It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

We've had snow and really cold weather already, so I'm all ready for Christmas! Another sign it's Christmas?

Frostie's Retro Blue Cream Soda!!!

Aren't the pretty?

Cream Soda, and Blue! Life is so good. I was smart this year, I bought extra cases and sent them home with Binding Guru Karen for safe keeping so that we wouldn't drink them before Christmas. Ashley and Ju, there will be some blue soda for you on Christmas this year!

We had our Sew Mod Christmas party last Friday. I love these ladies. They are the best and totally inspiring. Lorrie assembled gingerbread houses for us then had all the accouterments that you could possible want to decorate them. This will come as no surprise to those who know me, but I was covered in frosting by the end of the night. The dogs kept licking my pants when I got home.

This is Kelly's house. She made a dog run on the side.

Let's take a closer look at that dog, shall we?

We were calling him the alien dog. Considering what she had to work with, I think she did a pretty good job. He cracks me up w/those ginormous red eyes. You can see action shots at Lorrie and Paige's Sew Mod blog and at our Sew Mod Flickr group. We had a gift exchange. I got Pattie in the drawing and she loves the Rouenneries line as much as I do, so I had a good idea where to start. I found this table runner/wall hanging on a store's blog, but I can't remember which. I'll update when I find it again. I loved it, and I hope Pattie did too.

Close up:

The middle is the linen/cotton blend and the applique is wool. I used by Sizzix die cutting machine for the leaves and berries and free cut the vines. I quilted around all the motifs in the toile.

I liked it so much, I'm making myself one. That's not wrong, is it?

Shelley (Elsie's Girl) made me a totally fabulous pillow that I have on my couch. I'll take a picture asap, because you don't want to miss this one.

Another sign that Christmas is upon us, the always fabulous Christmas tree that Tammy and cohorts put up at the store:

I love this tree at night too:

It's a little fuzzy since I took it with my camera phone, but isn't it awsome?

I love the Lakehouse flower ornaments that she made. And the ric rac garland is beyond too cute.  Tammy bedazzled and decked out the snowflake at the too. It was just a plain snowflake before she got her hands on it. It makes me want to run out and get a white tree.

Well, that's all for now. I have a couple of more Christmas projects to finish up, then I can take the time to take photographs and blog some more. And have a Hot Toddy. I love that word. Say it with me, "Hot Toddy." There, isn't it fun?

 

Retreating

I had my bi-annual girlfriends quilting retreat the first weekend of November up at Evergreen Retreat in Janesville, Wisconsin. We all had such a good time, we probably each gained about 5 lbs in 3 days!  Evergreen is really a fantastic retreat location. It's reasonable priced, not that far from where we live, they provide all the 'stuff' for quilting (irons/big boards, tall cutting tables, rulers, ott lights, design walls, comfy chairs.....) and they have 3 nearby quilt shops to explore! I felt that I got quite a bit done, so that was a bonus.
I made pillowcases out of Riley Blake's "Colorful Christmas" line  for DiscoJen's kids for Christmas.

I finished sewing on the binding on the 'Plaid About You' quilt out of Lakehouse's 'Fun Flowers' black colorway. And since Binding Guru Karen was at the retreat, I even got it hand tacked down in record time. I tell you, the woman is a binding genius!

I used my water-soluble interfacing technique to mark my quilting.

I quilted the big flowers free-hand. Just to be clear, this is a panel. I did not applique these fabulous flowers.

And since this is for a baby, I used bright, lime green minky on the back. This photo doesn't portray the color accurately, it's really a lime green, like the gingham in the flower above. I love how the quilting shows up on minky.

I designed and tried to figure out how to make a commissioned tree skirt from my extremely crudely drawn design. I specifically save this to do at the retreat since I would have others to help me figure out how the heck to put this thing together. My friend Carol is especially helpful with these types of things because she's an engineer.
I started with this pile of batiks and fairy frost:

I made a circle out of the beyond fantastic red diamond Hoffman Batik. I found a ton of tutorials online on how to do this. I then used my beloved 1/4" fusible web tape and ironed under the edge.

Then I pieced together the greens into large strip sets and interspersed some thin. white fairy frost strips here and there and used one of those 9degree rulers to make wedges. I had the idea that if I could get the angles right on a quarter of the circle, then I could just do 4 of those and connect them, but unfortunately it isn't that easy. I had to make some wider angled strips, some smaller wedged strips and so on. I'm not done with it yet, but I have a good start at least. I'm really pleased with how it's turning out too.

And last, but certainly not least, I FINALLY finished the last of my Hydrangea commissioned "You Go Girl" bags!!!! It feels soooooo good to get this thing done. It wouldn't be that bad, but I quilted the crap out of the material. It took me 10-12 hours just to quilt the material, and this is the 3rd bag I've made like this! I'm really over quilting the hydrangea material!



Seriously, what was I thinking when I started to quilt it this way?!?!?!

I have photos of what everyone else made, but I can't locate the SD card with them on it, so that will have to be another post!

quilting over kill

This is what I've been working on lately:

It's the "You go girl" pattern by Tammy Tadd Designs. The fabric is the pink Lakehouse hydrangeas. I thought about cross hatching the fabric, but decided that it didn't do the fabric justice. I instead quilted the white areas around the flowers, thinking that would do it, but that left big areas unquilted. So then I quilted the leaves, but that still left a lot of area unquilted and it didn't highlight the flowers enough. I decided to quilt the flowers, which of course took 2 different colors of pink.

This is the result:

It's gorgeous, if I say so myself, but it took me 10, yes 10 hours to quilt! And I have one more to make, in the blue flowers. The blue will require 3 different blues.
I needed a day or two off from the bags to get my quilting mojo back, so I decided to actually start my Baltimore Halloween. Here's what I've done so far:

I'm pleased with the moon, but not so happy with the body or vest. I may like it better once I get the wings and head on. I chose the needle turn applique method, but I think I'm going to have to do a combo of needle turn and freezer paper so that I get my shapes just right. Here's where my type A quilting personality comes in. It's my first real applique project, so you'd think I'd cut myself some slack, but if I'm going to invest the time and money into this project, I want it to be the best that I can do. I think my stitches are ok, but I'll have to have my friend Debbie and the teacher of the block of the month look at them and see what they think.

And just because I think he's so darn cute:

Robbie figured out how to open the screen and let himself in. Isn't he clever?

Project Diversity

I was looking for applique info when I came across the Applique Today blog. She has a couple of very nice tutorials on needle turn applique. She also talked about a free online quilting magazine that I had to share with everyone! It's called Cotton Spice and you can download the magazine to your computer! So it's ecological as well. What more can you ask for?
I've been busy the last couple of weeks. I finished up my version of the Peace quilt by Late Bloomer that I made with LakeHouse fabrics. Binding Guru Karen is, well binding it for me. It was my first time making prairie points. They were pretty easy. This is an in progress picture.

I also made the Camille Bag by Penny Sturges out of the fabulous new Darla line by Tanya Whelan of Grand Revival. I have to tell you, I love this bag. I had never made pintucks before, but they were totally easy. And CUTE! I made it as a sample for Tammy Tadd Designs, but I love it so much I think I'll need to make myself another to use while it's on display! And as a side note, I'm eagerly anticipating Tanya's upcoming line French Hatbox. It's absolutely gorgeous. I think I need a cottage (quilting cottage that is) nestled in some rolling hills to decorate with all these fabulous vintagy florals that Tanya designs.


I also started an actual embroidery project this week! It's not great, but it's start. And I think it's totally fun! I used the China Town pattern by Sublime Stitchery. It's going to be a pocket on a grocery bag using the Chopsticks Please fabric by Kaufman. The takeout fabric will be the main panels and the fortune cookies are the sides and bottom. They make me smile.

I don't know, do you think my taste is diverse enough?

I would wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day, but I have a Valentine's Day Curse, bad things happen to me on or around Valentine's Day. I have a theory that if I pretend it doesn't exist, nothing bad will happen. In light of The Curse, I'll just wish everyone a Happy Saturday!

Refining

I have spent most of January working on my bag pattern and making bags! I just can't believe the month is gone already. I made 9 bags in approximately 6 days. Most of those were 2.5 - 3 hour increments in the evenings with a couple of Sundays thrown in. I'm glad I did the mass making because I was able to refine a couple of things to make the assembling of the bag easier. Now I just have to finish putting it into words. It ends up it's not all that easy to do.

3 of the bags were belated Christmas gifts that I forgot to take pictures of before giving away. They were cute though. One was for my friend Bill who made me the most wonderful cutting board last Christmas and brings me wonderful patterns and fabric from his worldly travels. He lived in Hawaii for a while and loves the Hawaiian prints and such, so I made his bag out of the same RJR fabrics I used in Tom's quilt.

I made 2 for my boss, who loves wine, out of this gorgeous line by Wilmington called "Bottled Poetry". I wish I had taken pictures before giving them to her because the pictures online just don't do this fabric justice. It's really lush and gorgeous.
I also made several out of Amy Butler's "Ginger Bliss", "Belle" and "Midwest Modern" fabrics.

And I made the CUTEST bag out of this fabulous Robert Kaufman fabric:

I also almost finished the quilt top featuring the gorgeous LakeHouse "Le Grand Jardin". I would have had it finished, but I cut the green hydrangea flower fabric incorrectly and and didn't have enough to do the prairie points. I'll take photos of it to post in a couple of days.

I don't know, do you think my tastes are diverse enough?

I've also been working on my mini quilt swap for my Swap Til You Drop partner from Flickr. What fun it is! It's like instant gratification quilting. And it's good for me since I have a hard time making small quilts. I don't want to post a photo of it until my partner gets it though, so you'll have to wait to see it.