Marcie's Williamsburg Medallion

It was very enjoyable to put together Marcie's Williamsburg Medallion quilt! Marcie's directions are really clear and accurate.

Smiling From Ear to Ear

Shop Hop has been going on this week-end at the Greater Atlanta quilt shops, which appears to have been extremely enjoyable for all concerned. My first two quilt patterns (see link to the right to see patterns for sale), House Party Setting and Tornado (using Wizard of Oz fabrics) were on display along with my samples. And, I might add, this was all happening right next to Lori Smith's patterns :-). This was all pretty thrilling.


I believe some House Party Setting patterns have sold and all of the Tornado patterns have sold, so will bring more over today for the last day of Shop Hop. I heard (and overheard) some marvelously gratifying comments on the patterns while working at Little Quilts yesterday and I can tell you, I could hardly keep back the tears.

Well! Yesterday, amidst all the frivolity of Shop Hop at Little Quilts, I noticed some promising fabrics to make an interesting (I hope) rendition of Marcie Patch's hugely successful Williamsburg Medallion pattern. Fabrics are here:

Do you think they will work, or will it come out looking Merely Odd? At this point, I still feel it could go either way.

I have been weeding thousands of ancient books at my despised day job. You know, the one that is keeping me from the Creative Life. That school library has been criminally neglected by previous so-called librarians for decades. I've always admired some of the rebound patterns that you see on old books, however, like the ones below. Don't they look quilt-like?




Don't miss the lastest Email from College, previous post.

Emails from College

[son makes rare phone call to adoring mother - highlight]: "Mom, you know how you have been worrying that I am not washing my clothes ever since my foot started to rot last semester?"

Mother: "I remember."

Son: "Well, I've been washing my clothes, I have, Mom [mother snorts], but I learned something yesterday. This girl at the laundromat asked me if I didn't ever use detergent. I said, well of course I do it's right here, and I showed her my bottle of Downy. She looked like she felt sorry for me and told me it wasn't detergent. It's all I've been using since school started."

Mother: "So let me get this straight. For seven months, you've been washing your perfectly revolting clothes in fabric softener and they've only been getting..."

Son: "...really soft."

Martha Washington Visits Little Quilts

You've just got to see how cute Muriel looks as Martha Washington conducting her Kaye England class, "Voices of the Past" over at the Little Quilts blog.

Stars Around the Garden Class Show and Tell

Class last night; we brought our first blocks and the various color schemes began to come to life...










Also had some Show and Tell of Second Saturday Sampler 2007 quilts:

This quilt is designed after a pattern called "BQ" from Maple Island Quilts. Has everybody seen this site? They have some pretty interesting quilts.

This quilt has the suggested setting design for this year's Second Saturday Sampler set of blocks and it is made with smaller 6" blocks.

Beautiful!!

This wonderful twirling quilt originated in another Little Quilts class, Pineapples.
Pretty nice, eh?

Emails from College

over a period of months, which to a mother is like years:

[mother emails son]: Hi, Timmy, how have things been going? How is college? Haven't heard from you in awhile. This is your mother. Love, Mom

.....silence.....

[mother emails son]: Hi, Timmy, are you there? How are your grades? What's been happening? Email me. This is your mother. Love, Mom

.....silence.....

[mother voicemails son]: Hi, Timmy, this is your mother. Please call and let me know how you're doing. Are you still enrolled in college? Love, Mom

.....silence.....

[must insert here that we did finally meet up for a Sunday dinner, during which I raved about Johnny Depp and Sweeney Todd; soon thereafter, son emails mother]: Hi, Mom, I am fine. Here is a Venn diagram of the viewer demographics for Sweeney Todd:


He certainly understands what I find funny :-).

Housekeeping

We all love to quilt, don't we. And I know you all care about keeping your lives in good order. I am no exception. Although I am busy with my quilting every spare moment I am home, I never neglect doing the things necessary to maintain a healthy balance in my life.

I keep my house tidy:

I eat a balanced diet:

and I take good care of my treasured pets:

Quilting forever :-) .

Jo Morton Little Women Show and Tell

Look at these teeny tiny Jo nine-patches in their own little wooden box. Each is a stack of perfect miniature nine-patches in the most beautiful color combos.

Now, this woman amazes the rest of us each month with her phenomenal talent for mixing reproduction prints. Isn't this little basket to die for?

And this is hers, too. This is her choice for an upcoming Little Women block swap. 6" blocks in a pattern of our choice, so we will all end up with a sampler quilt of about 18 or so blocks (since there are three sessions of Little Women).

Oh, same talented woman. These are for "Jo Morton Meets the Easter Bunny", as she says :-).


Two Mini-Nines...

Amazing quilt top. Don't you love the featured central block?

Now is this a perfectly amazing quilt or what? The pictures do not show it off well at all. This was made for a Member Challenge that will be shown at the Bulloch Hall Quilt Guild Show. There will be about 20 of these challenge quilts. The challenge was to do a quilt that is 20" square, using either black or white or both, and which uses some property of the color wheel, i.e., analogous, complementary, split-triad, monochromatic, etc. Is that cool or what? You see she won a ribbon and deservedly so.

If you're considering traveling to see this show, it is always a very, very good show.

Pattern Cover

Phew, I've been working all day long on this cover for my "House Party" quilt that is destined to be a pattern that I will offer for sale. Heavens, what a process, figuring out how to use a tripod for the first time (had no idea how many moving parts there were in a tripod), flooding lights all over everywhere, wondering all the while if I should go ask my next-door neighbor who is a freelance photographer to do the photo work for me, searching through my thousands of .ttf files on my old computer looking for just the right font, shooting stuff all over my house looking for the right background (old book covers, old suitcases, old canvas, old cobwebs, old dirty dishes, old kitty litter...kidding). This particular background is my very old chalkboard by my sewing machine on which I keep lists of quilts to work on. And I don't want anybody to know how long it took me to figure out how to make that little girl with the chalk in her hand.

So okay, the pattern cover is done, but I haven't done all that stuff inside it that tells a person how to make it :-) . I don't suppose that will go very quickly, either. What about if I just wrote inside "oh just wing it and do what you like"?... I like it :-) .

Theorem Painting

Went to the most enjoyable class at the LQS taught by the resident Baltimore Applique teacher, Wanda. Shading in Oil Pastels. All present enjoyed this class so much. The shading is done by smearing the oil crayon media on to the fabric from a window template. Here are my creations.

A classmate, Kathy, was busily making her own sihouette boyfriend; she kindly made the one below for me. A boyfriend! Thank goodness, I've been wanting one of those.