Monday, April 06, 2009

April Showers - At Galveston Beach

Spent another week on retreat. I am so lucky to live in an area where so many 'quilty' things are happening. I'm also fortunate to have so many friends that are also quilters. The FMLC were on retreat all last week at a beachhouse on Jamaica Beach in Galveston. It is an awesome place if you are in the area. We did have rain & grey skies the whole week. The sun literally came out as we were pulling out of the driveway to leave! We almost decided to stay another day- but I had to get back home since my in-laws were visiting from Tulsa.

We worked on Sharons floor quilt as a group effort. She picked some great pinks and greens. Her sewing cabinet that she bought at Houston Market last fall is that green color! This floorcloth was a whopping 50+inches so it kinda took up the whole floor, so the rest of us decided to practice on hers and do ours at home (well, OK, the rest of us still hadn't decided what fabrics to use for ours!).

We brought lots of projects to work on, not all of them were quilty projects. I managed to get several t-shirt quilt tops pieced and put together a top from 9-patches that were given to me by my Friday bee (Patchwork Friends) made of purples and greens. I also put in some time working on my oldest daughters Double Wedding Ring quilt - the top is nearly complete, but not quite. BUT, I also got some beading lessons from Linda. I (with Linda's help) made a couple of pairs of earrings and started a peyote stitch bracelet. Don't see any pictures of those, so I'll have to take some and post those later.

Oh, I finished up that BAMBOO Quilt and gave it to my nephew and his new wife as a gift on Saturday. So it already has a new home. The wedding was at a Unitarian church and the entire back wall was glass windows overlooking lovely gardens, trees, and bi\rds flying around. It made a lovely backdrop to their special occasion.
Looks like Lindsey managed to get a picture of Jon and me after the wedding.


Monday, March 23, 2009

Another UFO Finished! Bamboo Quilt

Well, I had such guilt over going into the hole on my Stashbusting efforts, that I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone - as they say. About Festival Time (Houston) in 2007, our Thursday Bee swapped a bunch of Oriental fabrics. From that we made bunches of blocks for the BAMBOO quilt. Well, I've had the top done for some time, and finally got it quilted this weekend. Also used several yards of fabric for the backing & binding, which I will add to my next stash report. I'm just finishing up the binding, so haven't taken a new picture yet. This is the quilt without before I put the borders on it. I quilted it with a gold colored thread (not metallic) but because of all the metallic colors in the quilt, it looks like I used metallic thread.
Did anyone watch Quilting Arts on PBS Saturday? I was glad to see it back on again. Had 3 cool projects, but the last item really got me excited. They used some software (new to me) call Kaleidoscope Kreator. I think this will be fun to play with, as you can take a digital photo or scan some fabric, and then create the kaleidoscope on the screen, then print it out on fabric. No piecing! They have a couple of companion software packages that do other shapes. Definitly think this will be fun to play with.

The other new thing is that I've joined yet ANOTHER Bee. This one is an Art bee, and amazingly there was a huge turnout at the meeting. 17 of us were there with a few more saying they couldn't be there because of Spring Break. We were trying to come up with a name for the group, and from Quilters with an Attitude, Ruth suggested ARTiTude! Next month when we meet, we're going to do some fabric dyeing. Not sure yet what kind, but a couple of the ladies are putting together a program for us and we'll do some hands-on work. At the meeting we talked about doing some resist dyeing, or dyeing with natural elements. Here is a link at Pioneer Thinking that gives all sorts of suggestions of what to use to attain the color you are looking for. Am looking forward to see what we're going to do!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Stashbusting Report - March 2009

Haven't done a stashbusting report in a while.... Been pretty busy working on customer quilts, and on retreat I worked on Quilts in Process, namely the Smokey Batik Stars quilt and the Double wedding ring quilt. Those were projects that had already been cut, so didn't use anything from my stash. HOWEVER, I plan to get at least one of those tops done soon, and quilted during March to meet that goal.

Fabric added this month: 12 yards (it was the trip to La Grange quilt show & West Houston Quilt Show)
Fabric added year to date: 15 yards
Fabric used this month: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 10 yards
Net fabric busted: <4> yards OOPS Went in the hole!!!!

Guess I ought to get started cutting strips for my swap that is due in May. 9-patch blocks for a new Bee that we're forming to swap scrappy blocks. More on that later.

Bought quite a bit of fabric, but that was over a month AND two quilt shows!!!!

I think I am going to have to start doing a stash busting report on my YARN PURCHASES! I have accumulated some beautiful yarns, (even bought an awesome Ghana woven basket at the WHQG quilt show to keep them in). But alas, not finishing up any yarn projects. Knitting socks is one of my goals for this year, but I also wanted to knit a beautiful shawl for my daughters wedding this fall that will be on the beach in Mexico. So, I've been practicing on dishcloths (or maybe baby washcloths!!).