Retreat - Part 2

Before I show you all the great projects that my friends made at our retreat, I wanted to remind you about this...

My guild's quilt show is this weekend! May 30th and 31st. If you live in the Seattle area, I hope you will come. I will be there all day Saturday, so come say hi.

On to the retreat...

This is Lou and she is HILARIOUS. I mention Lou often on my blog. She invited me to join the guild and she is just too fun. Doesn't she look fun...

...and a little crazy. Lou has us all laughing so hard that we all leave the retreat every year with six pack abs. Lou worked on a lot of different projects but I didn't get pictures of them all. Here is a pretty batik quilt that she spent a lot of her time on.


This is Barb, quite the model isn't she? She has become a whiz at making this wallet purses.

She also made this table runner start to finish. I love the cheerful '30s fabrics?

Barb was guild president for the last couple of years and as a thank you everyone made these cat blocks for her. She found the perfect setting for them don't you think?


This is Amber. She is co-chairing our quilt show and she has a wonderful eye for fabrics. She brought this quilt and I think all it had left was the binding. I love this black and white bento box.

Here's another one of her wonderful quilts.

I adore this strippy pieced quilt with all the bright colors.

Love the brights with the black. Cool visual effect.

This is Darlene. She was my table mate and I was so glad to get to sit by her. She's easy going and fun. I love her scrappy blue and yellow quilt. Those colors are so happy together.


I love the colors of this quilt too. A great pattern to show off the fabrics.

Darlene used a jelly roll to make this pretty braid quilt. I like how she put the lights on one side of the braid and the darks on the other.

This is Susan and she made this cool, quilt made from batiks. It was a kit that all the pieces are already cut with a diecut. It is the coolest thing!

She also made this pretty quilt using almost all Amy Butler prints.

This is Margot. She brought her little featherweight and sewed like mad all weekend. She made this cute turtle quilt and used stamping to do the lettering.

She also made this political quilt of her own design. I don't have a picture to show you of the borders she did but it was cool. She had stamped political words on strips of fabric that surrounded this center.

Here is Nan. Nan knows everything you need to know about quilting. I make her my mentor every time I go to retreats. And she does beautiful work. She used batiks for this cute one.

This quilt was so interesting to me. She used only two fabrics for it. Two hand dyed fabrics. One light and one dark. She cut them up and paired up lights and darks and it resulted in this beauty...

When I finally finish my block of the month from this past year it will look like this...


Nan is obviously a lot more on top of things than me.

Here is a gorgeous Hawaiian quilt that Nan started while at retreat. She cut it out and machine basted it and even did some needle turn applique on it. She gave me a little lesson on how to needle turn. Thanks, Nan!

Ada worked on a lot of projects. I only got this picture of her cute wallhanging in progress. She also worked on the Summer 2008 Block Party Quilt. We were all oohing and ahhing over her blocks.



Alice made this adorable little petal dress for her niece.

And she made this fun quilt for another relative.

This beautiful purple and green quilt is one that Sandy worked on. I love the use of striped border fabric pieced into the middle.

I hope you enjoyed this show and tell! Now I gotta run. Time to go help set up for the quilt show!

Quilt Retreat - part 1

I had a wonderful time at my quilt retreat. I look forward to it all year and it never disappoints. The view is beautiful, the food is delicious, and the time I get to spend with my friends quilting away is priceless.

Here is the big reveal on what I used all those log cabin blocks for...

My friend stood on a chair for me so I could get a picture, this quilt is a twin size. I love how it turned out. This is a block of the month quilt that was partially done when I started back up on it this past weekend. I had to finished the mountains and stars (my own design) and the yellow star block on the bottom before the middle was complete. The original design had a cat block and a dog block in it. I thought they didn't go with the design at all so I omitted them and came up with the mountain idea. And yes, (if you were wondering) this is the quilt that has the folded flower block from my blog header.

After that I needed a break and needed something small. Our guild's block of the month is a 3-D pinwheel block. Our guild has been so busy getting ready for the quilt show that's coming up this weekend that no one participated in last month's block of the month. So we all worked on the block for this month. We got a good collection going just from our little group. I made two, maybe I will win!

I've had this charm pack of Moda's Red, White, & Bold fabric line for a while. I took it with me so I could make it just in time for Memorial Day. The top was done in time but it still needs layered, quilted, and bound. Hopefully I will have it done by the 4th of July!

I was on a roll with charm packs so I got out my Nouveau and worked on some windmills. I like the look of them on point.



I got a lot done and had a good time. I will be back soon to show you all the beautiful quilts and projects that my friends worked on.

Retreat Sneak Peek

I'm having a great time ...



72 log cabin blocks. More on this quilt coming soon!

An almost finish

I almost finished my first Spring To Finish for May. I realize we are over half-way through May but I have been pretty busy.







This has been a fun, creative project for me. I received this gorgeous charm pack from Alexis, my swap partner for DQS6, and got inspired to do something with it right away. I had always wanted to do a braid quilt so I started slicing up that charm pack with a braid in mind.



It was fun because I had no idea where I was going with it. After making one braid and seeing that I had so many little strips left I made a second one. By this time I was thinking that I would make a table runner and so I put the braids side by side and framed it with a soft pink Michael Miller Fairy Frost.






I noticed that it needed something more and some applique in the border seemed like the perfect thing. So I added some flowers and leaves. Love it!



It was so nice to not have a plan and to design as I went. I would take a few days or so in between each step and think about what I wanted to do next.





All I have left is the binding. I will for sure finish it before the end of May. I am taking it with me to a quilting retreat this weekend along with a lot of other projects to finish. I am looking forward to some down time!

Quilt Show!!

My guild is having a quilt show!

It is coming up fast and I am so excited about it! This is my first time being involved in getting a quilt show ready. I am the coordinator of all the volunteers (guild members) that will be working at the show. It's kind of a big job but I have learned a lot and have been able to meet a lot more of the people (I would say women but we do have one man) in our guild.


Our guild has some award winning quilters so it is going to be a wonderful display of quilts and I can't wait to walk around and see them all. I even submitted a quilt, my first time ever to enter one of my quilts in a show and I am even going to have it judged, yikes! There will also be a huge display of journal quilts that are each the size of a piece of paper. I can't wait to see those too!


And of course there will be lots of shopping, a dessert cafe, and a chance to win a load of fat quarters. So if you live in the Seattle area I hope you will come. I will be there all day on Saturday May 30th, so come say hi to me!!

My Mother's Day

I think Mother's Day might be my new favorite holiday! My family makes it a weekend celebration and I eat it up. Literally! My kids and husband plan a fun menu and do all the cooking. It is a nice break to not be allowed in the kitchen.

They also spoil me with their love, attention, and time. Saturday we went to the kids' school and played out on the field. We played bocce ball, croquet, and catch with a baseball and mitts. Then we went to our community center and played pool (my favorite!), and then went geocaching. I love spending time as a family. That night we had a games marathon where we all wrote games we wanted to play on a scrap of paper that went into a hat. I got to draw the pieces of paper out and we would play whatever the paper said. It was lots of fun.

Sunday I was treated to a delicious breakfast and then cards and gifts. My son made this cute clay heart for me at school. I love these homemade gifts.


He also gave me the cutest little homemade coupons for me to cash in. They were doing dishes, going for a walk with me, and going grocery shopping. I laughed out loud at that last one. I think he might need my help on that one. And he wrapped up a few coins for me, so cute!


My daughter put her jewelry skills to work and made me this beautiful bookmark. And she wrote me a lovely card. She told me this past week that she can't wait to be a mom and that she has learned how to be a good mom from me. Awww, so sweet! (I'm glad she feels that way even though often I feel like have a lot to improve on)



At one of the "meetings" my husband and kids were having leading up to Mother's Day, my husband asked them what they think I would want as a gift. They both said definitely this...

... and that's what I got!! I was so excited and surprised that my kids knew about them! I have been wanting these beautiful interchangeable needles for a while now. They will make my sweater and lace knitting so enjoyable.


I hope you had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend as well. I feel so blessed that I have the opportunity to be a mother. It is a huge responsibility, but I would never want it any other way.

Who Says Boys Can't Knit?

While my mom was visiting she taught my son to knit. He had never shown an interest before besides finger knitting which I taught him long ago. That suited him fine, making "ropes". But with Grandma here, he suddenly showed an interest in expanding his options. I took him to my stash and helped him pick out a bulky yarn. My mom and I both knit continental so that's how both my kids learned. But I was amazed at how quickly my son took to knitting.



The way he held the yarn and needles, so naturally, really surprised me.

He really didn't struggle and his scarf grew very quickly.

Fun having another knitter in the family!

My daughter loves to make jewelry. She hurries in the morning to get ready for school so she can sneak off to her room and make a necklace and earrings to match her outfit. She has made sets and given them to friends, teachers, aunts, grandma, and cousins. Did you notice there is no mom on that list. I teased her one day asking if she was ever going to make a set for me. She looked at me surprised and said that the ones she makes and keeps are for us to share. I guess she thought I already knew that.

It dawned on me one day as I was surfing Etsy and dreaming about pretty stitch markers that I had my own little jeweler right here in my house. I showed her what stitch markers looked like and asked if she thought she could make them. "No problem", she said. So we went shopping for a few essentials and in no time she made me these...

And these...

Aren't they so pretty?

I went back to the store yesterday and bought smaller jump rings and asked her to make some stitch markers for my sock knitting. I can't wait!

I am really looking forward to this weekend. My sweatheart and the kids have been having lots of "meetings" without me. I think it is going to be a good Mother's Day weekend for me! I hope you all have a wonderful Mother's Day weekend, too!

Nine-Patches

I am really excited about three by three, the nine patch swap that twiddletails is hosting. I really enjoy making nine-patches and love the numerous possibilities with fabric and quilt patterns that incorporate them. Instead of just picking two fabrics and making all my blocks with them, I will be making a variety. I am also using this method which I think is fun, fast, and fairly accurate. If you are making 6" (finished) nine-patch blocks too, you can use this method by cutting your starting squares at 7 1/2" and your strips at 2 1/2".


The rules are that you have to use two fabrics per block and that they have to be medium or dark, not light. This is what I have so far and I am starting to question whether some of the fabrics I picked are considered light. Do I need to start over?