Pointless Quilter

This is what I have been working on lately and I finally finished my part. (The picture doesn't show it all the way finished tho.)  This is our guild's (Common Threads Quilt Guild - Hanford/Lemoore, CA) opportunity quilt and I was asked to machine quilt this.  I said yes.  It was a labor of love.  I thought I did pretty good for an amateur- but don't look too close.  This was done on my home machine (Bernina 640) with the feathers in Superior Thread's Nature Color and Rainbow thread and the rest in Bottom Line.  I do get to cross off something from my resolution list on the right there.  Now on to my own projects.   The first thing I have to do is make a fleece hat and neck cowl for my younger sister.  She picked the fabric out at Christmas and I feel I better get that to her before the weather warms up.  Oh, wait, she lives in the Seattle, WA area so she needs it for a lot longer than us Californians. :)...

I did some damage to my wallet at Road to California this year.  I consolidated the photos so it wouldn't look like so much.  Luckily I went with a plan and I didn't veer too much from it.  I didn't just shop either, I did take 2 classes.  The first was the "Painting with ink" class from Patt Blair.  She's a wonderful teacher and very talented.  Here's what I finished in class. The second class I took was from Joanie Zeier Poole, it was all about designing, adapting and marking quilting designs.  (Thanks to Sue--I got this class because she couldn't make it and needed someone to fill the space).   I learned alot.  We didn't sew - but we all brought the same size piece to work on and each got to play with drawing designs on paper.  This is what I created.  I used the fabric to help me chose a design.  The show itself was fantastic.  I took lots of pictures. I had a friend who had a quilt in the s...

Our guild started raising money by having monthly raffles of small quilts - silly me signed up to donate a quilt for January.  Here's what I came up with.  I saw this from the Quilt Sampler 2002 magazine - it was a quilt from the Quakertown Quilts store.  There wasn't a pattern so I kind of winged it. I hope it can make some money for the guild.  I also had some time this weekend at my folks house to create these two simple pages from my step-daughter's wedding.  These pages are about her wedding dress. Hope you are enjoying your first week of 2010.  I am getting ready for a busy quilting weekend and also leave next Wednesday for our annual trek to the Road to California quilt show.  I'm taking Pat Blairs class and am getting nervous.  She was the featured artist last year and I was so impressed with her art and was lucky I got in her class.  Anybody else going? 

This was hard to do--list all the projects I have started or at least have fabric packs or kits for quilts that need to be made.  This will make it really hard for me to go to a quilt show and buy something.  Ha ha!  That will never happen.  Anyway, I'm putting this list on the side of my blog and will mark off when they are done.  Do you think making the list itself is a good enough resolution? 

Well, now that the holidays are over, I can show everything I've been working on.  First off, my sisters and sister-in-law decided year ago to exchange ornaments each year instead of other gifts - however the ornaments must be hand made.  Here are the ornaments I made.  (Some of these are for my niece and nephews too.) Here are the ornaments I received.  The wood cut ornament my brother made and the wreath from my little sister.  My older sister made these wonderful family cookbooks (picture to come later) instead of ornaments this year. Here are some needle savers I made for my art friendship group ladies, Loose Threads.  I didn't get a picture of the wooden reindeer I made for my Material Girls. Here's the rag quilt I made for my step-daughter. And on to the stylish hats, my niece asked for hats for Christmas.  When asked what kind of hats, she looked at my sister-in-law and said "Stylish Ones".  Okay - so my mom knitted or crocheted...

Every year my friendship group has a challenge.  We usually decide in December or January what our challenge will be and then we reveal the challenges at our Christmas party.  Today was the day of the big reveal.  I gave each person a paint chip with 5 or more colors on it and the challenge was to make a quilt using at least  5 of the colors on the chip, we could add one more color and it must have at least one bead on it.  I took pictures of the finished quilts with the paint chips, however the glare from the camera bounced back on the chip so some are hard to see.  I belong to such a talented girls. This is Kathy M's quilt and her paint chip.  It was great that her chip matched the fabric line exactly.  Dear Rita B.  had the pattern, the material and just picked up her fusible to work on the quilt but at bowling that night, she tripped and broke her wrist/arm and it was in a cast for 8 weeks so she was unable to work on it.  We ca...

Putting up my Christmas decor today (still not done) and decided this cake plate needed a little runner to go under it so I pulled out my scrap therapy basket and pulled out some white and red 2" squares and started sewing.  This sits at the end of my counter.  Had a nice and quite Thanksgiving - just my husband and I but we did up the whole meal, even pumpkin pie.  Had it all again today.  YUM!  All I have to do now is put up my Christmas tree and clean house.  However, I needed my husband here to help me set up the tree and he took off this morning so I could decorate without him getting in the way.  Nice guy, huh?  Hope you all are having a wonderful holiday weekend.

I felt like I had to organize before I started any more projects.  So I took this (a box for each color, a box of Christmas fabrics, a box of batiks, and a box of novelty/other fabrics) and folded and organized and pulled out pieces that were smaller than a fat quarter, to this... And with all the scraps.... I cut up into 5", 3 1/2" and 2" squares for Scrap Therapy and this is what I got to add to all my other boxes of cut up scraps. So, am I crazy?  Or just organized?  Should I be really crazy and sort by color too?  I unfortunately don't have time for that.  Oh, if you need any squares of a particular color for your scrap quilts, let me know.  I have enough scraps to make alot of scrappy quilts. I will now start working on the guild's Opportunity Quilt.  I was asked to machine quilt this beautiful quilt - and I AM NERVOUS.  This quilt top is exquisite and it demands custom quilting...and they entrusted that to me.    I...