Gift from My Sister

Look what came in yesterday’s mail.  Sure beats bills!

Wonderful socks in my favorite neutral – lime green.  They are made with bamboo yarn and I am planning on wearing them today.  They feel great.

The right side is a beautiful batik.  Here is is open.

When it is closed it can be used as a small ironing surface.  When open, there is a sandpaper board which is so helpful for writing on fabric.  The other side has a cutting board.  What a great useful gift.  I assume Robin bought these at Road To California a couple of weeks ago. 

Thank you Sis!

Melinda

Design Wall Monday–January 30, 2012

This is a table runner from last week’s guild special projects meeting.  It is a disappearing nine patch using a charm pack.  I have had this charm pack for a couple of years, along with a lot of yardage, a couple of fat quarter stacks, a layer cake and a couple more charm packs.  The line is Authentic by Sweetwater and I fell in love with it when it first came out.  While I bought lots of it, I didn’t have a particular project in mind and have had a hard time cutting into it.  Foolish isn’t it that when we find something we love, we are reluctant to actually use it.  I doubt I am the only person  who does this, am I?

I need to move a few squares around and then get it sewn together.  I can’t wait to complete it.

For more design walls, go to Patchwork Times.

Melinda

Stash Report–Week 5, 2012

Time for another stash report.  I have been working on projects but they are not at the point where I can count yardage.  I found two more fat quarters that I couldn’t resist last week – Kaffe that I didn’t have so I added 1/2 yard.

Here is the report for week 5.

Used this Week: 0 yards
Used year to Date: 0 yards
Added this Week: .5 yards
Added Year to Date: 9.5 yards
Net Used for 2012: –10

For more design walls, go to Patchwork Times here.

Melinda

Accessory Bag Swap Received

Look at the wonderful accessory bag and matching items from Kris of Dandelion Quilts.  She made the wonderful bag – it even has pockets inside!  She also included a cute mug rug and a notepad cover.  Tucked inside was the post-it notes (who ever can have enough of them), the tissues and a wonderful smelling hand gel.  What a great package.

Mine is in progress and will be on the way to Kris in plenty of time to meet the deadline.

Melinda

Janet Fogg at East Cobb Quilters’ Guild Today

The program at guild was wonderful today.  Our guest speaker was Janet Fogg and her quilts were unbelievably wonderful.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera and my iPhone decided it didn’t want to take photos.  Since I use it frequently I was ready to go buy a 4S (mine is a 4) but after turning it off and on, it started taking photos again so I guess I will wait until the iPhone 5 to come out before upgrading.

Anyway, back to guild.  Since I didn’t get photos here are a couple from Janet’s website.

This quilt was hanging on a stand and is very large.  In fact, most of her quilts are large.  It is totally pieced.  Her quilting is just about the best I have ever seen.  What looks like printed black fabric is just quilting!

I loved this one also.  It is an older grandmothers flower garden that she rescued and added the border to.  She added the borders and then pieced the grandmother separately and appliqued it on.  This is a good photo but the quilt is much better.

Melinda

Beginning Machine Piecing–Class Three

Another wonderful, productive class or I guess I should say two wonderful, productive classes yesterday.  Let’s start with the morning class.

The first thing we do each class is to display the homework from the previous class.  Last week we focused on nine patches and nine patch variations.

As they make blocks during class, they take down their homework and put up the new blocks.  We worked on a square dance block and then moved on to log cabins.

By the way, the blocks on the bottom rows are from a student that was unable to attend last week.  We should have her caught up by next week.

After an exciting break go grocery shopping (senior day at the grocery story), I went back to the shop for the evening class.  Here is their homework.

And then the blocks they finished last night.

Great blocks from everyone.  A couple are still struggling with consistent 1/4” seams but getting better.  Next week we tackle half square triangles and make friendship star blocks.  I can’t wait.

Melinda

New Block of the Month

I have joined Sue Spargo’s 2012 BOM.  My friend Jan did one a couple of years ago that I was fortunate enough to quilt and after taking a class last year from Sue, I decided to sign up.  The first block came earlier this week.

So far, I love the fabric.  I also signed up to get the thread each month.  This is going to be fun!

Melinda

Disappearing Nine Patch

At the Allatoona guild today, we worked on a disappearing nine patch table runner.  Lisa had made a couple of samples and really didn’t like one.  I liked it a lot and she gave it to me.  Here it is hanging on my front door.  Just so you don’t worry about the table runner – I have a glass storm door that protects it from the elements.

Thank you Lisa for the class and for the table runner – I love it.

I have a large stash of Authentic fabric from Sweetwater.  I loved that line when it first came out and managed to collect quite a lot of it.  I have charm packs, jelly rolls, layer cakes and some yardage and have never cut into any of it, at least until today.  I guess I am an Authentic hoarder.  I managed to cut up and entire charm pack to make my disappearing nine patch table runner and will use a little more for borders.  I got most of the nine patches done but haven’t cut them yet.  Here are a few of them.

I am glad I finally started using some of it.

Melinda

Design Wall Monday–January 23, 2012

I have a design chair today.  These are the polka dots I bought this weekend.  I plan to use them (and others) for my guild BOM.  I am thinking about using Kona White for the background.

For more design walls, go to Patchwork Times.

Melinda

Stash Report – Week 4, 2012

Used this Week: 0 yards
Used year to Date: 0 yards
Added this Week: 9 yards
Added Year to Date: 9.5 yards
Net Used for 2012: -9.5

Well, when I fall, I fall big.  There is a buy one fat quarter, get one free sale at Tiny Stitches this weekend and I bought 36 fat quarters!

At guild we are doing a block of the month or more accurately blocks of the month and I decided to do mine with polka dots so I now have a big selection of polka dots to work from.  I need to search my stash to see if I have enough of a background fabric – I certainly hope so.

I can’t believe I bought that many fat quarters.  Shame on me

For more stash reports, go to Patchwork Times.

Melinda

Beginning Machine Piecing–Class Two

We had great classes on Wednesday.  The classes started with the students putting up their rail fence homework up on our new design wall.

Morning class

Evening  class

Here are the blocks they made on Wednesday.

Morning class

Evening class

Aren’t they doing a good job?

Melinda

More About Retreat

Here are a few completed blocks from the quilts at retreat.  Love to look at the different fabrics and how they change the look of the block.

Here is a group photo of most of the participants – it is hard to get a large group together.

And a couple of photos of work in progress.

We had a great time!

Melinda

Amicacola Quilt Retreat

We got up to Amicacola Thursday night.  I drove by myself since Danielle was not feeling up to going.  Of course it rained the whole way up there.  Here is the room when we got there.

On Friday morning it looked a lot different, with 48 women busy at work.  The theme of the retreat was the 50’s.  We did another mystery quilt by Debbie Caffrey.  She writes wonderful mysteries and I highly recommend her quilts.

One of the side projects was to make an apron and decorate it however they wanted to.  On Saturday night we had a fashion show of aprons but first I have to show you what Maetha and I looked like.  We were Laverne and Shirley for the weekend.

Pat brought her Mother’s sweater clips and loaned them to me.

Aren’t they perfect!  She also loaned me the sweater.  I made the skirts and two of the people attending also had poodle skirts but I didn’t get a photo of them.  One was yellow and the other pink.

Here is the apron parade.

And here is the winner.

She received a gift certificate for the shop and an apron from Moda.

I will show more tomorrow.

Melinda

Design Wall Monday–January 16, 2012

All I have to show today is one block from my retreat mystery quilt.  I have all the pieces to make the rest of the blocks but ran out of steam at the retreat.

For more design walls to inspire you, go to Patchwork Times here.

Melinda

Stash Report–January 15, 2012

Somehow I didn’t have enough of my background fabric for my mystery quilt so I bought 1/2 yard more.  I have decided I am going to count fabric used when I get a top completed since it might take a long time for me to actually quilt my own projects.

Used this Week: 0 yards
Used year to Date: 0 yards
Added this Week: .5 yards
Added Year to Date: .5 yards
Net Used for 2012: –.5 yards

I was unable to connect to the internet at the retreat so more to follow on that later.

For more stash reports go to Patchwork Times.

Melinda

Beginning Machine Piecing–Evening Class

Another five wonderful students in the evening class.

Here are the blocks that got made last night.

Off to retreat – more later.

Melinda

Beginning Machine Piecing

It is time for another session of Beginning Machine Piecing which started today.  There are 6 wonderful students in the morning class and they picked out wonderful fabrics to make their quilts from.  Here they are.

As usual, the first blocks they make are the rail fence blocks.  Here they are.

I am coming down with a cold and have retreat to get ready for tomorrow so I will post the photos from the evening class tomorrow.

Melinda

Gift Quilt

My friend Danielle is in the hospital with a serious issue.  What do quilters do when a friend is in need?  Give them a quilt.  This is a quilt I made last year and completed in November.  I put a label on it and took it to the hospital last night.  Danielle seemed to be pleased to receive it and I felt good about having it available to comfort her.

 

I hope it brings her comfort and warmth as she heals.

Melinda

Design Wall Monday–January 9, 2012

My design wall looks exactly the same as last week.  I still hope to get this quilt completed but this week is not looking good.

For more interesting design walls, go to Patchwork Times and check out the others.

Melinda