Step 2 and Snow Days

Step 2 of Quiltville's Roll, Roll Cotton Boll mystery quilt is complete! I used the the Easy Angle ruler for these and I love it! No trimming and perfect HSTs every time.

I also finished block 5 of the Snow Days BOM this weekend. I literally can not wait for the next one to come in the mail! I'm loving this embroidery project!

Before I even finished this post, I turned around and look what I found on my cutting table...

I guess Smokey figured he'd get ahead and get a little quilt inspecting done. I think he likes this project already. :)

Happy Quilting!

Shamless plug...again

So...I entered another quilt into the Quilting Gallery Quilt Contest. :) This week's theme is Thanksgiving, so I thought my little turkey wallhanging was appropriate! Did you check out the prize? A fat quarter bundle of Moda's "Awesome" line. That would certainly be an "awesome" prize to win!

Go check out the quilts here and vote for your favorite (me!). :-D

Happy Quilting!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here are this year's batch of turkey cookies...there may have been a little "creative liberty" in the assembly this year. I don't care, I'm thankful to have my family here to make the cookies together!

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day.

Life is good....

Step one completed!

Yay me! I finished the first step of the Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll mystery from Quiltville. It's not a great picture because of the flash, the reds look kinda pink.

I'm a happy mommy tonight because Zach is home and that means we'll have both kids home for the Thanksgiving weekend. :) I have much to be thankful for not only on Thanksgiving, but every day. Life is good!

Happy Quilting!

Memories

For some reason, I have memories of watching my Nana make apple pie. I don't think she made it all that often or at least I know I wasn't there every time she made it. It's just one of those activities that takes me back to the time I watched her make one. I remember it very vividly, standing next to her in her kitchen watching her peel the apples and slice them up.

Then she added the sugar, flour and cinnamon...I remember she always added pats of butter to the top of the apples. Does everyone do that? I remember thinking it was weird at the time, but of course, I always add them now...

I don't think my pie tastes as good as I remember hers tasting.

I miss her. :(

Thanks for the memories Nana....

Oh and a bit of quilting retreat update...I started this top at retreat, but had to finish the borders at home. Now it's ready for quilting! It's made from a layer cake of Moda's "Saltbox Harvest." There is a few more days of fall before it's time to pull out the Christmas decorations, right? I better hurry!

Happy Quilting!

Home from Retreat!

The quilting retreat was so much fun. Got to see some "old" friends and met lots of new ones too.

Angela is the best hostess and we sure appreciate her for making it possible to spend 3 1/2 days sewing, chatting, laughing, shopping, and eating! :)

I made progress on quite a few projects, but didn't take pictures of very many of them...but here are a few I can show you. This is a Thimbleberries tablerunner and in Thimbleberries style...it's ginormous! It still needs to be quilted, but I think I'm really going to like this one!

I also finished assembling my Busy Little Elves quilt. I so love this project!! I had hoped to find border fabric for it during our trip to the LQS, but I didn't see anything I liked. I think I'm going to do a scrappy border with the leftover reds I have. I did find a red and white stripe that will be used for the binding. I'll cut it on the bias and it will look like a candy cane!

I'm not sure how I am going to quilt this one yet...I have never quilted an embroidery project. Anyone have any advice?

I also worked on my Snowman on Parade Block of the Month and I hope to have that one finished before Christmas...stay tuned!

Happy Quilting!

Secret projects...

I've been working on a few secret projects for retreat and since I'm actually there right now (or will be by the time this posts!), I can finally show you what they are!

First is a mini quilt for our retreat hostess, Angela. It's one of Lori Smith's "Fat Quarter Quilting" patterns made with CW repros. I think it measures about 16x20"...I forgot to measure. I love this mini! It's hard to give this one away!

I also made this Pockets To Go tote for my retreat roomie, Conni. Isn't the coolest thing? This is the "cube" size, it's 6x6". The pattern also includes a rectangle shape.

Two zipper pockets on the outside....

Lots of organizing pockets inside too!

I loved it so much, I had to make one for myself. Of course I used my fav fabric, Frolic!

Look at all that stuff that fits inside!! I'm all set for retreat!

Happy Quilting!!

Veteran's Day

Thank you to all veterans, past and present, for your sacrifice and service to this great country of ours. Today is the day we celebrate you. Because of you, we enjoy the many freedoms that you have fought and died for....and for that we are forever grateful.

A special thank you to my husband...you are my hero. I am so proud of all you have accomplished! I'm so blessed to be on this journey with you!

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to

utter words, but to live by them.

- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Retreat time!!

I'm all packed up and ready for a quilting retreat! The retreat is in Indiana...in fact, it's at the same place I've gone to retreat for the last three years in May. Our fearless retreat hostess, Angela, decided to schedule two retreats this year. Yay! There are only a few of us from the May retreat that are able to make it again this month, though. All the "regulars" will definitely be missed, but I'm looking forward to meeting some new friends too!

Peggy and Robin were a bit unhappy about not being able to go with me, so I decided they just needed to come along! See, here they are, raring to go! We leave bright and early in the morning. Hope we can sleep tonight...you know how us girls can be giggling all night!

I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures to share when I get home!

Happy Quilting!

A visit from some BFFs!

Yesterday was an exciting day! Two of my very bestest quilting buddies came to my house for a visit! I've known Peggy and Robin "online" for 5 or 6 years but the only time we've seen each other in real life is at our yearly quilting retreat. Since I moved to the east coast (they both live on this coast too), we decided we need to make sure and take full advantage of this geographic benefit! The Spouse's Club here at Dover hosts a large craft fair every November, so it was the perfect reason for the girls to come down here for our first visit. We had fun browsing the crafts and visiting at lunch. Afterwards they came to my house and I showed off my quilts and all my unfinished projects. LOL All in all, it was an awesome day. I can't wait until we get together again!

Thought I would share this cute picture of Whiskers. Do any of you have to share your chair with your cat? I use this chair at the computer and at my sewing machine and 95% of the time, I am sharing it. I use the term "sharing" loosely...she gets much more space than I do! LOL She sleeps here without me too. In fact, I think she sleeps here most nights, which surprises me because there are many other warmer, cuddlier places to sleep in the house of an avid quilter! I don't mind, I kind of miss her when she's not there behind me.

Happy Quilting!

Found Treasure!

Do you ever find things that you forgot you had? I do...quite frequently, in fact! I pulled out my bin of "novelty" fabrics in search of something that I could use to make a couple of baby quilts for donation. I probably pulled about 1/2 of the fabrics out, when I discovered a ziplock buried deep down inside. Please understand...this bin is fairly well organized, fabrics are folded and I can scan what is inside pretty easily. But somehow, this ziplock had been hidden from view for quite sometime! I had forgotten all about it. Inside I found a nice little stash of novelty charms. Apparently, I had been part of a swap at some point. There were two of each charm and each measures 4.5". I vaguely remember participating in this swap and I know I probably had some grand plan for an I Spy quilt.

I decided this would be a perfect solution for the needed donation quilts. I separated the duplicate charms and came up with two stacks that look like this:

Then, because time is a bit of an issue right now (when isn't it??), I just sewed them up and made two quilts! These two quilts are from just one stack of charms. I have that stack above still available to make more. I think they turned out quite cute. All the charms are different in each quilt, so it's still could be a type of I Spy quilt, don't you think? The backing and binding also came from my stash...awesome! Love when that happens.

The quilts will be donated to a Crisis Pregnancy Center in Indiana. Our Retreat Mama collects the quilts at retreat and delivers them to the center for us.

Oh yes...did I mention I'm going on a quilting retreat in less than a week! Yay! I can't wait!

Happy Quilting!

Are you doing it?

Bonnie Hunter has a new mystery quilt coming up...are you doing it? Since I already have a gazillion projects in the works, what's one more, right? Funny thing is, I'm not particularly fond of mystery quilts! There is something about Bonnie's that I love though. Maybe it's the scrappy look to them...maybe it's because I can pull the fabrics from my stash and use up fabrics that are just sitting in bins. Whatever it is, I love them!

Here is a picture of the fabric I've chosen. I'm doing my colorway a bit differently than her instructions. She has green, pink and brown. I'm doing green, red, and gold...along with a neutral background. I'm going for a Christmas-y quilt! I need to shop for a few more FQ's of each color, especially golds.

So....whatta think? Are you in??!!

Happy Quilting!!