S U C C E S S

Our retreat at Shipshewana was a huge success. Everyone had a great time and we really enjoyed the spacious room. 56 quilters each had an 8' table to use. There were 4 other tables in our room to use for cutting or laying out a quilt. We only had one brief power outage for a row of tables, but that was quickly taken care of.

Our breakfast at the Farmstead Inn was better than I remember from last year. They have added a waffle maker and serve biscuits and gravy and sausage patties, along with the regular continental breakfast items.

The pies at The Blue Gate were yummy, as were the pretzels at JoJo's, and the cupcakes at the Garden Gate Cafe. There's just not enough time to eat every place we wanted to and get in major time stitching.

We got some instruction from Angie to make Zippy-Strippy quilts(AKA 1600 quilts) and there were some really nice looking quilts. Lots of fun!!!
Check out our quilters in this great video!

Our show-n-tell was held in one of the lounge areas. We laid our quilts out and all walked around to see them up-close-and-personal. I think this method is much nicer than holding them up at one end of the room.



We already have our reservation made for Oct. 18-21, 2012 and Oct. 17-20, 2013, and the registration form will be up within the week. See you then!

Our web album is here.

More fun at Shipshe

These girls are having a great time. Much laughter, pretzels at JoJos, lots of stitching going on.

Fun in Shipshewana

Some of the Lafayette quilters having a great time at the Farmstead Inn.

Ready for Shipshewana

I'm all packed and ready to head for Shipshewana, bright and early in the morning. I'm to pick Janet up at 5:30, then we'll be on our way. I'm so ready for a quilting break. We have 56 quilters from California, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio and Indiana. What a great time we will have!!



Dan finished making a big board ironing surface for one lucky quilter to win as a door prize. Thanks Honey!



I did quilt one more quilt this week for Virginia, so I'll be taking 3 of them to her tomorrow. This one is a Christmas quilt and I marked opposing diagonal lines in the border and quilted holly leaves and a loop.



One other thing I did this week was make this dress for a college freshman to wear for halloween. She is going to add some black felt spots to complete her Pebbles costume.

And Then Some Custom!

I love to do this kind of quilting also. After doing 2 meandering quilts on Saturday, I quilted these 2 for Carla today. Well, after I got rid of a nasty migraine this morning!







They both use the dame fabrics but are really different.

Ahh, Meandering!

I do love to meander and I think I'm pretty good at it. I think it comes from all those years of cake decorating and doing Cornelli Lace on cakes. Anyway, when I started quilting that was about the only thing I could do besides stitch-in-the-ditch, on my Janome. So I had a lot of practice before I got Mabel.



Virginia like meandering on her quilts, but she likes the borders done different from the center. This first one has a meander in the center and loopy meander in the border.



The backing is flannel and oh-so-cozy!



The second one is a Bricks and Stepping Stones quilt (A great Quiltville pattern.)



I did a meander in the center, ribbon candy in the first border and spineless feathers in the outer border.

Stashbusting 2011 - #43

Fabric Added this week - 0 yards
Fabric Added Year to Date - 99.625 yards

Fabric Used this week - 7.75 yards
Fabric Used Year to Date - 198.5 yards

YEAR TO DATE STASH USED: 98.875 yards

Oh so close...to 100 yards. I'm sure I will use a bunch this week, but I will also probably add to my stash while in Shipshewana.

My Row-by-Row

I showed this at guild on Wednesday and we washed it tonight and it's on our bed. There were 13 of us in this row-by-row and I may have said this before, but I didn't realize we were all going to make a row for everyone. When I've been in row-by-rows before with lots of peope, we just made rows for say, the next 6 or 7 on the list. So I may not have made rows for the same people as my other friends did. Anyway, I love how this turned out. I ended up with three 6" rows, which I took apart to fit around the dresden plates Janet made. I had five 8" rows and took one of them apart to use as corner stones for the 8" round. I had four 12" rows and took them apart and used sone of the leftover pieces in my tote to make them the correct size.



A closer look at the quilting:


Most of my fabrics are batiks or hand dyes, with a few regular cottons.

And the backing.



I quilted this with Bountiful Feathers after much deliberation. Lava thread and Hobbs 80/20 batting.

What a Difference!

The stack n whack quilt is finished, washed and dried and what a difference from the picture in the last post.

It is super crinkly:



And the back just looks conforting to me. I hope someone will like it!

Quilt for Zion's Quest

I offered to make a quilt for the Zion's Quest Auction to be held November 11th. I had these stack-n-whack blocks leftover from Kylee's quilt earlier this year and I quilted it on Sunday evening and stitched the first side of the binding tonight. I hope to have it ready for them to pick up on Friday.



Quilters dream cotton batting, PermaCore white thread and Bountiful Feathers pantograph.




And the back, a blue plaid I picked up in Cincinnati in April.



Zion’s Quest for 11q will be held at 4 p.m. November 21, 2010 at InStyle Studio, located at 750 Park E. Blvd. Lafayette, IN 47905. In addition to the donations, they would like to invite everyone to join them for the event.

Guild Row-By-Row

I put the final stitches in the binding of my row-by-row this evening. I'm really happy with this quilt and I was amazed at how well the rows, made by 13 different people, went together.

I'll take some photos of the whole quilt tomorrow, but here's a peek:

Design Wall Monday

Well, there is nothing on my design wall today, but I do want to share a pic of something that was there for a while. Here is the red quilt for Jeff and Dané. She washed it and put it on the bed right away.

Back from Vacation

I had a wonderful visit with Jeff, Dané and Calise. It was hard to say goodbye yesterday morning, but it's good to be home. Here are a few more pics from the week.

Napping in her swing:


A kiss from daddy in his uniform:


Mommy and Daddy ready to leave for date night:

More Calise

Here are the pillows I made for her room. The leaves were sighed by friends and family at her baby shower.


A few more pics

I'm not quilting this week

i'm spending my time with this beautiful baby girl and her parents.

Virginia's Stack n Slash

This quilt is for Virginia's daughter who is a teacher. It's really much cuter in person. I've never seen some of these super cute fabrics. She added the name and date in one of the borders....cute as can be!



She wanted a meander with different borders. So, I quilted l's and e's in the small border and a meander in the outer border.



And the back:

Virginia's Rail Fence

Ok, here's another one that I just LOVE! Virginia recently sent me 4 quilts to quilt and this is the first one.


It's for a guy and of course I suggested Square Spiral for the quilting.
She sent Soft n Crafty poly batting and I used Omni safari thread.



And the wild back:



I have a ziplock bag with lime and sage green leftovers just waiting for the right thing to do with them. Speaking of leftovers, what do you do with those leftover pieces from quilts. I mostly use fabric from my stash, so I don't go buy the 1 yard, or 5/8 yard pieces that I need and I often am left with pieces that I don't want to put back into my drawers because they are too small. I don't have room to have bins for them all like Bonnie Hunter does and I did away with my shoebox size scrap totes. When I finished the pillows for calise, I had these piles of leftovers:



So, I spent some time cutting them into usable pieces, mostly logs for a baby bricks quilt.

Carla's Carol Hopkins Quilts

There are 2 of them this time and they are small, 30 x 36 and 22 x 18. I quilted both of them last night and then even loaded another quilt.
Both are custom and lots of the quilting you can't see on the front, but the backs are show it well.











Lots of continuous curves, ribbon candy in the sashing.



I usually use the same color in the bobbon as on top, so this one has a tan thread on the red backing.