Monday, May 31, 2010

Memorial Day

I hope that you all had a happy and safe Memorial Day, and that you took the time to thank a veteran! We do appreciate all they have done and are doing for us!

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

What I've Been Working On




I have been a little under the weather but I am feeling better now. I have missed all of you and am happy to be back! I have been working on a few projects. My commissioned project is an adorable baby quilt. The shop owner chose pastel batiks and a very light green batik background. The triangles that form the edges are a darker batik with little spots of the pastels in them. The backing is a light blue with little colored speckles on it. It has been fun to make. I am in the quilting process now, which is a simple stitch in the ditch on the 9 patches and then the same pattern is carried on into the solid squares. I hand basted around the edges to avoid any bias problems, a tip a sister guild member, Denise, shared with me a few years ago.
I have also finished quilting my Civil War wallhanging, now I just need to bind it and add a few things in the little squares. So that's what I have been up to.....how about you? What have you been working on? This is the challenge week so finish up a project to have a chance at a prize!! Woo Hoo!

Monday, May 10, 2010

A Giveaway at Charmed Cards and Crafts

Sewing/quilting is my first love and scrapbooking is my second! I just found out today that www.charmedcrafts.blogspot.com is having a "Sweet May Candy" giveaway. It includes Tim Holtz's book
"Compendium of Curiosities", plus some other goodies. So check them out and see what you need to do for a chance at these goodies!http://www.charmedcardsandcrafts.co.uk/acatalog/Tim_Holtz.html

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Nice Family Photo

This photo of half my family was actually taken at Christmas. But I wanted to share with you on this Mother's Day what happens in my family when I say I want to take a nice picture of everyone!!!!! Does this happen in your family, too?
Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Pat Sloan Finish It Up FIU and Give-A-Way

I just left Pat Sloan's Site and she is having a Finish It Up Challenge from May 10 thru May23. This is a good opportunity to finish up that project that you absolutley love but just couldn't find the time. Or maybe other things keep coming up. So, why not join me in this challenge? I have 3 Jo Morton projects in the works so I am going to commit myself to finish up the Warm Wishes at Christmas one. In fact, I was planning on having a give-a-way to celebrate being a blogger for one month so maybe I'll incorporate the two! Sounds like fun! I think I need some give-a-way rules, so here they are.

Rule 1: You must commit to finish up one project. You don't have to sign up at Pat's site if you don't want to, just leave a comment and and email me a photo of the unfinished project so I can attempt to publish it on my blog. (notice the word attempt)

Rule 2: When your project is finished, please email a photo of the finished project so that I can, once again, attempt to post them on my blog. Another idea I just had was that you could post the photos on your blog instead of me trying to do it here and we could just link to your blog to see photos.

So, send me your comments and/or suggestions! I am learning as I go! Forgot to mention ..here is the link:

http://quiltmashup.com/index.php/topic,1448.new.html

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The Big Secret is Out!!!



Okay, here is the big secret! (giggle) Two weeks ago, I went on an
interview at Seminole Sampler, a local quilt shop in Catonsville, MD. The position I was applying for was a sample maker for the shop. I was a little nervous. I know the owner, Linda, and she is a very nice person. But it was still an interview, therefore, nervous. She liked my pieces of work that I had brought in and noted that they were mostly made of 1800's reproduction
fabrics and she is right! Her shop carries more batiks and gayer
(is that a word?) type fabrics. But the main reason I love her
shop is that it is an appliquer's dream. She carries all sorts
of fabrics that would make great backgrounds.. fabrics that
look like wood, sky fabric....I could go on and on!
I guess she liked my work because the next thing I know
we were discussing which project I would make for her first. We decided on
something small. A tablerunner. It looked cute and I thought it
would be fun to make. She selected a pastel charm pack with a
pastel yellow for backing. Okay. It was cute. A little different for me,
but cute. I was so excited I told her I was going home and starting
on it right away. She gave me two weeks to complete it, I told her I'd have it finished it one.
Oh, I was on cloud nine. That is, until the cloud turned gray. And became a storm cloud. With thunder. And lightning. And heavy, heavy rains. And it lasted for 13 days. Everything was going well on the second day, until I attached the outside border. If you look at the photo you will notice that the outer border is bias, I cut the yellow inside border on the bias ( I was worried if I cut in on the straight of grain I wouldn't have enough for the backing) and the row that the yellow border was attached to was a bias edge. So what do three bias edges spell?
T R O U B L E Yes, trouble. Actually, 3 sides were perfect. It was the 4th, one of the long sides, that chose to torment me. I ignored the minor stretch in the beginning, thinking it will quilt out. HA!!! Quilting it only made it worse:( So I ripped all that out and tried to figure out how to fix it. I ripped out the entire outer border on that side and the yellow inner border. Cut out a new inner border, on the straight of grain this time, and stitched everything back together. Now the fabric was flapping in the breeze, it was so stretched out. It reminded me of the Cat in the Hat book, the more he cleaned the dirtier the house became. Meanwhile, over a week has passed, and the tablerunner is not completed as I told Linda it would be. I sent her an email on Thursday, day 10, and told her I would be there the following Monday, day 14. I didn't want to tell her of my dilemma as I am trying to make a good impression and don't want her to think she has hired a totally incompetent person:( So.....I get the bright idea that on Sunday I will go to the shop and just buy all new fabric and start all over again, a much wiser person. Sounds like a good idea, right? There was a little ray of sunshine beginning to peek out from behind that cloud. Well, what do you think happened??? Of course, they had SOLD OUT of the charms. And, to make matters worse, as I am trying to buy this fabric undercover because I don't want anyone to know I couldn't even make this simple table runner, one of the employees say to me, "Oh, are you getting supplies for that tablerunner for Linda?" Yikes! What should I say? I can't lie? So I just nonchalantly say, "yeah". I confided to one person there my situation and asked her not to tell Linda. Now, what am I going to do? I also remembered that Monday morning I would be spending the entire morning at the dr's office for my knee. I had from 6:30PM Sunday, till 6PM Monday, to fix and finish that runner. Twenty-three and a half hours, minus the 4 hours I would lose at dr's office, gave me a total of 19 and a half hours. And I have to sleep in there somewhere. And maybe eat. Well...eating I could possibly skip. Yes, I was getting desperate!!!! So, on Sunday at 6:30 PM I disappeared to my sewing room. Told hubby he was on his own for dinner and he understood. Plan D was about to go into effect. Plan D was to disassemble the two borders once again, fuse with a lightweight interfacing (thank goodness I am also a garment sewer and had some on hand) and reassemble. I put in a Creed cd, pumped up the volumn, and a ripping I went. After many trials and errors, at 11:30 PM, I had it reassembled and laying flat!!!!!! Whew! Went to sleep as my ride was picking me up at 7AM. Packed a bag with the tablerunner so I could baste down those edges while at the dr's. My plan was, of course, to get that last side quilted, attach binding, and be ready to deliver by 6PM. Sounds good, right? What could go wrong now, right???? Can you even guess at what could possibly go wrong???? When I returned home, a few of my neighbors are sitting on their front porches. "Oh," they say" You may as well stay out here with us". "Why" I asked innocently. (are you ready for this readers???) "BECAUSE THE POWER IS OUT" they said!!!!!!! I almost let out an ear piercing scream. The cloud was back and darker and meaner than ever!!! I think it even contained a tornado!!!!! So I silently said a prayer and asked the Lord to help me. By the time my key opened the door the fan blades were spinning!!! Then I screamed..... Oh, I have power!!!!! I immediately threw off my shoes, and went straight up to my sewing room to finish this quilt before the power went off again. I was holding my breath the whole time. In conclusion I finished the quilt at exactly 6PM. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention. I am not quite sure how it happened but while I was quilting the border, somehow, as I was reaching for a stray thread, I actually stitched halfway through my middle finger through the nail. Thank goodness I wear those Machingers, (gloves) so most of the blood was absorbed by the gloves. Ladies, this is very painful and I recommend that you never do this to yourself!!!:)
In the photo you see the finished tablerunner, Linda loved it, and now I will be making a crib size quilt for her. I am back on cloud nine!!!!

Saturday's Doings


Okay, I have finally entered blogland again! These past few days have been crazy! Before I tell you the big secret, I want to catch you up on my doings. If you look at the photos on the right, you will see that on Saturday the birthday granddaughter, my hubby, and I did some gardening. Because I have a injured left knee, I had to sit in a chair but that's okay. I love having the granddchildren over at planting time. So, hubby tilled the area at the base of the birdbath, and granddaughter and I planted snap dragons. It is the first time to try them so we will see how things go. It was very hot,
in the 90's. And here in Baltimore, we are known for our high
humidity and it was high! After a couple hours of planting, and of course hosing down everything, including each other, what else is Maryland famous for?? Our steamed crabs, of course! So the top
photo shows us enjoying our reward, one dozen large steamed blue crabs, straight from the Chesapeake Bay.
MMMMMM

Monday, May 3, 2010

FNSI

The sign up for the FNSI is up on Heidi's blog now. So click on the icon in my right column and link on over, say hi to Heidi and sign up! We will have a blast!!!

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Civil War Group


Tomorrow my Civil War Group meets at And Sew It Goes quilt shop, which is located in Savage, MD. I will be working on this little Civil War quilt. I machine quilted it, but it needs more. I tried echo quilting around the hand appliqued border, but it didn't look right so I took it out. What I have decided to do is some meandering stitching by hand. What do you think?
A few weeks ago hubby and I went to the Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania and spent the day. Fifty-one thousand people lost their lives in that 3 day battle. So sad. I took this photo of a row of cannons.

Me and Eleanor Burns

So, did you guess Eleanor Burns? You are right!!! I was able to meet Eleanor Burns!!!!
Woo Hoo!!! She is such a sweet person. Her son, Orion, was also working in their booth. I stood in line to get in the booth, stood in line to purchase something that she could autograph, and stood in line for the autograph. But it was worth it. She is a great lady and I was thrilled to meet her!