Buried under quilts!

Well, that is my excuse and I'm sticking to it!  Who would have thought that T-Shirt Quilts could be so popular?   This graduation season is finally over, now I'm starting to get orders for Christmas.  I love it when people plan ahead! 

I did take a little time and worked on one of my quilts this month.  I had wanted to try the Baptist Fan.  Here is a closeup of the quilting .  Apparently, I neglected to take a picture of the whole quilt.  duh. 

Wow!  It has been raining cats and dogs here in Houston.  We are on the 'dirty' side of Hurricane Alex.  Anyway, that means we're getting anywhere from 10-20 inches in various areas around Houston.  Our back yard looks like a giant pond with fish jumping.  Shiner (the dog) does not want to go outside to do his business.  He finally HAD to this evening and was literally dancing by  the back door to get out.  How funny. LOL.

Received the new Quilt Festival Catalog in the mail today.  Since I did so much volunteer work at the show last year, we got our books a week for anyone else - even those that took classes.   Looks like I'm taking a Gail Garber class on Thursday and one from Karen Stone class on Friday.  I'm still trying to decide what to take on Saturday.  Our Bee has 5 rooms at the Holiday Inn reserved.   It's just a block from the George R Brown Center.  Time to figure out who all will be there for sure.    We usually end up with anywhere from 3 to 7 people piled into a room.    Last year we met several ladies in the lobby who were from New York and we all were Knitting.    They were showing us 'newbies' different ways. to cast on.  Hope we meet them again!

Hubby is planning on hiking the Appalacian Trail for a month next Spring.  While we were in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago, Robert and Jon did a day trip on the AT Approach.  Apparently it was 8 miles going UP both coming and going (kinda like when our parents walked 5 miles uphill in the snow both ways from school).   This picture must have been on the way UP!  They sure didn't look that fresh after they got home!  LOL.

Quilt Market Houston

Back from Quilt Market. It was early this year, but I was more than ready. Didn't really see any new 'gadgets' that I couldn't live without. Lots of new fabrics, patterns and books. What I'm noticing is that the patterns really are not 'new', but the same old traditional thing done in current fabrics. Does that consitute a 'new' pattern? Reminds me when I was 'little' and Mom would take me to Cloth World to look at dress patterns. She would remind me to look at the 'lines' of the pattern not the colors that the pattern was presented in. I mean really, a Churn Dash or Hole in the Barn Door is still the same. Do we really need new patterns for them? Now, if the 'artist' is presenting a new technique, that is something else entirely. The same thing when your favorite author (Merced Lackey) releases a book and you get it because it is your favorite author after all, you get it home and you figure out it is a book you read 15 years ago, just has a new cover and a new title. Bummer. OK, off my soapbox, and back to the Market report.

I think I only took one picture, and that was of Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts. She has a couple of new books. HOP TO IT and FRIENDSHIP TRIANGLES . Friendship Triangles will be available in November 2009. Edyta was doing a book signing, and these were available to us at Market. She loves doing half square triangles and apparently one shop made about 50,000 of the little squares! I don't think it takes THAT many to make the cover quilt. LOL. I'm already doing the HOP TO IT applilque quilt. Well, lets just say I have the first block cut out. Not sure if I have actually put an applique stitch in yet. BUT, this will be one the of the projects that I'm working on while babysitting the OLD FASHIONED QUILTING BOOTH at Festival. I'll be one of the ones sitting around the quilting frame showing others how to hand quilt. Be sure to stop by and say hello!