And.......

I hope everyone had a wonderful and filling Thanksgiving. It was the first year that I did not cook. it is also the first year that I didn't get to see my grand kids. This was a downer for the day and week and month and well til the divorce is settled their mom is with holding them from us. could go on for days on this but lets move right along before I get depressed.

The and................. I forgot to post, so here it is. Months ago I was away back home in MO and the hubby goes to an auction and makes a couple of purchases. When I get home I was pleasantly surprised with these two beauties.

These two  wall hangings are  hand quilted machine pieced. I don't know the maker of them and neither have labels on them. but I love em just the same. I can't believe the hubby got them for me. He is the one always complaining I have to much stuff in the house and I need a scoop shovel and trash dumpster to get it cleaned out. Well now I have the man trained!!! He got each of these for $20.00 and they both came with their rods to hang on the wall.  This flying geese one had a cute wooden rod with the hearts on the end. Take the hearts off and slip the wall hanging on. The second wall hanging the flowers, was on a cream metal rod with silver tips. I had to trade the rods on the quilts to fit the spaces on my walls to hang them. But never less $20.00 !!! I believe he got a good deal. He even picked up a floor quilt rack for displaying the quilts. It now sits at the end of the bed in the downstairs bedroom. this pretty blue floral wall hanging  is a lot prettier in person. Don't let the goldie walls fool ya.

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This next quilt is Karen O's and we have dubbed it the monster. I believe she used that in her description and I have kept in suit with it. I am not a homespun collector and really have no plaids in my stash. (you know I have found by keeping this blog I am really biased in my stash. And I need to learn to branch out more) but when I opened this top to quilt it, I never wanted it to leave. She gave me a brief history of it making by calling it a monster. Now if she didn't then I am putting words in her mouth for I took that out of her words. But since reading her little excerpt I have called it the monster, maybe cuz it is so huge. We chose a panto to do on this one, it looks wonderful!   I would think that the stars where from a swap, but not sure. If so what a cleaver clever way to use them up. I think that is what is so cool about quilting for others is to see what and how each one uses their blocks and specially their orphans. Sometimes I get so many ideas in my head from the quilts that I quilt that I feel I am going to explode. OH maybe that is just from all the food I have eaten this weekend. But it is a beauty of a monster and I hope she is pleased with what I did on it. If not I volunteered to keep it for her.                                                                                               

Close up of the monster! Great job Karen O can't wait to see what you do next!












Well I have one of mine own to do today so I better get with it!

Fri Night Sew In and ......

Ok I got the pics of what I did at the Fri Night Sew In. Now this in itself is a miracle, considering the last couple months I didn't even post about what I did. Now two post and pics!!!!

This is Kathy's, I taught this method at a retreat that she attended a couple years back. Kudo's Kathy for getting it done. I just sashed one of the samples this past retreat also. So you are ahead of me by getting yours completed. She made hers out of homspuns! Isn't it just wonderful. The colors are so lucious, I just want pick it up and taste. It reminds of a bowl of starbursts candy. Yum Yum. I was so pleased with her piano key border. I was really worried that it would stretch out of shape, being homespuns, but it didn't! Yay Kathy great job! Her backing was of a nice heavy flannel, pieced together in color blocks. So cool and it will be so warm this winter!

Here is a close up of the quilting!

Here is Stacy's bag challenge. I have had the top made for months but kept it to demo it at the state guild meeting. I had to go to SW MO to help in my Dads recovery care so a friend did the demo instead. Since I had it so long I decided to quilt it for her and then Fri night I decided to make her a pillowcase to store it in. Well before I could make the pillowcase I needed to cut the binding for the quilt so that is the binding, that little blob just to the left of the pillowcase. The body of the pillowcase is the same green as that small first inner border. The it has a small flange of the green floral outer border and the last trim of pillowcase is the same as in the outer row of blocks lighter color. I used almost every scrap of fabric that she sent me! I just hope Stacy likes it
So these are the items that I worked on at the Fri night sew in. Now back to sewing

Fri Night Sew IN and Can Creativity Be Lost

Well I have done it! For months now I sign up for the Fri night sew in and I sew but I never post about it so I am going to do it now even before the photos are taken. After coming home from eating out I got busy quilting a clients quilt. Yep that is how I spent the Fri night sew in. It seems I can't stand at the machine for long periods of time. OK really I can't do anything for long periods of time. I guess that is why it is so hard for me to finish a quilt I get bored of it before to long. And I guess that is why I have some many UFO's. So anyhow in between times of (I call it resting) I did piece together some scraps for a pillow flange and binding. Months ago I did a bag challenge but never sent the finished item to the owner for I was asked to demo the block construction for our state guild.Stacy wsa kind enough to let me keep the top until this was done.  I didn't get to go to the state meeting, becuz my dad had surgery, but a friend did it for me. So I decided since I have kept this womans top for so long I would quilt it. Yes advantage of having a Gammill on hand. Well in my resting moments last night (I normal look at patterns to start something new) I decided that I would use the left overs and make a pillow case for the quilt. When I get the pillow case photographed I will post it all. so that was my Fri night sew in. maybe I cna ge the photos up tomorrow but til then look at these.

This is Karen's Christmas Scraps and boy is it a beauty. So clever use of fabrics. I get some sort of brain freeze when it comes to Christmas fabrics. I have a hard time with them. Yep so fall colors and Christmas colors are my downfall.  My sister and I have a chllenge with Christams frabrics going on. I bet she makes something wonderful with hers and I don't even think I can find mine. But getting way off track, this simple block made such a beauty of a quilt. I used Jingle Bell Dance panto from Meadowlyon on this. I really like this panto it is such a great Christmas pattern. I think it really looks great on this quilt. I hope Karen loves this as much as I do. Her is a pic of it a little closer.

                                                                                

This is another one of Karen's. I want to say that this was swap blocks but I am not sure. I seem to remember a swap of this sort sometime back. but I could be totally wrong. I have been before and I am sure I will again.Here is a close up of it.

Now here is my question in the header. Can Creativity be lost? I was given this wonderful baby quilt. It is such a cutie. She told me she wanted stars. soem meandering stars in it. If I could do something else with stars then do that on the borders. BLANK I couldn't think of one thing to do for the borders. On hand I feel liek a heel for not being able to do anything for her and on the other hand I am wondering have I lost it? I have never (at least not like this) before, drew such a blank when it comes to quilting. It has me worried. These past couple quilts have been pantos so that is easy. I am worried that the next custom job, creativity won't be there. Can it be lost, Will it come back??????? I felt so bad about his one I didn't even charge her full price for it. Could stress be getting to me?? I hope this was a fluke and it doesn't happen again. I love standing in front of the machine and just creating. I hate to think that it would be gone. But anyhow here is the cute little baby quilt.

Ok I need to get pics taken of what I did last night and oh what got  done today. It will amaze you!

Quilting, and giveaway

 Check out Corrie for a great give away. I am in hopes of winning this one. Great frabics for sure!
So to some eye candy.

This is a quilt for Teri. It was made by Margie. She wanted something other than an edge to edge pattern. No problem! I love to create what the quilt wants. Teri picked out the center motif for the Ohio stars, but I was free to do anything else I wanted. I hear that she loves the quilt and I am glad! Here it is on her bed. OH I love the bed! I am an antique nut. I have this bad habit of buying antique beds. This one is a beauty. Ofcourse it does have a georgeous quilt on it. And look at that quilt hanging on the wall! A basket quilt and I love the way it is sashed. UMM what a nice room. Here is a close up of the quilting. I don't think it shows real well but when you take the pics you never really know.



and the back



Eye Candy

I went to retreat this past weekend and it always takes a full week to recoup from it so, I will try to post some pics form it. But I have to warn you the ugliest quilt you will ever see is in the group of photos. I took my own advice and tried to go outside of my comfort zone. Oh it failed, failed horribly.

Ok this pic has the 3 tops that I got done at retreat. The far left I added borders to the black and white row x row. The far right I finished the shuffled 9 patch blocks and sashed them. The quilt in the center is the ugliest thing I have ever seen. I tired I really did. Why is some can work with these tones and I can't. I used the disappearing 9-patch method and I thought it was going to be great but as you can see it is a horrid blob! I am hoping if I add borders it will help but I don't even know where to start with borders. Stay the course of dark or find something light or....... Oh oh oh what to do. I am at a loss. I really wanted to learn to like these tones but I guess I still have to practice with them. I thought I was good at putting colors together but...... well we can see that something went wrong with this one. In fact so wrong that even ReJena the gal that loves these colors was at a loss for words with this one.
so now lets get to the good ones.

This black n white is a result of two differnt internet swaps. First was a black n white block swap on one of the yahoo groups.Mailblocks I had done this swap years back and had the blocks sitting around. I love the black n white but just never seemed to get anything done with them. Maybe it was because I only had 10 of them and since I like big quilts I just never had the time to make more. So when a rowx row swap came up and we could do anything we wanted, I decided to use the black n whites. 3rd row down was my starting row.  After it came back I added the top row on,so now all my balc n whites are gone and in this top. I struggled with borders. I had an old piece of black n white zig zag fabric that I loved, but there wasn't enough of it. I knew I needed something to make the borders flow or move. I found the zebra print and that was it! I only wish I would have made the border just a little bigger but you know what they say about hind sight!
Well it is late so I will have to give you more eye candy tomorrow when my eyes are fresh and fingers can type better. Night all