Another project started

Julie and I are doing Amanda Jean's star quilt along. We started last night but Julie only had a few minutes to spare so she was in and out my door pretty quickly. I don't have a photo of her block but here is mine



Can you tell which one it is? The rest on the design wall are for the birthday quilt I am making for Julie. I have some fat quarters of "Seaside Rose" from Moda that I am going to use for the new quilt as well as other pastel scraps I have stockpiled. I really enjoyed the last quilt along and it will be nice having my sister do this one with me.

I also have promised a sewing caddy thingamabob to my blog buddy, Rhonda. (It's coming...I swear!) The question now is "What am I doing sitting here?" I need to getting moving!

Pretties for me!

One of our S4 members had surgery last week so 3 of us went to visit her at home. We brought cookies, had tea and chatted like magpies! On the way home we wanted to stop at an antique shop in Bethel but we were running late and the shop had closed. Quilty Pam suggested we try "A Wrinkle in Time" just outside Robesonia. The owner had just closed but saw us in the parking lot and invited us in anyway. Well! Did we have a good time?!? We each ended up with treasures and Julie even found a Rowe pottery pitcher that was about 1/2 of what she would have expected to pay. I found a darling platter with no mark on the back so I think that means it pre-dates 1891 if it was manufactured in another country. I also picked up a pretty little Elite Works Limoges plate with pink flowers. Very cute, very girlie.



The piece of fabric is one I picked up on Saturday. It is for my kaleidoscope quilt we are making at Bear Hollow. I still have to find fabric for the accent fabric and borders but I think this piece has a lot of nice colors and will be easy to find fabrics that will work.

My next big project not quilt related is to paint my coffee table though I am feeling some guilt about painting the top. The mahogany veneer has a diamond shaped (kinda) pattern and I really am not crazy about covering that up. Maybe I will just refinish the top and paint the legs. Decisions, decisions...

Productive weekend

I have restored my sewing space!





In the lower photo you can see part of the design wall. I have also been working on my sister's quilt. I have all of the 12" blocks finished and have started on the 6" blocks. I am not going to have enough shirting fabric so I went shopping yesterday. We went to 2 quilt shops that I thought SURELY would have what I needed. Nope...nada...zip. We stopped for lunch, hit Kohl's (did some damage there!) and tried a shop on the way home. Oh well, I guess this means I will need to make the supreme sacrifice and go to Burkholder's next week. ;0)

I am beginning the process of house hunting. It isn't imperative that I move so this may take a while. There is a darling little house about 5 or 6 blocks from where I live currently. It is a Cape Cod style and at only 1500 square feet isn't really much bigger than my apartment but it DOES have 4 bedrooms (small) which means that I could have a studio and 2 guest rooms. That would be perfect so that I could have both of my boy's and their families here at the same time. The house also has a little sitting front porch and an attached garage. The basement isn't finished but I could do that at some point and put in MY VERY OWN LONGARM!! OK...I am getting ahead of myself. I don't even know if I will qualify for a loan to purchase this one but at least I am working in that direction. If not this house, I know there will be another!

Hope you are having an excellent weekend!

A cutting fool

Since I embarrassed myself and showed you my cluttered studio (And, by the way, I didn't open the closet door for a reason!) I am not going to show you what I have done to my dining room table. Between cutting scraps into strips and blocks and squares, I have been cutting all the reproduction fabric I purchased for my sister's birthday present. I do not have the decor that lends itself to quilts made from reproduction fabric (or feed sacks or primitives or plaids or Thimbleberry), however, my sister's decor is perfect for the repro fabric. I am using Bonnie's Ohio Stars quilt pattern. Since I didn't have anything remotely scrappy that I could use, I have had to make scraps with 1/4 yard cuts of lots of fabrics. I am really getting tired of cutting fabric!

There is an art quilt display at Berks Campus of Penn State. S4 is going to view the display and then go out for dinner tonight. The display features the quilts of Jane Blair. If you have never seen her incredible quilts, check out her website. You will be amazed at both the diversity in quilt subjects and creative ability of this woman.

Back to work...bummer...

What a mess!

I am going to embarass myself by posting this photo of my studio

I am going to restore it to some semblance of order this weekend and will post a photo of the (hopefully) vast improvement!

I have been working diligently on organizing my scraps a la Bonnie. Rather than watching the primary returns last night, I put a couple of DVDs into the player, ironed and cut strips for HOURS! I still have so much fabric left to cut but at least I am making some headway.

Oh, there is a quilt giveaway at Camille's blog. If you decide to enter, please let her know that you heard about the giveaway from me. Thanks!

A week since my last post

Ever notice that "it's always something"? I plugged in my desktop computer Friday night when I got it home...turned out McAfee was blocking the Internet connection. I got everything hooked up and it was running beautifully until this morning. Right in the middle of something it shut off. Now it won't turn back on so I am going to assume that the power supply has died. This would really make me crazy if I had to go out and purchase one, however, I just so happen to have a power supply available from my old eMachine and it is the same unit so I will swap it out this week. I am so thankful that I bought this laptop.

Today was the monthly gathering of S4 at Quilty Pam's house. I managed to get all of the fabric cut for Julie's birthday quilt but never took my machine out of the case. We honestly spend more time talking and eating than we ever do anything that resembles sewing! One of the women in our group showed us how to do a "magical" stack and whack kaleidoscope quilt. Looks like that will be the project for our big retreat at Bear Hollow this year.

Before Julie and I went on retreat last month I made each of us this little holder "thingamabob" to put under our machines. Here's mine

It was really simple, quick sewing so I am making them for everyone in our group before the retreat in August. Aren't I just the best?!? :0)

I brought home a big bag of scrap strips this afternoon so I am off to sort them by color for a Linus blanket or two. Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend!

Guess what I've been doing...

I thought I had a plan when I started quilting this but so far all I have managed to do is stitch in the ditch. I can't believe how long it is taking me! I am going to do one row of echo stitch and then I think I will do something very linear to fill in the open spaces. I wish now that I had basted on some extra border fabric and loaded it onto the LA.

Well, back to slaving over a hot sewing machine!

Dance of Joy

I am connected at home...I am using a wireless mouse and keyboard 'cause I hate typing on the laptop. Wonder why I am using the laptop? Turns out that my modem may not have been the problem. The new modem still will not connect with desktop so I have to take my desktop to the office and have our tech figure out what is going on. Thank goodness I have free technical help at the office!

I am going to spray baste the double wedding ring quilt and hopefully get that quilted today. I do have a shopping trip this afternoon to a couple of LQS and I am looking for fabric to make an "Ohio Stars" quilt (ala Bonnie Hunter) for my sister. Her birthday is in May and I wanted to finally make a quilt for her.

Lots to do today and not a lot of time...Off and running!!

Nothing exciting or new

Let's see...I still have no internet at home (though a brand new modem is due to arrive today for installation tonight). I have not been sewing because I have been in a funk. I went to the fabric sale and spent too much money. My darling niece graduated from nursing school last night. I am taking a woman I met on retreat shopping tomorrow at Burkholder's (a Burkholder's virgin!). I am loading a quilt on the LA on Sunday.

That's it. Nothing else going on in my life.

Hope today finds you happy and productive!

It's not the camera...

First, still no Internet and I am getting twitchy. (Thank goodness for Internet at the office!) Second, I have made a very important discovery. I kept thinking that my photos were bad because I had a crappy camera. I have discovered that my photos are bad with a decent camera so the problem must lie with me! Maybe I need to take more shots and actually learn how to use a camera because I really hate being bad at something!

Anyway, here is what I have been working on

As I mentioned, my photography does it absolutely no justice. The purples are really beautiful. This is just still in flimsy form but I will quilt it this weekend. I am going to do it on Jenny. If I wanted to do it on the LA I would have to baste on extensions to the sides and I don't think I want to add a border. I think I am just going to bind it the way it is. What do you think? Does it need another border?

One of my favorite quilt shops is having an anniversary sale this weekend. Everything in the store is going to be 20% off. I can just smell my VISA card melting...

No Internet - Bummer

I am standing in the parking lot of our public library typing on my laptop which is sitting on the hood of my car. Long story short...there is something wrong with either my DSL modem or my router and my DSL provider technician did something wonky to my desktop CPU and here I am. They promised me that everything would be restored within 5 business days so no posting from home.

Hope everyone is having a better weekend than I am!

Still no sewing...

I have been working on my parent's taxes since I returned from the retreat so I really haven't had the time to sew. This weekend I am going to shut off the phone, lock myself in the studio and sew! Yes I am!!

Y'all have read about my sister (the quilting one) and I thought I would show you what she made for me a couple of years ago for Christmas Isn't it pretty? It is "Tuscan Rose" and uses the colors that I love. I would really like to lighten up my decor for the spring and summer but she told me that if I ever took it down, she was taking it home! (Nice girl, huh?!)

I have to share the latest additions to my tea pot collection. I waited until they were both on clearance...chick from TJ Maxx and bunny from Joann's. I think they are darling.
Wednesday means meeting day at the office. I would much rather stay home and read blogs but a girl has got to eat (or not!)

Zowie! (Borrowing a word from my friend, Dottie.) I just put on a brand new pair of pants that I bought the other day. They are the same brand and same size I have been buying for a while. They started SCREAMING when I zipped them! I got them zipped (and I didn't have to lay down on the bed to do it) but, good golly, are these things tight! I am going to totally blame it on the great (and abundant) food we had to eat on retreat. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the amount of chocolate I have consumed since the end of Lent!