Snowman Quilt

Finally was able to post the snowman quilt pictures. Isn't it cute? I really like the way Patty has the scarf and hat go off the edge of the quilt. Will look great hanging up for Christmas at her house.

No pictures

Well, I can't get Blogger to upload my pictures. I heard today that a Snowman quilt that I quilted for Patty won 3rd place at her guild quilt show and I wanted to post a couple of picture of it. I will try again tomorrow. I also completed a purse for Tiny Stitches that I will take a picture of tomorrow.

Next on my list is finishing a border on a black and white quilt. Hope to get that done tomorrow and quilt it Thursday. Would like to get it in the shop this weekend.

Collage RR

This is the next to last addition to the collage RR I have been in for the past few months. I have the last one here and need to get to it soon. Mine arrived and is finished but I have not opened it up yet - figure I don't deserve to look at it until I have Elizabeth's done and on the way to her.

Anyway, I used some paper doilies to add to this one, along with yellow glaze that I highlighted the lace and some of the paper that had been added my someone else. Each one has been so different and so interesting. Not sure I would do this again, but I have had fun.

Alphabet 4x4 pages

Here are pages from the CPS alphabet swap. We each mae 3 different letters and made 8 of each. My letters for these two rounds are J and V. I decided to use Jazz for J and then V for Vintage. We have one more round - this time is numbers and I am working on my 0 (zero) pages. This time we make 10 of each.

Long time, no blog - September Calendar

I am not sure why I haven't postied in such a long time - it just seems like I have been so busy and every night I think about it but just don't get around to it.

Here is my September calendar. At least I have been able to keep up with this! I painted the pages with regular acrylic paint, then used post-it notes to draw the pages, using my new collection of Sharpie pens. It is fun to figure out something new to do each month for the basic calendar and then to find things to decorate the pages with.

Nashville AQS Quilt Show

As I have said before, I am a longarm quilter. I quilted the above two quilts that Jan pieced. I love quilting for her. She has such wonderful color and design sense, it is so much fun to quilt her quilts.

The top quilt is a lone star set with beautiful squares that almost make you lose the lone star when first looking at it. I love the use of lime green and black. It is a great quilt. The second one Jan calls "How Does My Garden Grow" and is hung with garden gloves. The center panel is a single piece of fabric and I quilted all around the flowers and had a great time.

Jan entered these quilts in the East Cobb Quilt Show last year and we received honorable mention for both of them. She decided to enter them in the Nashville show and they were both accepted. The photos show Jan and I at the show in Nashville. The photos were taken from an angle because of the way that the quilts were displayed.

We drove up with Nancy and Wendy on Wednesday morning really early. We saw the show on Wednesday and Thursday and then drove back again on Thursday afternoon/evening. It made for a couple of long days but was a lot of fun.

August Calendar RR

This is Puff's calendar. Her's was a blank calendar with no dates on it. I decided that the Dog Days of Summer was appropiate and painted the orange/pink/red background and then found some images from a magazine to add. Used ink pads to tone down the magazines although you can't tell from this picture. Finished with words.

Then I used the ink again on the actual calendar page and used some flower stickers. It turned out better than it looks in the picture.

Laptop Sleeve

One last post before I go to bed. The above pictures are of a laptop sleeve that I made for my Gateway. I had seen these for sale at a website but decided I could make/design one of my own.

My sister and I made 3 of these a couple of weeks ago when I was in San Francisco. One for my Gateway, one for a Mac and the last for a Fujitsu. You have to measure the laptop and then adjust the bag for correct fit.

The prequilted outside fabric is from Joann's. It is two sided and the stripe is the reverse. It is lined with fleece and has a velcro closure. The laptop fits in there tightly and is protected when you tote it around in a larger bag. I frequently use a basket for my laptop and other projects and this works good and looks even better.

August Calendar

Here is my August calendar. Not enough color to suit me so I painted the September calendar before I drew the squares. I think I will like it better. This one I used my new stamps to stamp the month and year, used smaller stamps for the dates and decorated with junk mail and other stuff. Included are my voting sticker (when I went to vote in the runoff election, there were about 10 poll workers and me), bar codes, part of a measuring tape, mailing labels and such.

I have 3 days where I forgot to write on it so decorated them with some stickers I happened to have sitting close to me. Hopefully, September is the month that the habit of writing every night sets in.

W Zapbook Page

Sorry it has been so long since I posted. I have several things to show but think I will write individual posts instead of trying to do multiple things in the same one.

The above picture is from a Zapbooks swap that we have been doing for several months. Each month we traded alphabet pages with two other people. I still have several holes in my alphabet, partly due to others and partly due to me. This is the W page I made for the swap. For some reason I had a difficult time deciding what to do for W and finally decided on Winter. Made the classic cut paper snowflake, stamped lots of other snowflakes on the card. Turned out OK.

Making Fabric Beads

Here are the beads that I made today at our FiberArtBee. We had so much fun making these. We meet once a month and play with something new to experiment with. Margaret taught us how to make these beads today.
This is me making the beads. We found some wonderful glitter paint and went crazy with it. To make the beads, you start with a one inch piece of a drinking straw. We then covered them with fabric (cut 1 by 2) by painting glue on the fabric and then wrapping them around the straw. After they dried, we wrapped fiber around them, using a dab of glue to anchor the knot. Then we painted. Most of us loved the glitter paint and used it on all the beads.

This is a great group and I look forward to our meeting every month.

Longarm Quilting Class

I went to Snellville today for a longarm quilting class. Nichole Webb is here in Georgia from Washington teaching for four days. I have signed up for two days of classes and will go again tomorrow. It is about 37 miles for me to drive and I allowed 1:45 which should have been plenty of time but I was a couple of minutes late - will leave earlier tomorrow. Traffic in the Atlanta area is brutal. I am so glad I don't have to commute to a job daily.

The class was great - we drew and sewed many different overall quilting patterns. I have a practice cloth but it is too dark tonight to take pictures of it. Will try to do it tomorrow. Taking the class at the Gammill dealer means that we each have our own machine to work on. That is much better than most longarm classes where you have to share machines.

July Calendar

I decided to try to keep a journal. Each month I plan to draw a calendar page and decorate it as I write in it each month. I have never been faithful doing something like this but made it thru July and have started on August. I think it will be interesting to review it in the future.

4x4 Alphabet Swap

I got the first part of the alphabet swap back from the CPS Yahoo group. We are doing it in 3 parts. I had A for the first group. Won't it be fun to have an alphabet book of art like these great pages? They are 4x4 inches.

FiberArtBee - Flower Pounding

FiberArtBee was a couple of weeks ago but I kept forgetting to post a picture of what we did. We decided to pound flowers. Not everyone in the group was excited about it but it turned out that everyone had a great time, except maybe the people who were not pounding but just hearing it.

This is the first time any of us had done this but we all had such fun that I think we will do it again.


I need to decide what I want to do to finish this and what I want it to be. The flower part is about 12-14 inches and is on a larger square. I want to do some pen work to define the flowers, and then think I will play with quilting it. I have thought about adding beads but can't make up my mind.

It is really interesting how the color of the flowers change when they are pounded. The large flowers on my piece are rose petals. One rose was red and the other was pink.

In August we are going to play with making fiber and tyvek beads - should be another fun day.

Yet another puzzle piece arrived

I got another puzzle piece in the mail earlier this week. Now only have 3 more to complete my puzzle. This one is from Danette. The picture is a little fuzzy but the piece is really beautiful.

Christmas Quilts, Sally Collins and the Big Chicken

This is a quilt I made for Christmas in July at Tiny Stitches, my local quilt shop. The pattern came from Quick Quilts - Jan 06. There are a lot of good patterns in that magazine.

I have been really busy over the last couple of weeks getting ready for Christmas in July so haven't posted here. I made 2 quilts and quilted a few others for the shop and now I am behind on customer quilts so I need to get busy with that right away.

My local quilt guild, East Cobb Quilter's Guild, had Sally Collins http://www.sallycollins.org/. She is a wonderful quilter and teacher and author and we had a great 3 days. I am program chairman for the guild so spent a lot of time on her visit and loved every minute of it. The workshops filled up quickly so I did not actually attend them but monitored them to make sure everything went well. Fortunately, everything was great and didn't require much from me at all. Yesterday, after our morning guild meeting, we even did a mini shop hop of the three quilt shops here in Marietta and of course, had to show her the Big Chicken http://roadsidegeorgia.com/site/bigchicken.html. It is a local landmark that all directions seem to be related to. You always hear things like "just West of the Big Chicken". You have to be from here to understnad.

June Rolodex Swap

The June rolodex swap came yesterday but I forgot to pick up the mail until today. I worked at the quilt shop on Friday, Saturday and then again today. I was so tired yesterday I forgot all about the mail.

The Diva's are so talented - the monthly theme for June was "June is busting out" and we got a great variety of cards, including a couple with busts on them. Mine is the boring one with flowers - third down on the right. I did have flower sequins on them to liven them up a little but I really liked some of the others, especially the one on the lower left.

My rolodex is really looking great after several months of doing this swap.

The theme for July is Hot Dogs and Apple Pie!

July Calendar Spread

This is the July calendar spread for the calendar RR. This calendar belongs to Karyn and is smaller than most of them have been. Each page is about 4 x 8 inches. There have been some beautiful spreads done so far.

Since it is summer and the travel season, I decided to use travel stuff that I have stuck away. The boarding pass and baggage tags are from my last trip to San Francisco. I started by painted the pages lime green, then glued on some scraps of a map. Used a passport from a hotel, part of a ticket envelope and a small picture of San Francisco. I used another boarding pass receipt and then the top off a USPS stamp selection about American advances in Aviation.

Covered everything with bronze glaze and wiped it off. Got out my stamps and stamped some travel stamps on the right page and a face on the left boarding pass - also used my favorite DIVA stamp. Ready to mail to Christine!

Quilt Guild Brown Bag Exchange

We had a brown bag exchange at Quilt Guild today. Two months ago, we put 3 pieces of fabric, along with our name in a brown bag and exchanged them. The goal was to take those 3 pieces, add any other fabrics we wanted to and make a small item for the person who selected the fabrics. The guidelines said that the pieces needed to be at least 8" square.

I got Ruth's brown bag and she had put in 3 8" squares of fabrics that did not really coordinate with each other. I looked at them for several weeks. There was the problem of them not going together but they were also so small that it was difficult to make anything out of them or find other fabrics to use with them.

I finally decided to make a sewing tote. I used pink Sandcastle for the actual project but did a small English paper pieced flower on the front, using two of the fabrics that Ruth gave me.

The third one was used for one of the pockets in the tote. It holds a small cutting mat and has pockets for cutter, scissors, etc. She seemed to like it!

The creativity of the group is amazing. The completed projects included a teddy bear, small wallhangings, tea cozy, pot holders, table runner, a doll, larger wallhangings and others that I can't remember.

I got the best one of the day - made by Lisa.

The above is a close up of the top of the calendar holder and the bottom one shows me holding it. I put 3 fat quarters in my brown bag and I am sure they were a challenge for Lisa. Mine were the bright lime green she used as the background, the multi-color she used as trim and bound with and the purple that she made the letters with.

It is beautiful and colorful and wonderful. Lisa put hanging tabs on the top and included a great Maxine calendar so I can use it forever by getting a new calendar each year. I am so lucky to get this wonderful gift.

The whole guild loved the projects and it made for a wonderful program. If we do it again next year (and most want to), we will change the rules slightly to have you put in 3 coordinating fat quarters as a starting point. This will make it easier to choose projects to make.