Countdown to Christmas!

No, I have not fallen off the face of the blogosphere!  I've had posts in my head for weeks, I just couldn't get the photos uploaded and the posts written!  Besides trying to get everything done for Christmas, which is barreling towards me like a freight train, to say work has been crazy is an understatement!

But, I can take a breath right now.  It's my husband's birthday today (Happy Birthday, Ken!), and he wanted to go to the beach for the weekend.  It just so happens that my very nice boss has a very nice beach house that he never uses - but we do o:).  All the fun, none of the hassle!  So, I left him to hold down the fort at work at took today off to come to the shore for a long weekend.  (Yes, I feel a little guilty, but I'm sure I'll get over it - I've been working early, through lunch and late for a while).  So, here we are:

Lilly is having a ball...

Funny, I couldn't get her to sit still and pose for me on the beach!  Dogs, they're funny like that.

I haven't been in my sewing room in over a week (which tends to make me cranky), and I had hoped to get my Countdown to Christmas quilt quilted before the big day.  Not happening, but here is its progress to date.

As soon as I saw this line, I bought a layer cake, knowing I wanted to use my Big Twister Ruler to make a Twister quilt.

Here are all the squares sewn together...

And here is the end result.  If I were to do it again, I wouldn't have added the additional red border and I would have made the white border wider.  But, all in all, I am very smitten with this quilt!

Oh, and we had some very exciting news in our family earlier this month.  My brother asked his girlfriend to marry him!  Now, my brother is 48 years old and has never been married (I hope he doesn't read my blog - I'm sure he'd be thrilled that I announced these facts), so this is a Really. Big. Deal.  We are all over the moon, especially the bride-to-be.  Whom we all adore.  I think I'm as excited as they are.  They announced it at my step-dad's 75th birthday dinner.  What a celebration we had that night!  Here are the happy couple.

I smell wedding quilt!!

So, next up I'll have some photos of some other Christmas sewing I finished before the big work crunch!  Stay tuned!

Stockings for Kids 2011

Lyanna over at Purple Panda Quilts is hosting Stockings for Kids - a stocking drive to benefit the foster children of Central Virginia.

I had hoped to make more, but I did get one stocking done and off to Lyanna yesterday...

 I'll have to try to do better next year!  You can see all of the great stocking donations at Lyanna's blog

In other news, we had another Philly Modern Quilt Guild sewing night at Sew Smart in Doylestown two Friday's ago.  We had a huge turnout!  About 10 people (I'm sure the restaurant we all got takeout from loved all of us trooping over there at one time and milling about waiting for our food - LOL).  We had a great night, and I spent the whole time working on the 20 placements I'm making as Christmas gifts...

These are made with Le Poulet fabrics by Windham.  I made a set for myself and lots of folks loved them....so guess what they're getting for Christmas!  These make up really quickly and just a little straight line quilting does the trick.

And, a product review for you...I read great things about the titanium rotary blades on someone's blog and as I love a nice sharp blade, thought I'd give them a try.  I got the 45mm and 60mm...

Wowser!  That's a sharp blade.  I love them!  But, of course I just started using them, so we'll see how long they keep their sharp, but so far, so good.  I'll give an update when I've used the blade for awhile.  I got them from Crafters Gallery.

I'm in the midst of Christmas sewing, but I made a quick Christmas quilt for myself over the long weekend - which I'll show soon!

2011 Christmas Quilt Show

It's that time again - Darlene of Insights From SewCalGal is again hosting the 2011 Christmas Quilt Show. 

My Mom installed a small quilt hanger in her dining room aftter I made her a wall hanging when I first started quilting.  I'm slowly adding to her collection of wall quilts.  It's a great gift idea for the woman who has everything - LOL! 

A few years ago I decided she needed a Christmas wall hanging.  I decided to use a poinsettia fabric I had to do a little broderie perse applique.


I used a black satin stitch around the edges and some rich gold-flecked fabrics. All of this was from stash as I recall.


Even the "Christmas paisley" has gold in it.  I love visting this quilt every year!

Stop in at SewCalGal's site to see the rest of the Christmas Quilt Show!

Adventures in Shop Hopping

A couple of weekends ago I went with three fellow-Philly Modern Quilt Guild members on my first ever shop hop - the 2011 Fall Fabric Frenzy.  We had a blast.  We hit seven stores on Saturday.  Whew!  We left at 9:30 am and returned at 6:30 pm, with two short pit stops for food. For me, the time just flew.  Shop hopping with friends is the way to go!  Near the end, we didn't even know what town we were in.  Andrew (who was kind enough to chauffeur us three ladies around) just put all the addresses in his GPS and off we went.  We hit the last shop with just moments to spare, as all the stores closed at 5pm on Saturday.

I didn't go overboard, but did get some things I had been wanting.  There was only one store where none of us bought anything.


I have been itching to try the Fit to Be Geese ruler and found it at one of the later shops, along with some citrus Best Press that I couldn't pass up.  Since I love my Angler, which is the original plastic that you have to tape on your machine bed, I picked up the new cling version - Clearly Perfect Angles....

I had been eyeing the 60 degree Double Strip ruler to make some cool hexagon quilts for a while so picked that up...

I didn't think I'd find the new Quilts and More, since it wasn't scheduled to come out until later in the week, but I did!

In one shop, nothing much was doing it for me, but they did have a nice charm pack selection so I picked up a couple of Sugar Pop charm packs...

I picked up these Fig Tree FQs to add to my collection at another stop...

At Generations Quilt Shop (hands down my favorite of the day), there was so much I wanted I didn't know what to get, so settled for this FQ bundle and stripe for the binding.  A cute quilt made of this was on the wall and I decided I'd love to make it...

This little kit is for some pretty Christmas placements that I thought would look great on my dining room table...

That was the haul from Saturday.  I still had two more shops to hit though, so on Sunday I went to the Byrne Sewing Connection, which is near my house, and got fellow-guild member Jessica Levitt's new book Modern Mix - there are a slew of projects I want to make from this book!

Then on Monday, I hit my last stop - Granny's Sewing Den, which is near my office. I think I was shopped out by then.  I only got some snaps.  Not even worth showing a photo of - LOL.

So, my first shop hop was a success.  Will I do it again?  I'm not sure - definitely not by myself.  For me the day more about hanging out with quilting buddies all day than shopping - and that was worth every mile traveled!

Mini Quilt Party!

Amylouwho is hosting a Mini Quilt Party!  I just happened to have made a mini quilt a while back ....

This hangs in my sewing room.  A few years ago (well, probably more than a few), my LQS offered a mini-quilt-of-the-month.  I think I picked up at least four.  So far, I've made this one (don't even ask how many BOMs I've got hanging around that aren't even started).  This one is from Jo Morton's book Small Quilts for Framing.  

It measures 13" x 13".  Here's a quarter next to one of the inner HSTs for scale.

 

 I recall I really enjoyed making this - I should pull out the others and give them a go!

You can see the links for all the Small Quilts over at Amylouwho's place!

Lilly Would Like to Thank the Academy...

Lilly and I were so excited when we found out that she won a Viewer's Choice award in the 2011 Pets on Quilts Show hosted by Sew Cal Gal!  This was her entry...

Lilly and her Max & Whiskers quilt...

I was also very thrilled to have won a prize in the contest from Sew Cal Gal herself!  My 2012 Pets on Quilts calendar just arrived (put together by Ms. Sew Cal Gal Darlene herself!!)  I know I will enjoy looking at all the pets and quilts next year!  Thanks again Darlene!!

A post about my Shop Hop spoils is coming. A fabulous time was had by all!

PMQG Charity Sewing Day

One Saturday in September, some members of the Philly Modern Quilt Guild got together to make quilts from the Jay McCaroll Habitat Challenge blocks guild members had made earlier in the summer.  We had a fun day and got a lot done!

Amanda captured our day in photographs (thanks Amanda for letting me "borrow" some of the photos)...

Laying out the blocks on the pool table...


Me making some sort of funny face while cutting (I am notorious for the funny face photos at guild meetings for some reason!)



Look - Monica's nails match the blue in the blocks - LOL

Some of what we accomplished by the end of the day...

Left to right - Monica, Andrew, Candi, me

I took one of the tops home to quilt...I was going to just do a meander, but saw the Curlz pantograph still on the table from the last quilt and thought it would look good so did that instead.  I think it worked out just fine!

Here's the back...

The rest of the quilt top were given out to members at our last meeting to finish up the quilting and then they will all be donated.  It was a lot of fun to see and work with all of the blocks and see the creativity of our members - everyone did a great job!

This weekend is the Fall Frenzy Shop Hop 2011 in our area.  I can't believe that I've never done a shop hop in all of my years of quilting, but this will be my first one!  A few of us from PMQG are car-pooling on Saturday and the plan is to hit about 6 of the shops that day.  I'll do the others that are near me on my own on Sunday and Monday.  That's a lot of shopping!!