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I've actually done quite a bit of sewing this week but nothing I can show off as I'm getting ready for our Valley Quilt Guild quilt show. I'm finishing sewing on bindings, clipping stray threads and sewing on labels on the the 6 quilts I've entered in the show. Not the most fun a quilter can have but necessary and I don't like to wait until the last minute.

Our show is March 17 and 18 in Yuba City California, 50 miles north of Scaramento if you're in the neighborhood! It's our 28th annual show and we'll have over 300 quilts and about 20 vendors.

I'd love to hear about your guild's quilt show too!

Now go and see the beautiful creations all our fellow quilters are showcasing on Judy's Design Wall Monday.

I Started Another One!

This is kind of a bad photo, just some of the pieces of a quilt I began today. Here's the story of why in the world I'd begin a new quilt when I have so many others to finish:

DH and I visited Portland, OR this past week and stayed with a friend who just moved up there. He's lived in California all his life except for a couple of years in college way back in the early 70s. He fell in love with Oregon and always wanted to move back and now that he's retired, did just that. His house has a wonderful view and he's doing a great job unpacking all his stuff and setting it up (he's a life-long bachelor).

He apologized for not having a proper 'guest room' bed, only a pull-out couch, and his blanket and pillow situation was quite meager but he promised that he'd get a proper bed by the next time we came to visit. If that isn't inspiration to make someone a quilt, I don't know what is!

This guy has been to Alaska many times and loves it there. Just so happens, I was on an Alaskan cruise last summer and bought all sorts of Alaskan-themed fabric in those great shops up there! PERFECT!!

What you see here is 3 of the 6 horizontal, fussy-cut rows and 2 of the 5 'stripe' horizontal sashing rows. Each of the 8" fussy-cut squares has some sort of Alaskan theme; whales, moose, bears, totems, etc. I'll be putting the top together tomorrow and hope to be able to send this off to him in a couple of weeks. I plan to put it in a big ol' box with a note saying "for when you buy your new guest bed." I think he'll love it!

Wool Appliqued Kitties

Well, I'm really loving this wool applique! The sewing's like 'butter' and it's really, really fast! I blanket stitched around all these cute kitties in a couple of hours. Nothing to turn under, no basting, just trace the pattern pieces on fusible, iron them on the wool, cut them out and fuse them on the main piece. A couple hours later, you're done! I'm still sewing on the eyes, noses and whiskers and there are a few more cute little details to do--mice, a yarn ball. . .

I changed the colors from the pattern on four of these kitties to represent our own: The gray and black is Bobo, the black and white is Tippy both cuddly little guys who adopted us a few years apart. They sleep with us, bring us 'presents' all the time and bring joy to our lives. The calico is Little Bit who passed away 5 years ago and the all gray is Boogie who passed away 2 years ago, also kitties who adopted us many years ago. We miss them so much. Perhaps some day, we'll have an orange kitty and a white one with gray patches. I hope so.

This started as a "Bareroots" candle mat pattern but I wanted to enlarge it for the center of my new dining room table. What you see here measures 19" across. When all the hand sewing is done, I'll be fusing this whole thing on a wool piece that's about 1 3/4" larger (a lovely green) making a pretty ring around it. Then I'll blanket stitch around that. I'll show it to you all when it's finished.

Hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day! Especially you Judy! Thanks for the Design Wall!

Selvage Bag

Do you save selvages from your fabric? I heard quilters were saving them to make pincushions and small zippered bags so I started doing so about a year ago. When I was at the fabulous Road 2 California quilt show last month, I saw a woman carrying a great bag made of selvages and decided I had to make one!

I found a pattern I really loved and some bright Alexander Henry stripe-y fabric (to go in the opposite direction of my selvages) and started making it right away. I'd post the pattern title for you but, truly, it is written so poorly (missing pattern pieces, other pattern pieces the wrong size) that I wouldn't recommend it.

Getting all the selvages centered and sewn together on a foundation just the way I wanted them took several hours and the bag construction took several more but I just love it! Hope it inspires you to save your selvages and make something out of them!



Thank you, as always Judy, for allowing us to show off our wares!

Color Palette Challenge

This is a stretch for me, that's what's so great about Judy's blog--she stretches us, challenges us, makes us better quilters!

I'm kind of choosy about my colors and there are certain colors I'm uncomfortable with but I decided I'm going to do this!

It looks like Judy's making a whole quilt each month but I can't do that so I have a plan: I'm going to make this same quilt block each month with the monthly color palette THEN make them into a quilt at the end of the year. This block is from one of my favorite books, "Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts" by Judy Martin. I feel the blocks in it are so different and original. With this particular block, I can use 5-6 different colors easily and I can't wait to see what the next month will bring! (In this photo it looks like I used black but it's really a really dark blue.)

Oh, and the best thing about this challenge: that we get to use all those fabrics from our stashes that are at the bottom of the stack, wondering when they're going to be chosen to appear in the next project! I have LOTS of those!! LOL!

UFO #5--All Done!

By the hair of my chinny-chin-chin I finished my UFO #5, "Anteitum"just in time . I started this quilt at a mystery retreat last June and finished the top there then put it away. I pinned it a couple of weeks ago but didn't remember I needed to finish it until yesterday! Can I quilt it and sew on the binding before tomorrow, I wondered? Well, I spent 5 hours today quilting it on my domestic machine (Janome 6600), put the last stitch on the binding at 11:48 pm, took a picture (that's my adorable DH holding it for me) and typed up the blog.





I did a small meander on all the light, background spaces and put a little swirly stencil on the blue spaces, (haven't washed out the markings yet!) and let the rest "pop out". I love it! It will go to the next person who requests a quilt from me for one of the local charity auctions we have so often where I live in northern California.
Thank you, Judy, for inspiring all of us to finish our UFOs!

Wool Applique ala Primitive Gatherings

Thank you, Judy, for letting us show our design walls every Monday. I am so inspired by what I see every week!

I've been a member of the Valley Quilt Guild in Yuba City CA for 15 years. I've lived 45 miles from there for over 11 years now and even though there are many quilt guilds closer to me, I still go there for meetings every month because my very favorite quilting buddies are there. Last week, we were lucky to have Lisa Bongean from Primitive Gatherings in Wisconsin teach us how to wool applique! What a character! We were thoroughly entertained by her lecture and her techniques and amazingly wonderful wool and patterns. I'm pretty sure I'm going to get hooked on this 'new' process as the wool is SO lovely to needle through and the sewing goes SO much more quickly than traditional applique. Instead of spending weeks or months producing a work of art with cotton, you can get a beautiful wool applique project finished in a fraction of that time. I'm all over that!!  This is the project we worked on in the class.

I'm also in a Row Robin group and this is the row I'm to be inspired by. I plan to add a tree, another type of house and a bear in the row I make to go with this one.