Friendship Quilt Block Swap - Swap 1

What a fun day. Inspired by Thimbleanna's Friendship Quilt, two friends (Carol and Cheryl) and I have started our own Friendship block swap. We meet on our lunch hour on Wednesdays to applique and will be swapping our blocks on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Well...today was the big day for our first swap and we were all so excited to swap our blocks with each other. Carol and I had the same idea and made friendship stars. I embroidered a butterfly on mine to symbolize a beginning. Cheryl really surprised us with cute shoe blocks (needle turn applique)embellished with beads, buttons, bows. This is going to be so much fun and Carol has already finished her blocks for July! I told her she needed to go ahead and give them to us...but she was having none of that.

Today, instead of appliquing...I finished sewing on buttons on my pincushions. What started out as a project of making a 25 pin cushions for kits I am putting together for a workshop and to contribute some to my guild boutique coming up, ended up with me making 62 pincushions!!! What can I say, I get carried away. They are made with four patch blocks and I was having so much fun making the four patches I just kept on sewing. Soooooo, I think I have enough to last awhile. I have a pincushion swap going on through this blog too, but only had 4 people sign up, but they will soon be getting one of these pincushions.

This also empties out my project box - so now I am free to start my next big project - the French Braid, Wooohooooo! (I have two project boxes, have to complete one to empty the box before I can start another big project - just a way I have of keeping myself under control. But hey, Hobby Lobby has more boxes and I have a 40% off coupon!)

Storage container contest

Sweet P is having a challenge to post interesting storage containers you use. This is a gift box that I received one Valentines Day years ago and I can not even tell you now what was in the box. I loved the box and keep my embroidery threads in it now. These gift boxes are a favorite of mine!

Whew...Fabric hunting is exhausting

Today I went to Mary Jo's Fabrics in Gastonia, NC to hunt for fabrics for a French Braid Quilt the club is going to work on starting next month. We met this morning to discuss fabric selections, and then headed on the big hunt. For those of you who have never had the fun of going to Mary Jo's, it is a quilter's paradise of fabrics with hundreds and hundreds of bolts to ooooooohh and ahhhhhhh over. And then they also have every other kind of fabric possible for sale as well. Prices are great. Today there was a bus load of women there from Virginia and I have met folks from all over the country that know of this place, including one lady that travels from Hawaii every year to purchase her fabrics.

Anyway, back to our hunt. We each had selected the quilt layout we would do and had to find our fabrics. Now a French Braid can take anywhere from 11 to 14 different fabrics just for the braid and accent colors and then you have the braid separator fabrics and the borders. Here are the fabrics I chose. The picture does not do them justice. Everyone selections were different and we are going to have some really nice quilts - but man were we tired.

I also found a Kaleidoscope ruler to use in cutting out my fabrics for the KScope quilt I am making. Interesting ruler - but looks kind of complicated. Any of you every use this ruler?

Check out Lynette's blog for a neat redwork pattern give-away!

Thank you, Kim!

Look what arrived in the mail yesterday. I received this from Kim. I just love it and will definitely use it this winter when I have my hot tea in the evenings. Thank you again for such a great give-a-way!

Kim is a real inspiration with the treasures she finds in her thrifting adventures. (She's a darn good quilter, too!)

K-Scope Design

I have been playing around with this design in EQ6, trying to get the border the way I wanted it and I think finally have it. Here is the design I will make the quilt by. The inner border which completes the stars will have to be paper pieced at least that is how I plan to do it. I have made one K block so far and I sure hope I can do it a little better on the next 98 blocks.

And here is an alternate color scheme - all in blues. Same quilt, only change is the color. EQ6 is just so much fun!


Hope you are all staying cool!

Question??????

When I am looking at a picture on someone's blog, and I click on the picture to make it bigger, I can not get back to the original blog. Is there a way to get a close up view of a picture, without losing the blog site the picture is on?

Be Positive

Finished the third block of my Golden Rules of Attitudes from the Be Attitude pattern. This one I think is my favorite - at least for now. The pattern calls for a cherry on top of the cupcake, but I just could not bring myself to put a red cherry on my pastel quilt...so I have a pink cherry. I used a pink button turned upside down so that it would be smooth and curve down towards the cupcake rather than stand out so much. I do love the attitude of this ant hauling away that cupcake!

I also did a little "thrifting" this weekend and came across this decorative plate that is just perfect for my kitchen, at least it will be when we get the walls painted. The green check border is the color I plan to paint the walls. I was so pleased when I got the plate home and compared it to my paint sample! It is just perfect with my white cabinets, golden countertops and the red accents I want to use. This is a signed Bob Timberlake plate and on the back of the plate is his signature and a message to the "Hooks" family. I personally do not know the Hooks family, but I sure am glad I came across their plate!