Winner!

I'm happy to announce that the winner of the giveaway is Julia of Julia's Sew Sweet and Special Occasion Clothing for Children. I'm sorry for the delay in getting the choosing done. I went ahead and entered the people in who had left a comment after the deadline. I didn't have as many entries as I thought. It's funny, I see a lot of people who come to the blog, many who come multiple times, but not as many entered as I expected. I know part of this is my inconsistency in posting. My excuse for that right now is summer. Once that's over I expect to be doing a lot more sewing.

I also wonder if I need to leave different types of messages. I feel like this blog needs a little more personality. I would love to include the occasional rant about general world views. But I would still want my blog to mostly be about quilting and sewing.

Regardless, I gotta do something. I want more readers!

Anyway, leave a comment if you'd like. I'd love to hear what you have to say. I'll leave you with photos of a baby quilt I made years ago. I think I posted it once before but it may be my favorite quilt.

Time to celebrate! Let's give something away!

A few days ago it was my girl's sixth birthday. I love her to pieces. We went to the Cheesecake Factory and they fancied-up a sundae for her.In honor of her birthday and this being my 100th post (and the fact that I have fewer readers than I'd like), I've decided to do a giveaway! These five cute Riley Blake Boo to You Halloween fat quarters could be yours!
You get an entry for every one of these things you do:

1. Make a comment on this post (bare minimum)
2. Follow my blog
3. Include me in your blogroll
4. Mention my blog in your blog

If you're already following or have me in your blogroll, that counts! Just make sure you let me know in your comment how many entries you get based on the rules above. I'll close the entries Tuesday or Wednesday. We're going out of town later this week, so I'll pick the winner by random draw either just before I go or right when I get back on Monday.

One more Molly (as a puppy) photo for good measure.

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!