time flies like a banana

Photos!

For the Minnesota Road Show (which went fine, I think), I have a couple more samples to show. First is Ric Rac Rendezvous. It's a table runner to show off rick rack.Also, Posh, a wall hanging. Both of these patterns are from Maple Island Quilts.I also have the Raspberry Ripple purse. This pattern is from Melly and Me. It's not from the Minnesota Road Show, by the way. I think I forgot to show it when I did it a couple of months ago. Anyway, Melly and Me are out of Australia, and I'm not sure but I that their version of fusible fleece might be a little less stiff than ours. This baby has some heft! But I love the colors.Here's my round robin. Remember this one? It started out as just one strip with the wavy lines in it. My friends all added the rest of the rows. You'll be able to see a lot of our round robins at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in February.And finally, Molly had her birthday party today. She had a Beatles party, so I made a yellow submarine cake. Those funky things in the water are her candles.

Little, purple, cute!

Lots of projects going on now. I haven't written lately because I've been so busy! I haven't forgotten about the giveaway, though.

In Molly news, she got her first sewing machine. It's purple! It's pretty loud, but it is a real machine, with a real bobbin, so it meet's Mama's requirements. She's sewing together the pieces that were part of the shop display for our Scrap Therapy classes, which I'm no longer teaching.This Saturday at 2 pm, the Dumbarton Library is putting on a small production of The Little Mermaid and I was recruited to make mermaid costumes. This is an in-progress photo, but you get the idea. They're done now, and I'm pretty pleased, considering I did two start to finish in a couple of evenings. Ugh -- please ignore the disastrous state of my sewing room!I finished another bag for the Minnesota Road Show. I hope you're coming if you're in the area. It's only ten bucks and half is taught by me! This bag is Zippy Strippy by Atkinson Designs. It's not technically part of the road show, but I'm incorporating it anyway.And finally, I'm doing a project for a friend who I recently unearthed in Australia. It's been ten years since I've seen him and I'm so excited to make something that's not a required project. I was lucky to find some Australian inspired fabric. I'll post a photo when it's all done. This photo some of the quilting when I was just starting. I love pebbling.What I did was layer the print below the black, then I quilted most of the spaces, but left a few unquilted. Then I cut away the black layer to reveal the print below. I'm going to couch some yarn over the grey straight lines.

Z is for Zipper

This little quilted bag is from the book Fat Quarter Fonts by Terry Atkinson. The bag is called Z is for Zipper and it was super easy. It has the letter a appliqued onto it. It's a little hard to see the letter here because my fabrics were both so busy, but I think it's cute.
The bag is lined with the letter fabric. The zipper was pretty easy to install. The only downside to it is that the seams are unfinished inside. I think if I did it again I'd do it with french seams.

The sample is from the same book as this quilt and is for the Minnesota Road Show coming up at the shop. I'm teaching it again this year!

Pointy points!

I have a quilting group that meets monthly to do show and tell and chat with each other. We're called "The Other Women," which is a name one of the members came up with because she's cheating on another sewing group with us. Anyway, we did something new this past Saturday; we had a mini-class. We learned a different type of paper piecing, where you stitch with the fabric on top of the pattern instead of on the wrong side of the pattern as in traditional paper piecing. I'm not sure which I like better. This is easier in some ways, but takes more time in trimming because you can't use the Add a Quarter ruler (which I highly recommend if you do paper piecing).

Aaaanyway, I made a pattern called Emily's Star. The pattern is by Lynn Graves of Little Foot, Inc. So far I've made four blocks.My poor camera. It has a hard time with colors. You should know that all the backgrounds are blues and all the stars are various shades of red and orange. They're actually quite striking, not that you'd know it from this photo.

Look at the pretty points!
In family news, we got a Prius last Saturday. I've only used about half the tank of gas so far. Yahoo!

Oh, and in honor of my upcoming 100th post, I'll be doing a giveaway. I have no idea what yet. Stay tuned!

Commission T-shirt quilt

I've been working on a commission t-shirt quilt. It will be a graduation gift for someone finishing high school. I like the way it came out (though I have realized that I have undercharged by quite a bit). This photo shows the quilt finished except for the binding and the label. I'm embroidering a label right now. I'm not sure if I'll be happy with the way it's coming out because I'm using one strand of floss and it looks kind of choppy. If I'm not happy with it, I just hand-write the label.
This is the backing fabric. It's a blue paisley in the Good Earth collection by Alexander Henry Fabrics. It's quilted in a variegated green with a meandering pattern. I meandered right over the t-shirt motifs. It seemed to work fine except for when the image on the t-shirt was especially thick. Then I found that my thread kept breaking unless I slowed way down.

We're also attempting to paint the master bedroom this weekend, which involves removing an especially ugly wallpaper border. It's going to be a busy one!

So this happened

Yeah. It's my daughter's latest craft project. It's alpaca wool felted around a lump of soap. I think it looks more like something the cat coughed up, but her little hands made it, so... yeah. It smells the way you'd expect a wet alpaca to smell. The idea is that the soap gets embedded in the felt and comes through as you use it. So, of course Molly wants to take a bath with it now. Lovely.

And here's a glimpse of my latest contribution to the row round robin I'm in.It's 3:22 a.m. and I can't sleep. I'm really happy because I got off a video call a while ago with a close friend who I haven't seen in a long time. He lives in Australia now, which makes timing a bit tricky, but we slipped into conversation as if it had been only ten days since we last talked instead of nearly ten years. The internet is a wonderful thing. Now I want to send him something I've made.

hodgepodge

The Quiltathon is over! There is still time to donate if you'd like (please do -- this link will add to my goal), but the work is (mostly) done. Here's a shot of most of my team, including Becky, Michele, Allen, Mary and Deb. Only Coni is not in this shot (sorry, Coni!).
We worked Friday night from 10 pm until 1 am. We got quite a lot of work done, though it's hard to quantify because we were working on three different quilts at once. Here's an arty shot of Allen's hands quilting one of the rows!
So far I'm in the lead as far as individual donations go, but the next person is really nipping at my heels. I really want to be the person with the most personal donations. So, if you've been thinking about it, or if you were one of the people who asked me, "what can I do?" while I was going through treatment, here is your chance to help!

I've also been making more tooth fairy pillows. I decided, after much harass--... er, encouragement, from my fellow quilters, that I should charge $15 instead of $10.
Lastly, I'm working on a commission piece. It's a t-shirt quilt for someone who is graduating high school soon. I have framed all the shirts in a green batik and am working on what to use for the background. Here they are on a solid, but I think we'll be going with something more lively. I do like how the one batik ties them all together, though. T-shirt quilts can be tricky because they don't often have a consistent color to them.
I'll be taking more commissions as time goes on. If you know of anyone who wants a t-shirt quilt made, let me know!