LMS

Archive for October, 2010

Blogger’s Quilt Festival • 10.30.10

So, you can add me to the list of ladies wishing to be at Quilt Market right now. What I wouldn’t do to get my hands on some Sweetwater Sunkissed…

I’ve decided to do the next best thing and participate in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival hosted by Amy. Blog hopping always lifts my spirits and helps take my mind off all of the fun that I am missing….kind of. =)

This was a quilt that I made during the Old Red Barn Quilting along–the very first round–back in the day. Actually it was just last summer, but it was my first introduction to the virtual quilting world & I have been hooked since.

Being involved in such a thriving quilting community via flickr and other quilty blogs opens up such a resource of inspiration as well as opportunities I wouldn’t have had.

This quilt is made using fabrics from Heather Bailey’s Pop Garden line of fabric. It is a bright fun quilt–one of the gals over on flickr told me she was a little bit afraid of the bright yellow. It is a bright color–more “neon” as opposed to a softer “banana” yellow but, I have never been one to shy away from color.

Uh-oh….we lost her…

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Christmas Swap Partners • 10.25.10

Yay–I am so excited for this swap!

Just a reminder–this is what we will be swapping:

~Delicious Chocolate/Sweets

~A Heartfelt Handmade Item (just something small)

~Selection of Fabric Bits

~An Unexected Surprise

~A Christmas Card

I wish that I was able to swap with each and every one of you! I have such great readers of my blog!! =) The 3 randomly drawn swapees are:

Crafty Maine Mom said…

This sounds like fun. I love bright white accented with pastels. pink, yellow, and green are my favorites but I have been enjoying using orange lately. A surprise under the tree would be fun. As a stay at home mom I tend to buy all the gifts including my own.

Jessica Christensen said…

I do think that sounds fun! I love all your stuff! I like bright colors with white, but I also like all the muted Fig Tree and Three Sisters color palettes as well. (I LOVE Fig Tree.) Truly, I think the only color I’m not fond of is purple. I do love simple stitchery and embroidery, and I love anything with caramel in it. I would love to swap with you if I am not too late.

Angela said…

I would love to swap with you! I think we enjoy very similar styles of sewing and fabric, and I think it would be so much fun. Also, I think we live pretty close to each other (I’m in PA) Pick me.

And, I just had to add:

Whitney said…

what fun!! LOVE your blog! I work at Country Craft Cupboard and saw you a few weeks ago – so fun to see what you make with your stash! I’d love to be a part of this swap! I’ve never done one before but would love to try it out! My Favorite color is robin’s egg blue and my decor also includes olive green, warm creams and deep reds. I’d describe my style as casual cottage – picket fence, ironstone china, wood floors, farmhouse sink….. that’s me! I have 2 boys (2 years & 5 months) so they keep me hopping but I love to create when I have a few minutes to spare! Thanks for the chance to be a part of the swap! What a great idea!

So, I will be swapping with all 4 of you! I can’t wait to create little goodies for each of you! You have all given me some great inspiration to work with. I’ll be sending out an email to each of you shortly. =)

And, now for all you other gals. I am pairing up everyone who replied to my last post. Contact info. should be available via your partners link in the comments section or their original comment in the first Christmas Swap post. Please contact your partner for mailing info. & for any additional information you may need from them. We will be mailing out our packages the first week of December & remember…no peeking until Christmas morning!

Partners:

Nadine C & sewfunbymonique

Tracey & spencers

Cris A & Heather

Elsa & Kristine Hanson

Stephanie C sends to Kori, Kori sends to Beth, Beth sends to Stephanie C

Each of you is paired with the person right below/above your name in the comments on the last post–except for the last group–which has 3 ladies since we had an odd number of comments. If you have any trouble contacting your partner or any other questions please let me know! =)

Have fun!!

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Christmas Swap Update • 10.23.10

Woohoo!–Thanks everyone for wanting to participate in this fun swap. =) I’ll be randomly choosing my “swapees” soon.

It was mentioned that since I won’t be able to swap with everyone that the remaining people might like to be paired up to swap. If there is enough interest, I’ll be glad to pair up anyone wishing to participate. =) Just comment here & let me know if you’d prefer a blind swap or if you’d like to know who your partner is. =)

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A little Christmas Swap? • 10.21.10

I was browsing over on this blog and came across what I thought was a great idea. =) We all love Christmas and we all love giving and getting right?–How about a little swap…does anyone want to trade a little Christmas Goodness package with me?

In the package will be:

~Delicious Chocolate/Sweets

~A Heartfelt Handmade Item

~Selection of Fabric Bits

~An Unexected Surprise

~A Christmas Card

If you would like to trade a Christmas Goodness Package with me, please leave me a comment and let me know the things you like, such as colors and important things I need to know. All Packages will be mailed out the 1st week of December & upon receipt you are not allowed to peek until Christmas morning {promise}.

I will only be able to accept a handful of trades and will choose randomly from the wonderful peeps who leave a comment.

What do you think? Sound like fun? Are you in?

Had to add some random cuteness. =)

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Stinky Cheese & What I Have Learned • 10.18.10

First off, does anyone else automatically think of this book when you hear “stinky cheese”–”run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the stinky cheese man”–it’s a terribly cute book if you’ve never had the opportunity to read it. =)

Yes, stinky cheese….who knew that would find a place in a quilting blog…! I was starting the embroidery on this block:

Which incidentally is for Tami in the Scraptastic Bee. She sent the green spiderweb fabric(which has glow in the dark eyes…and did you know that when you iron glow in the dark fabric it glows?…imagine my surprise as I was ironing away and the fabric started glowing…very interesting) and asked for 12.5″ Halloween blocks of any design. There were some cute embroidery patterns in my latest issue of American Patchwork and Quilting that I wanted to use so I decided to use the pattern The Wishing Ring 2. It had the perfect sized square in the center to embroider within. So I finished the block and was ready to embroider. Now, you may be wondering when we are getting to the stinky cheese part….well, that part is right now. As I went to my little embroidery box(it’s a little fishing lure box I think) & opened the lid…I noticed quite an interesting smell…quite rank really. Smelled a bit like someone dumped some milk in there and closed the lid for a few weeks…quite yucky. Everything looked ok but obviously, something was amiss. I started polking around a bit, and there, way down in the corner underneath some embroidery floss were two small cubes of very green cheese. Can you imagine?!? Let me tell you embroidery floss and cheese do not mix…at least not after more than a couple days. I can only think that one of my two girlies–probably that silly littlest one…decided she had found the perfect spot for the two pieces of cheese she didn’t want to eat right then and wanted to save for later.

Now, don’t worry Tami—the black embroidery floss was on the other side of the box and not stinky at all–trust me, I gave it a good sniff… =)

So, #1 lesson learned…cheese belongs in the fridge. Lesson #2…did you all notice that the block up there has inset seams? Yay me! You may also have noticed that my Savvy seasons block had mitred corners as well. My mom taught me how to do them just two weeks ago–I had always been a bit intimidated by mitred corners and preferred not to make them. But, no problem! =) I think this will be a helpful skill to have under my belt.

So, remember cheese + pasta=good, cheese + embroidery floss=bad. =)

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Bee Hexed In Block • 10.16.10

I finished up the hexagon block that I had started on for Bee Hexed In. The colors that Brioni chose were blues/greens & she asked for a white background. This is the mosaic Brioni shared with us to help define her color scheme.

The hexagons are a lot of fun to make albeit a tiny bit time consuming. The finished product is going to be so pretty! For anyone interested in making their own Bee Hexed In blocks–the instructions can be found in the first issue of Fat Quarterly. Be sure to pop on over to the group and see some of the other wonderful blocks!

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Well that week flew by! • 10.15.10

I had a pretty busy week which explains the lack of posting on my poor neglected blog. In between meeting some deadlines for a fun little project I did manage to finish up my Savvy Season Swap project.

As I had mentioned in my last blog post, I was only planning on quilting the borders. After finishing those up, I realized that the white portion of the quilt looked so sad and bare–so I decided to add in some swirly quilting. When I originally drew up this embroidery design I had planned on stitching some swirlies in that area(there are also some on the gnomes beard) but quickly gave up that idea due to time constraints(meaning I am running a bit slow on on this project LOL). Quilting the swirlies gave me the look I had originally intended at a much speedier pace.

I also whipped up a tea towel to include in the package along with two fat quarters of fabric in the red/aqua/pink color scheme I went with.

I also finished up my quilt block for the Ringo Pie Bee which kicked off in October. Kerry is planning a “Cabinet of Curiosities” quilt–she asked each of us to make a block with a collection of items–she wanted us to include a vintage bit of fabric, a new piece of fabric and then any other fabrics we wished to include(all fabrics for this bee come from our stash.

I went with a collection of baskets or purses depending on how you look at things. =) I was going for baskets–after I had finished the first basket(that little guy in the lower left corner) I asked my girls what they thought it was–my 5 year old, Chloe, looked at it…”hmmmm”–my 2 year old….”purse Chloe…it’s a purse Chloe!” She was pretty proud to have figured it out before her big sis! =) So baskets or purses..whichever way you look at it. =)

This bee is going to be a lot of fun although it is definitely the most challenging bee that I have been in. Each month we will have a theme that we will be designing our block around–coming up for November we will be doing a dessert theme…not sure what I’ll be doing for that yet. This bee involves a lot of paper piecing and or applique as well as having very non-traditional blocks–it will definitely have me stretching my skills. And talk about sticker shock–the members in this bee..wowzers! I was super excited to be invited to join such an amazing group of ladies–I am gonna need to keep my game up LOL!

I also finished up the hexagons for Bee Hexed In another bee that just started this month.

This bee is based off of Tacha’s Bee Hexed In pattern in the first edition of Fat Quarterly. The blocks will look like this:

minus the text of course! =) Each month a bee member will choose the colors they would like their blocks made and we will each make one of the hexagon blocks above in those colors using fabrics from our stash. Pretty cool, right? Again, this bee is chock full of amazing ladies–I am so excited to be working with them! =)

And lastly, a little sneak peak of the super secret project…hmmmm…. =)

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Well, I changed my mind • 10.07.10

And I have decided to go with the non shaded version. =) I am so happy that I went with my gut feeling as I am feeling much better about this version. I used Moda’s Bliss fabric for the coin border–man, this is really a great line of fabric. I have way too many projects that I would love to use this fabric for. It is really just stunning.

I just need to finish up the stitching around the outer border and then it will be ready to quilt. It’s just gonna be a little mini quilt. Now, how would you quilt it? I was thinking about just doing a little bit of stippling in the border sections and leaving the stitching areas as they are. What do you think?

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Lemondrops and Gumdrops • 10.04.10

Last week I started up a new group over on flickr, Fabulous Fabric Stacks. It’s a place to share all of your lovely stacks of fabric & also a great place to see fun fabric combos. Amy had the wonderful idea to have weekly themes & see what we could all come up with. For example, this week I got to come up with the theme–”Lemondrops & Gumdrops” was what I came up with (inspired by my good friend Barney LOL). The stack above is my take on the theme–pez, ribbon candy, gundrops & of course where’s there is candy there are probably bugs…=)

If you haven’t joined this group already–pop on over and take a peek. There are some very drool worthy stacks of fabric goodness to be seen. =)

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do. Good Stitches Bee • 10.03.10

In August I joined the do. Good Stitches Bee. It is a charity bee that makes quilts for children in need. There are currently 3 circles within the bee–the Hope circle(which I am in), the Faith circle, and the Love Circle. Each circle completes one quilt per month & is involved with a different charity organization.

September was the first month for the Hope circle. The quilter in charge, Krista, asked that we make wonky square in square blocks using the colors green and blue for a little boy. In this bee we each make two blocks using fabric from our stashes. You can see all of the blocks above and these were the two blocks that I made: