Sneek peek....

There were four quilts hanging around the sewing room that needed quilting and since I am going on a quilty retreat in June and wanted to take them for show-n-tell, I thought I had better get going and get them to the quilter. Well, I picked them up tonight...in the pouring rain (rain, rain, go away) and hope to get the bindings on real quick. As I do, I will post a picture of the fully finished quilt.

First quilt is the Crows in the Corner; second quilt is a sampler of blocks that were an exchange between my sister-in-law and myself; third quilt is a shop hop quilt and the fourth quilt is the Strawberries and Lemonade quilt from a tower of fabric by the same name that I won at the retreat last year and will be attending again this year in June.

Enjoy your sneek peek. Finished quilts coming soon. :D

I flew in this morning.....

I'm back from Paducah (by way of St. Louis, MO). I flew out Wednesday afternoon to St. Louis to meet up with my friend Sandy and from there we drove to Paducah for the big AQS (American Quilter Society) quilt show. We talked, walked and shopped until we dropped (almost literally).

Before I left though, besides packing, I had to finish up my "eco market bag" so that I could use it as my purse and my shopping bag. I had already tea dyed the handles and had most of the bag together except for the buttonhole, button and a couple seams. I think I was finishing it up at around 11:30 the night before I had to leave. This is the fabric that I bought at Lake Street Mercantile a little while ago. It turned out great and really did it's job as a shopping bag.


Several times, I visited my quilt (War and Piece) that had won the on-line quilt contest for AQS.



My friend, Sandy, was a contestant in the show and we visited her quilt, several times. In fact, she ended up giving out autographs and received lots of compliments for her quilt.



I did do some shopping, but tried to contain myself as I had to carry this all back with me on the plane today. Sandy did offer to box up my dirty clothes and mail them to me since she knew I couldn't go home without my purchases. You know how it is.....we like to pet our new fabric purchases after we have gotten them home, so I had to do that right away!!! I bought plenty of new browns and blacks and creams for my Hearts and Hands blocks. Can't wait to get working on them since before I left this week, I had printed out all the pattern pieces and they are all ready and waiting to go.




There were so many beautiful quilts at the show, it's hard to pick out ny favorites. I did post a couple pictures, but on reading the AQS blog, there are copyright laws, so I have deleted the quilts that I had posted previously. But I certainly hope you had the opportunity to go to the show and if not, I am sure many of them will be in the next Amercian Quilter's magazine or on their website. I don't know how they make their decisions as to what is better than another because there sure are a lot of talented people out there.

It's back to reality. So, as I think of more, I will talk to you all later. Enjoy!

Paducah bound....

I will be leaving for the big AQS quilt show in Paducah midday Wednesday (tomorrow). My eagle quilt has been there two weeks already and I am going to go and visit it. I will return Sunday with lots of pictures to share. Have a good week. I know I will.

What's this about?

I know pattern companies are probably trying to save space and trees, but when you have a pattern that has paper pieced parts to it that require 8, 20 AND 53 separate copies, you'd think they would make it a little easier for us to do the copying without having to totally tear up our pattern pages.

This is the pattern I have been working on in the black, brown and creams which I will probably entitle my Cafe Au Lait quilt. Much of it is applique, but the paper pieced parts were scattered all over the large sheet of paper and I had to cut them out and put them on one sheet so as not to have to make way too many copies when I run to Kinko's later today. The one with the most spires requires 53 separate copies.

Ok, so I have to cut them out, but why oh why would they have you cut up the directions? Oh well, I guess I will be doing a lot of taping to put it all back together after I get my copies. I am just trying to prepare ahead of time for my quilty retreat in June and this is probably one of my main projects that I will be working on.

Maybe there was a better way, but apparently this is the way my brain works.

Spring has sprung!

It seems to have been a long time coming, too. I have been so jealous of those blogs who have pictures of little green sprouts showing up or pretty little flowers in bloom. Now I can say that we here in Michigan are finally seeing some warm weather and warm enough to make the magnolias bud out and the forsythia come into bloom.




I, also, have a picture to show where our pear tree was that fell this winter from a wind storm. It has been chopped down and ground up. All that is left is a mound of chips. While dear hubby was out there cleaning up that area, he also trimmed up the evergreens that were encroaching on his ability to cut grass without getting all caught up in them. Didn't trim them up too much as we like our privacy when sitting outside on our deck. I was a little leary about him doing this, but it doesn't look too bad.




Anyways, it sure it nice to finally have some nice weather. Made me want to go out and get my mani/pedi.....always a good sign of nice weather.


I will be leaving for the big AQS quilt show in Paducah on Wednesday, so be assured that when I get back, there will be lots of pictures to share. If not a lot, at least you will see MY quilt hung up in all its glory. Hope you are all enjoying a beautiful Spring day.

Oh, oh....by the way, my blog has just been added to http://www.quilterblogs.com/. If you want to get your blog "out there", this is the place to be for quilting blogs. Check it out!!!

This is Happy Easter.....

I have the boys today and they will be spending the night as their mom and dad are going to the Tiger baseball game today. They've had their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, played outside, played in the basement (the best time for them!!! as there is apparently a lot of interesting things down there for them to see and do), we went shopping and they got bubbles which they did after pizza tonight and the big finale was coloring Easter eggs for tomorrow.

For some reason, they felt "blowing" on the eggs was going to help in the coloring process.

Now they are all tucked into bed and Mimi is hoping she gets some sleep in between being bumped and kicked and listening to them breathe or snore or whatever will keep me awake, because we have a very early morning church service to get up and ready for. Then the whole family is getting together for a wonderful brunch.

Hopefully you will all get to enjoy your families tomorrow. Happy Easter.

It's been an up and down kind of day....

It's been cold and rainy here in Michigan. Sure wish Spring would come and stay.


There were numerous things to do today. Had to pick up extra tiles and grout for #2 bathroom remodel (which hasn't started as we are not done with #1 bathroom remodel just yet). Did go and pick up the toilet, sink and fixtures for #1 remodel, so dear hubby just has a little plumbing to do, I need to paint and then we can get it all together....soon. So, that was a good thing. Pix coming soon.

Also, made arrangements to take the Crows in the Corner quilt to the quilter tomorrow. I just need to trim away some of the excess fabric in the back where I did reverse applique.


Now one of my downers today was taking the aqua sweater I have been working on into the yarn shop. The front and the back didn't match colorwise even though I used the same dye lots. This is what I get for working on too many projects at once. I wasn't paying attention from one side to the other. See for yourself.



What I found out was that this happens with hand dyes. Sure wish I had known that before I got so far, but the alteratives that the gal at the yarn shop gave me were #1 to just go ahead and sew them together (NOT!), #2 rip out the one side that I have the least of (my favorite side), as I have three skeins that are working up the same as the least favorite side and use the lighter one for the arms because there is a different stitch there and it may "hide" the fact that it is lighter, or #3 rip it all out and then use the lighter yarn alternating it with the brighter yarn throughout the body. Guess what I chose? Here's the after pic.



I did manage to save two rows on my needles. Pathetic...huh?

Then my real high for the day was running over to the quilt shop, Quilt'n'Friends, because my friend Nancy said they had a lot of black and tan prints that I have been hunting for to use in my applique quilt. Well....I came away with a pretty good stash to work on this quilt. Can't wait to get back to it.





Hope you all had a great day; and hopefully your weather is a whole lot more "Spring-like" than we have here.