Get ready, get ready!

Three things to be happy about:
(1) desk clocks with pendulums
(2) pumpkins
(3) open 24/7

I just thought I'd throw that last one in because my November calendar has a graphic of a coffee cup that says "FRESH COFFEE served hot daily .. open 24/7"

Whatever...

I got my paint chips for this year's Quiltville mystery!  I thought I'd go for it this year because I like the color choices.

I'm pretty much set for the reds and golds; you only need 2-3/4 yards and 1-3/4 yards, respectively.

I just happened to have these already sorted out in the same bin and I also have more in another bin, so that saves me from having to go on a treasure hunt!  Digging for gold, as it were.

I have plenty neutrals, since I bought some last month on the Lancaster trip - I'm absolutely sure I have at least 5-1/2 yards!  You need 2-3/4 yards of black fabric and I have lots of black-and-white fabrics, but I'd like to beef that up with more "black-and" fabrics ... something other than black-and-white, just to stir things up!

Now grey!

I have this very large yardage of grey fabric that I got from JoAnn's sometime around July 4th.  It was on their discount table at (I think) $3.99 a yard, minus another 50%, so of course I had to get the entire piece!

The only thing is, it might have too much going on with the pink and yellow printed on it.  I believe I could work with this but I want to look for another piece...

Which brings me to this one... the color is perfect but I don't have enough - I need 1-1/2 yards!

This is less than 1/2 yard, the grey needs to be constant throughout the entire quilt.

Even the back side would have been perfect!

The chances of me finding more of this fabric are less than zero - I have no idea where I bought it (or when!) or the manufacturer.

Meanwhile I finished all the alternate blocks for my Passa-whatever quilt - I might name it that!

For some reason I managed to sew 12 more of the black strips than I needed - pfffft!

Sewing together the 9 patches is more fun and seems to go faster, especially since I'm chain piecing and webbing the blocks!

I love these red, white, and black 9 patches!

I need a total of 84 of these blocks; I want to get them as close to being finished as I can before the Quiltville mystery starts in two weeks - 20 down, 64 to go!

That's it for now, have a great Monday... uh, Tuesday!  Sew forth and sew on til later!

Fabric goodies from Lancaster!

Three things to be happy about:
(1) home made chicken soup
(2) a foot massage
(3) mint flavored toothpicks

This is what my shopping cart looked like as I chose fabrics from Sauder's on Friday.  My focus this trip, as it has been for the last two trips, was to beef up my neutrals stash.

As you know I like scrappy quilts and I like a lot of Bonnie Hunter's scrappy patterns, so when I buy neutral fabrics I use her guidelines - anything that has a white, cream, beige or tan background.  Any color or pattern can be printed on the foreground, but if that background reads as a neutral?  it works like a charm!

I found a few pieces on their remnant table that I just had to have!



The pieces on the right are the only exceptions to my neutrals - now take a look at what I got!

The pictures should get biggie sized if you click on them!

Aren't these gorgeous?!

There's a little birdie in there, perched on a musical score - its called Girlie Girl,  by Dana Brooks for Henry Glass & Co.  They also had the birds in pink, but I kinda like the blue.

I like words!

That find-a-word piece is different; I think I've seen it around but I never bought any of it before.

Some fun pieces!  Good morning, good night, wake up and eat!  Is the Kellogg's piece a neutral?  You betcha - the background makes it qualified!

Lots of variety in these pieces...  I like the boldness of the piece on the left; it's called Paper Dolls Around the World  by Sibling Arts Studio for Blue Hill Fabrics.  There was just over a yard left on the bolt, so I took it all!

This piece was from the $2.99 flat fold table at Good's; it's called Garden Romance, by Hoffman.  Pretty!

I like the variety of fabrics I got, I like that they add lots of variety to my neutrals stash.  They have been thoroughly petted and are waiting to be snuggled in next to my other neutrals.  Love it!  Now - how many of these can I use before our trip next October???

That's it for now, have a great Monday - sew forth and sew on til later!

What to do...

what to do???   I'm being driven off my nut, out of my tree, bananas, off my gourd!! 

What in the world is she talking about??

They're STILL working on the house next door to me and yesterday I felt like I was
going
out
of
my
HEAD!

There were about 6 men working inside yesterday; among other things they were installing new wood flooring and the noise was louder and more intense than ever before!

All day long, until about 5 pm, there was banging and banging and some kind of continuous buzzzzzzzzzing sound!  Above you see one installer using a skillsaw; that's not the sound I was hearing from inside, it was probably an air cleaner.

At one point I was on my porch and I said something to the guy like "Sounds like you're doing a great job in there!"  Then he asked me if I wanted to see what they were doing.  And, being a nosy inquisitive sort of person, I went inside to take a look...

This is the only picture I took:  standing just inside the front hallway, looking into the living room and dining room.  They've removed the far dining room wall which was technically the back wall of the house (that's probably where all that brick came from a few weeks ago).  The kitchen has been completely dismantled, I think they're moving it out to the enclosed porch area to make a very large kitchen/dining room combination. 

As far as I could tell, they're making what's left of the old kitchen into some sort of large storage area (or powder room), hence all the banging and scraping I've been hearing on the common wall the last week or so. At the same time they were also working in the basement doing who knows what.

So much for that nonsense, I'll keep my nose pressed to the window for more snooping ops or whatever.

I wasn't able to make it to the Red & White, Too artists' reception Saturday but I understand it was very well attended with a positive response!  Here are some more pictures from the exhibit:



"King's Fancy" by Bernerdette King



"Petals on a Pond" by Loretta Tatum

The quilt above is a cutwork technique that Loretta taught us at our 2011 Scrapbagger's retreat in Deep Creek, Maryland.

And last but not least, this beauty was done by Deb Sanger:


"I Heart New York" by Deb Sanger.

 I still have more pictures that I may share later - enjoy your Valentine's Day!

Sew forth and sew on

Stash count

Three things to be happy about:
(1) whiling away an afternoon
(2) chopping like a chef
(3) quilting

I've been thinking about starting a weekly stash count but I haven't done anything about it yet.  Well, I think today's the day, get to steppin'!

There's no way I'm going to measure and count all the yardage I have in my stash, Mission Impossible for sure!  I'll just start with what I use and what I add, on a weekly basis. 

So... my grand total for last week:

Added:  -0- yards
Used:  1.5 yard (?)
Scraps cut into usable pieces (?)

Last week I made that little fractured crumb quilt and I'm not *quite* sure how to count crumbs, so I measued the piece and got an approximate count.  That includes fabric for the back, border and binding - the three B's.  This seems a bit small... I'll just let it be for now; I might change to a rounding-up or -down method later on, as I get used to doing a count. 

I actually meant to start my stash count in January, but a start is a start.   This will help keep me aware of what I'm doing!

Sew forth and sew on

Fabric shopping... again!

... but I didn't buy too much, honest!!

Yesterday our bus trip to the Pennsylvania Dutch area was just great, despite the rainy weather!  The sun and clouds kept playing peek-a-boo with each other... every time the sun would try to peek out, the clouds would go "BOO!" and dump a rain shower .... oh well, you can't keep a determined bunch of quilters down, especially if they're on a fabric hunt!

We determined quilters started the day in Columbia, Maryland waiting ... waiting patiently in the sprinkling rain for the bus, and here it comes, woot woot!

"open up!"

Terri, our driver, was just a bit - a-hem! - late  arriving

At Sauder's in Denver, PA, the greeter wasn't coming out, no way -  it was starting to rain!

No worries, we were glad to go in anyway!

You're probably saying "is that a basement  they're going into??"  Yep, Sauder's Fabrics is in the basement of a farm house!

Donna, sometimes my fingers type faster than my mind thinks, as if they're 16 seconds in the future like Max Headroom!  Read on for the answer to your puzzle...

After Sauder's and a great lunch at Shady Maple, we drove to the Kitchen Kettle area in Intercourse, PA (Intercourse is near Lancaster)...

 
See? They even had their own greeter, too!

The horses in the Kettle area always interest me.  These people were queueing up for a carriage(?) ride to points unknown...

Bucket list!  One day I'm going for a ride in one of those carriages.

This horse was glad to pose for me... soon as I snapped the picture, he turned back to his friend and continued his conversation, or whatever.  Clever horse!

And this horse was funny - he was staring through this window and I just  had  to snap a picture!

What could he have been looking at??  Could it be .... moi??

I love the Jam & Relish Kitchen in the Kettle area... how many different kinds of jalepeno jellies  are  there??

Not to mention apple butter, peach butter, pear butter...

My goodness, that's a lot of preserves! 

And this is a lot of pictures, I know - but I wanted to share part of our day with you.  We had a great time, it didn't rain the entire time so the day wasn't a "wash out."  Everybody came home with something... and some people came home with everything, LOL! 

I have one or two more pictures to share if I get a chance to; who knows you may find them interesting.  Guild meeting today with an ugly fabric auction and a great workshop - another day of fun!  Have a great day everyone!

Sew forth and sew on til later...

At last, spring!

Hi everybody, thanks so much for your good wishes yesterday about the BB contest, it means a lot to me  :o)

Well, here we are in the merry, merry month of May, can you believe it?  Where did January through April go?? 

Years and years and years ago I bought two azalea bushes - one red and one white - and planted them in my front yard fairly close together.  Well, as you can guess they got friendly with each other and both turned pink with pleasure (or embarrassment?).  One of them died but the other one lived and is in bloom now...

This is what it looked like when I got home from the quilt show the other day; since it's only pretty one week out of the year I thought I'd better get a shot while I could...

The picture immediately above was taken looking down at the bush from my front porch; the color looks a deeper shade of pink on this side.  In reality, the color is a sort of rusty pink, hard to describe.  If I remembered to feed it spring and fall, I'd have a fuller bush.

Speaking of the quilt show, I bought a yard cut of this village scene by Timeless Treasures from the Fabric Peddler...

The design runs the full width (42") of the fabric, I'll have fun using this one!  Click on them, you just have to see them close up!  Here's a piece of companion fabric I bought...

Sometimes I don't like to use the "companion" fabric with the main piece, somehow it looks too "pat" and put together for my taste.  Like somebody sat down and decided, "okay, this one goes with this one, and if you put them together with this one, you'll have a perfectly coordinated finished product!"  I'd rather do my own thing. so chances are 10-to-1 that I won't use this piece along with the village scene.  It's pretty, though.

That's all for now, I just wanted to show off my lovelies, which is always fun! Sew forth and sew on til later...

Progress behind the scenes...

Giveaway on Madame Samm's blog - hurry, it ends today!

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Hello followers, glad to see you!   *big wave*

I haven't been in the mood to do much sewing the last couple days, after work I just want to veg out.  I did a little stash organizing, though; my goal is to get the fabric off the shelves and into containers to avoid light fading (and dust!).  I'm trying to fold and organize by color, but it was taking too long to lump all the colors together because they're so scattered... so I decided to just organize them within the containers and do the fancy stuff later.

Tonya, I was tempted by your batiks but I didn't jump; you'll see why in a minute!

Some reds, greens, lights in this bin...

yellows, tans and greens...

batiks in here.  I bought the rolled ones from a store that used to sell the last half-yard at $1.25.  I would dig through their basket and get all the batiks they had in there!

These batiks didn't make it into the bin; have to start another one! (See, Tonya?)

This is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg... lots more to organize and use!

NOW, having said all that... here's a must-see program on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), airing at 8 and 11 pm on February 21st:  

Enough Already! with Peter Walsh

"A Charity Case

Barbara's family comes second to her 2,000 pounds of quilting clutter. With Peter's help she must learn to set limits and prove to her family that they come first."

I'll be watching this one... I want to see if I have any of her fabric in my stash!

Sew forth and sew on...