Pointless Quilter

We have a pottery collection and on his travels home from picking up his trailer in Michigan (we're in California) he brought home these goodies.  We try to buy only stuff that was made in the towns/states that we visit.  Our collections is getting quite big.   As far as quilting - I finished the 60's challenge quilt.  Can't wait to show it off.  Now all I need to do is finish my ATC cards for the guild meeting (60's themed as well).  And a few more gifts for the people who finish their mystery quilt.  Then I have to quilt my latest Scrap Therapy quilt that's pinned and ready to go and then I have a mini whole cloth quilt that's marked, pinned and ready to go - probably donate that to the Great Little Quilt Sale if I can get it done before the July guild meeting.  So much to do, so little time.  Good thing I have Monday off - I hope to get a lot done.   Until later...

Except for yesterday when I was down with the flu.  Still home from work today because I'm not feeling 100% yet.  It took all I had yesterday to get up and throw balls to The Guy (one of our dogs).  So today I'm going to post some pictures of things I've finished in the last couple of weeks but was unable to post because they were gifts.  First, one thing to mark off of my resolution list.  (Yea!)  The picture is poor quality because my husband took off on his post retirement National Park trek with the camera.  (he's having a great time by the way).  So this was taken with my cell phone camera.  Each block has a different background stitch pattern.  I referred to 365 Days of Free Motion Quilting blog for ideas that I'd like to try.  Now I know which patterns I would use and those I wouldn't.  I also used this as a sampler for my guild's Quilt University where I showed free motion quilting.  Now it will be my refere...

Whew - we did it.  We left at at 7:00 this morning and got to the first quilt shop in Ceres, California and worked our way south until we reached home today - home being Thimble Town in Visalia.  Anyway, here's a picture of most of my loot.  The orientals are what I collected at each shop, I got w patterns, one for a diaper bag and one for a purse, the latest Shop Sampler magazine, fabric to make the purse, a stencil and the rest of the stuff you see are goodies the shops gave away.  We got block patterns from each store except for Ceres.  They didn't have any and we got there first thing this morning.  Oh well, if I ever make the quilt, I'll jut make up a block for that area.  Janice makes a good riding partner and navigator.  Even though we wouldn't not have made some wrong turns if we actually would listen to the GPS.  Thank you Janice for a wonderful 2 days.  And thanks to the stores who participated.  It was the first tim...

In the 10 years I've been quilting, I have never been on a shop hop.  The Central Valley is hosting their first Shop Hop from Maricopa - which is way the heck in nowhere (southwest of Bakersfield) to up north to Ceres.  Today we went south, tomorrow we go north, and Sunday we stick close to home.  I have not purchased a whole lot - my goal is to get a fat quarter from each store and since I don't have a lot of orientals, I thought I'd try that.  Found a great diaper bag pattern (for my step-daughter) and some Hobbs wool batting.  That is just day 1 and 4 quilt shops.  Off to bed - we're leaving at 7 a.m. and going north and working our way south towards home.  Maybe if I'm not too beat I'll report on that.  The thing that bums me most is that I won't be able to sew all weekend because I'll be shopping. 

I'm sorry - I just couldn't help myself with the corny title.  But I did actually dye fabric today and it was great fun.  Here's what I ended up with all washed and ironed.  Some of them turned out to be the same colors so a few of us will be trading with each other.  There were 7 of us and most of us did different color runs.    Here are a few of my friends doing what you have to do while dying - waiting.    Other than this, I have done nothing creative yet this weekend.  I have laundry to do and a house to clean.  Maybe after that I'll work on machine quilting a quilt for a friend.