Another Charity Quilt done!

Here's another (#3) of the nine charity quilts that I just finished quilting. It really is straight, it just looks strange because of the way I have it pinned to the wall, AND the plaid on the turquoise fabric. To compare colors, you can check here.

The next one is red, white and blue. It's on the quilting machine right now.

How to enable "return reply" comments

I've had several people ask how does one enable replies to comments left on my blog.

To tell you the truth, it's been so long ago, I had forgotten where the change was. So, thanks to Vin, you will have the necessary steps. This is a good thing to do, especially if you want to have a question answered directly to you, rather than having to check back on the blog to see if it was answered. If you don't want to use your real email, get a hotmail, gmail or yahoo account.

Here's How!
*Log on to your Dashboard in Blogger
*In the sidebar click on Edit Profile
*Under Privacy check the box whether you want to show your email address or not
*Scroll down and Save Settings
*You even have choice to show your profile or not

Shorty3Boys, if you decide to update your profile, please make your request again. I'd love to send you some directions once I get a reply email address.

And as a bonus for being patient with this cranky old quiltgranny (not really!) about not being able to talk directly to you, here's my purchases from the quilt show last week:

3 fat quarters of luscious hand dyed fabrics ($3.00 each) destined to become columbines, and yet another pincushion. I didn't have a fish, so what's wrong with adding another cushion? LOL!

More quilt show pictures next time!

More Quilt Show

Closeup detail
Seeing double or triple? The Kansas City area is the home of Alma Allen (and Barb Adams?), and here are some quilts made from one of her/their patterns. I don't know what it is, but I should probably find out. (If Shirlee is reading this post, maybe she'll know?) We never fail to see multiples of her quilts at shows around here - they are all so loved!


And this is one of the challenge quilts from the Olathe Quilt Guild. They celebrated their 25th anniversary, and their theme was 25 of anything. This was the only one I could get a good picture of, and it took me a long time to figure out that the "25 things" were the 25 black backgrounds. Machine quilted beautifully, too!

More quilts from the Main room next post!

Quilt Show/Room One

These are pictures from the great quilt show my friend, Ibby and I attended last Friday. It was a two guild show, so each guild had their own boutique tables, and their own challenge rooms. Here's some of the Blue Valley Quilter's Guild's "Ball" challenge quilts. There were quite a few more, but the layout of the room made it difficult to get more pictures. If I could have stood on the conference table in the room, you would have gotten to see more of them! (Click on the pictures for a larger, closer view).

More of the quilt show will posted next blog entry! Stay tuned!

Comments and questions

I love you all, really I do!

But I MUST say that I get so frustrated when I try to reply to your comments, especially if you've asked a question, but you don't have your email enabled for me to send you a reply.

So, with that said,for those of you who would like me to answer your questions, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, go to your blogger setup and change from being no-replies to having an email address to respond to. If you don't want to use your real email, get a hotmail, gmail or yahoo account. You'd get more interaction with folks that way.

I most likely will not go back to the original post to add a reply, but I WILL answer your email!

Who Let the Dogz Out?

58" square
Hmmmm, could it have been Bonnie and Clyde?

More from the Amazing Quilt Babes

This past Saturday was our Amazing Quilt Babes last birthday stitch day of the year (for Vicky). Unfortunately, my uncle passed away, and I needed to go to his gravesite services Saturday morning before everyone arrived to sew. It's a good thing everyone knows where things are, and also that they make themselves at home in my stewdio, too! So, off I went, in they came, and when I came home, there was a beautiful quilt show all spread out in my living room. What a joyful sight to see!

Shirlee and "Everything but the Kitchen Sink"
This is made from the same nine-patch exchange that vice's quilt came from (last post). The connector blocks are different - what a change!
Quilting close-up
This is another one of Shirlee's quilts, just back from the quilter. Even though I asked Shirlee specifically what for the pattern name, I still can't remember it. I've seen several different versions of this pattern, but never in the gorgeous colors that Shirlee used. Isn't it beautiful?

This is Carol's "Babydoll Dresses", and what she says is her first attempt at machine quilting. Something tells me that Carol has been holding out on us!

Here is Carolyn and her "Baskets". It originally started out as a twin size charity quilt that sort of grew too big and then lodged in Carolyn's heart, so it will live at her house now. I can't blame her!
Quilting Close-up
And when it was all over, Bonnie had to rest in one of her many favorite spots in the stewdio. Notice her patriotic pincushion!

Last Birthday Stitch Day of the Year!

As you all know, my Amazing Quilt Babes give each other the gift of sewing each year for each of our birthdays. Today was our last one of the year, and Vicky is the lucky birthday girl this time. She is sitting in the chair, front and center, right where a birthday girl should be! You'll notice that we are making the quilt look straight by leaning in the direction of the blocks...it was much easier doing this, instead of resetting the rows on the design wall.

You'll notice that these are the same blocks from the Kitchen Sink, which our group had exchanged the 3" nine patch blocks. Shirlee chose to set her blocks like the Kitchen Sink on HER birthday stitch day, too. Vicky, however, chose to set hers a bit differently, and I like it just as well! Very soft and pretty! We were missing one of our members (Ibby) today, and it just didn't seem the same. We still had fun, even though we were all pretty tired.

Clyde is always worn out after his stitch days with the girls!

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of the mini-quilt show we had here at the house. Quilts were back from the quilter's house!

It's a Good Thing!

Every once in a while, I sit in waiting rooms at the hospital, at the doctor's office, or any other place someone needs to me wait. Most of those times, I take handwork with me, but more often as not, the time just doesn't warrant it. So on those days, I try to find a magazine to read that I normally don't pick up. Yes, I have to admit that I've read Argosy, Backpacker, Horticulturist, and Outside many times. They are always interesting, since they aren't magazines I see in my own home!

Last week, during one of these short waiting periods, I picked up an August issue of Time Magazine. I had already read everything they reported about, but in the "interest" column, I found something really cool!

It was titled "7 Cool Sites You'll want to Bookmark. I've studied a few of them, but the two so far that I think are great are:

Pandora.com
"Type in the name of your favorite band, and within moments, the site will be streaming a radio station, featuring songs from that band and similar ones, to your desktop through your browser - no registration and no downloads required. You can fine-tune the playlist by using the thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons. It's a nifty way of discovering new artists who sort of sound like the bands you already like, and of becoming a font of music knowledge at parties...courtesy of the Music Genome Project.

Zunafish.com
Sign up here to trade DVDs, CDs, paperback books, video games and DVDs. The only money that changes hands is the $1.00 fee you pay the site for each successful trade. It's easy to post an item: you simply plug in identifying information - the site walks you through that - and the Web Elves produce a full listing. The sole limitation - apart from those of your collection - is that you can only swap like items (CDs for CDs, books for books, etc). So choose a screen name and start swapping.

I haven't had a chance to explore more of them, but you can see the full annual list of Time's 50 coolest websites, including shopping, cooking and parenting blogs at Time's website.

I didn't get a chance to take pictures of all my pincushions as everyone else was showing them. I have a lot of them - two on each side of my design wall, 4 catcher bags with pincushions, 2 Ewesful pincushions, and a couple of chickens. I also have a patriotic one, sort of like a large tomato. I try to keep my pins sorted between them, but that is a futile exercise! I have two wool pincushions, both of which were gifts. One of them fits perfectly in my "carry along" kit, and here is the other one. I think I love them both the best!

What color red?

You Are Rouge Red

Of all the reds, you are the most energetic and vibrant. You never need to recharge, and in fact, you often recharge others. Gutsy and brave, you've never let your fears stop you from doing anything. You figure that life is all about experiences, and you'll always take that leap of faith.

What Color Red Are You?

Seeing double....or triple?

My friend, Carolyn and I are working on these small quilts for our 2007 charity mission. The first one is mine and the last two are hers. We each are making nine of them for the Diabetic Education Class of Jan 2007 for Caritas Clinics in Kansas City. So, this is a good cause. The quilts work up pretty fast, and we make them 44" X 60" so we can get one made out of a 3 yard piece of fabric, along with bits of coordinating fabrics. A nice way to use up the stash for sure!

I imagine you'll get pretty bored with looking at the quilts as time goes by, but you can see how different fabric makes a different quilt, each time, with the same pattern, anyway. I'm working on a bright and fanciful pink and turquoise one today.

The funny thing about all three of these quilts is that NONE of the larger pieces of fabric came from OUR stash! We had just decided on the pattern when another close quilting buddy of ours told us she had oodles of bags of fabric she had cleaned out of HER stash. So, we took half of the bags, and went through them. We chose what we wanted and passed the rest to a local Lutheran church for their mission quilts, and more to the local Linus brigade. I think the other half went to another church. Out of what we chose, Carolyn had enough fabric to cut and "kit" all of our January quilts! Of course, they run another 6 month class after this one, so we have lots more opportunities to use our stash, for sure.

At the same time, we are making our stars for the February auction quilt. We decided on a really beautiful pattern from the DesMoines Area Quilt Guild called "Stars of the Heartland". It was their 1994 raffle quilt, and it features two different sizes of stars that are set to make it look like they are in a circle. Our goal for this one is to have it to the quilter by the middle of November if not before. Watch this space!

Gotta Grow Up!

This was my car in the morning around the middle of August, not so long ago. It was my second car, same color, same everything except 5 years newer than the first one I had. Well, after much discussion and thinking about the number of times I filled the gas tank each week (yes, it was more than once a week), we knew we had to do something....

So this is the car I drove home with (and a check in my pocket) later that day. A nice little Kia Spectra 5 is much nicer on the pocketbook at the gas station.

Which of course, translates into many more fat quarters, too!

Halloween Decorations

The first picture I took in Michigan was in the bathroom of Renee's Quilt Shop in Williamsburg. This is a great shop with really friendly people. I fell in love with the decorations in the bathroom, and Renee had a really funny look on her face when I asked if I could take a picture in there!

Such a simple idea, doncha think? This is just a plant stand that she has filled with toilet paper wrapped with fat quarters. She changes the fabric with each season, and occasionally changes the lights wrapped around the stand! And don't we all have some fat quarters for the seasonal changes?

I've just finished stitching down the binding on Happy Jack's Pumpkin Patch so I can get it hung in the Hearth Room before the grandgirls arrive tomorrow night!