Ginnys Quilts

Garrett's Eagle Scout Quilting for Cancer Project coming along nicely!

2012-02-08T10:51:00.000-08:00

Is a serious understatement! I am pleased to say that the main reason I have been negligent about blogging is because I am so very busy quilting! My business has just exploded this last month. Last week I get calls for 10 quilts! For a fairly new business I can't complain. On top of these quilts I have been working with Garrett on his Eagle Scout quilts, we are coming to the end of his project with all quilts needing to be quilted, bound and labeled by Feb. 21st! This week I have had the boy scouts over and they are finishing the last 5 quilts! Last night was day 2 they are finishing one a night and I have been very impressed with how they have just jumped right in. Check out the pictures below!

One of the dads was so intrigued by the whole process that he as if he could give it a try. I loved his comment that "after a day of surgery (he is a Dr.) this would be very relaxing and rather zen like."

David was a bit nervous at first but got the hang of it pretty quickly!

Matt and David feeling rather proud, and for good reason, they each finished a quilt!

And I think they actually had fun doing it. Matt has decided that quilting should be an Olympic sport!

Garrett working on his quilt.

Wendi did 2!

These are just a few of the quilts that everyone has been working on.

This is Garrett showing off one of the quilts at Quilt Party. Stay tuned for pictures of when we get the entire batch completed!

Oh and if you want to follow more closely what all we are doing with these quilt please log onto facebook and "like" my Candy Mountain Quilts page by clicking

www.facebook.com/candymntquilts

As always thanks for stopping by!

Happy quilting,

Ginny

Peacocks take 2

2012-01-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

My last post was all about the peacock quilt I made for my husbands manager. Well, I liked the quilt so much that I felt the need to make another one! This one I made with the intent of keeping it, well you know what they say about good intentions! I finished the quilt and decided it needed a bit more sparkle. So I got out my crystal setting tool and went to town!

I had a great time both quilting this quilt and adding the crystals,
I think it fairly shines. Enough so that I will be entering it into a couple local shows!

A couple of detailed shots of the flowers.

I didn't count how many but I know there are at least 500 crystals!

Sadly, the one thing I did was inflame my shoulder, so no quilting until I can get in to see my doctor!

I even put crystals in the feathers!

I really had planned on keeping this quilt for myself, but after showing it to Bobbie and seeing her reaction. I will be giving this quilt away after the quilt shows.

It will go to a good home! Now I have to make myself ANOTHER ONE!!!

A Peacock quilt for Rhonda.

2011-12-14T22:54:00.001-08:00

Last week my darling husband called me from work to ask if I could make a quilt for his managers, it seems that she doesn't have any heat in her office. I said I would and set out to make this quilt. I played with the layout on EQ7 until I found something I liked and then got to work, it took me just one day to put together.

I had a lot of fun making the quilt, and deciding how I was going to quilt it. I needed something fast and easy, yet elegant to match the beautiful peacock on the panel.

So, I decided to do a simple swirl type fill with tiny peacock feathers in the black, stitched with black thread so not to detract from the print.

Then in the pinwheel blocks I had a feather party! Each half square triangle got a peacock feather!

I needed to make this a super warm quilt (due to the lack of heat) so I opted for Minkee on the back with Warm and Natural as the batting. I love how the quilting shows on the back of the quilt.

Stuart took the quilt to work today and by all reports she loves the quilt!

Now I think I will make another one, for me! And I am going to add some hot fix crystals to mine!

What I've been working on.

2011-12-08T13:26:00.000-08:00

I have been a busy busy girl! I wish I could say that I have been working on personal quilts, but nope that's not the case. Oh don't get me wrong I am certainly not complaining! I have been getting more and more customer quilts and that makes me very happy. Plus I am now doing at least two classes a month over at the shop and that is a good thing too.

I have just finished piecing a beautiful quilt top that is due to be quilted this weekend, it is for Stuarts boss. She doesn't have any heat in her office so he ask me if I could make her a quilt... this is the results!

I have finished 4 customer quilts since Thanksgiving. Here is a snippet of what I have been working on, each is very unique and had it's own challenges.

This is a gorgeous quilt! It is all embroidery. She wanted just a simple stitch in the ditch with a monopoly thread. So that's what I did.

A jeans quilt, this was a fun on. A simple meander, the customer used a fusible and fused the tree material on top of denim, I was a little worried about the weight and my machine handling the denim, and knit and fusible. She did good though and I had no problems!

This was a quilt made by my friend Carol. I purchased several new leaf templates at MQX in October and was telling her about them, she "donated" her quilt for me to learn on! I have to say I LOVE the templates, the leaves stitch out beautifully and really surprisingly fast.

The back of the quilt, I like it!

A close up of one of the leaves.

And a big ole feather on the border.

This last little quilt is a baby quilt for another friend from the shop. This was a super fast and easy quilt done with a sweet heart pantograph. I do love Ann Bright Pantos!

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T11:17:00.000-07:00

Just popping in to wish one and all a very happy halloween!

A quick blast from the past....

Gin

Happy fall, a trip through the maze.

2011-10-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again, fall... The leaves are turning, the nights are cold. We have fired up the pellet stove so the smell wood smoke now fills the air. This fall is bitter sweet to me. This will be the last fall that Torrie will live at home as my little girl. I keep coming back to that reality. It pops into my head at the most unexpected times. That at this time next year she will be off, living her life separate from us. She will be an adult and in college. I have been making a point to not slack off on some of the things that have become tradition for us, one of those thing is the yearly trip to the pumpkin patch.

We have made this trip every year since the girls were little. There is a bit of a ritual, Morgen always jumps from the straw pyramid, we always get caramel apples and of course we get our "perfect pumpkin" and as the years have slipped past and the girls have grown so have their pumpkins. The winner for the biggest pumpkin this year was Morgen. Hers weighed in at
40 lbs.

The there was the leisurely stroll through the corn maze. Oh and for those who don't know I am NOT fond of corn mazes. I guess I am to much of a control freak, I don't like the feeling of being lost! After about 2 miles (yes I had the pedometer going) we finally found a "shortcut" out. I told them they cheated. No one listened.

My two pumpkins, so grown up yet so very young!

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a Happy Halloween!
Ginny

MQX West and a Class with Dusy Farrell

2011-10-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

So, I mentioned how much fun I have been having lately and my trip to Portland for MQX, I could rave for days at how awesome the show was. One of the coolest things I got to do was take the echo puzzle filler class with Dusty, he is an interesting instructor, very free form and easy to talk to. You get the feeling that he is just an nice guy! Any how I jumped at the chance to take his class because I love his quilting style but just could not wrap my head around echoing those swirls. Well three hours later I was rocking the swirls! Plus very quickly picked up one of the flower designs I have always struggled with, on and a curly feather. Yep pure inspiration, that's all it took!

So, I get back home head full of swirls and curls and spirals, had to finish a quilt for a friend. When I got it done I threw a narrow piece of black on the extra backing and played for about 20 minutes... This is what I did!Yeppers I am super proud of myself!!! And now that I have the feel for it, I know I will get better. So what do you think? Pretty wild huh!
Oh and I love the new thread I got. It is Superior Thread, from the Rainbows line, called "the quilt show" Oh and a close up of that feather at the bottom.

Did I mention that my Crown Jewel stitches like a dream...

Well that's all for now.
Thanks for stopping in again,
Gin

Candy Mountain Quilts.

2011-10-20T23:02:00.000-07:00

Well, two posts in one day I think it is a record!

I finally got some work done on my Candy Mountain Quilts site. It took me a while to get everything written up. But I am now set up to take customer quilts via the internet! My pricing guide is there, quilt prep, and photos (not many yet) of my quilting. I will be posting more photos as time allows. I plan the page to be kind of a photo album of sorts, so not a lot of chatter. (I will leave that for here.) So stop by Candy Mountain Quilts and let me know what you think. If you find errors please let me know. And if you like what you see, then pass it on!
Thanks for your support!
Gin

MQX and Eagle Scout

2011-10-20T13:52:00.000-07:00

Not sure why I have been having such a hard time keeping up with blogging, I just can't seem to find the time to write. I keep saying its because I a super busy and that really is the reason! Between my customer quilts, my own quilts, donation quilts and now Garrett's Eagle Scout project I hardly have time to breathe! I am going to keep this post fairly short and just talk about two things.

I got to go to MQX last weekend, Oh my did I have a blast! Stuart and I spent two days at the Expo! This was my first time ever at a longarm quilting show and all I can say is WOW!!! The quilts were stunning (I didn't know you could add that many sparkly crystals to a quilt!) The vendors were great (I spent a LOT of money) The guest speaker was hilarious, the classes I took, well the one with Dustin Farrell was awesome, the one with Karen McTavish, not so much so, and I am absolutely going again next year!!! I will be signing up for more classes, there were just so many to choose from and I was on a very limited time and money budget. I have already started saving for next year and have told the daycare parents I am taking the week off!
I you ever get the chance to go to either the east coast or west coast show DO IT!

The other thing that has been keeping me busy is Garrett's Eagle Scout, Garrett is Torrie's boyfriend and a really nice young man. For his eagle scout he is donating at least 10 quilts to the cancer center. I agreed to be his adviser. It is an easy job, but I am having to teach him about quilting as we go. He has been a good learner and seems to be enjoying the learning. Here is one of the quilts that he will be donating.

Torrie and Garrett cutting out fabric to go into the kits for the ladies.

Garrett at Quilt Party telling about his project and handing out the kits. Out of 10 kits he found takers for 9 of them.

Well that's about it in a nut shell, Oh I have been doing a LOT of other quilting but unless you want to read a minor novel I will keep it to this.
Happy quilting,
Ginny

Snow Hook Kennel Quilt, Plus some!

2011-09-08T07:52:00.000-07:00

Good morning, and what a glorious day! The kids are now officially back in school, and I have been busy busy busy quilting. I spent labor day weekend working on a couple of baby quilts and I finished not one, not two but three customer quilts! I think I am back in the quilting groove. I did quilt this summer but not as much as I usually do.

I wanted to share my latest customer quilts with you. These were made by a friend that I have been teaching basic piecing to, when she first started bringing me her quilts, well her piecing was less than perfect.... I started showing her how to cut her fabric more accurately, and that worked into piecing... before I knew it we had become very good friends and we now meet a couple of times a week to quilt together! Anyhow she decided she wanted to make a couple of quilts for her brother who is raising money to fund his run in the Iditarod. These next two quilts are what she made.

Not a great picture, but you can see more in the close ups....

Moose.... I did a snowflake design in the window sashings, and then outlined the main features in the block.

This is what it looks like on the back

This is the other quilt, another attic windows, but this one has pictures of the race team and the dogs. the center block says Snowhook Kennels. That is the name of her brothers kennel. If you want to learn more about this team and maybe interested in sponsoring them in the next race please stop by their blog! http://snowhookkennel.blogspot.com/

Another picture of the wildlife quilt, just because it was so much fun to quilt!

Kelly's last quilt of the day, this is a queen size quilt, she learned how to applique! I quilted it in a pretty butterfly panto.

Now on to the baby quilts I worked on this weekend... The back story..... I have not seen my niece Amanda since she was 6 years old, last year we found each other on facebook. That 6 year old little girl now has 4 children of her own! She ask me a while ago if I would make a Minnie Mouse quilt for her baby. Took me forever to find a Minnie fabric that I liked. Well, after an afternoons work this is what I put together. Now to quilt it (thinking ribbons and bows) and send it off to her!

My other baby quilt for the weekend it for one of my daycare kids. Her mom came to me and ask if I could use her old crib bedding... (the one seen in this picture) to make her a new quilt. Oh goodie a challenge! so I said sure. She brought me this huge pile of bedding... bumper pads, dust ruffle, baby quilt and sheets. I proceeded to start un stitching.... spent a day with my seam ripper and away I went.

After un stitching, I then took pictures of each fabric and imported them into EQ 7 so I could start the design process.

Now, I knew I didn't have any really large chunks of fabric so piecing the new quilt was going to be almost impossible, Mom wanted a quilt that will last until she is a teen, so it has to be a pretty large quilt. So the plan was to add borders, lots of borders... this was my first draft. I NEVER go with my first draft! Oh and Mom wanted minkee, so I was able to add other fabrics into the final quilt!

So a little more tweaking and playing around and this is what I came up with for the final design! It includes all of the salvaged material, plus a black cotton and black minkee for the final border. Oh the bright green strip, that is a velvety stuff that was actually the TIES that held the bumper pad in place! I used EVERYTHING!

And, finally, all pieced and ready to quilt! I am not entirely sure how I will quilt this one, please feel free to share if you have any ideas!

Well, that's it for today. I have another new project I am starting on, stay tuned!
Happy quilting,
Ginny

2011-08-23T17:30:00.000-07:00

So as you may have noticed it has been a while since I have updated my blog. I confess I have been a bad bad girl ;)
With summer here and my work load increasing making time to blog always takes a back seat. School I am happy to say starts up again in a week! So with the start of school next week I should be able to write again!

I will say that a lot has happened this summer. In my last post I mentioned that I had to replace my old computer after the hard drive failed. Well that was a two week process just to get back up and running there.

One of the other things I had mentioned in other posts was the problems I was having with the Homesteader. Well, shortly after my last post I made the decision to sell the Homesteader!!! I had had enough! It sold the last week of July.
also in that time frame we waited on pin and needles to see if Stuart was going to be laid off, his company got rid of over 1,300 workers. When layoff day came, my darling husband called me and told me that I could use my money I had saved, and the money I had gotten from the sale of the Homesteader and I could buy a ...... Brand NEW Babylock Crown Jewel!
One week later.......

This was delivered and set up in my quilting studio!
I am just about over the moon with happiness. I have done three quilts on it since it arrived (Gosh that was only two weeks ago!)

One of the quilts I did was for Wendi's daughter Kendra. Kendra won a set of blocks from Craft Warehouse as part of their block lotto, she put them together to make this beautiful black and orange top, then she let me have my way with it!

I was totally happy with how the quilting turned out on this quilt!

Well, time to make dinner. I will start blogging again soon as I still have much to share!
Happy quilting,
Ginny

blah blah blah.. :)

2011-07-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

Wendi says I am being a slacker and need to blog....
Whew that was hard work, glad I could cross that off my to do list!!!

Ok in all seriousness, she is right, I have been a slacker! But in my defense I have been working, and I have been teaching, and I have been making customer quilts. I have been gardening, and enjoying quality time with Morgen (did I mention she got her learners permit...YIKES) I did enjoy a nice 4th of July with friends, and am doing a busy summer camp with the daycare...

I do have tons of pictures I want to share... and am still fighting with blogger I just can't seem to get a handle on the photo layout part after the change a few months ago...

Oh and my poor old Toshiba bit the dust.. quite litteraly, the dog knocked it off my lap onto the floor, boom fried hard drive, I have just now gotten the new machine almost set up, but for some reason everything I type on this computer is tiny, so small in fact that I have a hard time reading anything I type!

I do promise to get back to blogging soon. I hope!
Till then, may you thread never tangle and you needles never be dull!
Happy quilting,
Ginny

A simple Customer Quilt.

2011-05-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

Good Morning! I am happy to say that I think I have gotten my Tension Woes fixed. Wow what an pain in the Butt!!! After weeks of fighting with the tension, replacing parts, and then tweaking and tweaking I think we may finally have gotten things working. Enough so that I was able to work on this quilt yesterday for about 2 hours with out problems (well there were some frayed threads, but I can live with that!)

This is a very sweet quilt a customer brought to me last weekend, it is for her Mom who is undergoing chemo.
She ask me if I could add some borders and then when it is all quilted I will bring the backing to the front to form one more border, the backing is this soft fuzzy rosette material. (not minkee but similar)

This is a close up of the panto she picked, it is called Hearts a Flutter. And the thread is a bright pink! I think when it is done this will be one very cute quilt! I will be sure to post finished pictures.

Well, this was really just a short and boring blog today, possibly because I have a whopping headache this morning. I will try to post again later this week!
Thanks for stopping by.
Happy Quilting,
Ginny

Tension Woes...

2011-05-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I just re read my last post.. first off, I need to work on my proof reading before I hit publish!!! YIKES!

I was also ready how optimistic I was when I made the statement " now with my tension issues behind me..." Sadly not the case! After I got done with the quilt in the pictures on my last post I put on a practice piece as I was still getting some loops and tension was still a little off... after three 4 hour sessions fighting with tension and timing, Stuart finally threw up his hands and told me to call Darrin.

Darrin is our sewing machine repair guys at the shop, I called and he spent almost all of mothers day working on my machine. He did get it about half fixed. The loops I was getting were due to the gap between the hook and the eye of needle, he loosened the bobbin assembly and moved it back just a fraction and that fixed that problem! Then he went to work on the tension.

Now let me start by saying that no matter what I did I could not get the tension to balance and stay that way, oh I could get it to balance for a little while then BAM loops on the bottom and flat lined bobbin thread! I ended up with the tension dial cranked almost all the way down as tight as it would go and still the same thing.

So Darrin starts working on it, and gets the same results he disassembled and reassembled and changed springs, moved the check spring, and many more things... alas, tension is still way off. So here I sit almost a month after getting my machine back from it's "upgrade" and Darrin had my face plate at the shop either rebuilding the tension assembly or ordering me a new one. Needless to say I am less than happy.

The saddest thing about this whole adventure, with my old tension assembly I NEVER had these problems, I am still not sure why they replaced my face plate and tensioner... I did call to ask if they by chance still had my old one.. the short answer was no, and according to Her... the problem is not with the machine but with the thread... well then ALL of my thread must have magically turned to crap while my machine was gone.....

This is the first time I have been less than thrilled with the customer service from the Homesteader people... and right now I am very very sour.
Sorry about all of the negativity. Hopefully my next post will be happy and quilty.

Thanks for letting me vent!
Ginny

OH and if ANY of you have suggestions on how to fix this damn thing, PLEASE feel free to share! :-)

Candy Mountain Quilts Open For Business... And a Prom!

2011-05-02T14:13:00.000-07:00

So it has been a few weeks since my last post, and since I don't want to fall off the posting wagon like I did last year I figured I had better take a few minutes and throw something out here LOL!

Really I have good reason to have not posted much, I have been up to my ears in quilts and prom!
After I got my Homesteader set up on the new frame, and everything fine tuned...well almost fine tuned, I worked on a quilt for Wendi's daughter Jessica, some back story... Jessica is 17 and has had a bit of a heart problem since she was born, I won't go into a ton of detail because frankly it isn't my place to share her trials with the world... let me just say that Jessica is one of my favorite teenagers and I have a huge amount of respect for her, she has already had surgery once (maybe twice) on her heart, and has just found out that she will be having surgery again this summer, they have to replace one of the BIG arteries... (Wendi, feel free it fill in the details if you would like) Any how, as a surprise during one of the medical tests...Wendi made Jessica a really cool Shrek quilt... it is adorable...well to get it done before they left for the appointment I threw it on the frame and did a bit of quilting...

Not sure if you can tell, but the block in between the corners are made with onion fabric!

Jessica also has a thing for zebra's, hence the zebra backing, I kept trying to convince Wendi that there are zebra's in the Shrek movies... I don't think she believed me!

And then we quilted it in lizards!

I did fight with my machine during this entire little quilt, I could not for the life of me get the tension to balance. Well, once I got it done (it turned out OK, not as well as I would have liked, but OK) I did put on a test piece and played. What I found.. I absolutely can not use bobbin washer in my machine anymore.. not sure why or what the change is but the tension jumps around so badly that I have had to remove them completely. So with my tension issues behind me and the timing where it needs to be, I was ready to tackle my first customer quilt on the new set up, so here it is...

Candy Mountain Quilts Customer Quilt #1!

I am now officially (state licensed even) open for Business!!!

This quilt was brought to me by a nice lady, this is a wedding present so shhh! The couple are both avid out doorsy types so this will be perfect for them. She wanted just a simple large meander...

And she picked a nice rust colored thread, it blended so well in some places I had a hard time seeing where I had quilted!

The quilting shows up very well on the muslin backing, I have to say this is the first time I have ever quilted on a muslin back it actually turned out very nice. She comes to pick it up tomorrow night, I hope she will like it!

And just to show that my life is not entirely centered around quilting all of the time...let me share my other distraction this last week... Torrie has a boyfriend, and he ask her to prom... I have proof! LOL
Please let me indulge my proud Mommyness for just a few moments...

Lets just say it takes a LOT of equipment to get 4 teenage girls ready for Prom.. Oh and a lot of time too, they all started showing up at my house at 10 a.m... The Boy didn't show up till 5 p.m.!

Torrie was in charge of makeup, Hannah was in charge of hair.. the other two.. well I'm not entirely sure....

We did discover two things.. you can fit 4 teenagers into my small hallway.. and it takes 3 girls to get Hannah into her dress... I just don't want to know why!

Julia, Hannah, Garrett aka "The Boy" aka Gavin...Torrie and Rina.

So, once all the Magic was done, and "The Boy" arrived we took pictures, now for some reason, Torrie was the only one with a date... strange very strange since most boys are afraid of my daughter....
The good news.. "The Boy" (who's name is really Garrett) Was very nice and posed with all of the girls... they were having fun!

"The Boy" and Torrie,

I am pretty sure "The Boy" is pretty Ga Ga over her... Smart Boy... :)

Her dress is so pretty.. I am still amazed that we got it for $20! Of course the dress Julia and Rina are wearing are Torrie's also.. they were $20 each too! That was a great sale.

OK, so this is my absolute favorite picture (Torrie's too) She was sick and tired of getting her picture taken and had started to whine.. I grabbed then and ask for one more shot, she relented and let me.. it was the best one of the day! They had a great time at the dance, and are pretty sweet one each other. This is her first real boyfriend, I think she picked a nice kid, he is in Drama, and is smart, and she met his family... And if he breaks her heart.... well I will break his knee caps!

So that's it for today, Thanks for stopping by!
Happy quilting!
Ginny

Oh Blessed Day!

2011-04-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

Today was a 10! I hopped on the computer this morning to check the tracking on my longarm, which according to the tracking for the last week was due to be delivered Thursday the 14. Much to my surprise I was informed that it was on the truck out for delivery... Well I canceled my breakfast plans so I could be home for my baby.. and then I waited, and waited and waited, I paced, I fed the kids lunch, I paced some more, I sat and stared out the window, and I waited some more, the kids came home from school, I fed them snack and we all waited, we all stared out the window, Moms showed up and picked up kids, Dads showed up and picked up kids and then I waited a bit more! Finally at 4:25 p.m. the Fedex man drove past my house!!! YIKES then he backed up and came to the door, I signed for my delivery and we brought her in the house... Opened the box and there she was!

Stuart and I then spent the entire evening working on my "new and improved" set up. We didn't quite get finished, we did get the frame leveled, and the rear handles attached to the machine. Tonight we will be getting the encoder wheels put on and all of the cables run. Then I will get to load a test piece on and see how she runs. Tomorrow if all goes well I will put my red snappers on ( got a good deal on them from a nice lady I met online after a major Snafu with the Quilts on the Corner shop) Once that is done I will be back in business!
I can't wait to be able to quilt from my own home again, don't get me wrong, I love quilting over at the shop, but there is something to be said for finishing up dinner and going out to work on a quilt for a few hours before bed. I just sleep better! Plus I am more active, not sitting on my butt playing on the computer night after night.
I will post pictures after we are all set up and quilting!
I hope you all have a wonderful day.
Ginny

AT LONG LAST!!!

2011-04-09T08:29:00.000-07:00

Good Morning!!!
So first off I guess I should explain the post below this one, it is actually a continuation of a conversation on Facebook, so if you jumped here from facebook well then you know what the heck is going one, if not.. Miss Megan needed a baby quilt quick like and I pointed her to the quilt at the top of my blog, wrote up some quick and simple (I hope) directions and then pointed the way here to show her a rough picture of what I drew up... I can't wait to see her finished quilt. It actually made for a fun morning, yes my life is that lame. I was thrilled to be of a little help to her, she is one of my favorite blog writer, and just in general a great person.

So, here is my bestest news... My longarm is at LONG LAST on it's way back home! According to the tracking number it is it has just left Charlotte NC. and should arrive here on the 14th. Just in time for a double class weekend. I think this was the longest 2 1/2 months of my life. Thankfully I have had the machine at the shop to use when I needed, but still it will be nice to have mine back and be able to quilt when ever I want to!

My other good news for the day, ALL medical results are in.. everything came back OK, no cancer!!! They even are going to have me wait till next year for my next Mammogram. Originally they were thinking I would have to come back and do it all over again in 6 months.

Well, I guess that's all of my good news for the day, I am off to shower as I get to spend the day with my friend Wendi, time to clean up the sewing room before Baby gets here!
Hope you all have a wonderful day,
Happy quilting.
Ginny

A Magic Star for the Bitchy Stitcher!

2011-04-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

This is for you Megan! Like I said in my post, this was a quick and dirty layout. I just used what ever color looked close. Your quilt will be MUCH cuter. I do like the idea of using the yellow for the stars and the star material for the sashing!

EDIT....

I was able to make a better image in EQ 7 even though it is still not perfect. I was able to get the stars in there after all.

Here is the pattern I wrote up and sent to Megan on facebook. It assumes you have some basic quilting experience.

Magic Star
Cut 36 5” squares for 4 patch blocks
Cut 4 5” squares for Star center
Cut 12 5” x 9.5” rectangles for sashing
Cut 48 2 ¾” squares to form star points
Cut 5” boarder
Now simply sew together your four patch blocks. I use a random layout when using a variety of fabrics, for yours I would stick to just the pile of fats. Once 4 patch block are made set aside.

Now place one star point square on one corner of your sashing rectangle and sew from corner to corner, do this for all four corners of the rectangle, you should end up with each corner of sashing rectangle the same color as your star center. Trim to ¼ inch and press.

Next take 3 of your sashing rectangles and sew them to 2 of your star centers in this order, sashing, center sashing center sashing. Do this twice. This will form both horizontal sashing rows.

Now take your four patches and attach the vertical sashing rectangles. You should end up with three rows of… 4 patch, sashing, 4 patch, sashing, 4 patch.

Now simply join these rows to your horizontal sashings.

Yep clear as mud!

When done add border!

The New Crown Jewel Has Arrived!

2011-04-04T22:07:00.000-07:00

Another busy weekend has come and gone, I have had some good news.. the pathology report from my surgery was non cancer! And after two hours of mammograms OUCH btw... I will have to go in again in 6 months to be rechecked. They did find 3 spots on one breast and one on the other.

Now in my usual fashion, I try not to let things get me down and these last two weeks I haven't had time to have a negative thought! I actually have had a lot of fun these last two weeks, Friday the day of my surgery Bobbie the shop owner sold our rental machine!!! YIKES.. Now this is a good thing because after all that is her job, to sell sewing machines, but the yikes comes from the fact that I have a FULL calendar the entire month of April, I don't have any room for down time due to no machine. Fortunately the lady who bought the machine was gracious enough to allow us to continue using and renting her machine while our new longarm was shipped. I taught her how to use her longarm the Sunday after my surgery, and then we waited... Well I have to say I am very impressed with the Babylock people, the new frame and the Crown Jewel arrived Wednesday and Thursday, less than a week after the old machine sold. So, Friday after I got off work Stuart and I headed to the shop to set up the new CJ, we got there at about 4:30, the ladies who were renting that day finished their quilt and we were able to start set up on the new system. Many hours later we had this....

We got done with initial set up, leveling and leaders at about 10:30 Friday night. I had my first class Saturday morning, things went OK, not great but OK, we had a bit of problem with the tension, as the day progressed I did manage to get it fairly balanced... Then Sunday I had another class..

And the machine tension went all to hell! Again I tweaked it all day long and finally late Sunday afternoon I got it balanced. I may have to cause pain to anyone who messes with that dial!

So now, after two full days of playing, both on my own test piece and my two ladies classes, I have to say I like this machine. It is primarily the Jewel just a little bit nicer, a couple improved features that make the over all quilting process a bit easier. I did have to put a warning sticker on the handles. The renters will not be allowed to use the precision stitch feature until they take a second class, I for see some real bloody fingers otherwise! I do like that you can change the stitch length right on the handles.
If you are looking for a good solid mid range long arm, I really would suggest you check out the Crown Jewel. Now the real challenge for me begins.. I have to learn how to use the computer guided portion.. Anybody out there familiar with Quilt Motion? If so give me a shout I am rather intimidated by it!
Well, going to keep this short tonight, it has been a heck of a week this last little while, and I need to get some rest!
Thanks for stopping by,
Happy quilting!
Ginny

A virtual quilt show!

2011-03-26T09:16:00.000-07:00

Good Saturday Morning!!!
First a real quick note the NO MORE MEDICAL TALK I promise!!! Did surgery yesterday and all went well! They removed what needed removing and left what was suppose to say! LOL The Dr says I will have some cramping and pain. So far so good...nothing... knock on wood.
So with surgery out of the way and 11+ hours of sleep under my belt I feel like a new woman!
*** I am still working on figuring out Bloggers new photo system, am having a really hard time with it. I apologise how awful the layout looks***
And with that I will now get back to quilting. I promised the other day to share photos from last weeks quilt show. So with out further ado... let the show begin (note, only a few of these are MY quilts, and sadly I could not take pictures of all, so this is just a small sampling of our local talent, and boy do we have some local talent!) I will write a little bit about some of the quilts, but I sadly did not get photos of each info sheet. Need to do that next year!

A close up! There was a LOT of work put into

this quilt

Just thought this one was lovely!

Not sure who made this one, but I love it!

Torrie's flip flops, lots of people liked it.

Ok, this set is cool, the blue pastel one won first place. These are miniatures! As can be seen by the 3rd picture in this group. These two can be seen on the top row right side. They were tiny!

This one was made by Kendra, my friend Wendi's Daughter, she was 11 when she did it. She even quilted it on my longarm!

This quilt was pretty cool. I was not a big fan of the over all design, but the next picture shows what I loved!


The quilter added silk leaves! It made for a lovely effect!

These three quilts were made by Tera Watkins, she is one of the ladies that come to quilt party, the pictures just don't do her quilts justice! Click on them to make them larger!

Loved the wonky stars on this quilt, just adds a bit of interest!

These two are embroidery quilts! The one on the left is a Latte quilt in pink! The other was made by one of the nicest people I have ever met! Ellen is in her 70's (we won't say how are!) And learned to machine embroider a few years ago, each year she enters one of her master pieces. This year was no exception. I do think our local quilt show should add to new categories.. One for Applique (we had a lot of applique quilts not win that should have if they had their won category. And Embroidery, again for the same reason!

This was another amazing Machine embroidery quilt, the quilt was stunning and the story was sweet. It deserved a ribbon, but lost since it was just clumped in with all the other large quilts. Hmm maybe I should say something to the guild? Of course that would mean attending meetings!
On the right you can see some of the embroidery details. BTW, this was done as a round robin for a sick friend if I remember the write up correctly.

Mine

Mine!

Also Wendi's! Lots of people liked it,

I even tried to sell it for her!

This was another fun quilt is was a year of Santa! I included the entire quilt plus a couple of the blocks for detail. so cute!

Wendi's Mario quilt! I love this picture because you can really see how BIG Mario and Luigi really are. I was kind of disappointed at where it was hung, in probably the darkest area of the show, it was really hard to make out her quilting details. The good part, lots of kids LOVED this quilt!

This was an amazing quilt, done by a group in Walla Wall, it depicts the Walla Walla Valley, the quilting was just stunning! I took probably a dozen pictures just of the quilting, there was everything from grapes, onions, wheat and asparagus. furrows from the tractor, and clouds for the hot air balloon. Hill, mountains and valleys, there was even a baseball diamond! Lovely job on this quilt!

Well, that looks like the last picture. Thank you for stopping in and visiting this virtual quilt show. If you happen to be in Washington state around this time next year please stop by and see the real thing! It only cost $5 to get in and it is will worth the trip!
Happy quilting,
Ginny

My new frame is here!

2011-03-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

Just a short posting today... having a bit of a rough day here... will be going in next week for another mammogram, am not dealing with this bit of news very well.
But.. That is NOT what this posting is about. I just wanted to share first pictures of the new frame, Wow!!!

This baby is really long!As you can see we off loaded it in the garage, will be taking it out to the sewing room this evening when Stuart gets home from work!

It is fully as long as my van. Yes I have space for it in the sewing room, I have spent every night this week clearing out my "junk corner"

Once we get it out there I will have to lay out the table and level the frame. I will also have to sew casings on the leaders for my new loading system.. I ordered a set of the Red Snappers!

Sadly, my Homesteader is still in NC. Jennifer ran into some issues during the upgrade and it has taken quite a bit longer than expected. The bad news it looks like it will be a few more weeks, the good news she is making Major changes since I have one of the very first Homesteaders from the sounds of it! So I won't be able to get to put this frame to use until April at the soonest. Thank you Sue for bringing me my new frame! I you are interested in the Suzy Q frames, I would highly recommend them. Art and Sue are two of the nicest people, and they make a good quality product. I love the fact that due to the new Stitch Regulator I am putting on my Homesteader, Art custom built parts of this frame to match my exact specifications!
Plus he made it longer than what they sell on their site, so if you go to Suzyqquilter.com and don't see a size you want, call them and they will probably be able to get you what you need! Yep this just turned into an advertisement LOL

Hey Wendi, I just got the MOST interesting call from Bobbie!
And with that I shall bid you farewell.

Ginny

Sold My Frame! Bring on the 12 Footer!!!

2011-03-23T10:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life can be funny.. Yesterday was a day from hell! I had to go in for my Pre Op and then register at the surgery center, I also got to have a mammogram! Yep fun day... So in the middle of all these appointments I get this phone call (I literally was getting ready to take my shirt of and put the little pasties on) The call was from a lady who saw my Suzy Q frame listed on Craigslist! She was very interested as she had just been looking at one at the quilt show last weekend. I scheduled for her to come over yesterday evening... And she bought the frame!!! I will be delivering it to her next week, helping her set up her machine and giving her some tips on quilting with a 9 inch throat machine. I could not be more thrilled.

Here was the kicker, after she left I noticed the husbands name on her check, I ask Stuart if he knew a guy named Don H.... He say well, yea I worked with him years ago at Hanford, he was instrumental in my advancing to management! Needless to say, Stuart will be going with me to deliver the frame so he can visit his old mentor! It truly is a small world!

So with my old frame sold, and my new one being delivered tomorrow now all I have to do is wait for my Homesteader to make its way back home! I got an email from Jennifer and they are almost done making all of the upgrades. To quote her...

The timing issue is to do with the timing of the take up arm. That has to do with an internal cam which we will change.

I know you will be very happy with your improved Homesteader.

I can't ask for more than that! So with any luck she will be sending my machine back home to me soon and I will be up and quilting again... I have three new quilts I am working on, plus a little scrappy thing I am putting together from corners cut off the three I am working on... It just seemed like such a waste to throw away those little 1 inch half square triangles... here is a sneak peek...

OK so the pictures aren't great, but you get the idea, these are pretty small still as they are just laid out on the ironing board.

I am not sure which one I like better so far, and since this is just a play around thing it is not a top priority, I have another quilt I need to get done asap as a surprise for a friend...

Well, that's about it for today, thanks for letting me share my good news.

Happy quilting,

Ginny

Fun Stuff.. and not so Fun Stuff...

2011-03-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

March, one of my favorite months of the year! March means the start of spring, flowers blooming, my birthday and our local quilt show, all of these are some of my favorite things!

This March has been a good month, well pretty much. I will start with the good and then go from there.

This last weekend was our local quilt show, I will make a post showing some of the beautiful quilts at the show a bit later. Today I am going to show you a quilt that I did this weekend. This is not my quilt but a customer quilt, a very special customer quilt. You see I am not really in business yet and have only done two other quilts for hire, one was a total commissioned quilt, and the other was a rush job for Stacy.. she needed it done a.s.a.p. for her brothers wedding. Well she called me Saturday during the show to ask if I could do another rush job, I said yes, and this is the quilt. The pictures are not great because they were taken with my cell phone. Now Stacy is a new quilter, I think this is her second or maybe third quilt, she does have some learning to do, but she gets an A+ for effort! She ask me if I could quilt it like the book...my favorite question..not. I was able to do everything except the center medallion on the 5" squares, so we compromised and did a feathered heart... Here are the pictures....

I was very happy with the final quilt, the quilting really enhanced the finished product! But most importantly, Stacy was delighted!
I am glad I got it done for her yesterday...
Mainly because that will be the last quilting I get to do for the next couple of weeks. The bad news in my life... OK so I don't usually give bad news on my blog and I don't usually discuss my medical issues. But today I am breaking that...

You see, I go in for surgery on Friday. During my last "girly" check up the Dr. found a growth in my uterus that is now outside on my cervix also. They will be removing the growth and running tests for cancer. I am not scared and not really letting it bother me. I know that it will be all right. I am bothered that I won't be able to quilt for a bit because that is what keeps me sane. So, if by chance I don't post for a bit. Don't worry, I will be back as soon as I have something pretty to share!
Until then, keep on quilting and lets enjoy the warmer March weather!
Happy quilting,
Ginny

Selling my Babylock and Suzy Q Frame!

2011-03-04T12:58:00.000-08:00

As you all know I have sent my Homesteader out for an upgrade, and I mentioned the other day that I am also upgrading my quilt frame. Well officially as of today I have listed my queen size frame for sale. I have listed in on a few of my yahoo quilt groups and also on craigslist. So I figured what the heck I would list it here on my blog also. I don't have pictures right now, but will take some this evening and add them here. Until then I will just tell you about what I am selling.

For Sale: Babylock Quilters Choice Pro 9" machine with a Grace Sure Stitch stitch regulator on a queen size Suzy Q frame. The Babylock has a built in thread cutter, comes with extra bobbins, Magic Genie bobbin washers, a ruler foot, free motion foot and several other piecing feet. The Sure Stitch stitch regulator works beautifully and lets you set your stitch length with the simple press of a button. The Suzy Q frame (did I mention I am getting another Suzy Q, I love this frame!) is very sturdy, with metal rails! Easy crank for the take up rail. The leaders have zippers installed for speed and ease in loading your quilt onto the frame!
I am willing to deliver the entire set up anywhere in Eastern Washington. For everyone else I am more than willing to ship, but the buyer will be responsible for shipping costs. Asking price... Well I am asking $1450.00
But it the buyer mentions seeing this on my blog then you get the Blog Special of.... $1350.00!

Please feel free to send me an email if you or anyone you know may be interested in this setup. I would really like to sell before my quilt machine and new frame arrive.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and pass the word!

Feel free to share this on your blog too!
Thanks,
Ginny

Kimonos and Celtic knots... oh yea!

2011-02-28T08:58:00.000-08:00

OK so that was mean! I but I was pretty tired last night. So tired in fact that my poor family had to fend for them selves for dinner!
I am very happy with how the Kimono quilt turned out though and it was well worth the two days it took to finish it.
I originally planned on doing an Asian panto on the quilt to get it done quick and easy. Well about 3 feet into the first row of the panto I decided I hated it! So I ripped it out and went with plan B... OK so I didn't really have a plan B.. I had to make one up on the spot!

This is what I ended up with....

I started by outlining each Kimono, then did a tiny stipple in that little 1/2" space by the colar. Then I worked my way down and around the kimono to fill in all of the black with a stipple. The sashing needed something so I went with a simple ribbon.. and viola there you have it. The fun part.. I quilted the entire thing in GOLD! So sadly you can see my wobble and bobbles. But let me say, doing a ribbon on 1" sashing is kind of a pain in the BUTT!

Working on the last two rows of the quilt, each block took about 7 minutes to do... there were 56 blocks... so roughly 6 1/2 hours just for the blocks.. not to awe fully bad!

The entire quilt done! Now I just need to trim and bind it!

And one more photo, you can see how the quilting comes together. In the end I think I made the right decision. I would not have been happy with the panto. I also love that I did not put any quilting in the Kimonos... as you can see blow, it makes the back a lot of fun too!
OK, so not the best picture of the back, but you get the idea!

Sadly, now I have an entire weekends worth of chores and emails to catch up on. Plus I need to start work on Stuarts newest quilt... can you say emerald green and Celtic knots... here is a sneak peek...
Now imagine that... 4 feet across... oh yea this is going to be a fun one!

Happy quilting to all!
Ginny

Sneek Peak...

2011-02-27T21:42:00.000-08:00

So, I busted butt this weekend! I spent two whole days working on the Kimono quilt...Here is a sneak peak... I will post the rest of the pictures tomorrow....Yep, I'm evil like that! That's all you get for today!
Stay tuned for the rest of the quilting story!
Happy quilting,
Ginny

February = Crazy!

2011-02-25T07:50:00.000-08:00

If I had to describe the month of February in one word it would be "Crazy" and not just this year but every year February ends up being one of my busiest months. Partly because it is my daughters birthday month, the high maintenance daughter, not the easy one! This year was actually the most mellow birthday she has ever had. Her friends threw her a party at their house, she was gone for almost 24 hours, then when she came home for birthday dinner she got called into work. Well in the hurry to get her fed before she flew out the door... Dad incinerated her dinner... UGG well Happy Birthday anyhow kiddo!

This month has also been crazy busy with longarm classes, Oh and time spent at the shop doing my own quilts. So far I have been there every weekend except last weekend as my class was canceled due to the student getting sick!

This month is the big push to get all of the last minute quilting done for all of the quilt show entries, I have finished the yellow and purple pansy quilt and think it turned out lovely...

The colors didn't turn out very well the quilt is really a bright yellow and purple. I also had a heck of a time getting a good photo of the quilting... bu there it is...

I played around and did a circle feather in each circle (this was a first for me) and then I filled the rest with fern feathers... Love those... and actually you can see them even better on the back than you can on the front.
I do love my Minkee backings.. they are so soft and show the quilting so very well!

I also made another last minute quilt... this was the BOM this month at our local Craft Warehouse...
I have over the years collected a LOT of different oriental prints, I can't help myself I LOVE them, well I also fell in love with this block. It is a total PITA to piece but the end result is well worth it. I decided to use a different print for each kimono... there are 56 block is this quilt... I did NOT use all of my Asian prints... I found about 10 more after I was finished with the quilt...

As I work on my quilts I show them to my Daycare kids.. one of my oldest kiddos ask me is she could make a block to turn in next Quilt Party, I said sure... here she is working on her block. I did all of the cutting, she did all of the stitching, together we pressed. She was a good student and did an excellent job. Sounds like she is going to start coming to Q.P. with me.
Here is Miss B with her finished block!

And a close up of her finished block.
Yes a crazy busy month! I have finally gotten around to binding Stuarts quilt Magic Hour... Now in my house of 5 cats you can NEVER make a quilt with out help.. here is Groucho AKA Cho "helping" me bind the quilt. He was a BIG help let me tell you. After much pulling, pushing and prodding I got the quilt done and he had an excellent nap!

One of my favorite crazy busy bits this month... Morgen, had her first "date" she ask a friend who happens to be a boy to the Sadie Hopkins dance (do we know why it is called Sadie Hopkins?) They met up there with a group of friends, danced and had a blast. She was all dressed up and ready to go. She reports that it was the most fun at a school dance that she has ever had. I guess so, her legs were sore for 3 days after wards!

Well that is my Crazy month in a nutshell, and we still have three days left!
I will post pictures of the Kimono quilt when I am finished with it. I think I may give that one to Morgen as a surprise... Shh don't tell her!
Happy quilting,
Ginny

The Leap!

2011-02-16T08:42:00.000-08:00

Around this time last year I started working on a quilt for my darling husband, that quilt turned into Magic Hour. Well, this quilt is not exactly small, it measures 102" x 102" and was WAY to big for my quilt frame, As a matter of fact it maxed out the frame at the shop too!

Now, fast forward to last month, I finally got around to putting the binding on Stuart's quilt, washed it and put in on our king size bed, it looks lovely btw.. But there is only about 4 inches of over hand on the sides. After putting the quilt on Stuart turns to me and says, "you need to make a bigger quilt so it hangs down the sides more" I explained that I can't make a bigger quilt as I don't have access to a frame large enough to quilt one. Now we have been talking for a while about my getting a larger frame just for this reason. So he then says to me... Go ahead and order the 12' frame you have been wanting!!!

Just that simple! I have wanted to so badly and had even talked to Sue to see if they could build me a frame that size (on their website they offer a 10' frame as their king size) But I could not order one with out Stuart agreeing as it is a pretty big money outlay. Well, I waited a day and then ask him if he was sure I could order the frame, I told him exactly how much it would be and he says "Happy Valentines Day" (this is over a dinner at our favorite Chinese place too)

So I came home and called Sue, 45 minutes later after a rather long extensive conversation with Art (did I mention this is a custom job) my frame is ordered and will *hopefully* be delivered in mid march! Just in time for my birthday!

Oh and Stuart has already outlined the next quilt he wants... emerald green with a 4' Celtic knot in the center... and being the good wife...I ordered the fabric and drew up and printed the design yesterday... Stay tuned!

Happy quilting,
Ginny

I jumped!

2011-02-15T17:27:00.001-08:00

I took the leap, I made the jump! I will tell you more tomorrow!

Wendi Weekend!

2011-02-08T09:07:00.000-08:00

Yippee my foot is better!!! For the last two and a half months I have been wearing this clunky old medical boot Uggg! I have had severe heel pain and was having problems putting weight on my left foot, yesterday I went to the podiatrist and he put a cortisone shot in that heal. Today I am back in my tenny runners and happy as can be!

Because of the heel pain quilting has been a chore, that's not so good. But I did have a fun weekend with my good friend Wendi, she has recently completed two stunning quilts and wanted to quilt them, so we rented the Jewel for a couple of days and to work we went. Now Wendi would be just delighted if I would quilt all of her quilts for her. I am NOT that nice LOL, I being the good friend that I am make her quilt them herself, I did help out a little on these two, the second quilt we split pretty evenly as it was a real arm buster! Here are Wendi's works of art.....This quilt is called Northern Ripples, Wendi won the blocks, we go to our local Craft Warehouse once a month for quilt party, they have a BOM and you bring it back and are entered in the block lotto, the winner gets all of the blocks. This as you can see was a fall BOM. Wendi played around with the layout and this is what she ended up with, I think it really sings. And since it looks like the ripples on a pond, we decided to do a water design. I found a panto called Drips, thought it would be perfect, quilted in a nice variegated brown... here are the close ups....

Now Wendi is the kind of quilter that does NOT want the quilting to show, I think we were successful, it does blend in nicely...

Here you can actually see the pattern.

She used a fuzzy backing (I am starting to wear off on her... Bwaa Haa Haa my evil plan is working) and you can REALLY see the patterning! LOVE IT.

This is the water color quilt she has been working on for several months, I think it is amazing! I love the diamond affect. This quilt was a total pain in the arm to quilt! For the design we let the fabric speak, there are lots of leaves and vegetation on the batiks so I found a lovely fern panto on the digitech website, originally we were going to make the panto HUGE so the quilting would not be very obvious, neither of us liked that one, so we used a smaller version of the same ferns, each fern leaf is about 3.5 inches tall, each row was about 6.5 inches tall. It took about 18 minutes per row... The arm busting part came from the up constant up and down up and down of the jagged fern leaves my shoulder was good for about 3 row, then Wendi would do 3, then I would do 3 and so on...We got it done, but would have to seriously think about doing the small version of the ferns again.... OUCH.... here is a close up of the ferns.....

Each spiky leaf is about an inch and half tall... I think this was one of our first rows, we were still pretty wobbly.
And the back, the backing is black with a dark blue bobbin, so hard to see but you get the idea.
I do think both quilts turned out well. I am hoping she will enter BOTH of them in the quilt show.

What do you think?

As always, thanks for stopping by my little corner of the world.
May all your stitches be even, and all your needles stay sharp!
Happy quilting,
Ginny

Rental Handouts...

2011-02-03T11:25:00.001-08:00

Ok, this is just a quick post today. I have gotten several emails asking about the papers I hand out in my class. So I have decided to add them to my blog, they will be permanently at the bottom of the screen. I developed these as teaching tools, the content is entirely mine. Please feel free to use the instructions as you like. Make changes to reflect your personal information and what you will be teaching. PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR SELL my handouts! If you want to post these or share these please contact me first for permission. I will probably grant it, but it would be nice if you ask before you share! Or you can just direct others to this website.

You will find three different handouts, The first one is the one I email to my students, this is a general guide explaining what they will learn and what to bring, it also gives resources to purchase thread.

Secondly, is my quilting checklist. We follow this step by step in the class. It gets them going one step at a time.

the third one is how to prepare you quilt for longarm quilting.
This is valid for ANYONE who takes their quit to be longarmed, either by a professional or by yourself these guidelines don't change. There is also instruction on how to attache zippers for zippered leaders. And how to attach your boarder so they don't ruffle!

Oh and one more little thing, I have gotten complaints on my purple writing on the black background, I finally figured out how to change the text color, so lavender it is!

Happy quilting,
Ginny

Longarm Machine Rental part 1

2011-01-30T13:37:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, I am a Daycare provider... I work from home and because of that I don't get to spend a lot of time with adults! Because of that I have found over the years that I tend to gravitate towards online groups, it allows me to interact with other quilters from home. I am a member of several really great yahoo quilting groups, the Quiltropolis longarm group, various Facebook quilting groups and of course I read a LOT of quilting blogs.

And for those of you who read my blog on a regular basis know that I am now an Instructor for our local shops Babylock Jewel certification and basic longarm quilting class.

So, the other day I was reading on one of my groups and a lady ask about the Pro's and Con's of renting her longarm, and I posted a little bit about my class and what I teach. Now I didn't really expect anyone to respond to my posting, imagine my surprise when I got an email from Renee in Georgia. Renee had a BUNCH of questions so I ask her to call me, she did and we spent about 45 minutes on the phone chatting, BTW Renee is like the nicest person and I REALLY enjoyed chatting!!!

As we were ending our call, I decided I would share with you all (and Renee) a little bit of what I teach in my class with pictures. So for those of you who do not longarm, or are not interested in my class then you may find the rest of this posting very boring. But if you are a longarm quilting and have been thinking of renting your machine, or if you are a quilter and want to learn you might find this interesting (no guarantees though!)

Before the picture show begins, I want to say a very special THANK YOU to Fonny my very willing student, I kind of sprung on her the fact that I wanted to take picture of her for my blog, she very generously agreed to participate!

After writing up this entire post, I have decided to split it in two as it ended up VERY LONG, So please continue to scroll down for the rest of the story..........................................

Longarm Machine Rental part 2

2011-01-30T13:21:00.000-08:00

The rest of the story......

As I talked to Renee, I shared with her how I teach and some of the things I teach. One of the key factors in my class is the fact that I am NOT at the shop when the students come in to rent, so they have to be very self sufficient, I stress that I am only a phone call away and can help over the phone and that the shop owner is not a quilter so really cannot help if they get in a bind.

I provide several handouts, the first and most important is the quilting check list, I did not take pictures during this part of the class (because I forgot) but I will briefly cover the basics, this is NOT the entire checklist....
Clean rails, bobbin area and machine, checking for threads and fluff, oil bobbin area, change needle, wind bobbin, check bobbin tension with TOWA, load bobbin, thread machine. Then turn machine on...

Load quilt...
back, top, batting, how to roll evenly, how to adjust the rail height, how to tension the quilt, and how to sew or pin zippers on to your quilt before you load the quilt. (you get a set of zippers to keep as part of the class)

Quilt!
How to bring your bobbin thread up and how to tie off, advance your quilt, what is good even tension, trouble shooting problems and thread theory.

Now for the fun stuff, we have our quilt loaded, and the machine threaded, we get to play! The first thing we do is learn how to not strangle the machine and cause ourselves sore shoulders and backs! We do a little stretching and shoulder rolls, I look for white knuckles too. When we are all set and ready to quilt.... we take a working lunch break (I am a MEAN teacher LOL) I have a packet of hand drawn designs... we sit down with our brown bag lunch and start work on the dry erase boards...
For this class we learn large meander, small meander, loops, loops with flowers, L's E's, C's, Spirals, Ribbons, and Dragonflies! I teach left to right, top to bottom, then they have to learn right to left and bottom to top, we go forwards, then when they are comfortable, we go backwards, when that is good we go upside down! As you can tell Fonny was actually having a lot of fun. I think that is one of the most important things I teach, relax and enjoy your self, quilting is fun!
I love this picture, you can see where we have worked on the dry erase until she felt comfortable and then we take that to the machine, do a pass or two then back to the dry erase for the next design, then back to the machine, I also take about 15 minutes and I take the machine OFF stitch regulated and I have them learn how to judge their quilting, and how to move their bodies with a non regulated machine, we practice getting nice even stitches and finding a good base line speed number for them to sew at on a non regulated setting. They many never need that, but it they do then at least they have a feel for stitching with out a regulator.
One of the things we do in class, we use different threads. I supply Glide, King Tut and Superior Rainbows, three very different threads, they have to learn to adjust the bobbin tension for each thread, and the machine tension. It also forces them to rethread the machine from scratch repeatedly. Plus they get to see how each thread looks when sewn out. Again, since I am not right there over their shoulder it is important that they can do everything from wind a bobbin to change a needle to threading the machine.

One of my other important hand outs (I email this one when we schedule the class) is my introduction to longarm quilting....

It starts like this (taken directly from my handout)....

Introduction to Quilting Class At Discount Vac and Sew

In this class you will learn the care and feeding of the Babylock Jewel, how to load a quilt on the longarm quilt frame and basic/beginner quilting.

For this class you will need to bring the following items.

1) A light toned cotton fabric this fabric should measure 46”x40”. For today’s purposes Joann’s or Wal-Mart fabric is just fine, this is just a practice piece and will actually be pretty ugly!

2) A practice backing, this will need to be prepared exactly like you would prepare your backing for a standard quilt. In other words, 10” larger than your quilt top both length wise and width wise. 56”x50”

3) A piece of batting the same size as your backing.

DO NOT BRING A PIECED QUILT TOP TO THIS CLASS.

I cannot express strongly enough how important this is. You will be “scribbling” on the practice piece on the frame, it really is not a pretty thing and you will ruin your lovely quilt top if that is what you bring!

One of my saddest stories was the lady who insisted that she learn to quilt on her lovely lone star quilt, needless to say she was very unhappy with what she learned, I was very stressed because it was impossible to teach, and she has never been back to rent the machine again. So now if we have someone come in for class with a pieced top they have to purchase fabric from the shop to learn on. NEVER AGAIN!

So that is why as you see in the photos, Fonny did exactly right, she purchased white muslin, yes you can see all her wobbles and fobbles, she was stitching in Navy Blue! But, I also keep on hand a stack of scraps that I lay down and have them quilt on to show how the quilting blends in and is not so awful when on a patterned fabric. (this does a LOT to help self confidence!)

At the end of a 6 hour day, I am tired, my student is tired... but I think they go home with enough confidence and understanding to come back and use this machine again. I do know that since I have been teaching, several of my students have come in and rented the machine....and to date I have only gotten one HELP phone call... and it was an easy thing to talk her through on the phone.

Well, I hope this was enlightening, entertaining, or at least interesting. If you are an owner and want to know more about my handouts, please feel free to email me... I will supply you with my phone number so we can chat, then I will gladly share with you my handouts. I only ask that you not sell my hard work, you can use it for teaching purposes, change what you need to do suit your needs, but that's it.

Happy quilting,
Ginny

Please Vote for Torrie's Bargello!

2011-01-28T20:21:00.000-08:00

A while ago I posted a photo of Torrie's Bargello quilt she made for her friend Sheri. Unknown to Torrie, I entered her quilt into The Quilting Gallery's weekly themed quilt contest. This weeks them is unusually shaped quilts, currently Torrie's quilt is in 4th place. I am asking every one to please take a moment and click THIS LINK and vote for Torrie's quilt. The voting ends Sunday night. She still does not think she did that great of a job on this quilt, I would love for her to win to boost her quilting self confidence!

Thank you, and Happy Quilting!
Ginny

Done, Done and Fun!

2011-01-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

Good Morning! So I am a couple of days late with this post, but you know what they say... better late than never...

I want to start by sharing photos of the Pansy quilt, all done and bound. I totally love this quilt. So much so that I will be entering it into our local quilt show. I think it has some real POP to it. I am also very very happy with the quilting. I did just a simple floral pantograph that I purchased from Digi-tech. (a little plug for Jessica here) I love the fact that I can order my panto, download it, size it to my desired size (OK that part takes a few minutes but not too awfully long) then I just print it out, tape the sheets together and I have a panto. No waiting for the mail, no shipping charge and I can really personalize the design to the size I want. So if you have a longarm and do any type of pantograph and have NOT been to the Digi-tech website, do yourself a favor and check it out!... Now on the the pictures!
Did I mention I love this quilt. Thank you to all who voted for option A. Good choice.

Here is a close up of the quilting, just a simple little flower and I will definitely be using this design again. Oh you can also see where the giant pansies were appliqued on.

So here it is, Torrie's 17th birthday quilt! I am thrilled with how this one turned out. Torrie informed me that she does NOT like pinwheels on a quilt and would I please make a nine patch instead (yep she truly is a quilter too) I found the center fabric at a little quilt shop about 20 miles away, based the entire quit on that fabric...This is a close up of the center fabric, you will notice the black cat outlined in green. They are not super noticeable at first. The green is this kind of celery green and because the center fabric is so wild we decided to go with very simple fabrics, so the black and green have no real pattern, the green is fairy frost and the black is just basic black. The real fun comes with the quilting.....

I loaded this on the frame with BRIGHT green minkee on the back, then I used a kitty panto for the pattern, to stay with the theme I used bright green thread, as you can see it works perfectly on the black fabrics. I was able to mirror the center panel... I think this is one of the best quilts I have ever done.... With one small exception... and you the readers of my blog will be the only ones to know... if you look closely at the top row of kitties... you will notice on the sitting kitty there is a bump on it's chest. I have an entire row of kitties with this same oops... That was when the track on my long arm carriage broke... I was so angry that the rails broke AGAIN (this is a grace carriage and the second time the rails have disintegrated on me) I made modifications to the carriage that came with my frame so I can use it with my Homesteader... LONG story there... Anyhow it was the carriage breaking that lead to the final decision to install a stitch regulator... Whew...

First I want to show you my weekend fun quilt...
So last Sunday my darling hubby was engrossed in football. I don't mind so much that means I get guilt free quilting time! So I scooted out to my sewing room and cleaned up a bit, as I was cleaning I came across my cat and dog fabric that Wendi had given me for Christmas (I will have to share the rest of that story on another post...) Anyhow, I folded it and was going to put it away when I decided what the heck cut it up and use it NOW... So I broke out my Go and my tumbler die and proceeded to cut cut cut, in the end I just did not have enough blocks for a good size quilt so I started looking through my stash and came up with a bunch MORE dogs and cats, wow did not realize how much of that I had! So more cutting then I mixed them all up and started piecing and this is what I ended up with! I think it is so cute! Now I am NOT a scrappy kind of girl but you know, this one I don't mind so much.
Here is a close up of just some of the fabrics. I didn't even keep track of how many different fabrics I used. I can't wait to get my longarm back so I can quilt it. I have the best idea for that.....

Well before I sign off for the day I thought I would show you something a bit different. This is my long arm, stripped down and off the frame. Just minutes from being boxed up and shipped. If you have never gotten a good look at the Homesteader... here she is.... If you are a Hobby Quilter like I am and want a longarm but just can't afford or justify the $10,000+ price tag of the big machines I really do recommend you check out the homesteaders. They are lovely machines for a very nice price. Now I do have to say that mine did NOT come with a stitch regulator, but it is an extra option. I just checked the tracking and she is almost to the homesteader factory to be upgraded and have the SR put on. I am counting the days until she is returned!

Until then, I have classes to teach, and time reserved on the rental machine, taxes to file and daycare licensing renewal to do. As always busy busy busy! Oh and a birthday party for the 17 year old... Wish me luck!
Happy quilting and back to work for me!
Ginny

Big Changes for my Longarm!

2011-01-21T21:10:00.000-08:00

Thank you all so much for your input on the Pansy quilt, I kept it at option A. I got it quilted last weekend, plus I finished Torrie's birthday quilt. Both turned out really well, I will post pictures later this weekend while Torrie is at work (need to take pictures when she can't see)

I am happy I got both quilted because officially as of today I am quilt machine-less :( Well that is really a :)
You see, I have been saving my paychecks for a while in order to send my machine in for a bit of an upgrade and retrofit, Stuart and I got to talking and we decided that while the machine is in for servicing I should have a stitch regulator installed!!! So I gave Jennifer a call and ordered the full package. Today was the day, I wrapped and taped and bubble wrapped and in the box it went then off to Fed-ex and away it shipped. I figure I will be machine-less for at least a month maybe a little more I will find out for sure next week.

Until then I have 4 quilts to bind, and a huge mess in my sewing room to clean up. I also have my business taxes to do and I have my daycare license renewal coming up, so really this was the best time to send my darling off to be worked over. Doesn't mean I won't miss it and I am really excited about getting it back!

Well, that's all for tonight, I will post pictures of Torrie's quilt very soon!
Happy quilting,
Ginny

Choice A or B?

2011-01-12T11:05:00.000-08:00

In my last post I showed you a picture of one my newest quilt tops, well I really really did not like the center panel, did a bit of shopping and found some large pansy blocks from the same line of fabric. Cut, iron and stitch... and this is what I came up with.....

A
Much better than.......

B

Let me know what you think, better or worse?

Thanks for stopping by!
Gin

Dreaming of Spring!

2011-01-10T11:17:00.000-08:00

Thought I would pop in today with just a short little post to show off the two quilts I have been working on, both still need a final border, the black and purple get a black border and the yellow and purple still needs its final purple border. I will hope full get those one today or tomorrow. Then I start work on three new quilts, I have two that are Christmas presents, Yep not even pieced yet! And one more similar to the one below for Torrie's birthday.

I did something I don't usually do, I purchased a kit! I can honestly say that I will probably not ever do that again, I really liked the pattern, but after I got it home and looked closer at it I was rather disappointed with the pattern. It was very scant and not well written...

Once I got the entire quilt put together I also decided that I STRONGLY dislike the center panel, it is very green and does not blend or match well. Not something I would have picked for this quilt even though they are from the same line of fabric.
Here is a close look, I just think it is very jarring, so I went to the store yesterday and picked another pansy fabric. Took the quilt apart last night and will re do the center this week too. I will show the final results when I am done.

The other fun little quilt I did this week is my Falcons Drunkards path! I cut this entirely on my Accuquilt GO, I was thrilled with how easily it went together and how well all of my seams lined up! This picture is only half of the quilt as I did not have space to take pictures of the whole thing!

And a close up, I guess I am feeling the need for spring as the focus fabric on both of these quilts is Purple pansies!

Well that was it just a bit of show and tell.

Dreaming of Spring!
Gin

Another Christmas Come and Gone.

2011-01-03T09:54:00.000-08:00

And I survived! Christmas in our house is always small, just Stuart the girls and I. We like it that way, we don't travel we don't have family over it is just us, I try not to go overboard with the gifts (we got rid of the credit cards about 5 years ago so overspending is never a temptation).

I took the week after Christmas off, this is the one week I take off every year, it is my time to recharge my batteries and just spend time on myself, this year I got a bit of quilting done, I spent a few days in my PJ's and went shopping with the girls one day (they just had to spend those gift cards!) and Wendi another. I went to the movies with Morgen and have decided that 3D movies make me sick, yep spent two days throwing up, not use if it was because of the 3D or the popcorn, I was a bad girl and ate about a cup of popcorn, yes I know better but really could not help myself!

On Friday Wendi and I took a short road trip to Prosser to a little quilt shop called The Sewing Basket, interesting little shop they have tons and tons of lovely fabric. I found several prints that I have searched for in the past but could not find because they are no longer made, well The Sewing Basket has them. The only down side to this wonderful little shop is the fact that they have TO MUCH FABRIC! Yep way to much, so much in fact that you could not see much of the fabric on the bottom shelves and it was hard to walk through there was so much stacked every where, two and three layers deep. I will have to thing long and hard before I make another trip to shop there again.

On Saturday, new years day Wendi and I did the Merry Mayhem/Planet Patchwork Mystery quilt. This was her first mystery and my second. It was fun and the little wall hanging turned out pretty cute, it was baskets, baskets are just not something that really thrill me so I was OK with the pattern but this is something that I would probably not make again unless it was for someone I REALLY like! LOL,This is Wendi's Mystery quilt, all in music themed fabric. I really like how hers turned out.

And mine, am not thrilled with mine. The mystery it's self is not to blame, it was really well done and the instructions were excellent, I just am not a fan of baskets.

Just before Christmas Wendi came over a put together a quick quilt for her youngest daughter. Kendra is 12 and LOVES Little Pets Shop pets, Wendi found this fabric a couple of months ago, I think the quilt is just darling.
Just a simple big huge piece of fabric, not pieced except the boarders. And then quilted with the same butterfly panto as I used on Alindseys quilt.

She used a pink minkee on the back, Kendra now says that ALL of her quilts need to have minkee backings. I tend to agree, I have said it before and will again, I love minkee for children's quilts. They have a nice weight to them and are so soft!

This is a little coffee quilt that I put together MONTHS ago, I finally took the time to quilt it. I have about 6 quilts that need quilted my goal in the next couple of weeks will be to get them on and off the frame before my machine goes in to have some work done on it, I will post pictures as I finish them.

This last one is of my Christmas quilt, I made it Thanksgiving weekend but did not get it quilted until after Christmas, I am very happy with the final product, this quilt came 100% out of my head! No pattern just an idea that I bounced off Stuart on day and he said do it! 12 hours later I had a top made and ornaments too. The ball ornaments were made using my Go circle cutter, each one has a pocket on the back for a sweet treat for the girls. There are also appliqued snow flakes, they were also cut on my Go.

So that was my Christmas vacation, very quilting just the way I like it!

Now for a sneak peek at what I will be making next...

Thanks for stopping by, hope that you all had a wonderful quilty holiday also,
Happy quilting,
Ginny

Moments..

2010-12-15T13:00:00.000-08:00

As we all know, December tends to be the busiest month of them all, especially so for us women! What with the regular cooking, cleaning and shopping, then add purchasing or making gifts, baking, decorating and just plain ole making everything merry for the family. Well that has left little time for anything else but I thought I would share some of my favorite moments of the month so far! (almost none of them quilting moments!)

Bambi, our very old, very cranky cat under the tree. She decided to help decorate....

Even Stuart started to show some holiday spirit! (Wendi don't you DARE tell him I put this picture on here, he will KILL me! LOL)Baby Aidan, my newest daycare child

Rachel helping me cut circles on my GO, she is so funny any time I pull it out to use, she wants to turn the handle!
And this is what the circles were for!

I have been planning this in my head for a while now, Stuart thought it was a great idea, of course it is not finished yet, I still needed to add the border and it still needs quilted, then the ornaments hang around the tree on the border and the kids then put them on the tree, there is a pocket on the back of each ornament for little candies to go into. I can't wait to get it on the frame.
Katina showing me her quilt that she finished. I think she did a lovely job!
A close up of the center.
SNOW, I hate SNOW!!! and we have had a ton! OK so I like it the very first day, then it can go away!
I thought this was pretty!
Oh my favorite part of the month, Torrie won 2nd place for her schools refection's competition, the theme this year was "Together We Can..." by placing second she advanced to the regional judging, well she placed 1st in her school district!!! Now she is on to state! I am so proud of her, her photograph was very well done technically and her subject, "Together we can mend a broken heart" fit into the theme very well. (picture was of one set of hands holding a fabric heart while another set used needle and thread to stitch it back together!) I was thrilled when she took up photography, it was after all what I went to college for, and she managed to fit sewing in there too, yep the nut didn't fall far from the tree with that one! Anyhow I am so proud of her, even if she does not progress any farther she has still done a wonderful job! (oh and that is her best friend Julia next to her, she won 1st.)

My last and almost most favorite moment, Torrie has been getting letters from various colleges for the last 8 months, some days it is rather annoying that all the mail is hers! Scoochy decided that she does NOT get to go to Chicago University. He took this letter and ran! Sorry Chicago the dog has spoken!

Thank you for stopping by, I hope each and every one of you has a Happy Holiday and a Very Merry Christmas. Take a moment to kiss a loved one, hug a friend, and help someone who may need a helping hand this season. Bless each and every one of you.
Ginny

Finished just in time for Christmas!

2010-12-15T12:46:00.000-08:00

And not a moment to soon! I started to wonder for a bit if I would ever get these out in the mail. So with out further ado Alindsey's quilt, finished!

A close up of the quilting, love this design.

And the minkee backing, it made for the softest quilt. I vow for next year all children's quilts will be made with minkee backings!
And this is Karen's quilt, I am happy with how it turned out, although purple and yellow will never be my favorite combination I still think it is pretty.
Both of these were queen size.
I did not have enough of the purple for the entire back so she got yellow and purple there too!
And a close up of the quilting, again this is a super cute and easy Panto.

Thanks for looking!
Ginny

Belated Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-26T23:24:00.000-08:00

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, spent in the way that makes you most happy, be it with family and friends and large groups of people, or quietly at home with those closest to you.

We never travel during the holidays, so ours was quiet and mostly peaceful (that was until I found out that my fridge had malfunctioned and turned everything in it to ICE)

A quick trip to the store restocked most of our dinner... and then all went off with out a hitch! Torrie had a friend over, Julia is from China and ask is she could come over for dinner, she wanted "an American" Thanksgiving, she is the sweetest girl so we were more than happy to have her, I just about blew her mind when I added rice to the table, I then put it back in the fridge and told her I was only joking, no rice for Thanksgiving!

On the quilting front today has been busy, I had a lady come over and she worked on a quilt, then this evening I finally pieced the backing for Karen's purple quilt, I got it on the frame and have made 4 passes on the panto I am using. The panto is called Whoopsy Daisy, and is very cute, I will edit and add pictures tomorrow! With any luck I will have that quilt finished and off the frame Sunday afternoon, Then I get to piece and quilt a couple of Daycare quilts that have been sitting idle since.. January! Nothing like a little procrastination to add spice to life!
Well I am off to bed, heading over to the shop tomorrow to do some tune up work on the Babylock, oh and a bit of shopping at Joanns, they have batting for 50% off and a 20% coupon, can't pass that one up, buying two rolls of batting, so excited I could jump!
Happy quilting!
Ginny

Bargello in the Round! Finished!

2010-11-16T12:00:00.001-08:00

It has been a few days since I last posted! So let me fill you in on my last week.

I will start with my class I did on Saturday... It was a blast. Leanne my student was a fast learner and was really into it, I feel confident that she came away from the class with a brain stuffed full of a new skill, she even rented the machine a second day so she could come back in a practice!

One of the things I did for the class was made up some practice sheets for the students to take home, and I am sending each student home with a dry erase board that way they have something to practice on. I find the dry erase boards an excellent way to teach.

I also got Alindsey's quilt bound and the boarders on Karen's quilt.

My favorite thing I did this week was quilt Torrie's Bargello in the round... This quilt was made by my 16 year old as a graduation present for a friend, she got stalled for a while due to work and school so it lounged around not quite finished. Well she found out last week that her friend will be home for Thanksgiving, so she finished the quilt and ask me to put it on the frame... I spent about 4 hours quilting it, it is a sun rays pattern, and it turned out very very well! I should have gotten a picture of the back too!
So here it is quilted but not bound (mainly because it is hard to hang once it is cut off the backing)

I spent the evening binding it. Now it is finished and ready for her friend.

I have to say this is a beautiful quilt and I am super proud of Torrie for even attempting it!

Well time to run Rach to school.
Thanks for stopping by,
Happy quilting
Ginny

Magic Hour

2010-11-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

Last January I pieced a king size quilt at my husbands request as he wanted a new quilt for our bed. After much time elapsed, I am proud to say that Magic Hour is now officially quilted and just needs binding!!!
This is the quilt loaded on the frame. I took me two full Saturdays to quilt!

I always love quilting at this shop for two reasons, the first Bobby the owner is one of the nicest people in the world, she always makes me laugh! Plus the rest of the crew (Darren) are great there is a lot of joking and fun, it just makes for great experience.

A back shot of the quilt on the frame. I have some pretty neat news about this machine, I will share more at the bottom of this post.

Done!!!!!! Yep 6 explanation points I feel so good that I got it done finally. This quilt really is a labor of love.

And a side shot!
One from the other side. 102 inches square... I use the entire frame for this one!

OK so for some cool news....

I mentioned before that I had been ask to teach an intro to quilting class. Well the pictures above were taken at the shop that I taught the class at, and the Jewel in the picture is the machine I am teaching....

Well, news got out that Bobby is now renting her machine, and that we are offering the into class, in the last week we have booked 4, yep 4 classes!!! I am pretty darn excited, after all to be ask to teach was a huge honor, to be ask to teach on a regular basis...pretty darn cool. To make money doing it, well that is a dream come true. I was ask this weekend why I still do daycare, it was suggested that I should quilt and teach full time.... I told her that my long term goal and plans are just that, in 4 years when my youngest graduates high school I plan on closing my daycare and quilting full time. That has been the plan for a few years... looks like it my just come true!

So today I am on Cloud Nine feeling like I am one step closer to my future.
Thanks for stopping by today.
Happy quilting,
Ginny

Oh, and please don't be shy... leave a comment. I don't always get a chance to reply but I do read each and every one and appreciated all who take time to read my little blog.

My Beauty!

2010-11-05T18:31:00.001-07:00

What do I have on my frame?

I promised a peek and here it is! This is the butterfly quilt for Alindsey, I am really liking how this quilt is turning out. I used Minkee for the backing and the butterfly quilting is showing beautifully!
While I was taking pictures last night I got to thinking that I don't have any pictures of my beautiful machine, I have pictures from the lady I purchased it from but none of my own. So I took the time to take some good pictures of my beauty. The Homesteader is not a very common machine so I am hoping this will be of interest.

I use my Beauty on a Suzy Q frame, with a Grace carriage, you can see in this picture where Stuart added a go switch for me to do Panto's with. You can also see the panto I am using for this quilt, it is a great pattern and super easy to stitch out.

Another front shot of the machine. The quilt roll is getting pretty large, but so far so not a problem given that this is a queen size quilt with minkee and I am almost at the end of the quilt I am not worried about running out of space.

A nice side shot of the head, the red box on the top is the speed control. When I teach I jokingly tell my students that the trick to quilting with out a regulator is simply much like the sleep number commercials... finding your stitch number I stitch at about a 6 to a 6.5 doing free motion and a pretty solid 5.5 when doing a panto.

Ok, just plain silly but I LOVE how pretty my machine is! Not only does it stitch like a dream, takes any thread I throw at it, but is looks good doing it!

The handle assembly, I will at sometime in the future be adding a set of removable micro handles, but that is some time way down the road. I am going to send my beauty back to the maker in January for a complete retrofit. This is a first generation machine and there have been some upgrades made since she rolled off the line, Jennifer had offered to bring my Beauty up to "new" for a very reasonable amount.

Almost done! Another side shot, you can see the handle for the carriage, I don't use the handle but we did run the thumb switch wire along it, plus it gives me a nice handle for doing pantos.

Last one! I totally and truly love my machine. If you are considering a smaller longarm machine, please consider looking at this machine, mine is a 19" machine, they also make a 22" and if computers are your thing, you can get the side saddle option.
Either way, for a home machine this meets my needs very well. The only reason I rent time on the machine in town is because of my frame limitations. I have a queen size frame and so I rent time when I have a king size to do.

More on that later... I will be finishing Stuarts quilt tomorrow.... stay tuned pictures to follow!
Happy quilting
Ginny

A 5 minute check in! More later I promise.

2010-11-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't checked in lately, I have been working on three different quilts!
I have been piecing the purple quilt for my step mother, and I have the butterfly quilt on the frame here at home, been quilting butterflies every evening and am almost done. Sorry no pictures I will get some tonight before I pull it off the frame. I have also been working on Stuarts king size quilt at our local shop, they have a king size frame where as I only have a queen size (that will be fixed come my birthday!) So, my Saturdays have been taken up either teaching or working on Magic Hour (Stuarts quilt) I will get a few pictures of it before I take it off the rental frame!

Well, that was it my 5 minute check in! Now off to the chiropractor to get my neck unkinked!

Happy quilting
Ginny

Awesome weekend! I need a better picture of Wendi!

2010-10-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

This weekend I did not do this...

nor did I do this.....

I didn't even do this...I did get to see this....And I was delighted that I got to get to spend some time with this...
(Torrie is in the black, Julia in teal, Hannah in pink and Renna in gold)

I did do this...

I got to spent some time with...
(we had ice cream!)

And I did this...
I got to introduce someone to my Homesteader, she is interested in purchasing a mid range machine and wanted to test drive my baby!

But the coolest thing I did was this....
You might wonder what is cool about this... I was ask to teach a beginner class on the Jewel, basic machine use, and intro to quilting, I guess I did a good job because I have been ask back to teach two more classes!

Oh and, I made some....

$$$

I had an awesome weekend!
How was yours?

Another Go Giveaway

2010-10-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

So, you all know that I am in love, in love with my Accuquilt GO, well I wanted to let you know that Micki from Irish Muses is giving one away! I have been pretty impressed with Accuquilt and how generious they are, not only have they been giving them away all over blogland, but if you follow along on their facebook page you have the chance every Friday to enter into their Friday Giveaway drawing, how cool is that. So you facebook folks head on over to Accuquilt and hit the like button, then look for the Friday Giveaway, it usually ends at 4 p.m. central time.

Anyhow if you are interested in yet another way to win a GO, Click HERE.... to GO to Micki's blog. Her giveaway ends on Nov. 5th, while you are there, read her posts, she is a very nice and interesting person!

Oh and Good Luck!
Happy Quilting
Ginny

Progress and Pumpkins!

2010-10-18T14:47:00.000-07:00

MY FAVORITE PHOTO OF THE WEEKEND!!!

Say HI to Wendi's Daughter Jessica!

Wow, what a great weekend! How could it get better, got some quilting done, went to the pumpkin patch with friends and family, got lost in a corn maze and got to watch my daughter do a little sword fighting demonstration! Yep great weekend!

This is Morgen, a few weeks ago she had the opportunity to take a Stage Fighting class. Friday and Saturday she was part of a group that got to demo what they learned during intermission at her high school play.

The whole gang, right after we "escaped" from the corn maze!

Stuart with his perfect pumpkin!

Torrie, was very thrilled that mom was taking her picture.

Morgen, got her "perfect pumpkin"

On our way out of the patch, I get sad when I think that this will probably be our last year going to the pumpkin patch, makes me sad.

Morgen and Me.

I have been working hard on Alindsey's quilt, and finally got the top done last night, The butterflies are all one and stitched down, now to finish Karen's and then both will go on the frame.And a close up of the butterflies, or at least this little one trying to fly right off the quilt!

So, another weekend come and gone, did you get any quilting done?
feel free to share!
Happy quilting,
Ginny

Oh I almost forgot! I got my little Halloween wall hanging done too!

And the Winners Are....

2010-10-15T22:48:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to....

Brittainy!! Britt is the winner of the 3 Accuquilt Go dies. I am so thrilled that she won, check out her wonderful blog HERE. Britt is Mommy to an adorable 4 month old baby boy, and even cooler she is stationed here in Washington,(Air Force) just a short distance from where I grew up, best of all, she just recently ordered the Baby Go, and as the Baby does not come with any dies this is PERFECT for her! Again, Congratulations Brittainy!

The Charm Pack winner is one lucky woman. Matter of fact I ask Shelley if she would come for a visit so I could get a little of her luck, you see not only is Shelley a 2nd time winner on my blog, yep she actually won my VERY 1st give away ever! Shelley has been a reader for a long time. The coolest thing, she just won a Go cutter too, yea I need her luck! LOL bet she wished that she had chosen the dies now ;) (oh and a side not to Shelley, the charm pack is all three stacks, I just wanted to show a variety of the fabrics that is why I had three stacks.)

So congratulations to my winners, Thank you all so very much for visiting my blog and entering, I do and did read every comment, sadly I rarely have time to respond to all the messages, I bow down those those amazing bloggers that do!

Oh I also wanted to share the final name of the quilt that is being donated to the Cancer Center, OK well the 2 quilts actually, you see I decided to donate both the bright one and the pastel one...

The final name for the bright batik quilt is A Dream of Flutterbys. My husband came up with the name. Yes he really is a romantic that and I have for years referred to butterflies as flutterbys. I like it and think it is pretty.
The pastel batik quilt is being called Las Mariposas, that translates to "The Butterflies" So there you have it, winners picked, quilts named, and I am kitty sitting tomorrow so Darlene can have a day off, it has been a full week!

Have a lovely and quilty weekend,
Ginny

TheTale of 5 Little Kittens. A Rescue....

2010-10-12T08:48:00.001-07:00

It is no secret that I am a cat lover, I know I post a lot of pictures of the Pooch but that is because he is a total camera hog! I do in fact have 5, yep 5 cats.. and I love them all!

This is Bambi, she is actually Torrie's cat. She is old, mean, and as you can tell by the look on her face she does not really like me. She really is Torrie's cat! We adopted her from the humane society when she was just a kitten.

This is Jack, he is our youngest cat, he just turned 4 in June. Jack was part of a litter that we had from a rescued cat. As soon as the kittens were born and it was safe to have her fixed we spayed the Mama and found her a good home. We ended up keeping a couple of the kittens.

This is Groucho, the oldest of the "Kittens" he is MY baby, he loves me, sleeps with me (as in under the covers) and use to shower with me until someone tipped him off that cats are not supposed to like water!
This is Mittens, our second oldest cat, she is Morgen's but really she is her own person. She likes to be outside a lot and only comes in to eat get a bit of love then back out to the back yard she goes. She was also a rescue cat.This is Lucky our newest addition, He was dumped in our neighborhood, got stuck under our house for two weeks, we got him out, called animal control to come get him (I CANNOT have 5 cats!!!) They took him to a KILL Shelter, we got him back! OK so maybe I CAN have 5 cats! Lucky has been with us for 2 years exactly. He was very very skittish and he only sits on my lap, he runs from every one else. He is the biggest love bug!

What may you ask does this have to do with anything... it leads me to a situation that totally and completely PISSES me off! Yep I swore on my blog!

3 weeks ago I get a phone call from one of Morgen's friend Cassy. Cassy and her Mom Darlene were asking for help with some kittens they rescued. They have never rescued cats before and needed serious help!

5 baby kittens about 2 weeks old were left at a bus stop in a box, the little girl that found them ask her dad if they could save them, he said NO and put them out in the woods to die. Darlene and Cassy found out and rescued them. I have been helping out ever since. Here is there story in pictures....
Three days after rescue and 1st trip to vet, vet verified age at approximately 2 weeks. Treated with antibiotics and flea meds as they were infested!

Darlene has put her life on hold, she feeds all 5 with syringe and then uses a cloth to wipe bottoms to stimulated bowel movements, she does this every two and a half hours!

At first Weigh in 5 days after rescue weights range from 7 oz. to 11 oz. Yes they are that small.

And they will all need a home! Our local rescue groups have been almost no help.

Week 2 of the kitten rescue had its Ups and Downs...

Feeling safe and secure in "Mommy's loving arms"

Often this is how they sleep, the good thing about it, these little guys will be VERY people friendly!

Almost lost two kittens this week, another trip to the Vet, they offered to put two of them down. Darlene declined and worked even harder. This in Monty, he was one of the two that they did not think would survive!

Week 2 Weigh in... They ALL weighted within ounces of each other! All were right at 18 oz.! in one week they doubled in size!

Kitten Rescue Week 3! So the little guys came over to play today! Look at how they have grown, They got to explore on the table because the Pooch thinks they are squeaky toys!
This is a good picture of "Mama Kitty" it is so sweet to see the kittens, if they are on the floor and she speaks, all five little heads swivel to look at Mama! She should be so very proud she has done a wonderful job with them all!

The weekly weigh in.... 23 - 24.9 oz. and yes I use my weight watchers scale, it works really really well.

Their personalities are really starting to show... plus he did not like the bright flash, they all had a blast with the fall decorations and the quilting materials!

Except J.J. She was learning by osmosis!

"But Mommy I WANT TO HELP MAKE A QUILT!"

Thank you so much for sharing this journey with us!

If you live locally (I know I have some local readers) Please consider for a moment helping Darlene and her family. Not financially but if you know someone who might be able or willing to adopt one the these lovely little creatures it would be a huge help. They are currently 5 weeks old and will be ready for a new home in about 3 weeks. The family has decided to keep one of the kittens (they currently have 2 adult cats in the home) So they still need homes for 4 of the kids!

Thank you for hanging in so long!
Happy Quilting,
Ginny

The Miricles of Facebook... A sweet story.

2010-10-08T07:17:00.001-07:00

The wonders of face book. A short story...
When I was a teenager I moved from one parents house to the other... I lived with that parent for 15 months before I escaped and was placed into foster care. (my father liked young girls...in a bad way)

During that time I also lived with my step mother, my two half brothers and a step sister.

For years I had no contact with any of them.. like... 25 years... two years ago my father died. (we went to dinner to celebrate) Last year via face book my stepsister contacted me. We have talked a little since then but never REALLY talked... But nice like, so that's OK.

Now fast forward to last week, Becky (the step sister) was looking at some pictures I put on facebook and ask me if I would be willing to make two quilts, one for her Mom (my Step Mother)
and the other for her Daughter Alindsey, well after some thought I agreed... We talked some more and I came up with some design ideas using the colors she said they like... she picked her favorite two.. So this is what I am working on this week.

For Karen, lavenders, and yellow and dark purple for kind of a country feel.

For Alindsey (who is 6) pinks and yellows.. OH and butterflies on each of the dark pink squares and butterflies flying off the edges too!

A close up of Karen's block, yes this is the fabric I am using. I LOVE EQ 7
I simply scan the fabric I want to use for the quilt and get a very accurate idea of how it will look.

And Alindsey's block, notice the butterflies!
Getting ready to cut...
A little note here, I was able to cut Alindseys quilt (it measures 85" x 85") entirely on the GO. (I have not cut Karen's quilt yet) I used the 3.5" strip cutter for the dark yellow and light pink sewed the strips together, then layers them across the strip cutter and cross cut, each block set is very accurate. Again that is what really really impresses me about the Go. The same for the Half Square triangles everything on this block lined up perfectly, to the point that I only used pins once and that was on the final seam, just to hold it together while I got started. These are 12" finished blocks!
And look, it looks exactly like the print out from EQ!

And it got the Poochy stamp of approval! I am almost done with this top, just don't have pictures yet. I have to sew the 12" blocks together, put on the boarders and then the butterflies and it will be ready to quilt. Will be quilting it with the Mariposa panto.

Well that's all for today, don't forget to enter my Giveaway (next post down) for the Go dies or the charm pack. As of this posting I only have 8 entries...so the chances of winning are GOOD!

Happy quilting
Ginny

Help Me Name a Special Quilt PLEASE!

2010-10-04T13:52:00.000-07:00

You all might have noticed that I changed the quilt picture at the top of my blog, it is no longer Magic Hour. I changed it to (gosh this quilt don't have a name! HELP it needs a name!!!) OK back to what I was rambling about, So I changed the picture because I LOVE this quilt it is probably the most "me" quilt I have ever made... and I am giving it away... WELL, not just giving it away.... You see the story goes like this, I am part of our area guild but not really I have never been to a meeting, I do however get the emails they send out and the other day they send this....

Good evening quilters …

This evening I had a call from a volunteer for the Cancer Center. She graciously asked if we would be willing to donate a quilt or two to be auctioned at their November 13 fund raiser. I told her that time was her biggest enemy, but that we have supported the Cancer Center in the past and might be willing to help out.

She understands the time constraint (I think). She indicates that a large bed-size quilt, although a nice option, would not be necessary – a throw or even a wall hanging would be acceptable. It (they) should a quilt(s) that would attract bidders, though.

Do any of you individually or in your friendship groups have interest to make a quilt for this event? Please respond back to me this week if you do. As you know, I will be out of the country for two weeks, so I very much need to hand this off to someone else (volunteer???).

Well, I responded back with pictures of both the pastel and the bright batik quilts I had just finished, I offered one of them and let them choose which one... they chose the bright one. Now let me say we have a fairly large and active guild, they had many many people offer quilts.

Mine was one of 3 chosen!!! I was thrilled, I mean here I am giving away one of my all time favorite quilts and I feel like I won the lottery! Plus I am thrilled to be able to help out such a great cause!

So the lady from the Cancer Center will be here next week to pick up the quilt, I am going to make a label for it just stating the maker (me) and the date, I would also like to add the quilt name so PLEASE help me out and suggest names! If you want to see more pictures and a close up of the quilting just click the link.

http://ginnysquilts.blogspot.com/2010/09/catching-up-1st-half-of-september.html

Well that's all for today,

Thanks for stopping by!

Ginny

A Baby Quilt for Aidan.

2010-10-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

As many of my long time readers know I operate an in home daycare. I love my job, some days more that others :-) but I do love my job. Last spring I started a new family, we have little Amelia, she is 15 months old and a happy beautiful child, I just adore her! Well, last week Amelia became a big sister! Baby Aidan was born at 1:09 p.m. Thursday Sept 30th. And as always, we celebrate with a quilt! This family is a little bit different in their tastes, I like that. So no traditional cute bright primary colors for this little guys although I did do traditional blue, blue batik that is, all different ones... And I got to use my Go cutter. One of the very first dies I got was the 8 1/2" Rag die. I knew I wanted it due to the fact that we make a lot of rag quilts for donation, I was a bit leery as some of the things I have read about the rag die were not complimentary. Here is the making of Aidan's quilt.

First off and a lesson learned, the rag die is 8.5 inches square, I cut my fabric to 9.5 and had a lot of waste, next time I think I will cut a bit closer to finished size. Also many people don't realize that even though you are using the Go to cut you still need to pre-cut your fabric with a ruler and rotary cutter
Just a small sampling of the colors I used.
These are the dies as I said before the 8.5 inch rag die and the 6.5 inch square to cut the batting.
I layered the fabric on the die and pleated it back and forth to get six layers. I think I was only supposed to cut 4 layers with the rag die, but could be wrong, six was a pretty good arm workout.
Here are the fabrics again, you can see the layering.
And pleating... Yep repetitious I know. Let me take a moment to share a thought, one I will say again when I post about the quilt I am working on now. All the stuff I read about the go tout that it saves you time and to a point yes, especially if you are cutting something like a drunkards path or applique there is a MASSIVE time savings, but for simple squares and triangles, I would say that between the precutting you often have to do, and the layering on the die there really is not much of a time difference BUT and here is the big BUT...The accuracy of the Go is amazing, every single point and corner matched up so well that I did not have to pin... I hate taking the time to pin but do when I have to fiddle with not quiet the same size blocks... cutter error (me) So that is my two cents.. not really faster is some cases, but way more accurate in the long run.
Rough layout, I drew this up on EQ before I even began to cut, then once I layered them out decided it was not large enough so I added another round.

Back to the GO, one of the big complaints about the rag die is the fact that you have to clean it due to all the little strings that come off on the short rag cuts. Again, what I think... having snipped about 150 rag quilts... TRUST ME cleaning that little die is way faster and easier on my hands than snipping!!! Well well worth it!!!
Here are the strings I am talking about, I tried using the pick they sent with the GO, then quickly got into my tool kit for my bent head tweezers. (no I don't have a picture but can upload one if any one cares/or wants to see it) Anyhow I take the little bent head tweezers and run the tips on each side of the little blades, dragging the thread to the outside edge, and giving a little flick of my wrist the threads just pop out! It took me just a few minutes to clean the die after I finished cutting the entire quilt, did I mention WAY faster than the hour or more it takes me to snip a quilt.
As the threads come out I periodically roll a lint brush across to clean them up.

Here is some of my waste, like I said before I need to cut smaller cuts for less waste. But then it did not all go to waste, I see a ton of butterfly bodies and dragonfly wings!
This was one of my favorite parts, I have BAGS of scrap batting left over from when I longarm, these are the side strips that get cut off, I can never bear to throw them out, they are perfect for rag batting, I used the 6.5 inch square, layered the batting on ran it through, pulled more batting on, ran it back the other way back and forth I had the batting cut in minutes! After that is was construction as always, a 1 inch seam allowance, edge of the foot against the end of the snips and away we go!
This is the finished quilt, feel free t click on the picture to get a closer look.

Oh and the back, mom really likes green so I made the back totally scrappy did not pay any attention what was going were!

So there you have it, one baby quilt, start to finish less than 4 hours! (yep that includes wash time) Oh did I mention that the rags fluffed beautifully I was a bit worried because of the batiks and how tightly woven they are.

Hope you like it, I have two more posts I will be making soon, one to tell about my quilt that is going to be auctioned, the other to talk about my welcome back blog give away... just waiting for a package to arrive in the mail to announce that one!
See you again soon,
Ginny

Shhh.... I have a secret....

2010-10-01T23:43:00.000-07:00

I am going to do a give away... stay tuned... more to come in the next day or so...Pass it on!

I Got A Go!

2010-10-01T15:44:00.001-07:00

I Got A GO! Seems like those short words have been shouted all over blog land! Sadly I did not win my GO, nor was I given one by Accuquilt which means sadly that I will not be giving away a GO, I wish I could but alas I just don't have the hard cash to buy one and give it away. (maybe with any luck the nice people at Accuquilt will see my blog and offer one...) But in the meantime I wanted to share the very first cool project I did with my new cutter... I made BUGS!!! Lots and lots of bugs!

This is the cutter in action... I was very pleased with how easy it is to use, I ironed on heat and bond to the back of the fabrics I wanted to cut, layered them on the die put the mat on and cranked the handle, wow so easy a kindergartner could do it. Actually she did a few days later! The nice thing was how easy it was to turn the handle, some days my hands hurt so badly that even typing hurts, this did not hurt!

Look Pretty pretty dragonflies! Wait till you see what I did when I put them on their blocks... it was super cool.

And bumble bees... my favorite is Bernie the Backwards Bumble Bee. You will notice one bee is solid yellow, here is a trick, I cut the main body first (the yellow in this case) then I used scraps and I mean TINY scraps to cut the black antenna, then I used fairy frost white and cut just the wings a little nip with the scissors to give it a nice round/heart shaped bottom and viola on bee with shiny wings!
And Butterflies, you will notice that on the flies... both dragon and butter I changed the body color, there again like the bee's I used scraps left over from the main body cuts, layered them out JUST on the body segment of the dragonfly and cut contrasting bodies. I like the added visual impact.
Another look at the dragonflies using the double fabric... fairy frost for shiny wings, bright colors for the body... PRETTY!
On the blocks I decided to add a bit of punch, notice the dragonfly with black body and blue wings. He is pretty boring, now look at the other three, much much more interest and depth, (I will use the red and white as an example) I cut a red and a white dragonfly, cut the wings off the red one, ironed the red body on top of the white one, then when I put the DF on the block, I too the red wings and placed them UNDER the white offset a bit and ironed everything down at once.. I love the dragonflies the bestest!
And butterflies, some with bodies some with out so you can see the difference.
Bumble bees! Whew I am all bugged out! The Blocks are 6 1/2 inch blocks also cut on my GO!
And of course Torrie immediately claimed it as hers, although she may have to wait a while as I just got a commission for two queen size quilts, thankfully I have my GO to make the cutting go faster!
Off to sew...
Ginny

September part 2

2010-10-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

Getting closer! So another cool story that I have to share, about 2 and a half weeks ago I get this phone call from a nice lady named Stacey, she got my number from the shop that I rent time on their big frame... any how, she is a first time quilter, and this is her very first quilt. She made it for her brothers wedding. So she calls me and asks if I can quilt it for her, here is the catch. She is leaving for the wedding in 4 days! Well, I have her bring it over and we look at it, choose a panto and away I go, of course the first thing that happens is my machine starts acting up.. so I have hubby look at machine and retime it the next morning, I work on it that evening as soon as I got of work.. and my 11 that night was done! I was mostly happy with the quilting, I did have one small gap between rows that I just did not have time to fix, of course that would be the gap in the picture. Most importantly, she was happy with the quilt, she got it back in time to bind it and she made it to the wedding gift finished!
It was a very very cute quilt, using coffee fabric and music notes. We used the Hearts a Flutter panto, which was perfect for a wedding quilt.

This guys was pretty good sized, a small queen size as it FILLED my frame... I am seriously considering saving up for a king size frame.. I think it is just about time.

This is the back, again the music notes. The back was flannel, and NONE of the fabrics had been prewashed, I did warn her to expect shrinkage! I was a little disappointed in the people who taught the class she was taking, they did not tell her that cotton and flannel shrink at different rates, and she pieced with both.

So on to one of my favorite quilts this month.. this was made by my very dear friend @#&%*...that is her name in symbols because she needs to remain nameless, as do the characters in the quilt.. the reason, this quilt is for her super computer savvy son and she does not want him to see it if he does a search... so this is really really hush hush! Oh and it is his birthday present! Is this not one of the coolest quilts, @#&%* plotted it out on graph paper, then cut and sewed it, each block is a 2" square!
Here is a better picture! My friend (as seen in the red) is roughly 5'6" This was a big quilt, some details... each "pixel" is a 2" block, I have forgotten how may but there were a LOT, each color was quilted using matching thread.. the light blue was quilted with rainbow stars... guess that's part of the game, the buttons are spiraled, and she may attach real yellow buttons, the brown bricks are quilted using a brick template so they look like little brick walls... And there are two pillows done the same with with mushrooms! gosh what else am I forgetting... Oh the son is a HUGE fan

I think @#&%* did a WONDERFUL job, especially since she quilted the whole thing herself!

Still have more to post so hang on tight, plus in just a few more posts I will announce a new give away.. kind of a getting back in the swing of things deal.
Ginny

Catching Up.... 1st half of September!

2010-09-28T19:15:00.001-07:00

Good morning! So I know I said I was all caught up, but since it is the end of September I guess I need to catch up September too. I have had a busy quilting month this month also. But I will be splitting this month into two posts.. you will see why soon.
Anyhow, to start with.. more of the Desert Storm quilts.

As you can see, these have not been finished yet, I was playing with different fabrics on the design wall. I like this one, but no one else did...

Another fabric.. NO ONE liked this one!

This combination was hands down the favorite. I have enough for two of these I think. I do know it was the end of the bolt. So, my goal for the next two weeks is to get them all sewn together and then I need to get my hands on about a dozen 1st Cav. patches so I can applique them in the center squares!

This was a fun little project I did just for the fun of it ;) I used the same pattern as the Desert Storm quilts but with a twist.. the fabric used was one of the new Timeless Treasures 10" packs, this one was called salt water taffy... I love the pastels they are so soft and pretty, the picture just does not do it justice. Feel free to click on it for a larger view! The white stars and boarder are a creamy Fairy Frost. This is one of my favorite "whites" to use since it adds just a bit of a shimmer to the white areas. Oh and notice little poochy all curled up next to the quilt!

A close up of the quilting shows the lovely batiks and butterflies and flowers. I used a panto for this quilt, the panto is called mariposa (Spanish for butterfly-we learned that last year in preschool) It is a very nice and relaxing panto to stitch out. I was a little intimidated at first because it LOOKS hard but it quickly became a favorite!

A closer look at the butterfly on the fairy frost. Oh I also used a nice pastel rainbow thread called Carnival from the Rainbows line by Superior. Did I mention that one of the things I LOVE about my Homesteader is that I can sew with just about ANY thread, have not found one yet that gives me fits.. can't say the same about my old Baby.

The funnest thing about this little project... Same pattern, same quilting, same every thing except. Timeless Treasures Hard Candy, and Moda blenders black... Look at the difference. This is what I LOVE about quilting!

And quilted the same, butterflies. I used a bright rainbow variegated for this one. It is also from the Superior Rainbows line. The thread color is appropriately called Rainbow!

And the back, OK so this is where I broke the cycle, Up until this point everything was the same, the pastel quilt used the white Fairy Frost as its backing, this one I could not get to the store for a black backing so I used what I had on hand...Blue.... but I like it and it does brighten it up some. Plus you don't get to see my goofs as much ;)

Well, the phone is ringing.. and kids are fussing, so back to it I go.
Thanks for stopping by, I will post the second half of September soon.
Ginny

Almost Caught Up!... August.

2010-09-27T14:43:00.000-07:00

August here we come!!!

Ocean Crest... Every few years we feel the urge to leave our dry arid desert landscape behind us and we take a trip to the Wet Side... we travel for 6 hours, until we hit the pacific ocean and run out of road, then we turn right and go some more. Eventually we land at The Ocean Crest Resort. I am not posting where it is, nor am I showing all of the lovely pictures we took, this is our secret place and if word gets out that Paradise is in Washington state then we will never get a room again! Seriously, this is one of the most beautiful and restful places I have ever been. Plus they have a WONDERFUL restaurant and a lovely indoor pool... Oh and did I mention the ocean view... Just look... see heaven on earth!
We usually go in August to celebrate our anniversary, this year was no exception.

We dressed up and had a nice dinner out. I look at this picture and know that in a very few years my babies will be grown and gone, they are in a word...lovely. And yes Stuart is really that tall!

Love this picture because it is of my darling and I... Hate this picture because it show exactly how big my butt is!

Dinner that night was amazing as always. The food is always wonderful... Hey I tried duck for the first time too! The waiter was a hoot, he picked on Hannah..hmm no pictures of Hannah sorry... we laughed and had a wonderful time, the people at the table next to us had fun too.. it was contagious.

Morgen describing something that went...Poof!

Lovin' this picture, Torrie discovered photography last year. Makes her mama proud, you see I went to college to be a professional photographer. This was my first camera, I used it all through high school and in college, now Torrie is using it.
This turned out to be my favorite beach shot, all three girls together, the third girl is Hannah. Hannah is one of Torrie's bestest friends, she was having some troubles at home so we ask if we could bring her with us for the trip, she is a very nice and very funny young lady. I am glad I had the opportunity to get to know her better that weekend.

I did manage to get a little bit of quilting done in August, this was the block of the month from quilt party, it is an adorable 3D pinwheel I chose rainbow colors and a cloudy back ground, the kids LOVE this quilt.

This is one of several military quilts I have been working on. I found the unit patch fabric a while back and purchased several yards with this quilt in mind. This quilt, plus its sister quilts are to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Desert Shield/Desert Storm. We landed in Saudi on September 10th 1990, with in days our signal van was set up providing communications for the off loading of the ships, from that point on we never slowed down... We spent 6 long months in the desert leap frogging to provide communications for our troops, we crossed the berms into Iraq... and when we were done, we pulled back into Saudi and went home. I was a proud member of Bravo Company 13 Signal Battalion, 1st Calvary Division, Local Rau 42. Voice of Command. First Team! Through face book there are about 60 of us who have gotten back in touch with each other, I started a group just for the 13 Sig Desert Storm vets. I am making these quilts to send to many of my dear friends from that time. As I get them finished I will post them on here as each one is a little bit different.

Each quilt will have the unit patch fabric, and a complimentary patriotic fabric, on each quilt you will notice the brown star (desert bdu -camo) and the green is woodland camo.. both represent our time in the Army.... Thank you for letting me share a part of myself I rarely discuss... now in the immortal words of my darling daughter Morgen....

Rock on Quilting World!!!

Whew... all caught up! Next post, will be what I have been up now! And I have been a busy busy girl!

Shall post again soon..
Till then keep those needles humming.
Ginny

Catching Up.... July Part 1

2010-09-27T13:35:00.001-07:00

OK so July, Oh boy July was a GREAT month... matter of fact it was so darn good I have to make it two posts! So finish reading this one then scroll down for part 2!

As many of my long time readers know I long arm quilt, well until July I actually short arm quilted with dreams of some day being able to move up to a larger throated machine. I hummed and hawed about purchasing a Baileys Home Quilter, they are very nice machines, but not exactly what I was looking for, they (until recently) only had a 13 inch or a 15 inch throat, and I wanted MORE! After all I was using a 9" machine, I want more than 6 inches!!!

So, I then considered having my Babylock stretched, Rick at WOW quilts does this for $1895.00 you send him your machine, three months later you get it back doubled in size. I even put my machine on the list... Still no call from them...I have been on the list since May. And then one day I was on one of the Yahoo groups I frequent and noticed an ad for a Homesteader.. for those who don't know what a Homesteader is, it is a stretched singer.. well you can get the idea from the pictures... now 1st things 1st this machine is NOT stitch regulated but it does have a nice speed control. The price was very very good, and gosh I had enough saved up because I had been saving to have my Baby stretched! So I contacted the nice lady, we talked and the deal was sealed, two weeks later Big Bertha (not that is NOT what I call her.. well sometimes..maybe) arrived, we promptly unboxed her, Stuart spend a few hours going over her with cotton swabs, canned air and oil. Making sure everything was there and clean and working (this was a used machine after all and the lady did NOT clean it before she shipped it :( I was pretty shocked at that) then on the frame she went...

This was the picture that the nice lady sent me, I STILL have not had the chance to take pictures of her on MY frame... isn't she pretty. Like I said, not stitch regulated but l am finding that is not a bid problem, I quilted for years on my Baby with out a regulator I was surprised at how easily and fast I was able to fall back into regulating myself.

I did contact Jennifer at the quilting solution (makers of the Homesteader) and got a ruler foot and base for her, plus we did a motor upgrade, the one on the machine was a bit weak this one just races right along! I also found out that she is one of the first machines they made so there are other upgrades that can be done, so she is going in for a retrofit in January. They will bring her up to "new" for me for $400.00 Not bad given that and the price of the motor and my purchase price are still under what a new machine would have cost me! I love this machine it sews beautifully, takes EVERY thread I throw at it, and I have almost ZERO thread breakage.

OK so now that you have met my new machine... NOT calling her Big Bertha.... I do need a name, suggestions welcome!!!

Off to part two... keep scrolling down....
See you soon,
Ginny

Catching Up.... July Part 2

2010-09-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

So, Part two... can you guess what I did this month.. Oh yea I caught up on a LOT of quilting!

This was a bento box quilt that Torrie made two years ago, I have been holding off on it until I had a machine big enough... guess what I do! these are 15 inch blocks, I was able to do the ENTIRE block in one pass!! Did I mention that my Homesteader has a 19" throat.

I also learned how to do pantographs, yes you can laugh, but with my old Baby I could not ever do pantos just not enough space!

I also did a bit of teaching, this is Kim on of my Daycare Moms (going to make a quilter out of her yet!) She needed a summer wall hanging for her foyer, she loved this panel so we knocked some boarders on it and SHE quilted it! it looked great!

Caution Rant Ahead

I also did a little baby quilt for one of the lady's at quilt party, this was a "freebie" She needed it quilted and I wanted the practice... she (the lady) ended up being a major PITA and I will NEVER help her again, free or not...YIKES some people... I ended up ripping out two rows because she did not like the design SHE chose!
I ended up doing the entire thing custom free motion... It was cute and I was happy with the end results... even though I had to deal with some SERIOUS piecing issues.. but then that is why I took it, as a learning piece... It helps to deal with "real world quilts" not just mine where I don't have many piecing issues...or boarder issues either, but that's another story (all her seams at her boarders were unstitched at least half and inch or more in and it was a 2" square pieced boarder...)
The back was a pretty blue Minkee, here are some loopy hearts.... perfect? No, did it work yes, there were hundreds of these all over the quilt, each 1 inch sashing has hearts!
On to better and much more fun quilts! This is Stephanie, my hair dresser! What do I love about Stephanie... well she had purple nails, purple eye shadow and eye liner and purple hair... Yep BIG streak of BRIGHT purple in her hair and I love it! I want purple hair, but am not self confident enough to have purple hair. Stephanie was cutting my NON purple hair (but very grey actually) one day and we were chatting I mentioned a quilt I was making and as it turns out she is also a quilter.. well we chatted and so forth, I ended up inviting her over to quilt up a baby quilt she was making... here is Stephanie using .. NOT Big Bertha...
She used the Hearts A Flutter panto.

And it turned out excellent... The front...

The back! The back was a bug flannel, the front bug strips! Hey this reminds me I need to schedule a hair cut!

So as you can see we jumped right in and got to work, I am loving my machine. And so are several of my friends!
So easy a newbie can do it!

Take care for now, thanks for hanging in this long. Next up August, and a change of pace, then September and we will be all caught up, once we get caught up I have something really cool to share!
Thanks for stopping by... and please suggest a name for my machine... I will NOT call her BIG BERTHA.

Ginny

Catching Up.... June

2010-09-27T07:54:00.001-07:00

Good Monday Morning!
Well the catching up continues... It has been a few days because we have been doing some major house repairs... more on that in a few posts! For now I lets talk about June, June was a sad month for me, oh it was a good month but sad, you see one of my daycare kids grew up. I have taken care of Ryan for 7 years. In seven years we went from preschool, to kinder garden all the way up the ranks of elementary school, this fall he started middle school and turned 12. Ryan has always been my sporty boy, he loves all things sports! Football, basket ball, racing but most of all Ryan LOVES baseball! So when it came time for him to leave my care I sent him off with a quilt of course. His Mom was thrilled because she has been wanting to redecorate his room. So this is what I made....

The funny thing about this one, I would be working on it right in front of Ry, cutting and so forth it took him about a week to ask what I was working on and if it was for him... I said Maybe... He actually got a little involved when it came time to decide if we liked it better with the little one inch sashings.. the over all consensus was YES.

I quilted it on my frame with my 9 inch machine (more on that news in my next post) I had to be creative as this is almost a queen size quilt, it is meant to last him a LONG time. I did just a simple free motion meander and on each block I used my rulers and did either a large or small baseball or a large or small start

I had to piece the back, originally the back as to be the baseball fabric you see below, but I was about (get this) 6 inches short! And of course was totally out of luck finding anymore. So I improvised to what I think are good results.

As you can see, baseball and stars, the theme throughout the entire quilt, Oh and I quilted it with Superior Rainbow Red White and Blue variegated. I miss Ryan, not as many laughs without him here.

This is the King size that wasn't! A year or so ago I made this lovely King size quilt for my husband, who took one look at is and said "Oh hell NO!" OK so that is not a direct quote but suffice to say he HATED it So it got tucked away and never finished, like in needed boarders sewn on and quilted... fast forward to May, I was talking to my good friend Wendi and ask her if she wanted it since I hated to see it just sitting in a box. She said yes that she would give it to her daughter Erika. Well, I sent it with her along with the boarder material, she finished the quilt then we took it over to the same shop that I did the Memory quilt, (they can handle a king size, my frame cannot) we then spent the day making spirals and spirals and more spirals.
Each circle got a spiral, and we spiraled the boarder too... It turned out WONDERFUL!
See, I think we counted 119 spirals. It was actually pretty easy as I was using my Doodling Designs spiral template.
This is the back, we used just a plain black back and Red and Black thread by YLI (think I got that right). OH and for the record, Erika LOVED the quilt. So all's well that ends well, the quilt got quilted and found a happy home. I just love a happy ending don't you!

OK on to July and my BIG news!

Thanks for stopping by and feel free to say hi!
Ginny

A little interntet problem...

2010-09-22T07:47:00.000-07:00

Good morning, just popping in for a second while I actually have internet access, I HAVE NOT disappeared again! I have on the other hand had sporadic at best internet access since Friday, I attempted to post my catching up May blog, when poof it was gone, since then (and numerous phone calls to our access provider) we get maybe 5 minutes of internet at a time, and then you may or may not be able to up load, down load or even access a page. I have taken to using my phone to check my emails and face book. The good news we are suppose to have full access again my October 5th! In the mean time I will try to continue catching up, but no guarantees!
Thanks for understanding!
Logging off now before I get dumped!
Ginny

Catching up... May

2010-09-17T12:09:00.000-07:00

Well folks we are going to give this a try! Cross our fingers and toes that I have Internet for a little while longer!

May.... May was a very special month for me. Two wonderful things happened, first I took a little day trip and went to Vashon to visit my mom, it was a wonderful trip! More on that to follow... Secondly I was ask to design, piece and quilt a very special quilt, Val, the Mom called me one day and ask if I would design and make her daughter a memory quilt for graduation! I was honored and thrilled as much by her asking as by her comment that she has lots of ideas, and no follow through, but she does have a large check book! :) I got the details from her, and went to work designing some tops for her to look at. The only restrictions. The fabric was to only be Maroon and Grey ( the daughters college colors) But they had to be subtle. Also she wanted to pack a LOT of photos on to one quilt. She came over a few days later picked the design she liked and went shopping. I loved the fabric she chose, and she then started sorting photos and printing them on the photo paper (5 packs of paper were used on this quilt!) I started piecing the maroon and grey during this time. Once she gave me the photo papers, I rinsed them following the package directions, and immediately had a problem, two of the sheets lost almost ALL the color, called Val and she reprinted them! So, I trimmed and sewed and sewed some more.. and this is what we have..

I love the center of this quilt, the two center blocks are a baby picture, and her senior picture. The Block directly above the senior picture is of grandma and grandpa,
There are prom pictures and pictures of her dog, pictures of her travels (let me tell you this girl has TRAVELED) there are pink flamingos and of course pictures of her and her mom, I fell in love with this quilt and felt like I got to know the daughter, it was a lovely experience.

Val decided that she wanted a warm and fuzzy backing... I suggested a grey Minkee... Oh yea good choice. Now I LOVE quilting on Minkee! No sarcasm really I do. BTW, my husband is holding this up, it is a HUGE quilt!
There were close to 100 pictures on here!

There was no way this quilt would fit under my poor little nine inch machine, so I rented time on the Jewel at on of our quilt shops, this is a lovely machine! I was very pleased with it, but did have some really WEIRD guy start taking to me and commenting on my quilting, He had NO CLUE what he was talking about, and would NOT leave me alone, finally Daren the sewing machine repair guy came over and ran him off... YUCKY. Anyhow this is me working on the quilt.

And just a close up so you can see the beautiful fabric she chose!

And some of the quilting on the back.

This is the label, Val chose the message, I did include my name as the piecer and quilter and the date I finished the quilt. Oh and did I mention, I got the phone call about this quilt on the 1st of May... Notice the date... graduation was June 4th. Whew nothing like a deadline! I and drew the feathers around the edge of the label to match the feathered boarder. All in all I was totally pleased with how this quilt turned out, it was my first paid job.

So during this frantic month, we also took a day trip to Vashon. This is where I grew up, well about a mile from here actually. This is Quartermaster Harbor, we use to swim here when I was child.. Vashon is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I NEVER want to live there again! But it was a nice visit.

The best part, Torrie and I went together and spent the day visiting places from my child hood, and she was actually interested and excited. This was one of our best days. (Is she not the prettiest thing ever.. OH and she is way smart too!)

WARNING! Torrie took the camera for most of the day, there are a TON of pictures of me.. more than I have ever had before, so this post is loaded with ME!!! And no trip would be complete with our Scooch the Pooch!

Yep, me again.

And one more, this one I am walking along Burton beach, oh it has another name now, don't know what it is, growing up we always called it Burton beach, it was just a short bike ride from the house, we could go swim and hang out. Growing up on Vashon was "different" the Island is small in every way, size and mentality and small town, the people are nice (if not a bit hippyish- OK a LOT hippyish) but it was a safe place to wander around, we rode our bikes EVERYWHERE and never worried, bad things did not happen on Vashon... at least not that anyone talked about....Oh the reasons I LOVE and HATE the place...

BUT, to not finish on a down note... I did find one of the best jewels ever on Vashon... The Island Quilter.. is a lovely little quilt shop with over 7,000 bolts of fabric!! It was the never ending maze of color and delight! I was in love oh my word! If you are ever in Washington and you want to spend a lovely day "away" take the ferry to Vashon Island, stay on the main road till you hit town (very little town, no stop lights, be sure you know your stop sign etiquette) and look for The Island Quilter, it is worth the price of the ferry ticket just to go. Plus Vashon is just beautiful! (did I mention that all the fabric was just $9.50 a yard)
I will have to post pictures of my purchases! I budgeted $150 but could have spent twice that there was such a selection.

So that was May, stay tuned I still have 3 more months to catch up to!
Happy quilting,
Ginny

Catching Up... April

2010-09-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

I have to say it feels SO GOOD to be blogging again, I really missed it. I don't think I even realized how much until I started again, I went for several months without even checking in and seeing what every one else was up to. I do partly blame my lack of blogging on Face book I signed on there and have connected with so many old friends. So if you want feel free to add me as a face book friend. Just do a search for Ginny Hildreth I will be glad to add you as a friend. Just make a note I do NOT play any of the face book games. :)

OK so this post is about April, what was I up to in April? Well lets look in my photo album and see...April was a blast, this is NOT my quilt this it Torrie's quilt. She wanted to do a foot print quilt, so we spent an after noon (4 hours) painting one foot, step, lift, wipe clean, paint other foot, step, lift, wipe clean, remove square, place and pin next square, and start all over again! She has striped feet, swirly feet, blue feet, green feet and so on and so on, our favorite is NOT shown, but she has rainbow striped feet. She then added different seashell sashing around each block, and stitched around each foot to make it look like flip flop soles, then she shopped and found cut ribbon, rick-rack and trims to match each colored foot, she stitched them down so it looks like she is wearing flops... I quilted it in blue waves on the tip half of each block, and tan ripples on the bottom half to make it look like water and sand... Now what I have not mentioned is Torrie has HUGE feet! So of course we named this quilt "Big Foots Day at the Beach!" it is wonderful and she uses it on her bed.

My other BIG accomplishment for April... I learned how to quilt feathers OH MY GOSH! I have struggled and struggled with feather for years, I have purchased books... and videos and practiced and practiced to no avail. Then I purchase a video called Twirly Whirly Feathers by Kimmy Brunner kimmyquilt.danemcoweb.com/shop/product/coming-in-january-twirly-whirly-feathers/ It was worth every penny! No joke I watched the video, and drew along with her and with in a few hours, yes hours I was making decent feathers! And feathers in ALL directions and shapes and sizes. This is a drawing I did coming up with design ideas for an old quilt the Torrie made a couple of years ago that I have not quilted because it needed feathers. I did NOT quilt this exact design but it was close.
So once I started drawing them on paper I needed to go to the machine and do them on fabric, I know this one is hard to see because of the white. Lets just say the entire thing is feathered all done on my 9" machine!
Here is a closer look, really it is still pretty rough, but it was the first time for me!

Lets see April was also the month of the fan, this was our block of the month at quilt party, I made two quilts, this one was just hanging out on the design wall, it now has its set triangles and boarders and is sitting in the Que waiting to be quilted. It will eventually find a home (at Christmas) with my wonderful neighbor Judy.
This is the same fan block (ok different blocks but you now what I mean!) My friend Wanda wanted one too, this was the layout she chose... yep it is in line too.

So as you can see April was a very busy and productive month... stay tuned for May because I had some thing really neat happen...
Ginny

Catching Up... March and a GO!

2010-09-16T14:13:00.000-07:00

S0 here we GO again! Still catching up from my months of not blogging...

BUT first I just have to share.... I have for several months debated purchasing a GO fabric cutter, well I finally broke down and got one! As my kids would say "OMG" I am in love! One of the dies I got was the Eleanor Burns Blazing Star, I cut and entire 30 x 30 quilt in less than ten minutes, check out the pictures.... So here she is, with the fabric piled on one side and the die on the other. If you have been thinking about getting one, sitting on the fence like I was, I say take the plunge it is a very cool cutting machine. I did a lot of research and watched every you tube video out there. I was concerned with how much fabric waste there would be, in my opinion if you think before you cut (just like with your ruler) then there is very little waste. Yes there is a bit more than if you just used your rotary cutter and ruler, BUT the trade off is in cutting time, cutting accuracy and for my the pain in my hands, some days my arthritis hurts me so badly that I can not use the rotary cutter.. Just that simple.OK, so the fabric is really really bright and funky, but hey that's what I like! The neat thing, these are all shapes that would take time to cut because of all the odd angles. The amazing thing, they are all perfect and perfectly the same size and EVERYTHING lines up! I don't have a picture of the finished block just a snap shot of the "dry run" but you get the idea.

OK, so on to March... Gosh March was a busy month, it was my birthday, I turned 42 (as Garth Brooks would say I am MUCH to young to feel this damn old!) It was also our local quilt show. I love our little show it always manages to fall on my birthday weekend! I know they plan it that way JUST for me! This year I got brave and entered three quilts into the show. This was the first time I had ever entered, this is not a juried show but a peoples choice. NOPE I didn't win a thing, but I did over hear a couple of people make very nice comments about my quilts :)
The other great thing was that my friend Wendi also entered her quilts and some of ours got displayed together! So here are the pictures... with comments....

The quilt on the left is Wendi's, the one on the right is my, we call it Starry Starry night.
This one is called deep space, this is one of the quilts made from the left overs from the day and night quilt pictured at the top of the blog. The cool thing about this quilt... I ran into the nice folks from the Island Quilter (a WONDERFUL quilt shop on Vashon) Vashon just happens to be where I grew up and where my Mom and Dad still live. Well I ask if they would be willing to take Deep Space and deliver it to my Mom, and they did! It was pretty awesome she got a nice surprise and I got to meet some wonderful folks from where I grew up!
This is my very dear friend Wendi! HI Wendi!!! Yep she reads my blog.... I love her Ball Jar quilt, each jar has a different fruit or veggie, and she quilted each with the word BALL!

Wendi again with her Cars quilt that she made for her husband Rick, who also happens to be one of the nicest guys I know.. and a car salesman to boot... if you need a good car and are in the Tri-Cities... call Rick at Tim Bush Motors... Tell him Ginny sent you!

Wendi again, with.. oh gosh, I don't remember what this one was called!!!
OK so this is me.. nuff said!
And me again, this time with Adams quilt.

This not so little quilt was one I drew up and made for Ryan, one of my daycare kids, he grew up and had to leave the daycare. I had him for 7 years! Ry is very much the sports boy.. he plays football, basket ball and baseball, with baseball being his favorite. So that was the theme...
Here is a "dry run" UUGGGG did NOT like it! it was super super busy and hard to focus on, so I went back to the drawing board... and well, you will have to wait a few months to see how it turned out!
Till next time, I Gotta a GO!!!!

Ginny

Stay tuned for April and May.. May was a really cool month!

Catching Up...February

2010-09-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

Good morning,
So, I said last week that I would start blogging again, then promptly got side tracked with a round of Doctors appointments... So here I am a week later with some answers to my medical problems (I won't bore you with the details) and some frustrations because of NO answers. What I will do is share some of what has kept me away.. are you ready?Torrie turned 16, I think that was what my last post was about. Anyhow, she being the princess that she is (really she is not she is very smart and level headed, that's why this was so much fun) anyhow, being such a princess, she decided that for her 16th birthday all the girls should dress up in their most formal wear and go to a nice dinner and a play... the hilarity ensues... Oh and as you can see, she matched her cake, yup sick mama...Morgen in her nice dress, she looked pretty that night, this should have given me a clue that my other baby is also growing up... more on that later.. in the August post...
Here are all of the girls all dressed up and ready for a lovely dinner out...
Torrie chose one of her favorite dining locations...Dairy Queen! Boy did we make a scene people actually stopped and stared! The folks who work there were very very cool about it though, the best part, there was a little girl about 6 having a birthday party too, we over heard her ask her mommy... can I have a princess crown too? Mommy said no because she didn't have one. Then one of the girls in our group went over and gave her her crown. Very good kids my Torrie's friends.

Oh and yes there was a lot of quilting going on in February, but you don't get to see it till my next post... So stay tuned for MARCH (a bit later this afternoon as I have a lunch date in a few minutes)

So much to share, So little time!

2010-09-07T08:18:00.000-07:00

After a long 7 month hiatis from blogging I feel it is time for me to come back! I am sorry it has taken me this long, we had a busy and wonderful spring and summer, we went on a little vacation to the ocean, and as always because of the daycare we had just a super busy and fun summer with the kids. Most importantly though... I got a longarm quilting machine!!! I found and purchased a lovely 19 inch Homesteader and put it on my Suzy Q frame. I love this machine and I will share pictures and all I love about it in my next post. I will say that due to the new machine I have been very very busy quilting up my stack of tops, so look for a post with all my quilt pictures soon too.
Like later this afternoon I hope!)

Until then, have a great morning and it's great to be back.

Torries new car and quilts done!

2010-02-12T22:00:00.000-08:00

I have been a busy, busy girl!
I am finished with Magic hour! (OK still have to sew the back together but that doesn't count!)
And have moved on to Adams Black, White and Red quilt, I have it done except the boarders, and I have almost finished the two extra quilts from the left overs, I will get them done this weekend and posted since I have a three day weekend I am pretty sure I will have time to get all three finished!

I have also been busy searching for a car for Torrie. Stuart has been working on a 72 bug for her to drive, but sadly has not made a lot of progress on it and it will not be drivable for a long while. So I made the command decision to use some of my savings and buy her a car...oh what a long strange trip this has been!!! I spent several days looking on craigslist for something in my budget and something that will be safe and reliable... well let me tell you, those three things just DO NOT go together!!!!
I looked at one car that.... well lets just say, the pictures were wonderful (just love photo shop!) But when we actually saw the car, well side swiped, spray painted, water leaks oh and my personal favorite, they had MELTED the air bag cover back in place, of course no air bag because it had deployed when the car got hit!!! OMG.

So, after that lovely little car I decided it was time to start calling dealerships, now I know that the chances of finding something in my price range is almost zero, but it never hurts to call.

My first call, I get put on with this nice salesman named Rick, I explain to Rick that I have $XXX amount of money, not financing anything, something safe for a teenage girl.... you get the idea, well as we are talking Rick says to me... "Do I know you?" Me.. "no" he says "you sound really familiar" ...Oh I say... then he asks if I quilt.... now let me tell you, I work from home and do NOT know a lot of people especially men... so when a strange mans says he knows you, AND know you are a quilter the will FREAK you out! Anyhow, he then pauses and say...Wendi! I say..RICK... Turns out that I had completely forgotten that my good friend Wendi's (maker of the Cars quilt a couple of posts down) husband is a sales man, and low and behold but that was who I got put on with... well, long long story short, Rick was a wonderful help, I ask him to please find a car that he would buy for HIS teenage daughter (yes he has one too) and he did. I did cost more than I had planned on spending...(I will NOT be putting a fence up this year after all) But I got an excellent car for Torrie... So with out further ado... Torrie's new "Grandma Car"

It is a 2001 Buick Century, like I said a grandma car, BUT it is in excellent condition, drive beautifully and has working air bags! Plus, even though it is not some cutesy teenage girly car she love is.

The sad thing, it is newer than MY car!

A quick shot of the inside, this car was very well cared for, the only wear spots are on the steering wheel. I am happy and think we got a good deal.

So, yep all in all a very productive week, one quilt finished, another almost finished, two more with all blocks completed just needs assembled, and a new to us car purchased, Oh and Torrie took her written drivers test today (passed it too) takes her driving test next Friday, and turns 16 on Saturday!
Yes, busy busy and loving it.
Thanks for stopping by, I am headed to bed!
Ginny

A walk in a rainbow

2010-02-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

I love going to the fabric store... I know women who love to shop and look at jewelry, I know some who love to shop for make-up, I know several who have shoe addictions (you know who you are!) and I know some who love to shop for clothing... for me it is fabric, I love the colors. When I walk into the fabric store it is like walking into a rainbow, all bright and cheery, different textures, shimmery, bold, and pastel all in one. No matter what my mood I am always happy in the fabric store, and I ALWAYS go over budget!
I have not been feeling well this last week, I am not "sick" no cough, or stuffy nose just a sore throat and all over body aches... Today I was finally feeling up to leaving the house, still tired but needed to pick up the backing for the Magic Hour quilt, and another that is in the works (I will be taking pictures soon and showing it off). So off to Joann's I went, had a lovely visit with Annie one of my DC moms who works there, she was shopping too! Got the backing I needed plus a couple extra yards! Oh and cutting mats were on sale so I splurged and got a new cutting mat, my old one was just about wore through on the 0 line! All in all the trip was a success, fun and I feel 100% better, lighter in the pocket book, but since everything was on sale I won't complain too much!
So with that, I will wish you all a wonderful upcoming weekend, and remember when you are feeling those winter blues... go to the fabric store and take a stroll inside a rainbow.
Happy quilting.
Ginny