added seven flower beads anchored with buttons. Since I had my buttons out, I also added three more buttons - actually double buttons, staying with the circle theme.

Another Beginning Machine Piecing Class

Another Beginning Machine Piecing class started on Wednesday. This is my favorite class to teach because of the students and their excitement about learning to piece. I use Alex Anderson's beginning book and the first day we make some rail fence blocks.

Fabric selection is always a challenge for new quilters. I usually have them pick out a border fabric and then we find three color families to pick the rest of the fabrics from.

Here is one selection. She found the border that she loved and we were able to fill in from there with the fabrics above the border.

Here is the second one. The border is the green on the bottom of the stack.

This last group is all batiks. She picked out the dogwood fabric from the shop hop almost two years ago. It was just about the last of this fabric. This is going to be a beautiful quilt!

Cooking Today

I decided to do some cooking today. I haven't made bread in years except using the bread maker. Today I decided to make it the old fashioned way. Since it had been so long, I started with a simple white bread recipe from my trusty Good Housekeeping Cookbook.

Here are the first two loaves of bread - with a couple of slices taken off the end of one loaf. We had it for a snack when Bill got home from work. We didn't even let it cool off. I can't wait to have toast in the morning.

As long as the oven was hot, I made a batch of oatmeal cookies. I just use the recipe off the oatmeal box and it works great each time. I know there are a lot of good recipes out there but the one off the box is our favorite. I don't put raisins in them because Bill doesn't like them but I bet they would be great with raisins also.

I am also working on making luggage tags to teach at guild on Tuesday. Will finish one tomorrow and post a photo - today I had to make a run to Hancocks to buy vinyl for the tags so didn't get the sample done.

400th Post Give-Away

I just realized that this is my 400th post. I hadn't been paying attention to the number of posts and when I went to do one for today, saw that the last one was #399.

I guess it is appropriate to have a give-away in recognition of this achievement. I had no idea that I would stick with it this long but I really enjoy writing here.

I have been talking a lot about the Tote Along, the pattern that we were selling at the Georgia Quilt Show. If you post a comment on this post, I will enter you in a drawing for your own Tote Along. I will make one for you and also send you the pattern.

As a reminder, here are three of them that I have already made. I will make one out of your favorite fabric type for you.

All you need is to comment on this post. I will draw the winner on Halloween!

Jan's Quilt at the Georgia Quilt Show

Both Jan and Nancy had quilts in the quilt show last week. Several times I went to look for Nancy's quilt but never saw it. I did find Jan's however. This is the quilt that she made based on Sharyn Craig's class a couple of years ago. The name of the pattern is "Glorified Nine Patch". Jan made it look like flowers by adding 3D flowers in the center of the red petals.

Here is a close-up of one of the flowers. I quilted this for Jan and did a type of feather/fern in the red.

We won a blue ribbon at the East Cobb Quilt Show but didn't get anything at this show.



Here I am with the quilt. Isn't it a great quilt?

Row by Row Quilt - Last Row

At the Allatoona Quilter's Guild we have been working on the garden row quilt for the past 8 months and I have posted photos of most of the rows here. This is the last one. As you can probably guess, this one was designed by Michelle.

Each person has selected their own palette of fabrics. Mine are black and white backgrounds with various bright fabrics for the rows. I didn't work on my row yesterday so you will have to be content with Michelle's row. The two hands will go on the ends of the center panel. Each row of the quilt measures 48" across but they are various heights. This one is 8" tall.

We have several rows of fusible applique like this one, some paper piecing (fruits, vegetables and bird houses), regular piecing and some combination rows. This is the first time we have worked on an original design so it will be fun to see how the quilts turn out.

Next month we will be looking at ways to join the various rows into a quilt and start thinking about borders.

Georgia Quilt Show

I am finally getting back to normal after the Georgia Quilt Show. We set up on Wednesday and then worked the booth for three days on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We took down the booth on Saturday night - it comes down much quicker than it went up. It took about 6 1/2 hours to get set up and we took it all down in just about an hour.

This was the first time that the Georgia Quilt Show was put on and so of course the first time we vended at this show. It was a good show and the next one will be held in 2010, which is good because the ECQG show is next September in 2009. Having two shows so close together may not be worthwhile.

The photo above is the center of the booth. I couldn't take a photo directly in front because all you could see was the Christmas tree. What a great idea it was to take the tree. We filled it with gift items and Jim Shore ornaments. It looked great!

While most of the booth was Christmas focused, this table held Halloween fabrics and projects.

Here is the right corner of the booth, with Christmas kits and miscellaneous fat quarters and other items.

Here is Mary waiting for customers before the show opened one day. She made the cute aprons that we wore. It was a great idea having the aprons to identify ourselves.

They had a demo stage at the show and I did a demo of the folding tote bag each day. It truly takes only 1/2 hour to make out of 1/2 yard of fabric, even on stage. It was a very popular pattern and we did well with it. The name of the pattern is "The Tote Along" and can be purchased at Tiny Stitches. The pattern was developed by my sister.

I also did a demo of the new Clover Pom-Pom maker. We made Hydrangea flowers out of batik and they turned out great!

Georgia Quilt Show

Tiny Stitches is at the Georgia Quilt Show. This is being put on by the same people who run the Sewing Expos around the country. They have it here in Georgia in the spring.

One of the quilts that I quilted for Jan is in the show. I was disappointed to see that her name was the only name on it, but she did give credit to the Sharyn Craig for the design and Karen Kay Buckley for the applique inspiration, as well as me as the quilter in the description in the program.

This is the first time that they have had an actual quilt show. We are vending and went last night to see Marianne Fons speak about "Why we Quilt". She is a very good speaker and except for the air conditioning being so cold that we were freezing, we had a great time.

Here is a photo of me, Marianne and Maetha (the owner of Tiny Stitches). We set up the booth yesterday and it is a lot of work. I managed to take a tumble in the parking lot but except for a scrape on the elbow and much damage to my dignity, I am fine.

I forgot to take photos of the booth but will do that today before the customers come in. The Quilt Show is in Gwinett County, about 35 miles from home but because of the long days, we are staying out here at a hotel. The show is open for three days and we will take everything down on Saturday night.

This is a great quilt that was shown during Marianne's presentation last night. It will be in the next issue of the magazine. Great quilt!

Finished Beginning Quilt Top

Karen brought in her beginning machine piecing quilt top over the weekend. She made twice as many blocks so ended up with a nice sized lap quilt. All her fabrics are batiks and she has wonderful color choices.

She also brought in a top that she made for her grandmother's birthday. It is folded in quarters so is a nice large quilt when unfolded.

This started out as a stack of 10 inch squares that she made into 1/2 square triangles and then set paying attention to the darks (medium) and lights. Very nice and I am sure that grandma will love it.

Purse class tonight - will try to get photos of the projects to share later.