Maybe You Could Join Us

Vicky and I will be at Alex Anderson's Quilt Retreat next month. I can't wait!!! It's so much fun. My "famous" friend Deb just posted this news on another site. I thought I would let all of you in on the contest too! APQS and Alex are having a contest. What fun if you won! Why I'd even make you a pin cushion ;-o Alex Anderson Quilt Retreat contest link http://www.apqs.com/quiltingcontest.htm Check it out and if you enter ... Good Luck!

Class at PIQF

Whoa, what a busy weekend!! I think I need a week to rest from my weekend! Thursday was spent at PIQF, Friday was chore day, you know the days where the laundry, car, bills and all of that boring stuff needs to be taken care of. It rained HARD all day too! I've also been pet sitting in Benicia, it's not hard work, but it's not the norm, so it takes a little more effort. Saturday morning I was signed up for a class at PIQF. I've never taken at class at a show before! I've said that if I went back to Asilomar I would take a class by Sue Nickels and Pat Holly to learn how to machine applique. Well Sue was teaching a raw edge applique class and I couldn't resist. Chances of me going back to Asilomar are slim, so I thought I'd better take advantage of it.

Sue is a great teacher, she covers everything and has so much patience, yet allows everyone to move at their own pace. She uses a camera to teach so that everyone can watch her work on the screen as she doing it. It's an awesome tool. It was wonderful to see her quilts. Such beautiful machine work. She works very closely with her sister and most quilts are done in tandem. I was going to show you a couple of pictures, but blogger is being difficult, quit after the first picture!

The 75th Anniversary Bernina's were furnished for the class. If you are a Bernina lover, I'm sorry, but I wasn't a happy camper. I wasn't familiar with using the knee lift. The last time I used my knee for sewing it was when I learned how to sew on my Mother's old Singer in the cabinet. Talk about flash backs! I was also having trouble with it skipping stitches, and that darn needle up/down feature on the foot pedal was too sensitive and messed me up constantly. Even with all of the problems and unsewing, I managed to get one little bird block done. I can't wait to sit down at my Pfaff and give it a go. Now that I see how it is done, I will be machine appliquing my pumpkins.

During lunch break my friend Debbie and I met up with Deb and Holly and I was able to lure them to the Bonnie Blue Booth. I got some major notches in my meg belt. We had to hurry back to class but there was plenty of time to shop after. I got some supplies that I found useful in the class, easy thread needles & tweezers. I found a couple more patterns and that was it. Today I was off to a baby shower and back home to clean up the messes I left while passing through all weekend. Back to work tomorrow, but I do have another 3 day weekend this coming week, just 4 more days!!

Where to Begin?

What a day! It started by taking a bus ride with the Wednesday nite ladies to the Pacific International Quilt Show in Santa Clara Convention Center. This is a huge show, I think the largest that I've been to. I love taking the bus, everyone is always in such a good mood and you don't have to fight traffic coming or going. The show was awesome as always, but I have to say that I really just go to see the vendors, LOL! I think I have already seen most all of the quilts online at one site or another. There weren't many surprises. The biggest surprise to me, was to see so many quilts with very very heavy quilting. I guess that is the trend now that there are so many talented long arm artists. The quilting is beautiful, but sometimes I think it's a little too much, but that is just my personal opinion. I tend to like the more traditional.

My first mad dash at the show was for the Fig Tree booth, Joanna has limited kits made up and they go quick. I just love her stuff, she had her patterns there and I managed to put a sizable ding in my checking account. From there you could follow my trail of drool from vendor to vendor, I think I left a big pool of drool and the Bonnie Blue Quilts booth. Be still my heart, those civil war fabrics tug at me. I wasn't too bad, but according to Vicky's three touch rule, I should have brought it all home with me, I must of picked everything up at least 6 times and put it back. I found out that they are from Katy Tx. , I used to live in Katy Tx.!!

So this was my haul, a little of this, a little of that. I was happy to find the book for my class on Sat. (yes, I have to go back on Sat., oh darn!)I was able to take a nice nap on the bus home. When I got in my car there was a light on the dash board that I didn't recognize! OH NO, I knew I have a small oil leak, but this devastated me. I thought I was being punished for my carefree purchases. I came in and looked in the book... LOL, oops! I forgot I turned the defroster on this morning, whew, saved again! Then I went out and got my mail, what an awesome surprise was waiting for me!

My new bloggy friend Theresa sent me the most beautiful piece of hand dye that I've ever owned, the color is so pure and clean, THANK YOU!! Isn't this gorgeous?To top it off I got news that I finally have enough in my deferred comp account for my employer to kick in a little... nice! Hope your day was good one.... OOOOO I almost forgot, I got chance to see Pam and give her a hug, in fact she probably thought I was stalking her, we were passing each other at every turn! It was great to see her and ... Ok I'm babbling, I can't wait to go back, LOL! I'm gonna go see if I can remember how to put pictures from the show in my flicker album. And also I wanna add that after seeing what Carol bought in just ONE shop, I don't think I bought much at all!! ( a good thing she wasn't with me at Bonnie Blue's)

Finally Finished!

Last year I made that Nancy Halverson panel advent calendar for my son's foster child. They asked me if I could make something like that for her birthday. Daja's birthday is on Halloween. Do they want birthday theme? Halloween theme? They said both! This sent me in a tizzy, I'm not creative, I can follow a pattern, but that is as far as it goes.

Hmmm.... Daja loves PINK! Oh my gosh, this is the little girl who when I visited her took me by the hand and pulled me into her room, jumped up and down over and over yelling PINK PINK PINK! My son had painted her room totally PINK! She was tickled pink! I remembered that Moda line "Wild Things" that was cute and had pink in it, kinda Halloween, so I searched and searched and found some coordinating fabrics.

Now for a pattern. Hmmm, I couldn't wrap my mind around a design. I Spent hours looking online, looking through magazines and books. I found I had one those fabric folding books. AHA, a little bit of an idea. The Christmas book had a pocket type count down hanging. But wait, isn't there a Halloween book too? I Need it! Well I got it and it didn't have anything that really worked. Then I showed Daja the fabric. She didn't like it! Do you see where I'm going with this? $$$ is adding up and I still don't know what I'm doing! Do you do this? Do you start off in one direction and turn completely around? I guess this how I build my stash. Well then, the divorce got started and I put it all aside. I wasn't planning on making this, because of all that has happened, but I kept seeing the fabric sitting there and I had to do it!

TADA, here it is. It's pink and it's original, I borrowed the pattern from the fabric folding book and got some help with lettering from Elizabeth's book and Holly's fabric is so fun to work with. (Thank you for the link info Rabbit Stitchings! ) My lil project is finally done. Just need to sew the button, the label and the sleeve and I can send it off . It's outta here! I sure hope she will enjoy it. I won't get to see her face when she opens it and finds all of the goodies that I'm stashing in those little pockets. The only place I used the original purchased fabric was for the binding, sleeve, backing and pocket liners! The lime has cute purple spiders and I found an awesome lime green button with a spider that is going on the end of the thread running through Halloween under the spider web.

So now I can move on,

I'm off to mind my P's.... pumpkins an pincushions that is!

Happy Birthday to my baby brother and my dear Dad, they both celebrate their birthdays today. You are both always in my heart!

Lazy Blogger

No, Actually I've been a very busy blogger, the day job has been extremely busy & I've been working on a special project that is taking longer than I thought (don't they always?) I'll be back to post and share pics when I get this lil project done. xoxoxomar

I'd Like You to Meet...

The GIRLS!

Biddies and Precious

I used have dogs and cats, but that changed as soon as I had my first child. Too busy for animals. I pet sit often for extra stash cash, so I've had plenty of opportunities to enjoy other peoples pets. In fact I love OTHER people's pets. Well at the beginning of summer I inherited my son's cats. It was only supposed to be until they sold the house (staging, right?) No problemo! come stay at Kitty Hilton, I have a master suite at their disposal. Unfortunately he got kicked out with the kitties! So the story goes, my son got a divorce and I got custody of the girls. I guess now I'm a cat person. He loves his girls dearly and as soon as he gets settled (it's the batchelor life for him), he will take his girls, but now I get to feed and care for them. They are quite endearing. I swore I wouldn't get attached. But how could I resist?

Now don't you think they would look cute in those LHDG Cherry Baby Kitty bibs that they are going to give away here: http://hollyholderman.typepad.com/holly_blog/

I'd like to give a special shout out to my doggie friends Rio, Daisy and Grizzy. Please don't be mad, I still love you too!

To get in the mood for the new season and because this is supposed

to be about quilting, here is a picture of a little wall hanging I made for a dear friend many years ago :-)

Muddy But Nice!

Yesterday ended up being a wonderful day. It rained on Quilting In the Garden though. I called ahead and found they had hung all of the quilts indoors. Hmm, it was going to be a muddy, crowded show but wanted to meet up with some special friends. It was sooo worth it. We had a good time looking at all of the quilts and chatting with Alex. We said goodbye to one our group and headed over to Inbetween Sitches and LUNCH at the Railroad Cafe. This little place has great food and they close at 2, so we just made it. We had to wait about 15 minutes and would you believe they told us we could wait in the quilt shop, they came and got us when our table was ready!! How's that for service! LOL I Love it! Potato pancake and fruit, yummm. Inbetween Stitches was packed, got a chance say hi to Pam and the crew and shop a little. Then we headed out to the Diablo Valley Guild show. What nice surprise that little show was. It's grown since the last one and had some very nice quilts. It was great day and I was worn out!! My purchases were minimal. I'm so proud. I must be preoccupied with pumpkins :-) This is all I bought and no Darlene, not joining you yet! ( oh how I want to!) Also, I've added a flicker album to the left. There are some pics of both shows in the albums.