Auction quilt, earrings and my poor, poor dog

Whoo-wee, I've been busy! My new job at Quilter's Corner is going great! Also, the Richmond chapter of The Modern Quilt Guild is in full swing. Personally, we've also been busy with RT's exam, typical end of the year school activities, and purging all of our ridiculous junk in preparation for a big yard sale this Saturday. I love yard sales. I am happy to give things to Goodwill, but I like to at least try to get something for them first. Yard sale to the rescue!

One thing I haven't done much is sewing, hence the lack of posts. But I have a few things to show. the first is a not-so-great photo of this past year's auction quilt. I stepped into the project after the idea had been determined, so I didn't have much say in how it was put together. Basically, each child chose a country and then they colored the flag for it. This photo shows it draped over some chairs in the lobby of the school. The lobby chairs all have arms, so that's why it looks so lumpy.I have to say, this is not my favorite project. I felt like the kids didn't have much involvement in it (coloring? Really?) and so they didn't have the emotional investment they have had in the past. I don't even know how much it went for! Oh well. If I do it again next year, I'll make sure I have some say in what happens. With Molly being in first grade, this was a new classroom for her.

Over Spring Break I went to Corolla, North Carolina. They rented a house for the week and Molly and I were able to join them for a couple days so RT could study. I bought these earrings.
At first I didn't realize why I liked them so much. There were several styles, all using the same beads, but in different shapes. Later I realized these look like little quilts! No wonder I love them so much!

In sad news, Snickers is not doing great. She's 16 now, which is very old for a Belgian Malinois. She has been losing weight like crazy. For most of her life, she was 55 pounds. A couple nights ago she was down to 29. She still eats, but nothing sticks with her. The vet said she probably has cancer somewhere but she's so old she wouldn't be able to withstand the anesthesia for a biopsy, much less any kind of treatment. I don't know how much longer she'll be with us, but for now we just love her and pamper her as much as we can.
Those bumps sticking out by her waist are the wing-y parts of her vertebrae. And here you can see her backbone pretty clearly.

Those are her hipbones; yes, they are.
A dog with this much undercoat shouldn't show her ribs. But I don't think she's hungry. She eats with the same patterns as she always has (leaves part of her breakfast but eats it all at dinnertime). I think it's just not staying with her; the cancer is taking all the energy and nutrients. This post shows what she looked like in healthier times.

We have had her a long time. We got her when she was seven years old from the Humane Society. I never thought she'd be with us longer than she was with her first family. She's a wonderful companion and we are doing our best to show her that we love her. I don't think she's in pain. She doesn't pant or whine. And she still wags her tail and follows me around the house when I have food. So in that sense, she's just like she always was. What a good dog.

The Richmond Modern Quilt Guild has arrived!

I'm so happy to announce that there is a new chapter of The Modern Quilt Guild in Richmond! We'll have our first meeting on Friday, April 15th starting at 6 pm. We're currently meeting at Quilter's Corner in Midlothian, VA. If you sew and are in the Richmond area, please come! We're going to have giveaways, food, and a beading demo by the wonderful Cathy Etter. If you've never met Cathy, you are in for a big treat.

I'm so excited to be a part of this!

Flannel goodness!

I have very exciting news! I'm now working and teaching classes at Quilter's Corner in Midlothian! I'm so excited to be a part of this shop, and looking forward to learning a lot more about the behind the scenes details!

Oh, yeah, sewing.... Okay, I made this quilt for Molly for Christmas. I even had it mostly finished for her to unwrap on Christmas day; I just had to add the binding. It took me forever to get it on the blog, though. Oh well, baby steps, right? There's really no pattern to it. I just cut pieces that were 3, 6, 9 or 12 inches (finished) and pieced them randomly. I bought the flannel at a shop in Michigan a couple of years ago when I went up there for my aunt's funeral. I'm hoping to make a small version for my newest great-niece (who is well past her first birthday) from the fabric I have left over.

The circle of life...

Our cat, Simon, died a couple of years ago. We buried him in the back yard. Molly has been curious lately about what he might look like right now. We've been telling her he'd mostly be bones and some fur (we buried him wrapped in a towel and then put inside one of those heavy duty Harry and David fruit boxes). I assume that's about right. (Anyone know for sure?)

This past weekend we ended up cleaning up the yard. It started with picking up sticks and eventually involved some raking. Most of the leaves were late stragglers that had been caught up next to the fence and house. As I'm raking next to the fence, I kept thinking, "Now where exactly did we bury Simon, anyway? I must be getting close."

More raking; more wondering.

Then, my foot drops about 12 inches into the ground.
Huh. I guess I found out where Simon had been buried. Or, rather, the empty space where Simon used to be before he became fertilizer. The weird thing is, I didn't see anything in the hole. Maybe I had just packed the dirt on top of anything that might have been visible. Whew. Dodged a bullet there. We filled the hole with fresh compost.See it there along the fence?

Shopping, shopping, shopping!

Oh, sure the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival had plenty of quilts on display, but we all know the real reason we go: shopping! Truthfully, I didn't buy much. Being an employee of a quilt shop means I see so many fabrics go by that if I had $1,000 to spend on fabric, I know right where it would all go! And tools can be ordered. No, for Mid-Atlantic, I had my eye on things that I couldn't get at Quilting Adventures. I only bought two things of note (other things I purchased were stocking up on things I could get for a bargain).

One is this ingenious kit. It's laser cut! Such perfect little pieces, down to the notches! It's tiny; it will finish at 16 x 20 total. The blocks finish at four inches. And those curves would be a bear to cut myself. Totally worth the 20 bucks.
I also bought these shoes. Yes, shoes at a quilt show! They are a little dirty in this photo as we were doing some yard work yesterday. But they feel awesome. I have to stand for long periods at work and I've been having some plantar fasciitis in one heel, and these shoes help a lot.
Also, you may have heard that Borders is in bankruptcy, so we did a little shopping there this weekend, too.

Books, 25% off!
Magazines, 50% off!
Good thing my birthday is this month!

Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival 2011

Man, I am a bad blogger. Just when I think I'm doing well again, something like this happens: I don't post for six weeks! You'd think I'd have more to show for it, but no. Anyway, the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival is this weekend. If you haven't gone yet, there's still tomorrow! As I've mentioned in the past, my Monday night quilt group, festively called "The Other Women," often does round robins. This year we were able to put several of those quilts in the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival!

The way a round robin works is, everyone makes a center or a row. Then everyone passes it to the next person who adds on, and you add on to the one you've received. In the end, you get your quilt back. So for these two quilts, I did the initial piecing and then I also quilted it. Other bits were added by my friends.

For this one, I started with the center.
For this one I started with the row that has the blue waves. It's above the ducks.
My oldest sister, who lives in Oklahoma, was part of two of our round robins. This one is her quilt. I added the top and bottom rows with the half-circles.
This one is also my sister's quilt. I added the little tulip row.
If you want to see these or any others in progress, just click this link.

I didn't buy too much this year. I'll post photos later!

I'm in love!

This past Friday, my wonderful husband and I went to lunch. I said, "I have no ambition. I think we need to get away." He said, "okay, where are we going to go?" I wasn't really meaning this weekend, but thanks to him, we ended up leaving the next morning and spending a long weekend in Philadelphia! I love that we have a small enough family and a great next door neighbor (who is always willing to watch our pets).

So, Saturday we went to the Mütter Museum. Their website isn't very useful, but it was a great museum to go to. It's full of medical specimens. Have you ever wondered what a 75 lb ovarian cyst looks like? Or are you curious about forensic anthropology? Or the skeleton of a man with a disease which causes his soft tissues to calcify into bone? They have it all. It's amazing. To hear a description, you might think it's like a circus side-show, but it's all presented in an educational, non-exploitative manner. In fact, no photos are allowed inside the museum. So here's Molly outside instead.We also went on a short horse-drawn carriage tour of the Independence Mall area (Molly's favorite part of the trip) and saw the Liberty Bell.On Sunday we went to the Franklin Institute Science Museum. Later that day we drove around and eventually ended up at the King of Prussia Mall. I have memories of going there on band trips in high school when we went to Philly to march in the Gimbels parade.

On Monday, we checked out of our hotel. We ate breakfast at a cute diner called Mrs. K's. We had been sick of eating at the extremely overpriced hotel restaurant (seriously? Nine bucks for a bowl of oatmeal? You're kidding me) and were very happy to have found it. The waitstaff was really nice and the locals eating there were friendly and chatty. And a bowl of oatmeal was only about $2.50. No website, though.After breakfast, we checked out Fabric Row. I only went to one shop and was a bit turned off. Maybe I went to the wrong shop. It was crowded and it was hard to see everything. I did buy a bit of fabric to make a ballet skirt for Molly.

The highlight of the trip for me, though, was a quilt shop we stopped at called Spool. This is why I posted that I was in love. The shop was quite small and didn't have a ton of fabric, but what they did have was breathtaking. No batiks, no blenders, no novelties; just designer prints and some solids (and a few shot cottons and Kaffe homespuns and stripes). But what they didn't have in quantity, they made up for in quality. So clean and gorgeous!First impression as you walk in:This is pretty much the extent of their fabric shelves. The only shelves you can't see here are a couple in the back where they have sale fabrics and some home decs.
Here is their classroom area. So cute with the coordinating sewing machine covers!
Another view of their display (really, their only one).
Their patterns.
Here is my haul. First is a laminate that Molly picked out. I need to make the Amy Butler kids raincoat for a shop sample. So I'll make two, so Molly can have one now!
Here's the fabric I bought, just because. It was hard to stop at five yards. The person helping me, who was super friendly, said that the whale fabric was designed by someone local. There were several of her designs there.
And I bought their two bags of scraps. Seriously, you could make something beautiful out of anything they had there. I figured even their scraps would be delicious. I bought the only two bags of scraps they had. If they had had ten, I probably would have bought all ten.
If you go to Philadelphia, visit this shop. I was blown away. So small, but perfect. Only the best of the best. There's a yarn shop next door called Loop that I didn't go to, but they seem to be connected in some way. If I were a knitter, or if I hadn't already spent over $100, I would have gone there, too!