Christmas Tablerunner and My Love of Magazines

I've been getting a few things dome early for Christmas. It's not really like me to start this early but I hate rushing around in December trying to get things done. I just finished the binding on this Christmas tablerunner last night. I bought this pattern about two years ago and I finally got around to doing it. I have so many patterns just floating around here waiting to be finished. it almost makes me feel guilty :) I am proud to say that this runner is completely out of my stash and scrap heap :) This pattern is from a company called "A Little More Effect" in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. You can see some of their patterns here or here (I couldn't find a web site for them). I used the "Groovin' Piping Hot Binding Tool" for the first time to add piping into the runner itself and into the binding. I think that was one of the main reasons that I wanted to make this runner; so, that I could learn how to use this tool and to use up some scraps as well of course. Well, I guess I have to mention that I also thought that the pattern was absolutely beautiful and that it would look great on my table over the Christmas season :)

I found some more great Christmas patterns in the Special Holiday issue of The Quilter Magazine "Quilting for Christmas." I think that there is about 6 projects in there that I would like to do. If you go to the "Quilting for Christmas" page you can see some of the patterns. I love every pattern on this page but I really love the "Holiday Runner," "Christmas Wreaths" and "Mr. Winter" patterns and a bunch more from the magazine. I always seem to find lots of patterns that I like in this magazine. or maybe I am just trying to justify the fact that I am a magazine junkie :) I have subscriptions to I think 3 quilting magazines and I purchase a few more at the news stand every time they come out. I also love Fabric Trends Magazine to see the new lines and what the designers are doing with them and the $100,000 Quilting Challenge for the inspiration and wow factor. Oh and I love the "American Quilter Magazine" which is the official magazine of the American Quilter's Society or AQS. You have to be a member to get it but it is worth it I think. And how can I mention magazine without mentioning Quilter's Newsletter Magazine?? this was the first quilting magazine that I purchased and I have had a subscription ever since. I love reading it cover to cover but I always read Helen Kelley's column "Loose Threads" first. You can see Helen Kelley's blog "Helen Kelley Patchworks" here.

Wow this was the blog post of links!! I hope that you enjoy them all :) Again, if you have any questions or comments please feel free to post them here.

Quilt Bee Quilting

Hi all!;
I can't believe that I am only just now sharing this photo of my "Silver Thimbles" quilt!! I belong to a quilting bee called "The Silver Thimbles." We meet on Tuesday nights, for two hours, and work on group projects. The person whose turn it is picks the pattern and the fabrics. Then we get the fabrics ready and usually we piece or applique the quilt as a group. Then we load the quilt onto a big "old-fashioned" quilting frame and we sit around the frame hand-quilting. While one quilt is on the frame we start working on the next quilt.

I love being a part of this group! I've been a member for just shy of 5 years I believe and I just love it. We have members that range from their 30's to their 70's ans do we ever have fun! We laugh and stitch and just generally enjoy each other's company :)

This pattern is from "The Quilter" Magazine from I think three years ago. It is like a cross between a Boston Common Quilt and a Trip Around the World. I call it "A Trip to Boston Common" :) It has the Hobbs Heirloom Wool batting (you will have to scroll down the page to see it on Harriet Hargrave's site) in it and a wonderful brushed cotton backing so it is absolutely wonderful in this type of season. I love wool batting since it is warm and fluffy but it breathes and it still light. It is really wonderful to hand quilt as well. The lanolin in the wool lubricates your needle so it just glides throught the fabric and you can acheive nice small stitches without too much trouble. I also find that I can hand quilt for longer periods of time with the wool batting as my hands don't get tired as quickly. Just my personal preferance though :) I have a double sized bed and the edges of the bed come to the outside edge of the second cream border so that the final border just draps down the mattress. It looks wonderful on the bed. I honestly think that it looks better on the bed than hanging LOL.


This is a picture of another one of our quilts that belongs to another one of our members. It is a pattern called "Hearts and Apron Strings" the was originally published in Quilter's Newsletter Magazine as a serial pattern in 2004. It is a pattern by Sharon Schamber that you can now find on her web site here or in PDF format here. It really is a very nice pattern and she does some wonderful work so please check out her site.

We did this quilt as almost a round robin since it was all multiple borders. We all worked on the piecing but then one of us would take it home and add on the next border and bring it back the nex t week. It really was neat to see the quilt getting bigger and bigger. The picture that is here is a picture of our quilt hanging at the Carp Fair with a First Place ribbon on it for group quilt that is hand quilted:)

Another Christmas Quilt

Since i have been showing off Christmas quilts lately I thought that I would share another one. This is my Christmas Dresden plate quilt. I won these blocks from our guild Block of the Month program. For every block (of the specific pattern and sometimes colours) that you enter your name is put into the draw 1 time. I entered 4 times and won 16 blocks. I made two more to set them on point and sashed them with a scrappy sash of uneven strips. The basic pattern was adapted from Fons and Porter's Quilter's Complete Guide from the pattern "Take the Night Train." in that pattern they used Ohio Stars but I just love the setting so I put my Dresden Plates into it and I think that it worked out really well. It is quilted in a meander pattern using rayon thread. This quilt was made about 5 years ago but it is still one of my favourites since it was a group project.

With all three of my Christmas bed quilts we all have a Christmas quilt on our beds during the season. I really love how you can transform your bedrooms with quilts. People sometimes look at my Christmas quilts, or other quilts, and say "but that wouldn't match my bedroom" and I think wow someone thinks that a quilt won't match everything??? Especially a Christmas quilt! How can it not look good?? Quilts don't have to match perfectly all the time. They are usable works of art that only need to be loved to work :) Now don't get me wrong I have nothing against painting a bedroom, or any other room, to match a quilt; or, with co-ordinating a room around a quilt. Using the colour wheel to add in colours or take away a couple of colours from the room can make anything work. Maybe I think this way because I love changing my quilts with the seasons or with my moods; or, maybe it's just because I LOVE quilts. Whatever it is I have a feeling that I am not alone thinking this way. Or, at least I hope that I am not :)

I found this funny blog thing on Blogging, Near Philladelphia another quilting and other things blog. I found it really cute since fall is my favourite season and I just love the colours and the brisk air. Many of our friends that moved out to Calgary say that they really miss the changing colours of the leaves and I can completely believe it! I just love the colours and the inspiration that it gives me.

You Belong in Fall

Intelligent, introspective, and quite expressive at times... You appreciate the changes in color, climate, and mood that fall brings Whether you're carving wacky pumpkins or taking long drives, autumn is a favorite time of year for you

What Season Are You?

Christmas Scrap Kaliedascope

Here is a picture of my Christams scrap Kaliedascope quilt. I have a real thing for Christmas fabrics. Maybe it is the intensity of the colours or maybe it is just that green and red are complimentary colours and I love complimentary colours. I also love all the gold on Christmas fabrics. Whatever it is I am a real sucker for them. The after Christmas sales at the quilt shops always get me when I see those Christmas fabrics at half price :)

Anyways, needless to say I have a mighty stash of Christmas fabrics. I was able to make my Christmas scrap quilt from my small scraps and this one from some larger pieces and random fat quarters from my stash. This is an Eleanor Burns pattern by Quilt in a Day. I used her Kaleidascope ruler and pattern. I absolutely LOVE her rulers. I have the Triangle Square up ruler, triangle in a square ruler, and her flying geese rulers and I really think that her methods and rulers can't be beat for accuracy and speed of construction. i know that I have commented on that before but I just love her stuff.
Here is a close-up of the piecing and the quilting. I quilted it using Sulky opalesant sliver metallic thread in a random wavy pattern. The metallic thread really adds a nice effect to the quilt and the sliver metallic really changes in tone depending on what fabric it is crossing. The Holloshimmer metallic thread is my favorite to use generally since it tensions wonderfully but I just love this colour of the Sliver. I just have to quilt a little bit slower and make sure that the thread is not twisted before it gets to the tension disk. The effect is worth it I think :)

You can really see some of the wonderful Christmas batiks in this picture and all the gold on the fabrics. What do you think?

Quilting Update

Here's a little quilting update for you all. We have been having an absolutely wonderful fall here in Ontario. The weather, until the last few days, has been really nice. I love watching the leaves turn on the trees and I love the brisk air that comes with the fall. We have been outside more trying to take advantage of the nice weather.

I finished the applique on my celtic table runner. this was an online course from Quilt University. I really enjoyed the process and found the course really clear and enjoyable. I really liked the way that the table runner worked out.

This is an Advent calender panel that I just finished. It is by Makower fabrics. I absolutely love their Christmas fabrics. I love all the gold and the bright tones of the red and green. I have done two of their advent calendar panels now so each of my boys can have one. I seem to be a sucker for the Makower Advent Calendar panels :) The pockets can be a little bit fussy to do but they are worth it.

I don't know why this picture didn't flip :( I'll try to figure out how to rotate it later. Sorry.

Another Funny Blog Thing

I did another funny blog thing that I got from another quilting blog that I read Nancy's Quilts. Her blog is great you should check it out.

You Are Teal Green

You are a one of a kind, original person. There's no one even close to being like you. Expressive and creative, you have a knack for making the impossible possible. While you are a bit offbeat, you don't scare people away with your quirks. Your warm personality nicely counteracts and strange habits you may have.

What Color Green Are You?

I think that it sounds pretty nice to me :) I love doing silly blog things; they make me smile :)

More on the Fair

Here is a picture of the wedding quilt that our friends so nicely sent back to us with the first place ribbon on it. It took the first for machine quilted article. That was the only category for machine quilted quilts under 72" x 90" that I could enter it in.

I should explain a little more about the Carp Fair I think based on the comments LOL! It takes place in a town called Carp here in Ontario. I've included some links in case you want more information. It's probably the largest Fair based quilt competition in the area. Well, at least it is the largest that I know about :) This fair is part of the Ontario Assosciation of Agricultural Societies (OAAS) so the Best Quilt in Show for both the Hand Quilted Quilt and Machine Quilted Quilt go on to compete at the provincial level in February 2007. I am really excited about this!! I still can hardly believe that my quilt is going to compete at the provincial level. You can see a picture of last years winner for Machine Quilted Quilt here. Isn't it great!? I think that we may travel down for the competition.
This is a picture of my 90" x 108" handquilted "Welsh Beauty" wholecloth quilt that took a second place. It is a preprinted panel by Benartex. My quilt is the one on the bottom. I call this quilt, lovingly, "A Comedy of Errors" because just about everything that could have gone wrong with it did. I have split red wine on it, bled on it, had the kids dirty hands on it and I cut a hole in it. I appliqued a patch over the hole so it was vitually invisible but some of the stains I just couldn't get completely out. Then just when I was about to finally finish the quilt and I was rolling on my 3 rail Hinterburg frame I realised that I didn't have quite enough of the wide backing fabric to go all the way to the top. I was short by only 6". Maybe the clerk thought that I was going to rack the quilt the other way and I didn't; I'm not really sure. Since I purchased the fabric 5 years ago I couldn't really complain:) Luckily I had some extra backing fabric on one of the sides of the quilt that I was saving for the hanging sleeve. So, I had to take the unfinished quilt off the frame, cut the extra backing fabric off the side of the quilt, sew the extra fabric onto the top and reload the quilt onto the frame to finish the quilting. I had to use a different fabric for the hanging sleeve but that's okay. So anyways, I was pretty pleased with the second place ribbon for my stained and damaged quilt :) So the moral of this story is always double check your backing fabric amounts and lay the top on the backing fabric to make sure that there is enough :) By the time that the backing fabric episode happened I just had to laugh because it really was just another thing that went wrong with this quilt :)

If you have anymore questions or comments please feel free to post them here and I will try to answer them.

I won!!

I won!! I am so excited! This quilt won the first in the Carp Fair for Machine quilted quilt. Plus it won Best in Show for Machine Quilted Quilt and Reserve Grand Champion for the show!! It goes on now to the provincial level to compete.
(Update: I was wrong!! Sorry! Can you tell I've never really competed before :) It now goes to compete at the district level this weekend then if it wins there it goes to the provincial level. A woman phoned yesterday and just told me so off it went yesterday. I'll find out on Sunday or Monday if I take anything.)
I can hardly believe it. I've posted previously on how I constructed this quilt. You can see the process here. I really can't believe that a machine quilted quilt took Reserve Grand Champion at a fair. It just goes to show how the world is slowly changing and accepting machine quilting more and more; because, I really don't remember another machine quilted quilt at this fair taking one of the champions. Please somebody correct me if I am wrong :)

I also won 5 other firsts, including a first for the quilt that my friends sent back to me, two seconds and one third place prize. I really am just so amazed by this that I don't know what to think.

The Lazy Girl Designs bag, the Gracie Bag, that I entered won a first prize and it is going to be sent to Toronto in February to the Ontario Association of Agricultural Societies Convention to be on display in the Craft Room to be an example of what a really good bag looks like.

The embroidery I did on my Pfaff embroidery machine and it is a free design from Ann the Gran web site.

This is the better picture of the bag rather than the blurry photo I had up before.

Harry Potter Scraps

Thank you guys for your nice comments about the Harry Potter quilts that I made for my two boys. They do really love them. I can just picture them at university with those quilts on their beds LOL :)

This is a picture of the quilt that I made from some of the scraps from the Harry Potter quilts. The block is called Arkansas Crossroads. You can see a variation of the pattern that I used here. Mine is a little bit different, in that it uses half-square triangles instead of the stitch and flip method, so I will see if I can find it for you. The blocks are 12 1/2" unfinished and it is set 4 by 4.

The border is a piano-key border with cornerstones. I used up a lot of scraps but I still have even more if you can believe it :) There are some projects that I just seem to completely over-buy in fabric. At least I am getting better now in my fabric purchasing and I am using up a lot of scraps in various projects and in preemie quilts.

Harry Potter Quilting

Well I have a confession to make :) I am a huge Harry Potter fan! So if you are not you may not want to read this post. I love the books and the movies and my boys love them too. I made them both Harry Potter quilts a few years ago for Christmas that have been on their beds since then. This is a photo of one of them. The quilts are quilted in YLI "Glow Bug" glow-in-the-dark thread for the magic coming out of the wand. This is a very thick thread and I found that I had to use a 90/14 Topstitch needle to accommodate the thickness of the thread. The rest of the loops and stars are regular cotton thread. The borders are quilted in Superior "Glitter" metallic thread to look like the golden snitch flying. I couldn't take a really clear picture of that, sorry.

I just found this web site called Sew Hooked where she has some original Harry Potter paper piecing patterns on her site. Best of all these patterns are free! You need to click on the title to get the pattern. I would have loved to have these when I was making the boys' quilts. Now I have not tested any of her patterns but they certainly look wonderful.

Fair Entries

This is one of the quilts that I am going to enter into the fair this coming weekend. We gave it to two of our friends for their wedding present late last fall and they were nice enough to send it back to me for the fair.

Thanks Guys!

the pattern is from a McCalls magazine from I think last August. Sorry I can't even look that up since I gave the magazine away :)

The quilt involoved a lot of template work which I hadn't done before so I learned how to do that

I should also mention that this was quilted on a regular domestic sewing machine and not on any type of a long-arm. I don't have any type of long-arm system but I can see something like that in the futer maybe :)

Here is a close-up of one of the split Lemoyne Star blocks. I had never done one of those before and I have never had so many points coming together in one spot before. I really enjoyed the challenge though and found that I don't actually mind doing in-set peices.
The Lemoyne stars and the Ohio stars are both quilted in gold metallic thread in an interlocking swirl pattern.

I hope that you enjoy the close-ups of the machine quilting. I quilted the background in navy blue rayon thread. I tried to emulate the style of Caryl Bryer Fallert who is an amzing machine quilter. You can see her web site here. It is really worth a look. She does her own hand-dyed fabrics and uses them in her amazing art quits.



This is a picture of the back of the quilt so that you can see the machine quilting a little bit better. I really enjoyed quilting this quilt. While I was quilting it I felt so free and relaxed and I really enjoyed the whole process. This type of unmarked free-form quilting is very nice to do.

You really need to click on the pictures to see the quilting at all :(





Here is the border treatment. It is quilted in a paisley feather type pattern and echoed once to give it dimension.


I hope that you can see it :)

This piece will be entered in the category "Article of Machine Quilting" since there isn't a category for machine quilted quilts under 72" x 90". It's too bad but I think that it deserves to be entered.

What do you guys think? Again, if you have any questions or comments please feel free to post them here and I will try to answer them :)

Getting ready for a fair

Well lately I have been trying to decide what quilts and quilted pieces I am going to enter into one of our local fairs. It is hard to decide which peices best fit which category and are also some of my better work. I am going to enter a few pieces this year and we'll see how it goes. I'll post a picture tomorrow of a quilt that I had friends send me back so that I could enter it. I am also going to enter my Halloween jacket under "long sleeve decorated sweat shirt." What do you think?

I've been reading about all the people who did a no new fabric in August challenge. Congrats to all the poeple who managed to do it! Well, I actually did buy fabric in August but if the challenge had of been for June or July I would have won LOL! As you know I have been trying to use up my stash so I really haven't been purchasing any new fabric lately. During our trip to those great quilt stores in Alberta though I definately purchased some fabric :)

A Very late Christmas gift :)

This is a Christmas gift that I actually had finished before Christmas but only just gave to two of my friends. I made it out of a "Big Block Kit" (12 1/4 meter cuts); but, instead of just doing all large blocks I did a 4-patch 1-patch design for some extra jazz. Very simple and very quick but I think that they always turn out nicely. I've done a few like this and they are always well loved :) The fabric line is the Three Sisters Christmas line from Moda.

It is quilted in a large feathered wreath type of design using rayon thread.

Well i guess that it is good that they will have the quilt for this Christmas :)

Sandy's Halloween Quilt

Here is a picture of the quilt that I have been machine quilting. It is my friend Sandy's quilt guild tinners quilt. Isn't it great!? I posted pictures earlier of Marion's block ( in the middle) to show here photo printing work; but now you can see it in the quilt.

I quilted it on my domestic sewing machine using nylon monofilament thread and various metallic threads. I wanted to draw attention to the work of the individual quilters more than the quilting so there is a lot of outline work and in the ditch work. however, there are a lot of nice metallic cobwebs in the blocks too :)

This is a close-up of the spider-web quilting that I did in the border. I used a nice holoshimmer metallic thread and free-hand quilted the spider webs.

This is also a picture of the block that I did for the quilt. It is the same block that I made for my pumpkin crazy son that didn't have happy enough pumpkins. Sandy really liked it and wanted one for her quilt so I was happy to accomidate :) It is a free embroidrery design from Ann the Gran's site and it stitches out really nicely.

I think that the quilt is really great. Sandy is going to put lots of crystals in the web in the border. Once she does that I will get a better picture of the quilt for you to see. If you have any comments for Sandy please feel free to post them here and I will pass them on :)

I should also add that I was getting a ton of spam in my comments section so I have to put some protection on the comments section. I have to do the word identification thing and so far this has eliminated the spam. I hope that this doesn't prevent any of you from commenting since I really enjoy your comments.

Long Time No Blog!!

Hi all!!
Long time no blogging! Well I was away for a little while in Calgary Alberta. We were visiting friends and sight seeing. I've pasted a lot of Wiki links in case you want anymore information about any of the places I was.

On the left you can see some of the Hoodoo's in Drumheiler Alberta. The Badlands were truly amazing to see since it was so empty of vegetation; but, as you can see, the rock formations were truly beautiful in thier own way. We also went to the Royal Tyrell Dinosaur Museum in Drumheiler. It is one of the best dinosaur museums in the world and the collection of dinosaur bones was really amazing. The boys just loved it.

We went to Canmore Alberta and stayed at a friend's place by the Three Sisters Mountain. Canmore is just outside of Banff National Park and it is really breath-taking! On the left you can see Grasse lake. We hiked up a fairly easy trail with the boys and I just could not believe the view. It was truly one of the most awe-inspiring places that I have ever visited. I really loved it.

I really loved seeing all of our friends and visiting new places. Travelling can really expand your horizons :)

While we were there we gave two of our friends a 10th Aniversary quilt. These two got married before I was quilting so they didn't get one for their wedding gift. This is the quilt top that I showed way back in my first blog post.

I finished the quilting just the way that I originally thought that I would. I did continuous curve the the blocks and feathers in the triangles and in the border.




Here you can see a close-up of some of the feather quilting in the setting triangle.

When I quilt feathers I will mark the spine of the feather with a Calk-O-Liner then quilt the reast free-hand. This quilt was also quilted by me on my regular domestic machine (Pfaff 2144).

While we were in Calgary and Canmore I was in two of the best quilt shops that I have ever been in. Freckles in Calgary and The Sugar Pine Company in Canmore. The shop in Canmore was truly overwhelming. They had so much fabric and so many patterns.

I purchased a couple of patterns by Rocky Mountain Desings since one of the patterns was of the Three Sisters Mountain in Canmore. I plan to make that as a remembrance of our trip.

Alll in all it was an excellent trip that went way too fast. I don't think that any of us wanted to leave when it was over.

I hope that you enjoyed reading about my trip and if you have any questions please feel free to post them here and I will try to answer them.

Attaching a Hanging Sleeve

After you have machine sewn on your binding to the front of your quilt (my explanation of binding a quilt starts with squaring a quilt up at here and finishes with the binding in the next two posts) you are ready to attach a hanging sleeve. Most quilt shows and quilt competitions require a 4” hanging sleeve to be attached to the quilt and it is far easier to attach the sleeve into the binding before you turn the binding to the back rather than sew it on later and do it entirely by hand. This is the method that I use to attach a standard 4” hanging sleeve with room for the rod.

Cut a strip of your backing fabric that is 8 ½” or 9” wide by the width of your quilt. I do this easily by laying an 8 ½” strip of fabric across the width of my quilt and and cutting it the length needed. It cuts out the step of having to measure it with a tape measure :) In the picture you can see the back of the fabric I am going to use for the sleeve.

Take the fabric to your ironing board and do a double turn under at each of the short ends. I generally turn under1/4” to 3/8” for each turn.

Now take the sleeve to your sewing machine and using thread that matches the fabric sew the hem down. I really like to take this opportunity to use some of the decorative stitches on my sewing machine. Many people say that they don't use their decorative stitches but this is a great chance to try some of them out and it adds a nice embellishment to the quilt. I usually try to choose a stitch that will compliment the front of the quilt somehow.

Next take your sleeve back to the ironing board and fold it about ¼ of the way up and press all the way down the length of the sleeve.

Take your sleeve back to the sewing machine and sew ¼” along this fold using your longest stitch length or a “basting” stitch. You do not want to use a short stitch length here because we will be taking these stitches out later.









Moving again to the ironing board fold the two raw edges together and press a crease in. The little sewn “tuck” will be standing up. Make sure that you stretch out the fabric so that there is not extra fabric in the tuck. We want the tuck to be only ¼” and no bigger or it will show past your binding from the front. Your sleeve is now ready to be sewn onto your quilt.






Take your quilt and your sleeve to your sewing machine. Center the sleeve onto to top of your quilt. You will have a small amount on either end where the sleeve does not touch. This is where your binding will be folding to the back and where your hangers will go to hang it on the wall. Sew the sleeve on to the quilt using less than ¼” seam allowance. If you use a bigger on it will go into the binding.

Now you are ready to hand sew down the back of the sides and the bottom of the hanging sleeve. Use the same blind stitch that you used for the binding. After the stitching is done remove the basting stitch from the sleeve and you will have a bit of extra fabric in the sleeve to accommodate a rod. If you don't put this extra bit of fabric in the quilt will pull over the top of the rod or the rod won't be able to go in at all.

I will add to this post once I do the hand work to show the finished sleeve but it is just too humid right now to have the quilt on top of me to do the hand stitching. So there will be more soon :)

I hope that you all enjoyed this blog on the hanging sleeve. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to post them here and I will see if I can answer them.

Day Out with Thomas

This weekend we drove about 800 km to St Thomas Ontario to go to "Day Out with Thomas." This was the only Canadian stop on the tour. My youngest son, the one who also loves pumpkins and orange, is a big Thomas the Tank Engine fan and we promised him last year that we would go if it came back to Ontario. You can see from the picture that Thomas looks wonderful! It was really amazing to see the engine and how great he looked. All the kids around were really excited and happy to see him. We went on a 25 minute ride on Thomas and it was the first train ride that my boys had ever had so that was really exciting for them. I really have to say that if you have a little Thomas fan in the family take them to this event because it is worth it! You can go to the web site here to check out show times if you want.

I took a lot of photos of the event and I am thinking of making a photo quilt of the day. I'll have to find some Thomas fabric though. Somebody must make Thomas fabric right?

Today I spent a few hours machine quilting a quilt for some friends who are celebrating their 10th aniversary. When they were married I hadn't started quilting yet so they didn't get a quilt. Since then every one of our friends has receieved a lap size quilt as their wedding present. So, I thought that it would be nice to give them a quilt to celebrate their aniversary. You can see a picture of the top here and I will post pictures of the finished quilting maybe tomorrow.

I am going to continue my binding series of posts with this quilt as well. I will be showing how to attatch a hanging sleeve to the back of your quilt. So stay tuned!

Funny Pumpkin Things

Hi all;

You Are

A Classic Pumpkin Face You would make a good pumpkin pie.

What's Your Pumpkin Face?

I did another blog thing because my youngest son, Gavin, (5) LOVES pumpkins. You can see him here in my Preemie Quilts post. Well actually it isn't limited to just pumpkins it is anything orange. You can see him holding his very first quilt here it is one that he gave away to a little preemie baby in need.

We are going to work on his second quilt this summer. We have been collecting fabrics for quite a while for it. It is so wonderful to go into a quilt shop with him. He immediately finds the brightest orange fabrics that he can find or ones with pumpkins on it. Now, he doesn't like just any pumpkin fabrics. He likes pumpkins with happy faces on them :)

I made the quilt on the left for him for a nice little halloween quilt that he could hang in his room. He looked at it for a while with a quizzical expression on his face and when I asked him if he liked it he said "No" very seriously. I asked him why and he said "because they don't have happy faces like these ones" and he pointed to the pumpkins on the border fabric!






So I promptly made him the next quilt! Notice that all the pumpkins are happy and smiling. That is another one of his requirements :)

So when I did the pumpkin blog thing and found out that I was the classic smiling pumpkin I just had to laugh and post about how important happy smiling pumpkins with faces are.

I should mention that these two free embroidery designs came from Ann the Gran.

We are almost finished collecting fabrics for Gavin's quilt. Just a few more key pieces to go and we will be all set.

The other part that made me laugh about the Pumpkin blog thing was the thing about how I would make a good pumpkin pie because one halloween Gavin begged me to make a pumpkin pie from the whole pumpkins we had. I spent the day baking the pumpkins, making the filling, making the pie crusts and finally making the pies. Everything was made from scratch and using only the best ingredients. I really wanted to make these pies special for him. They were wonderful except for one thing. No one else in my family (except me) would eat them. They all decided that they didn't like pumpkin pie so I was left with two fresh pumpkin pies that had taken me the better part of a day to make and a whole bunch of pureed pumpkin. Needless to say and awful lot of pie was given away that day :)

More Photo Fun!

Hi all;
This is the other block that my friend Marion did for our guild tinners group. You can see the first block here. You should check it out if you haven't seen it already.

In this block the woman whose tin it was is on the right all dressed up like "The Quilt Diva" you may be familiar with that quilt you can see the pattern here. (I have never ordered from this company or anything I just found it here on-line). Two more participants in our group are under the hair dryer. The beauty salon pictured is Sandy's actual beauty salon.

Isn't this block wonderful! Well done Marion!! If you want to let Marion know how much you like the block you can post it here and she will see them.

No too much going on

It has been hot and beautiful here lately so I have to say that I have been doing lots of stuff outside and I have not been quilting very much. I don't know if I am wierd or not but I don't find hot summer weather very quilty. I have been making some preemie quilt tops (pictured here). I find that that is always a good way to keep quilting while doing something for charity.

As I was saying the hot weather doesn't motivate me to quilt very much. Maybe it's because I just don't want the fabric on me or soemthing. maybe I'm just in a bit of a quilty slump. What do you guys do to get motivated and going again? I would love to have some advise!!

I am a Snapdragon What Flower Are You?

I did this fun blog thing about what type of flower I am. I've never thought of myself as a snapdragon but hey you never know. Here's what the test said
"Mischief is your middle name, but your first is friend. You are quite the prankster that loves to make other people laugh."
I do love to laugh but I've never thought of myself as a prankster; but, hey maybe I am :)