It was a great workshop with Pat Sloan and the next one is coming Fast!

The workshop with Pat Sloan was really great! She is such a fun, genuine person. We heard lots of fun stories and learned lots of great info! It's so fun when you take a class from a professional...they always teach us little tidbits that are helpful to know! She taught us all about different threads, needles, and a darling appliqué stitch I'd never seen before. It was a quick and easy way to do some appliqué, plus a bit artistic with the contrasting thread. Great fun! Here's a bit of show and tell from the day!

 

 

If you ever have a chance be sure to take a workshop from Pat. You will learn so much and enjoy yourself!

It won't be long until the event with the store in Omaha gets here! If any of you live nearby, be sure to check out www.moresewforyou.com and see the details about the workshops available from The Quilted Crow Girls! The classes are just about full! I am so flattered to get to meet them and introduce my designs to the area by vending in the back of the room....fun fun! Can't wait to see what I learn from these fun ladies!

Take care,

Missie

 

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It's A Gatherin'!

Well, I did my first vending gig last Friday and Saturday! It was in Stover, Mo...a cute little town in central Missouri. The name of the vending show is It's A Gatherin', and boy did the shoppers come! Great attendance and nice people. Here's a few pics of my booth...

It was great to visit with quilters from the area! There is always a friendly person when you go to a quilting event. Lots of happy ladies admiring and having fun at all of the booths!

Julie, from Me and My Stitches talked me into getting into this show, and I'm so glad she did! We had a blast! Now I can't wait to find another one to attend...

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Take care,

Missie

 

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Happy Easter!

Have a Blessed Easter!

Take care,

Missie

 

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New Pattern, Aged Glory...

And to finish what I showed you yesterday, here is one of my new patterns, called Aged Glory.

This is a small wool and cotton quilt, 22" square. It has a cotton background and wool stars. (The picture isn't too good because I forgot my good camera at my daughter's house! )

I stained my homespun cotton background to give it that old look...nice and aged looking.
This quilt is quick and easy to make!  Thanks!
Take care,
Missie

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Just Call Me The Silly Shoveler!

Thank goodness we only had 6.5" of snow last night. I have a weak back and I only shoveled two strips so my tires could get on pavement without packing the snow down to turn to ice. We had a new bed delivered today so I was sure to shovel a portion for them to get the bed out of the truck too. I am afraid of the snow blower so I am saving some fun for my hubs when he returns home tonight! I didn't want him to miss out! Tee Hee! I suppose you could call me the lazy shoveler...but I will blame it on my back!

I went on a road trip to do some shopping the other day. Found some wonderful fabrics and a few wools.

Can't wait to find the perfect quilt to use them in! I have been on a tiny print kick lately for a few mini quilts I am working on. The more fabrics the better when it comes to quilts!

I did a little experimenting with some garment wools I have had laying around for a while...like maybe these clothes have been waiting 4 years to become something! I read about dying wools with Kool Aid recently and decided to give it a try! It was super fun and super easy! Some did not all do well, so I will try again, but here are a few of my finished recycled wools that I am happy with. This first picture is from an off white skirt I used to wear in college. The colors turned out very very bright! I have no idea what I will do with these, but they sure are pretty! Maybe they would make cute Easter eggs around a cute little bunny...hmmm, ther's an idea!

This one below is from some tan pants my mom used to wear. It looks like a great tomato color, variegated nicely. This fabric is fraying, so I will most likely need to needleturn it when I use it in a quilt.

This one is a plaid blazer of my mother's. The original color is laying on the bottom right. I used blueberry and grape Kool Aid if I remember correctly. Next time I will take notes!

I did the Kool Aid dying in the morning, and then decided to try tea dying in the afternoon. I didn't have any plain tea bags so decided to use instant coffee. I cooked the fabrics a while on the stove, then layed the fabrics out on cookie sheets and baked them to dry. That gives the dark stains. I am very happy with most of these! Although, I will have to figure out how to get those deep wrinkles out! I am afraid to put sizing on the fabric for fear it will wash out those good stains! I will keep you posted on how that works!!! The base fabrics from left to right are 3 colors of tiny checks, 2 homespun plaids and a solid unbleached muslin. Yummy!

And last, I'll show off a quilt I made in the year 2000. I have not had it on my wall for a while. It's one of my favorites. It is double cross hatch quilted and has that good wrinkle that makes a quilt look old. It is a Lisa DeBee Schiller pattern called Le Fleur De Jardin. It was a BOM gift from my mother. I changed a few of the fabrics and you know I didn't follow the pattern! Haha! I set it a bit differently than the pattern called for...just a little change.

Here's a few pics of the quilting and inking details. The designer spoke at a guild as I was making the blocks. I took them to show her and she signed one of the blocks. She also added the inking twigs to the block, so when I finished all of the blocks, I had to add inking too! It was scarey as I thought I would make a mistake...but I went slow and after a few twigs, I was comfortable with the process. It adds quite a bit to the quilt!

 

 

Thanks for stopping by today! Stay warm and take care,

Missie

 

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Des Moines Area Quilter's Guild Show 2012

As you know if you read my last post, the Des Moines Guild is at the same time in the same building during the AQS Show. We usually show about 450-500 quilts. It is an outstanding show! Here are some highlights for you to see.

 

This quilt was made by my friend Mary Martin. Mary is in two small groups with me. She made this quilt showing all of her family's pets. They look so real when you look up close! She did an awesome job! All of the animals names are written on the quilt. If you notice the black lab's name...he was a rowdy pup and Mary's husband cursed at him enough that became his name! She said all the neighbor kids loved to come play with this dog because they could curse! What a story! LOL She received a second place ribbon.

 

Bragging time for me...this is my daughter Katie's quilt! She made this last summer in about two weeks. I showed her one triangle to demonstrate foundation paper piecing and she needed no more help! The blocks cover the top of her bed and the borders hang down to cover her thick mattress. She got a BLUE ribbon in the Junior Division.

 

This was made by my friend Julee Prose. She started this quilt in the 80's and finished it recently. It won Best Hand Quilting and a second place in it's category! Very pretty! She loves large appliquéd blocks with scalloped borders.

 

This quilt was made by Karen Pavlik. It received an Honorable Mention ribbon. I don't know this quilter, but every quilt she entered, I was drawn to. When I was checking out folks at the end of the show, she came to my table. I introduced myself and complimented her quilts. It was nice to meet the person who made them since I liked them so much!

 

Some First Place Winnwers!

 

Half of our Little Quilt Auction. We donate little quilts and the money raised in the silent auction goes towards our programs each month. It's always fun to watch the end of the auction when everyone is trying to outbid the last person! Fun fun!

 

My quilt, In The Orange Grove, Honorable Mention, Pineapple Category

 

A Warm Welcome, first place, Small Quilts

 

Two pretty quilts...the black one is Julee's.

 

 

My Charmed Beginnings in Cotton and Wool, third place, wall hanging.

That's all the pictures I have! I hope you enjoyed the show!!

Take care,

Missie

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Secret Pal Fun!

One of the small groups that I am in is called "Rather Bees", short for "I'd Rather Be Quilting", shortened more to "Bees". This group has been around for over 20 years and it is still going strong! We have about 21 members when we all show up, and the regulars are about 6-16. It's a fun group. We take over someone's house each Tuesday night and have fun visiting and stitching. Those who want to participate draw names for Secret Pals and we leave secret gifts for our pal now and then throughout the year. We also celebrate the Zero Birthdays big in this group!

Well, this January, I turned one of those big Zero birthdays and my pal asked each member of the group to bring a card along with a few fat quarters and 4 1/2" cut squares. I opened each card and stash of fabric with joy and at the end, one of the girls said she was to gather them all back and my secret pal would take it from there...well, at our Valentine's party about 3 weeks later, this is what I received! Drumroll please..............

It is big enough to cover the top of my king sized bed! WOW! What a thrill ! Thanks Secret Pal, whoever you are! In the package was the scraps and a rhyme that basically said since I like to do appliqué so much, she couldn't wait to see what I designed for the borders! What fun... By the next week I had several borders sketched off, taking ideas from some of my favorite books. We all took a vote and the border shown below in the book, Stars All Around Us, by Cherrie Ralston, won hands down! You can see my sketches and directions for the pieced top, Scrappy Hourglass, from the magazine Sew Scrappy: Quilts for Fabric Lovers, Vol 2. To make things a bit more special, I found out my good friend, Mary Helen Schiltz was a contributing editor for this magazine. But I know she is not my Secret Pal, so I am still trying to figure that out...

Since I have finished all my current projects, I decided it was time to get started on these borders. First I need to make enough hourglass blocks to add 24" to the quilt length so that it can be tucked under my mattress. So I went digging in my stash for a bit more fabric... Ooops! There was an avalanche!

 

Soooo, I did a little organizing after digging deeper and choosing the fabrics I needed! LOL

 

This Pattern calls for you to lay the light and dark squares together and draw a line down the center. Ask any quilter who knows me and they can tell you that I always say I am not a piecer! I look for shortcuts anywhere that I can find them. See below for the shortcut to avoid drawing that line. I used a small ruler laid from corner to corner and kept the point lined up with the ruler as I stitched.

 

So far it is working good! I will keep you posted as I go along. I'll stitch these 192 blocks for a while and try to get started on the appliqué to work on now that football season has begun! It's great bonding time with the hubs. Once I get started on the appliqué, I will show you what I get accomplished.

Have a great evening, & take care,

Missie

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Fastest Finish Ever! Charmed Beginnings

Less than a week and this baby is finished and ready for the show! A week and a half is a record for me!

I am a good last minute worker. Every year I seem to do this to myself...I sign up quilts for our quilt show that are not quite done. Usually they have been started when I enter them...but this one was not even started! I've done so much traveling this summer, it kept getting put on the back burner. It was a thrill to get 'er done so quickly. I felt like I was at a quilting retreat for a few days!

This is the quilt that I designed for Blackberry Primitives using 100% wool fabrics. They got to keep the original, so I needed to make one for me to keep. I used cotton and wool in my version. (The pic above is a horrid picture, but the camera batteries are dead, so iPad pic it is for today!). I used Steam A Seam 2 and did machine appliqué.

Below, you can see the wool version that Blackberry owns.

And this is how my new version looks when it was stuffed in the quilting machine. Small enough to be easy to quilt at 45" square.

This quilt is machine quilted on my Sunshine 16 longarm. It's a great little machine and I was glad to have something to quilt on! This machine fits in my room without taking over my sewing room. It was very economical in price and I'm so glad I made the decision to purchase it! You can find info about it here.

The problem I have is deciding what designs to quilt in the empty areas. I hope to make better decisions as I do more quilting. This one was challenging as there were some areas that were very empty and some that were not so empty, but still needed filling. I didn't want to do very small quilting in these areas because the charm center had not so small quilting. See where my mind goes?!? Around in circles! My goal is to get to the point where I just KNOW what each quilt needs, rather than spend days and days thinking about it! Am I alone with this? Do you have problems deciding what designs to quilt?

Take Care,

Missie

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A Warm Welcome is done!

Here it is...all finished. Quilted and bound! Whew. For a little quilt at 24" square, it sure was a challenge! but it's good to have a challenge now and then.

I hope you can see the quilting if you are able to zoom in on the picture. It is not perfect, but I am learning new things on my quilting machine each time I quilt another quilt. If you have ideas of something else I could have quilted into the border area, I would love to hear about them. I was stumped and all I could think of was feathers...
VOTE FOR THIS QUILT HERE FOR THE SCRAP QUILT CATEGORY IN THE 5th BLOGGERS FESTIVAL!!

This is the backside. Again, not perfect, but if I squint, it looks good! LOL. I may consider no sleeve on this one for displaying both sides.

If you notice, I finished the back side the same as the front for the binding. Since I was using the english paper piecing method, I wanted to bind it as I have seen antique quilts bound with this shape. It was difficult at first, but ended up getting easier as I went around.
I started by sewing on a matching color paper piece (thanks to Mary Helen for that color suggestion). I stitched two sides of the piece. This pic below is from my phone, so it is a bit blurry, but I think you can see the new paper piece I am stitching on to the border. 

Then after an entire side of pieces were sewn on, I flipped them to the backside of the quilt.

The backing fabric was trimmed and folded under so that no raw edges showed at the intersection area that is very narrow. (See that right under my thumb.) Then I pinned the piece in place at the point and the narrow intersection where both sides are touching.

The edges were stitched in place as shown above and I took an extra stitch at the narrow area as seen below.

I used wool batting and it was quite puffy until I gave it a good steamy press. Now that it is completed, I think I like the look. It's a different way to bind and I do have great appreciation for our grandmothers of the past who used this method to finish their quilts. This was a common way to finish a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt. Many times they would just fold the backing under instead of adding the colored piece like I did.
This quilt will hang in the Des Moines show the first weekend in October. I just got started on another quilt for the show! Yes, I am doing this at the last minute, but I do this every year to myself! I have posted Charmed Beginnings that I designed as a pattern for Blackberry Primitives. It looks quite different in cotton fabric this time around! The stems and grass are wool.

Now I am trying to decide on the border color...have to think on it for a while. Not too long though! It needs to be completed by Sept 21st!!
Thanks for stopping by today, take care,
Missie

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