Sappy Sappy Sappy!!

I must confess - I so dearly enjoy the Sappy Christmas Movies that are played on Hallmark and Lifetime at this time of year!  It started last Saturday and I am SURE if I don't scale back, I will be tired of it all by the time Christmas gets here  :)

I am a talented lady and as I write this post, ( I know how to multi-task)  I am watching "Snow Bride" on the Hallmark Channel.  My kids (they are all adults now) show up occasionally to let me know how sad I am.

I have been busy sewing too!  This is what I did today:

Not a real great photo, I know. But, I was trying my hand at a little Victorian project.
The Victorian projects I have viewed have a LOT of BLING!! I am not a very bling-y type of person so this was a little difficult.
One of the purposes of this project was to use fabric from one of the lines my sister and I purchased in the summer.  I also made this:

 

A pillow case. I watched the Missouri Star Quilt Company tutorial on Youtube to check out how to sew it "hot dog" style.  I decided to do French seams on the inside.  It looks very nice!

Well, back to "Snow Bride".  It is easy to figure out they will fall in love and then have a difficult time trusting each other once he figures out she is not who she said she was.  Oh but it is still fun!

Off to Denver for a quick trip this week then more sewing when I am home.  Hope everyone has a great week!

Quilt Market Part II

Wow, it's hard to believe at this time last week sister and I were physically exhausted but mentally stoked!!  We spent last Saturday working with a fabric rep and drooling over the beautiful fabrics that will be released next year.  We purchased 2 lines - they will be coming out at different times. We also purchased some fabrics that will be shipped this month (how exciting!!!).

But . . . let's start at the top of the day.  Here is a picture from the Convention Center in Houston:

Sister Diane enjoying the morning before Market opened:

Once the market opened, we just HAD to stop and check out the sit down models of the Gammil sewing machines.  This is Diane making a mug rug  (I had to explain to her what a mug rug is - we used to call them coasters! Diane is older than me and learning new lingo is more difficult for her. She has probably asked me 3 to 4 times what a mug rug is!)  :)  Love you Sis!

Towards the end of the day, I managed to spot Holly Holderman of Lakehouse Fabrics.  Not only is she a talented woman, she is very kind and gracious, too!  This photo was for my friend Kim! She LOVES everything Lakehouse!

 This past week was crazy!  Got home from Market on Sunday, left for Denver Tuesday morning (work related), got home Thursday evening.  Then we had a baby shower for daughter Hannah. She is expecting her first baby - A GIRL!!!

Hannah wants to decorate the baby's room with letters so we bought the alphabet in different sizes and fonts.  We set up a painting and decorating station for the shower guests to show off their creative abilities.  Here are some photos of what the finished product looks like:

Neat idea, huh?
Well, I am off to San Antonio tomorrow for a conference on the software the company I work for is using.  Hopefully I will learn all kinds of things this week!
Until next week!

Houston Quilt Market

What a crazy weekend!  Sister Diane and I are both en route to our homes (different directions) now after having a great weekend together in Houston.  Our creative juices - right along with our silly and zany ones - were running amuck!  We took educational and inspirational classes, visited vendor booths, and met some wonderful people who had all kinds of nuggets of gold to share with us.
BUT FIRST, We decided to prepare ourselves for what dear hubby might say when he learns how much $$$ we spent . . .

 

I am planning on blaming Diane but she says .. .

 

 

This was just tooo funny to pass up! It was right there by the Southwest Ticket Counter at the Houston Airport!

 



 

We stayed at a very nice hotel not too terribly far from the Convention Center.  It was the Doubletree by Hilton. About a mile away, we decided to forgo the shuttle and hoof it.  By the end of Friday, this is what my pedometer app told me:

 

 

 

Now, I happen to believe this is an error. But we really walked about 15,000 steps!  By the time we got back to the hotel on Friday night, all we could do was GROAN like a couple of old ladies!!!

By the way, this represents a couple of round trips from hotel to convention center and back.  Diane had one more round trip than me because she forgot to take her medication and had to go back and get it!!!!!

 

Opening session For School house was done by Andover Fabrics.  They have the license to do a line based on one of my favorite shows,   Downton Abbey.

They flew in the show's costume designer and the show's set designer.  They both had lovely British Accents and It was fascinating to hear all about what they do.

The fabric line is beautiful and here are some photos of what they had made up:

 

 

 

Well, that's all for now!! I will post more later.



One Ring  Ruler to Rule them All

 

 

Well, believe it or not, I have been writing this post in my head for almost a month now!  The hold up has been trying to figure out how to fix my photos with a watermark.  Regardless, it has been WAY too long and I need to get this out!!!

 

In September, our local Quilt shop hop took place.  Here in Maricopa County, there are 14 shops that participate.  You purchase a "passport", visit each shop, watch their demo, get your passport stamped, then turn it in at your last shop and keep your fingers crossed for winning a prize.

 

I was working from home the week of the shop hop so I planned to take my time, visiting only a couple of shops each day.  In the past I have visited all the shops in two days and I came away realizing how much I had missed by just blowing through it.  Not so this year! My plan was to really look at what each shop was demonstrating, consider carefully if it was something I would truly use, and make any purchases WISELY!!

 

During dinner one night, my husband asked what "damages" our family budget had incurred as a result of my shop hopping.  I was very pleased to tell him that I had purchased nothing!  I was a bit discouraged to see how many shops were demonstrating RULERS!!  Now, come on!  How many rulers does one person really need?  (I asked my husband).  With a cute little grin and a twinkle in his eye, he said "One Ruler to Rule them all".  Well, being the huge Lord of the Rings fan that I am, I cracked up and my imagination started running wild.

 

I called daughter Diane, told her my idea, and this is what we came up with - One Ruler to Rule them all:

 

 

Drawing is compliments of Diane Brennan.

 

 





 

She absolutely caught my idea and drew it up! The ring has "One Ruler to Rule them All" in it as well as some elvish writing (hehehe).

 

I am proud to tell you all that I did not purchase any rulers   YAY!  

 

NEWS   NEWS   NEWS   NEWS

 

I am meeting my sister in Houston for the International Quilt Market.  This will be our second visit to Market and we have a PLAN.  I will be sure to post photos when I get back.   Until then . . .

The finished product

Here are photos of the finished jelly roll quilt.  It has been done for a while, I just kept forgetting to get photos when the time of day was right.

Hubby was holding it up but the light wasn't right so we put it over the pool fence.

 

 



 

A little closer view.

 

 

Close up of the quilting.

 

 

AND . . . a re-post of my first quilt label!

 

I got a little side-tracked over the weekend, pulled out a bunch of my stuff (because I was looking for something) so my family room looked like this -

 

I found these really cool little corrugated organizers and they fit nicely into my cube bins (they are 10 1/2 inches high)

 

So, started making sense out of the MOUNDS of fabric that I have

 



 

My goal is to go through all my fabric, organize it on these neat things, then sort by color and theme!

It will take a while but at least I have started!!

 

Now, the next project to finish had better get done this week.

More later

Keep sewing!





Learning to Long Arm

Back in March I took a class at Mulqueen's Sewing Center in Glendale, to learn how to use a long arm sewing machine.  Needing to go back and practice, I had set up times twice to rent the machine and each time my work got in the way and I had to cancel   :(  
It wasn't until I had my sewcation and went with my sister to Cowles Quilting and Sewing center in St. Albans, VT, that I had contact again with a long arm.  And oh boy, what a machine that one was! We got another lesson and actually used a Gammil Statler (that's a computerized machine).
Any way, once we did that, I was all jazzed up to get back to practice. On Friday, I returned to Mulqueen's, rented the machine, and quilted a quilt.

I think it came out fairly well for a first one! I used a pantograph because I thought it would be nicer to do something other than just a meander.  Here are some photos:

The quilt loaded onto the long arm table

This is the pantograph pattern I used

My first attempt at a quilt label

 

I need to explain the label.  After leaving Mulqueen's, I was really hungry. I had been at the long arm for 6 hours and not taken a break to eat, drink, or potty!  Mulqueen's is over on the west side of the valley so as I got into my car, I was trying to think of someplace between there and home where I could grab something to eat.  Of course!!! There was a Starbuck's on 43rd Ave. and Thunderbird!  As I got close, I remembered there was also a quilt shop there (wink) and of course I would just have to stop in to "The Other Quilt Shop".

I went in and the owner, Sheri, helped me choose a binding. She asked if I had my label already made and when I told her I have never put a label on any of my quilts, she started to tear up! She told me this story about a young girl who started a quilt in 1886 at the tender age of 15. It was all handpieced. Sheri had photos of the quilt, the girl who made it, and even a photograph of the notes she had made. All this to let me know that while I may think my quilt isn't worth much, someone 50 to 100 years from now may want to know.

The label doesn't have much information on it but I am not sure yet how much I want to put on a label!

I am ending now so that I can put the last stitches into the binding.  Then on to the next projects . . .

How the Sewcation went . . .

I think I am slowly recovering from my sewcation! It was lots of fun and lots of  WORK!!!!

Sister Diane and I had very specific plans and specific projects to work on.  The first was the party slippers pattern out of Christmas fabric for the HoHoHo blog hop. Cute pattern, but it wasn't until slipper #3 that I figured out the best way to make them! (See previous post for photos).

Diane and I had planned to complete a quilt made out of the Jason Yenter - Winter Wonderland fabric we purchased for our online store (In the Beginning Fabrics).  The name of the online store is CadiCorners.  (More on that later).

On Monday evening, I started cutting it out. We had decided to do a triple Irish Chain pattern. Of course, being the gals we are, we couldn't use a pattern with the math already done, Nooooo! We had to  change it up and go through the (hassle) of figuring out the master block size with all the other sizes involved! Trust me, it is so much smarter to use a standard size quilt block. Cutting fabric at 10pm and continuing on into the wee hours of the next day is NOT smart when you have to cut 1 3/4" strips. It would have been so much easier if they were 1 1/2" or 2" strips!

Having the strips for block A all cut out, we finally decided to call it a day (night) and head to bed. Early on Tuesday morning, I started sewing. I sewed, and sewed, and sewed and (well, you get the picture!)

Here's what things looked like:

 

I sewed the strip sets together, then cut those into 1 3/4" strips. There are 7 fabrics in a strip, 7 strips in a block.  Notice I had containers with the sewn together strip sets. They were labeled

A, B, C, and D.

 

There are a total of 32 blocks of the above combination.

 

 

Block B has a total of 31. I don't have a photo of those in progress but here's a close up of one taken after the whole quilt was quilted:

 



Diane and I took the completed quilt top to the local Gammil Dealer up in St. Albans. Both my sister and I have had long arming classes but this was a first using a Statler. This machine is computerized and we chose two different snowflake patterns for the two different blocks.
Here is a photo of putting the quilt on the frame:

Here's a photo of the screen up on the wall. This is how we were able to lay out what the machine would do for us:

This is Julie (with her back to us in the photo). She and her husband run Cowles Sewing and Quilting up in St. Albans. Julie was wonderful and worked with us to help us get this quilt totally quilted on Saturday. Diane is in the photo too! She was pretty pooped when it was done! I was there to help put the quilt on the frame, get started with choosing the snowflake patterns, run through setting up the first two rows to be quilted, and then I took Mom back to Diane's house.  I returned a couple of hours later to find Diane almost done! She had two final rows to set up and quilt, then we had to turn the quilt on the frame to quilt the remaining two borders.  This took from 10am until just after 6pm to do. Basically, Diane and I were taught how to use this machine.

So, here are the photos that I have of the quilt. I left Vermont to go home to Phoenix on Sunday, August 11th. On Sunday evening, my sister had completed the quilt -She sewed the binding on. I do not have a photo of the completed quilt - but this will give you an idea of what it looks like:

 

Diane made a gorgeous Christmas tree skirt - she just needs to get it quilted and photographed. Then I will post that!
I will be working on a Christmas stocking here at home.
Well, so long for now!