Happy Halloween!

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.

 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

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.

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

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!

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

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