Sew-in Day with Whacky Ladies

This has been a fun week- with not one, but two days spent with quilting friends.  Yesterday was the annual Charity Quilt Sew-in Day with my local quilt bee, the Whacky Ladies.  We met at our wonderful quilt shop in Wake Forest, Quilts Like Crazy.  They let us use their classroom area and cutting areas, as well as the entire kitchen.  It was very inspiring to work surrounded by great eye candy quilts!

We had two goals for today, besides our usual catching-up chatter.  The first was to start collecting blue and white twelve-inch blocks to assemble into a quilt.  We are going to make a full or queen-sized sampler quilt for the Capital Quilters Guild annual Heritage Days auction in October.  Several people brought completed blocks or whipped one up during the meeting. Marilyn found this pattern in a quilting magazine.

Here is a contemporary "Moon Over the Mountain" block by Kathy.

Our new member, Lori, whipped out a beautiful card trick block.

I was going through my UFOs and found this Bear Paw block left over from a quilt I made for my oldest son.  I started it in 1988 and finished it in 1999!  This may make it into the sampler quilt.

Here is a picture of that Bear's Paw quilt.  It started out as a hand-quilted, quilt-as-you-go quilt.  It ended up with a medallion center with strip-pieced and rotary-cut mountains and deer, and machine quilted borders. 

In addition to the blue-and-white quilt project, we worked on charity quilts for either the Quilts on Wheels or Quilts for Kids program.  Carolyn accepted one of my UFOs and got the top finished before lunch!

I bought the star and nine-patch blocks on e-Bay many years ago, and am so glad this is becoming a quilt. Love the refreshing colors!

Several other tops got completed or almost done, including all the tops that my friend Marcia gave us from her mother's stash.  Anne Vernon, your quilting legacy is continuing!

Many thanks to Donna Sontag and Betsy Jobe from Quilts Like Crazy for hosting a fun and productive meeting!

New Stuff

We had so much fun yesterday at our Whacky Ladies sew-in at Quilts Like Crazy. We had a good turn-out, and got lots of quilt tops started or completed. I came home with two finished ones to quilt for others and donate to our guild charities.

I decided to work on a nine-patch in an analogous color scheme of blues and violets. The alternate blocks are a white print with little pointing hunting dogs in blue. It is about three-fourths finished.

One of our bee members is the long-arm quilter at the store, and she and another store colleague prepared our delightful meals. It was even mostly on my current diet plan, which is South Beach Phase 1. I only cheated a little by eating a bit of zucchini bread. That's healthy, right?

As a little thank-you to the store for hosting us, I just had to make a little purchase. I can't resist those little fabric tulips of fat quarters, so I got one of those in teals and avocado greens.

Here are those fabrics opened up a little.

And I added a few more FQ's to the yellow-salmon fabrics I purchased there recently.

Today several of us had planned to go to Sanford, NC, for the Quilting and Fiber Arts Marketplace. Thirty-seven vendors will be in the Dennis Wicker Civic Center for a two-day trade show. This has my name written all over it---like the vendor mall at a big quilt show without all the distracting quilts to look at!

Snow was predicted for today, so we decided not to go. And I remembered all the stuff I had recently purchased at Mary Jo's, Michael's, and Jerry's Art-a-Rama during Christmas vacation- and had not even put away yet. So, I think I will pass on the trip. I wish it was not scheduled for right after Christmas! But it did not snow a bit here, just rain once again, although the snow caused a lot of traffic problems just north of here.

When I went to Mary Jo's Cloth Store in December, I did not have anything special to buy, like backing fabric for a certain quilt. So I just zoomed around and looked in all the bargain bins, fat quarter tables, button collection, etc. The only fabric I had cut were three pieces of organza. But here is some of the booty:

Some buttons (all are marked down at Mary Jo's)

Batik scraps and some fat quarters:

I love bluebirds, so had to get this fat quarter:

Here is the organza, some thick black satin, and some voluptuous tassel trim.

Some brass stencils for embossing or ???I have a needle-felting machine, but sometimes you need to do a little by hand to stick fibers down before running them through the machine.

And I found two more Cedar Canyon rubbing plates for Shiva oil Paint Stiks.

and some big bags of seed beads.

Okay, gotta go create something!

Silky New Stuff

Still working on secret stuff...but I thought I would show you some of my recent quilt-related purchases.

I am so lucky that we have a local quilt shop in Wake Forest- Quilts Like Crazy and Knit, Too!-owned by my friend Nancy Pease. My little town is growing, but there are still so many items that require a drive into Raleigh to purchase. Nancy and her daughters have been successfully running this business for years, including their long-arm quilting service. Anyway, I was just getting ready to run errands last Thursday when I got an e-mail about an additional sale on her half-price yarns. I am not a big knitter although I learned how back in the seventies. I am always searching for pretty fibers to use for postcards and art quilts. I got these beauties for sixty percent off!

I mentioned my visit to Waechter's Silk Shop while I was in Asheville over Thanksgiving. Here is the length of fabric I got for fifty percent off- enough for a jacket. And look at these yummy yummy hand-dyed silk ribbons! Even their names are delicious: Mango, Green Apple, Wild Berry. You can purchase these online from their shop.

I hope to make one of these two jackets which are perfect for long-arm quilters to pre-quilt the fabric before assembly. I like both of them!