The Greater Atlanta Quilt Shop Hop was such fun!

I am now back to DD and DSIL's house in Marietta after completing the Greater Atlanta Quilt Shop Hop - 13 shops in 2 days! What fun to take the tour with a bunch of like-minded shoppers!! I am SO glad I took the bus tour that was organized by Sarah at Intown Quilters. It was well worth the $100 to have John do the driving; I definitely want to do it again next year and I expect to see some of the same ladies on the tour next year. I met Shirley, Martha, 2 Mary K's, Diane, Anne, Deborah, Lucretia, Bonnie, Bess, Thea and Thea's mom, and others. We shared our purchases, our projects, and our lives during the long drives from Decatur to Covington, Conyers, Jonesboro, Newnan, Hiram, Lawrenceville, Duluth, Sandy Springs, Marietta (3 shops) and Holly Springs. Each shop had made a quilt using the same blocks, and each shop gave us a pattern for their block. It was so interesting to see all the different quilts made with the same blocks. At Red Hen Fabrics I saw Sandie, the woman who quilted my Van Gogh's View and shared my happiness about her quilting with my friends on the bus - and gave out some of her business cards. I even met a lady at one of the shops who had read my blog entry yesterday or this morning about going on the bus. An unexpected treat was meeting Aunt Philly at Stitchin' Time - the creator of Aunt Philly's Toothbrush Rugs. She was demonstrating her method of making these quick, completely washable rugs and some of us bought her pattern or her CD, or a starter kit -- and I practicing making it on the bus back to Intown - sure made the trip back go fast! Now I've got quite a few fabrics that will be "seasoning" as Lucretia says while I plan for their use. Maybe at least one of us will even be one of the prize winners.

Add to all the fun of the Shop Hop the fact that I have seen, or will see, my mom, 3 of our kids and their spouses, all 3 grands, and a friend of a friend back in Lexington - it will have been a great extended weekend. Only one thing could have made it better - if DH had been along for the trip so he could have seen the family too.

I'm in the Atlanta area this weekend

I came from VA to the Atlanta area yesterday to participate in the Greater Atlanta Quilt Shop Hop. I signed up for the bus tour that between today and tomorrow will take us to all 13 shops. I am staying with DD and DSIL in Marietta and have to leave in a few minutes to drive the 15 miles or so to Intown Quilters where the tour starts. Yes, they suggest that I allow about an hour to get there since I have to go on I-285 from Marietta to Decatur. At times like this I have to remember exactly why it is that I want to move to the Atlanta area when DH decides to retire! The reason is that 3/4 of our kids and all of our grands live here between Athens, Marietta and McDonough. Wish me luck on the drive. The funny thing is -- this shop is across the street from where the Marietta family used to live! Oh well, here goes.

The other two blocks for an ALA quilt

Here are the other two blocks that I recently made for a different quilt for the ALA BiblioQuilters. This quilt will have all purple and green Log Cabin blocks, and I volunteered to make one of each. It will also be part of the Silent Auction that will be held at the American Library Association meeting this summer in Anaheim. The center block will be the same in all of them, and the organizer also sent one purple and one green fabric, along with one beige that we could use if we wanted to. I used her purple and green ones on the longest outside positions, and the beige is in the top center of the purple one. I had not made a Log Cabin block in a long time but liked doing these and now want to do some more for myself!

Sterling Touch Quilt Blocks

Recently I joined the ALABiblioQuilters Yahoo Group - a small group of librarians and library-related folks who make quilts to be in the silent auction at the annual American Library Association conference. Since I attend this conference most years with my husband I offered to help make some of the quilts. This year they are making three, and I am helping with two of them. I have finished the two blocks for the first one - "Sterling Touch." This pattern was in Quiltmaker last year. The organizer of this quilt sent me 3 pieces of material - I needed to use at least one in each of the blocks. The rest of the fabrics were to come from my stash. In this one the fabric of hers that I used was the tan with burgundy brush strokes in the small triangles on the outer edge. This is the bottom center block. The second one that I made was the left center one. The fabric that she sent that I used in this one was the burgundy oak leaf design in the center. The organizer of this quilt converted the patterns that were in the magazine to paper-pieced designs. It took me a pretty long time, and a special trip to a quilt shop 45 minutes away from here, to come up with fabrics that I hope she will approve of!

The other quilt I am helping with is a log cabin design - I have one of them partially finished and have selected the fabrics for the other one, and hope to finish them both today. No quilting since Friday night -- we spent the weekend painting our hallway. We finished just in time for me to watch the last few laps of the Daytona 500! None of my favorite drivers finished in the top three but it was an exciting finish!

Questions about Guild Size

I recently volunteered to be on a committee for my guild to come up with some ideas for having small group experiences within a large guild. How do you put people together diplomatically, or do you let them put themselves together by interest group, geographically, etc. And are there other ways of having the large group seem small enough to make friends and have a chance to enjoy being with each other? At the moment our guild has 63 members, and probably 20 of these have joined in the last 2 years or less. If everyone on the rolls came to our monthly meeting it would be standing room only. We are currently using a place for our guild retreat that can only hold 22 sewing machines, and some people are unhappy about that. Some have suggested that we limit our size to 65 - but several of us are opposed to that at this time. If any of you have ideas about our concerns please let me know. Our committee is having its organizational meeting this Saturday, but our investigations into this issue will be going on for awhile.

Center of BargelloBowl is Finished!

I was up until 3 am, but did get the center of my BargelloBowl finished. It is 48 1/2 by 64 1/2" - each square is 2", so there are 768 pieces in it! That is not many pieces for one of Bonnie's scrappy quilts, and with only 32 different fabrics I'm not sure it qualifies as "scrappy." I am very happy with it, and am now thinking about borders and binding, and then quilting. For the border I am thinking of using the purple "Raindrops" with maybe squares or rectangles of the other fabrics arranged to look like they are floating on the purple. Not sure how to do that yet, but I am thinking about it. This was a fun quilt to do, a design that I had wanted to do for a long time, and pretty quick, though several others on QuiltvilleChat got finished way before me! Getting the intersections to all match up worked well most of the time, but at 3 a.m. I am less of a perfectionist! I hope that I find the time to do other bargellos. I have a book of bargello designs in needlepoint from 1967 - might be fun sometime to convert some of those to quilting. I also ordered the Twisted Bargello pattern that so many on QuiltvilleChat have talking about.

First Half of BargelloBowl Quilt is Together

Thanks to all of you who replied with your thoughts about which layout I should use. I finally decided on using just one square at the top and bottom of the stairs. I am not sure what my quilting pattern will be but I think I will try to follow the lines of the fabrics and if that is the case I thought it might be easier to do if there was only one block at the ends of the stairs. I have 12 of the 24 strips together and am now working on the 2nd half, then I'll sew the two halves together. I'm still hoping to get it finished before I go to bed, but we'll see. I've had some trouble getting a few of the seams to line up correctly, but I am trying to not get frustrated! Here is the first half I also took time out to fix pizza for dinner - from scratch, including the dough! This would have been a good day to order out, but our tradition is that I always make it at home. It was good, but took about 2 1/2 hours for fixing, eating and cleaning up. And watching all those commercials took time too! Some of my favorites were the baby for eTrade, the dog and the horse for Bud, James Carvill and Bill Frist for Coke --- oh, and the oboe player who became a football player. It will be interesting to see which get the most chatter over the next few days.

Back to the machine now.

Layout question on BargelloBowl Quilt

I have cut my 4 tubes of strips and am laying them out to see how I want that to go. Can't decide between having one square at the top and bottom of the "steps" and having 2.

I will sew the first six strips together and then see if I can decide - and in the meantime might get some input from others.

My fabrics for the BargelloBowl quilt

I now have my fabrics cut for the BargelloBowl quilt. I have agonized over the fabrics I wanted to use for way too long - after all it is supposed to be a scrappy quilt, right? Well, I decided to use teals, purples and blues and only 32 fabrics, so each fabric will go completely across the quilt. Here are some pictures of my run. I just laid out the strips on top of each other to get the general idea of how it will look. They are shown in order from top to bottom.





Now I need to start sewing the 4 groups together. It's a good day for staying inside here - freezing rain, ice and sleet apparently this morning and even though the temp is 37 now there is still ice on the trees and bushes. I do have to go out later for hair appt, but I'll get some strips together before then I hope.

BargelloBowl '08

One of the Yahoo Groups I belong to is QuiltvilleChat, hosted by Bonnie Hunter She is one busy lady, but has decided in the midst of having packers come next week to move her family from SC to NC that she wants to do a quilt on Sunday during the Super Bowl, and she has invited the members of her Chat group to join in. She/They/We will be making her Scrappy Bargello quilt in a lap size. For that we need to have 128 strips - 2 1/2" wide by 16" long. I was undecided about whether to join in or not, but after seeing this logo that one of the members designed today I thought I just really NEED to do this! I have not made a bargello before, even though I have collected a lot of fabrics with that design in mind. Not sure how scrappy I will make mine - but I have a few days to decide. Anyone want to join in??

Copyright Issues and Jumping to Conclusions

One of the Yahoo Groups that I belonged to until just recently was Quilters Corner Club. It is now defunct, mostly because the person who started it has apparently disappeared, and the other two women who were in it with her started, and recently expanded, a new group called One Stitch at a Time Saturday night I read on the OST group that the founder of QCC, the nowhere-to-be-found young woman, was selling as her own designs a group of New York Beauty patterns that look to be identical to those designed by someone else. On the QCC site they are called the International New York Beauty BOM. Beginning this past June she posted for our free use two patterns per month. If we did not get them from the site during that month then we had to buy them from her. A few months ago she started selling all the rest of the 25 if we wanted to move more quickly than two a month. In early January we expected the next two to be posted but they never appeared. We then began hearing the the other two women could not contact her, and soon they pulled out completely from QCC. I have already made 4 of these blocks and had planned to make a pillow using some of them, as well as finishing the BOM as they appeared. The OST woman said she was going to throw all of her patterns from the BOM away and I gathered thought we should all do the same thing. After reading this, and seeing the photo evidence they presented, I found some patterns and books by the designer who they told us was the actual designer and purchased them online. Later that night, or the next morning, I read a follow-up posting from someone else who was trying to set the record straight. This person, who as far as I know has no contact with any of the other women, told us that she emailed the "actual designer" who told her that indeed the patterns were designed by the first person. Seems that a fabric shop where the "actual designer" recently held a class was looking online for a picture of a New York Beauty quilt to advertise her class. Rather than get a photo from her, they just went online and found this one and put it on their website as hers, when in fact it was from the first young woman. Apparently they are taking that picture off their website, although it is still there as I write this. I did think it was odd that as I looked at designer #2's patterns and books I did not see any that looked exactly like the International NYB from QCC, but it never occurred to me what the real reason for that was. I did however like her patterns, and will be happy to have them in my collection. When this mix-up was pointed out to the OST women, including a quote from designer #2 the response was that there was to be no more discussion of this topic on OST. Clearly there is more going on there than has been said, and the fact remains that the first young woman is the only organizer of a retreat scheduled to be held in WV in April that now no one can find out anything about. I have not signed up for that but apparently several people have, and have paid for it. Messy, messy, messy!

I plan to continue at some point to complete the NYB blocks that I have already, and if we never get any more of them I'll just do something with the ones I have. And the pillow is still on my list of projects. One of the OST women is now designing some other NYB blocks that I may also use for something, but they are a different size from the others. Here is a photo of the 4 blocks I've made so far -

If you have followed this saga and are not confused to this point - then good for you!!

Hydrangeas and Butterflies pillow finished!

Tonight I finished the paper-pieced pillow-top that goes with the Hydrangeas and Butterflies quilt. I did the piecing on it months ago. It was the first Carol Doak design I did before I started on last year's Fat Eighth Swap in her Yahoo Group, which took place from April - June I think. I used some of the same fabrics that I used in the quilt, and made a cording edge using the same stripe that I used for the binding of the quilt. It is probably hard to see the back of the pillow, maybe some of it in the second picture, but it is the fabric from the border of the quilt. I hand pieced it, and just finished assemblying it tonight. The cording gave me a few problems, but I really wanted to use it so I kept working with it. This completes the Hydrangeas and Butterflies "set." Now on to other projects!

Allie's Green Batik Quilt

Our youngest daughter, Allie, has been visiting us since mid-November. She had been working as an intern on an organic farm in the Hudson Valley of NY, and after a visit with us left this past Friday to go back to work on that farm for a few weeks before moving to a nearby farm where she plans to work this coming season. During the last couple of weeks that she was with us she decided she wanted to make herself a quilt using some of my batiks. She was living in my sewing room, surrounded by my stash and I think it must have been calling her name! She likes to make up her own designs in her quilts, and her knitting. She has two quilts in progress that I have pictures of on my Quilting Links webpage - http://mamanance.info/quilting/index.htm#family She hand-pieced and is hand quilting them, but this time she wanted to try out my Brother. She started on it Jan 7, and finished all but sewing down some of the binding by the time she left here Friday. She had never machine quilted but practiced a bit with the walking foot and with free motion, and, as I guessed she would chose, she liked the free motion better, so did a meandering stitch all over it -- and seemed very happy with the results!

Van Gogh's View is officially finished

Just a few minutes ago I finished sewing the label into Van Gogh's View so I can now say it is officially finished. Usually the labels come later, sometimes much later, but this time I thought I would do it while I still had the quilt. I made the label using 18-count cross-stitch fabric, and did the lettering in backstitch, then put a border around the label. I'd hoped to have it finished by Christmas, but that didn't happen. I'll be shipping it to our daughter and her family in GA.Tuesday since tomorrow is a holiday.

Hydrangeas and Butterflies wallhanging is finished!

This afternoon we hung the completed Hydrangeas and Butterflies wallhanging in our room. I have documented some of the progress in making it on my Quilting Links webpage I began this project in September 2006, a few months after we painted our bedroom and got a new comforter, etc. The room is blue, and not a pale blue, and the comforter has a large block of lime green, one of blue and one white, so I knew from the beginning that it needed to have blue and lime green in it, and I knew where in the room I wanted to hang it, so that limited the size. After looking and many fabrics on quiltshops.com I saw the large hydrangeas fabric and knew right away that I had to use that fabric. I looked at the collection it was in - Lakehouse's Hydrangeas and Raspberries - and bought some of those fabrics, along with the butterflies fabric that was in a companion collection by Lakehouse. I found a pattern using big blossoms, that actually used the hydrangeas fabric, but the pattern had some aspects that I didn't like, so I designed my own. I used other fabrics besides just what was in the Lakehouse collection to make the borders around each block. It is hand quilted using the Baptist Fan pattern in the 4 big blocks, a cable around each of the big blocks, and a diagonal grid on the border. For the binding I used a striped fabric from Lakehouse and cut it on the bias so that the stripes would go at an angle. I am so happy with the way it turned out - I have been making extra trips upstairs just to look at it today! I have a paper-pieced pillow using several of the same fabrics that is almost finished that will go on the bed. Can you tell that blue, yellow and green is my favorite color combination!

Daughter is home; 1 treetop done

The traveling daughter is home, all safe and sound with no apparent problems. When she called this morning from DC to say she was that far it was a like a big weight off my shoulders. Kristie and Cindy, thanks for your comments.

I appliqued the smaller treetop on Van Gogh tonight, and 1/2 of the larger one, but it is time to put it up for the night. I work at the hospital tomorrow, but will try to finish it tomorrow night and get started on the label.

Progress on Van Gogh Quilt

Here is a picture of one of the trees on the Van Gogh quilt. I have machine quilted the two trunks and treetops. The trunks are appliqued on and I will be working on getting the treetops on today.

Bloglines, LibraryThing and Motherhood

No, there is no real connection between these three topics, just things I want/need to comment on!

First, Bloglines - is a great way to see which blogs have new postings. You just enter the list of blogs you want to keep up with, then go to the Bloglines site to see a list of all your favorite blogs, with the number of new postings indicated beside each. Thanks to Jen for mentioning this site. Unfortunately, it doesn't help you find the time to read them all!

Second, LibraryThing - Thanks to Debbie I have found this great site that lets you catalog your library collection rather painlessly. As a retired librarian who has done a fair amount of cataloging, I am thrilled to find an easy way to catalog my own books. You can see to the right of this posting a widget from them that shows a random group of book covers from the ones I added earlier tonight. It even shows you how many other people on LibraryThing have the same book in their collections. At the moment I only have 19 of my books in, with lots more to go, but I think 2 of them are only in my library.

Thirdly, Motherhood. My 4 kids are 28-38 years old and all on their own, but we still worry about them don't we? Our youngest has been an intern on 2 different organic farms for the past two growing seasons. In 2006 she was on a small family farm in south central KY; this past season she was at Hawthorne Valley Farm near Ghent, NY. We picked her up from there the weekend before Thanksgiving and she has been here since then. She started working full-time at the library where my husband works the week after she got here. She has already made one driving trip back to NY to visit friends there, and on Christmas Eve she flew from Atlanta, where we had gone for Christmas with our kids, grands and hubby's family, to NY to spend a week or so at the farm. This past Friday night she was to have taken a bus from NYC to Bangor, ME to visit a farm about an hour from there where she would like to work this year. I last talked to her that night before she left - she was trying to stay awake so she could sleep on the overnight bus. Today she was to take a bus back to NYC, then, after a few hours wait, take a bus from there to Charlottesville, VA where I am to pick her up tomorrow afternoon - that's about an hour from here. The more I think about it the more worried I get! These are not her first bus trips - last year she took one from Atlanta to KY to revisit that farm, then from KY to NY to get to the new farm, but overnight bus trips, and being in bus stations during the transfers, etc really worry me. She said she would call me in the morning when she is waiting for the transfer in DC. I'm sure she gets aggravated with my worrying, but I still worry.

OK, back to a bit more quilting before I try to get some sleep. I am finishing up the quilting on the treetops for the Van Gogh quilt. I'll try to post a photo in the morning.

Quilting plans for the year

This is NOT a list of New Year's Resolutions - I know I won't keep those! But I do want to make a list of projects that I want to finish or continue on during the year. Will "publishing" it make me more likely to actually stick to it - not sure about that, but here goes:

1. Finish the applique and label on Van Gogh's View - DONE AND MAILED
2. Make the labels for Surrounded and the two Cars quillows - attaching will have to wait until I am in GA again - ONE QUILLOW LABELED
3. Make secret 6 blocks - DONE
4. Make secret signature wall hanging
5. Make a secret flannel rag quilt - DONE - JAN '09
6. Bind Hydrangeas and Butterflies - DONE
7. Assemble pillow that goes with Hydrangeas and Butterflies - DONE
8. Assemble the calico lap-quilting blocks into a lap quilt
9. Continue on the Spectacular Scraps quilt- MORE FABRICS CUT
10. Continue on Grandmother's Flower Garden - WORKED ON BUT NOT DONE
11. Continue on Dresden Plate Stack 'n Whack
12. Catch up with QCC's NYB blocks
13. Catch up with Carol Doak's BOM
14. Make a quilt out of the blocks I got in the Carol Doak Fat Eighth Swap
15. Make the Dahlia Sweatshirt
16. Do something with my guild's challenge fabric - DECIDED NOT TO DO
17. Continue on the Christmas wreath wall hanging
18. Continue on the Pantry quilt that the Senior Center group is doing - center is done
19. Finish quilting the blocks for the Senior Center sampler- DONE AND IS HANGING
20. Assemble the Senior Center sampler quilt - SEE ABOVE
21. Make some toe-warmers for the guild retreat- DONE
22. Make some of the participants' gifts for the guild retreat - DONE
23. Finish quilting Allie's apple quilt
24. Finish quilting on Fallen Leaves wallhanging - DONE
25. Finish quilting on guild's comfort quilt
26. Make Peter Rabbit quilt - ON HOLD
27. Make a quilt for grandchild due in August - PIECING DONE; HAND QUILTING IN PROGRESS
28. Make one of Quiltville's scrap quilts - see #33
29. Make the batik Hawaiian wedding quilt
30. Make a quilt with the blue Tonga batiks
31. Make the Celestial Migraine quilt
32. Make a quilt for niece/nephew due in June - DONE
33. Make a bargello quilt - Center is pieced
34. Continue on the Tumbling Blocks quilt
35. Make some placemats for us
36. Make some placemats and/or table-runners for our kids - ONE TABLE RUNNER DONE
37. Make a 2nd pillow to go with the Surrounded quilt - probably NYB design
38. Make a rag quilt from my collection of homespun fabrics - new addition to the list
39. Make a beach/water themed quilt - new addition to the list
40. Make 4 blocks for the ALA BiblioQuilters - new addition to the list - DONE
41. Bind the purple Senior Center quilt - new addition to list (2/20/08) - DONE
42. 1 secret block - new addition to list (2/20/08) - DONE
43. make 5 blocks for the Carol Doak Spring Batik Swap - new additon to list (3/19/08) - DONE

OK, that's that enough to list for today. Amazingly, I don't think I would have to have any more material to do all of these projects! Maybe some for backings, but not even sure about that. Can you tell that I must have a pretty big stash right now? If I am counting right, about 20 of these are finishing or continuing on projects already started. I would be astonished if I got all of those finished this year, but it is a goal I could strive for. I will be starting with #'s 1, 3, 6, 7, 15, 24 and 37 though not necessarily in that order. #18 is an on-going project that I work on mostly on Wednesday mornings before I meet with the ladies at the Senior Center on Wednesday afternoons. I am hoping to have #1 and #15 done in time for our next guild meeting - Jan 12. So I'd better stop working on my list and start working on Van Gogh! I am hoping that putting this list out for all to see will be some encouragement for me to try to be a "completer" this year.

Updating!

Hard for me to believe that it has been so long since I posted a blog entry. I have been quite busy trying to get some projects finished for Christmas, some of which I did finish and some that I didn't. I also started working part-time in November. One of my volunteer jobs was working at the Home Care dept of our local hospital. It started out as 4-6 hours one day a week, then went to twice that, then after Thanksgiving I went to paid temporary part-time - 24 hours a week. That may slow down some in January since the people I was helping to replace are expected to return.

First, for what I did get finished by Christmas -
1 and 2 - The Surrounded quilt and matching pillow for my son and his wife. We started working on selecting pattern and fabrics for these projects in June. Quilt pattern is from Four Paws Quilting and the pillow is Fallen Leaves from Cindi Edgerton. I machine-pieced the quilt and pillow-top and a friend did the long-arm quilting on the quilt. I machine-quilted the pillow-top with a variegated blue/violet thread and backed the pillow with the back of a pillow that came with their sofa.

3 - ABC book for granddaughter. The pattern I used for this project came from a summer issue of McCalls Quilting. It uses RJR So Sweet So Soft fabrics, including the panel with the letters on it. I quilted some on each letter and used some the collections' fabrics and some that I had used last year in her green and violet quilt and patchwork puzzle ball.

4 and 5 - Two quillows for my grandsons. In mid-November I got the idea to do some quillows for Jack and Atticus. The fronts of both are a Cars panel with Cars fabric above and below the panel. The back of one is part of a duvet of Buzz Lightyear and the other one is a sheet of Backyardigans - these are their respective favorite characters at the moment. The pocket is from the NASCAR flag fabric that is part of the Cars collection. I machine quilted them - first big quilts I've done on my machine - doing some stitching around the Cars figures in the center panel and around Lightning McQueen and Tow-Mater in the other panels. One I added a binding to after I quilted it and the other one I "birthed" and then quilted. Can't say which process I prefer - both took way longer than I had expected!! We had our Christmas with our kids and grandkids on the 23rd, so I gave them the quillows then, but had to take them back at the end of the day to finish up. We saw them again on Christmas Day at my mother-in-law's house and by that time I did have them both finished. Here is Atticus wrapped up in his at his house, with the Surrounded quilt in the background.

The main project that I did not get finished was the Van Gogh for one of our daughters - see my posts from October 11 and 17 . I still have 1 trunk and 2 tree-tops to add to it. I have been stuck for some time about exactly how to do the tree-tops. For the trunks I have quilted the fabric to look kind of like bark (using batting and muslin) then appliqued the trunk to the quilt. I will do the same for the other trunk, and am trying to decide on the treetop. I felt so bad that I couldn't get it done in time to leave it with them for Christmas but I just ran out of time. I'd love to be able to make another trip down to deliver it when I finish it in the next week or so, but since they live in Marietta, GA and we live in Central VA I will probably have to have Fed Ex deliver it. I had also planned to do a 2nd pillow to go with the Surrounded quilt, but after doing one and seeing it with the quilt I'm not sure they need another one in the same fabrics. We'll be talking about that.

Here is a photo of me with the T-shirt quilt - I finished it a couple of months ago but we have not yet hung it in my husband's office. He wanted a picture of me in front of it to show how big it is.