Featured Sea Side Stitcher: ME

Here's your Quiltgranny working, working, working on those borders. Why oh why do they always thwart me? This particular interior border was left off, pictures taken, then taken off, then put on again, then taken off (the wrong one was put on), then put on again. It's done now, and I love it anyway!

Bad Quilt! No biscuit!!!

Look at the bottom border. Do you see something missing?

BUT, wait! Here's another quilt finish! Do you recognize this one from it's bits and parts laying on my floor before I left home? I had my home based Amazing Quilt Babes look at it. I had you look at it on a previous blog. I had my Sea Side stitching friends look at it. I had the shop owners from Atascadero look at it. They all agreed I should just leave it as it is. No one could really see what was wrong until *I* pointed it out! If you look closely, the left border doesn't match the corner on the right side. The left side looks like a stovepipe hat. The right side looks like one side is caved in. The title of this quilt will be "It is What it Is". The top of the quilt is shown at the bottom of this picture. It has none of the twisty border on it, just black fabric.

So by this point, Wendy and I took a break, and went to town to reserve our space for next year's retreat. On the way back, we saw that Camp Pines in the Woods had an open house, so we went there. It's a summer camp for kids, and it is such a great place! Here's the crafts room where the mosaic over the fireplace was done by some of the campers. There was just so much detail in it! Isn't it fabulous?

The otter with the shell on his belly had three dimensional whiskers. And mirrored tiles were running through the "water" to give it some sparkle.

An overall view of above the fireplace mantel.

The shells and stones were real, and the snake on the hearth was getting close to "getting" the little mice huddled over a little ear of mosiac corn. Towards the bottom of the picture, you can also see the snakes heart/s.

At the camp, they have a great horned owl and a red tail hawk that have been lent to them for their wildlife programs by the Forestry service. While I have seen both of these birds from a distance at home, I have never had the privilege of seeing them up close. They are magnificent!

Great Horned Owl
Red Tail Hawk

Camp Counselors

Quiltgranny and the turtle

In town, there was an art gallery with beautiful displays in the windows. I fell in love with these glass sculptures. They were in all sizes, but even the smallest one was out of my price range! So a picture will have to do!

Another day we drove to Morro Bay for our picnic and shopping at the Cotton Boll, we ran in to Rob Appell. We got to see all his great patterns and quilts that he has done for the Endangered Species Quilt Project. They are wonderful! So is he! And so is the shop. It's always on our list every year for a special day trip.

Sea Side Stitchers and Rob Appell with a couple of his quilts

Quilt Granny and Rob Appell with the tiger pattern

We saw this quilt last year, but had no idea who Rob was. I think this is my absolute favorite of his work.

One morning we woke up, and the day was sunny and bright. As we watched the ocean from the window for more whales, this fog bank started rolling in. Within 5 minutes, you couldn't see even 3 feet away!

Now, on to what I know you all have been waiting for. Just HOW MUCH FABRIC did I bring/ship home? Well, not so much my friends! I DO have to update my stash tracker, but I will do that at the end of these posts, because I can also track a lot of fabric out. This is the TOTAL of the stuff I bought. There is a total of 15 yards. The little petite fours were a gift from our friends from the Quilter's Cupboard in Atascadero who joined us for dinner one night. There! That wasn't so bad, was it?

Tomorrow's blog posts will be of all our Cambria and Atascadero friends Ta Ta for now! Keep stitching!

Featured Sea Side Stitcher: Wendy

Wendy is our official Camp Director. She keeps us straight with our dates, our money, and our projects. She's one good kid, let me tell 'ya!

She is also our music coordinator, and I don't think Margaret knows this yet, but Margaret is the Music Director, and long with Wendy, they pair up to serenade us sweetly with piano (thank you Wendy) and songs (both.)

A little down the road and up the hill is a camp for kids. They were having an open house, so Wendy and I decided to go see what they were doing. WAY COOL! I wanna be a kid again! This was Camp Pine in the Woods, and of course, we had to get some of the T-shirts. You'll see more of these pictures when I post my stuff.

This was in a planter in downtown Cambria. What a giant Hen/Chick!!! I had to take the picture with Wendy's hand for size.

Wendy made this spool block for Margaret using the selvedge strips as an idea of what kind of blocks she could make using all those little blocks she made.

One of my favorite projects that Wendy worked on. I think it is called Lake House?

And here are Wendy's Amish Dresden Plates

This is Wendy's design wall with last years applique kitties and this year's projects. The spinning stars are made from all sorts of scrap fabric donated to the church. Quilts like this one are tied and sent to Africa for use as room dividers, floor coverings and possibly coverlets. Isn't that great?

My friends, Wendy and Margaret enjoying the sunset and a cool glass of wine on the deck.

Have you ever seen deer on the beach?

How about in the ocean? I never had EVER!! A neighbor told us that there is a natural spring that flows down the beach here and that's probably why they were there. Too strange!

So, tomorrow is ME. ALL ME! So come back and see my big projects that I FINISHED! And you'll also get the lowdown on just how much fabric came home with me! LOL!

Featured Sea Side Stitcher:Sherri

Sherri was the most industrious quilter this week. I do believe she won the prize! There was one morning I heard her giggling at 3AM, and when I came down later, there was ANOTHER quilt top done! HER quilting fairy from Wendy must have obeyed her orders, while mine just played with taking borders off when I wasn't looking.

Sherri told us a story about how to make your face look slimmer when taking photographs. So whenever we took photos, our hands were under our chins, regardless of whether we were sitting or standing. Did it work?

How about here?

Now look very, very carefully. How many hands do you see in the picture below? Sherri is using TWO hands to hold her blue embroidered snowman quilt, but yet there is that "slimming" hand, again. Tell us, did it work here?

These are her quilts for the week: blue embroidered snowmen, black and white panel strippy, an Oriental I Just Can't Cut it, Mod Quad, a Turtle kit from Florida and a Hungry, Hungry caterpillar.

A close up of "I Just Can't Cut it"

Florida Turtles

Sherri, you ROCK!!

Mod Quad before the sashings and borders

Panel Quilt

Sherri loves her aprons, and she wears them most of the time. I haven't caught her wearing it to bed yet, though:) This was the night of Joyce's chocolate lava cake. Where was Sherri? Licking the beaters and the bowl....ummmm....well, there WERE a few others, too! They all said they were helping clean up!

Two more official Sea Siders to go, then our guests. Stay tuned!

Featured Sea Side Stitcher: Joyce

Joyce is the quietest of the group, but when she speaks, it's worth hearing. She makes us laugh a lot, too. AND she makes the most awesome chocolate lava cake with Trader Joe's ice cream. I have to admit it...I like the lava part the best with the ice cream, and then I share my cake with Margaret! LOL! When I figure out how to load my short video of everyone in the kitchen licking the bowl and beaters, you'll see how much we all love that cake! One day she was the most fashionable with her shirt on inside out, so we all decided we would wear ours that way, too. I had my Charlevoix (MI) T- shirt on, and she kept trying to read it. She finally asked what XIOVELRAHC spelled - was it Russian? Didn't take her long to notice, eh?

Joyce brought several projects to work on, and here are the two that had the most time spent on them. The little dachshund is going to be one of many. And of course, every shop we went to had more of the PERFECT doggie fabric, so they were added to the formula as well. More backgrounds were found on the last shopping day, so a lot more progress was made on these puppies than you can actually see. And aren't these Easter Eggs just the best? She got the borders on, but I didn't get a picture of them, but I'm sure one of the other campers did.
Joyce was our one stitcher who definitely knew how to put the r-e-t-r-e-a-t back into retreat! Although she always had the coffee on a o'dark thirty in the morning, she took breaks often, and when she wasn't resting, she was talking to her sweet hubby on the phone.

Last year, Joyce brought her felting machine and we all fell in love with it. In the year since, she has gone back to doing most of her felting by hand, and has made some absolutely beautiful pieces. I want to be Joyce when I grow up! Here is an unfinished snowman she has started.

Here are her wet felted booties, the most beautiful needle felted wool scarf, and Pinelope (which I covet). You can't see Pinelope very well. This picture was taken just prior to her trying to get into my bag to go home with me. (You notice that I said trying...she was unsuccessful.)

Every time we leave on the final day, Joyce's car doesn't run well until it gets to San Jose. Joyce says it's because the car doesn't like the gas she buys there in Cambria. I say it's because it doesn't want to leave. That's why it hid the car keys, too, so Joyce couldn't leave when everyone else did. You'll notice that she has plenty of projects to keep her busy if she has to wait for AAA to bring her another key? (The keys were found about 5 minutes after we left hiding under a sack in the back seat area.)


And the sun set another night on the Sea Side Stitchers. Yet another stitcher profile tomorrow!

Featured Sea Side Stitcher: Margaret

Margaret is the newest of the Sea Side Stitchers. This year she flew from her home in Columbus, Indiana where she is a long arm quilter to visit her sister Helen first, before we made her crazy in Cambria.

Take a panel of fabric, slice it vertically, sew with a scant 1/8" seam (YES I SAID SCANT 1/8" seam!). Then slice it horizontally and do the same. Fractures!!! Proof positive that we drove her crazy!

Margaret (left) and Wendy (right)

She fit right in with the our silly group, and suggested we use the hot tub (we finally found the little key for the tub this year!) even though we had to go buy "spa wear" at a local thrift shop! We watched the whale "blows" from the tub most every day, and it was Margaret who spotted the first one! And I think she was the last to see them, too!

Now, when you learn something new, it always helps to have about four people hovering over your shoulder, right? Margaret was making her FIRST ever half square triangles! Can you believe that, after you've seen those scant 1/8" seams and the fractures?

Of course, her half square triangles were perfect with all the instructions we gave her. LOL!

No matter how hard I tried to get her to put the bears in trees, she stuck to her guns, and put the bears where they belonged. Of course, there were about 5 different variations before the final cut, but don't they look grand?

Way to go Margaret, and if you had the rest of the fabric, I'm sure this would have been already done. Now, to go look in my stash to see if I have some more for you to use.

Keep stitchin! Another featured quilter tomorrow!