A different kind of Pinwheel...

This is what is on the design wall today..  My One Star block to take to my guild meeting.  My mug rug is right there underneath it...again ready to take to guild meeting...(I just realized that I might not have the paper with my swap persons name on it...yikes...I hope it's in the bottom of my purse)..and then the right half of my hand pieced Single Girl.

And this is my stuff for class today...   I still have to find some paper scissors and somewhere in my sewing room my fabric scissors are hiding.. I need them to come out NOW!!  I must leave NOW...

And Lynn was right... It's a pinwheel especially for travel...I found the instructions here ...  She uses a fancy doily for the top, but I am a simple gal so it was polka dots for me.  I will use it for my hand piecing...

It's nice because it keeps the sharp edge of the pin hidden, so it's great for traveling... Might make me a couple for gifts... They would be really cute with a monogram embroidered on top...maybe I should get  the old embroidery machine out...nah...I'll just use hand embroidery..

Nancy

Rest Stop...

I see a road trip in my future....  Read THIS...   Isn't that worth a trip just to stop there...

Nancy

I made this today....

Do you know what it is?

I'll be back sometime Tuesday to tell you...

psstt..if I forget, someone please email me...K?

Nancy

so here it is!!

I am so excited. I FINALLY after a gazillion tries got the needle threaded...not once but enough times to finish this...

I am not so happy with the way the upper left hand corner looks, but maybe it will be ok once it is sewn to another quarter of the block.   Want a closeup? 

I forgot that I need to clip the curved seams.  Although it does lay flat!!  I was so excited I sat and watched Survivor and did this...

By the time Krista was booted off Redemption Island and Stephanie voted onto Redemption Island..(Go Matt!) I had hand pieced the arc and started pinning it to the inside background.  And I finally had to go get a pincushion from the sewing room.  I am off today to find a Clover automatic needle threader and maybe some nice sharp pins.  I am not a pinner usually so the ones I have seem very thick.  I think I need to invest in some nice thin ones... maybe some silk pins?  I don't really know much about pins...Marsha said she will check in on my progress, so maybe she uses a certain pin?  I can look in Paducah during the show... And I am thinking of taking a hand piecing class at the Quilted Fox in town.. I know that with anything there are tips and tricks that I will not learn on my own...but it's kind of expensive at $65 for 4 - 2 hour classes...

NEWS FLASH...was talking out loud and hubby says "oh, sign up for the class"...  Yea..it starts next Wednesday..."where's the credit card, honey?"


Nancy

How did my eyes get older than me?

  Yesterday I spent most of the day doing laundry and spring cleaning.. so that today I could spend all day in the sewing room.  I got up, made french toast for breakfast and got started.   First up was to work on my mug rug for the Modern Quilt Guild swap.  I made 3 and didn't like the first 2 , so third time must be a  charm mug rug.  And it's bound and ready to go..

Amy Butler Midwest Modern

 And our guild put out an incentive to make One Star for Moda..   There is talk of a prize drawing if you bring it to the meeting... so I pulled out some of my stash and finished this off..

Remember the last meeting of the St Louis Modern Quilt Guild?  I saw a demo on hand piecing..   and all the way out to the other house I kept thinking...and thinking... maybe I could do that?  Maybe I could do Denyse Schmidts Single Girl pattern?  So....I got on Etsy and ordered the pattern here and got free shipping.  It's not a cheap pattern so free shipping was a bonus.  I wondered why it was so much more expensive than other patterns I have purchased and when it came I fully understood.  It contains full size pattern pieces and a full size pattern sheet for the quilting plus very well written instructions.   Today I traced all the templates from A to EE, cut them out of template plastic, traced them onto the fabric and cut them out... I pinned them to a piece of batting in the order they are to be pieced...  This is only the first quarter of the block..  Marsha gave us a list of the items she used and since she does beautiful hand piecing I decided to start with the right stuff and bought #60 weight thread in white as that will be my background fabric, #10 applique needles cause that's what she uses but I didn't buy a little automatic threader cause I have those red ones ( like in the photo) that I use all the time for embroidery but really how hard can it be to thread a needle?

Fabric is Central Park

So I have my fabric, pins, thread, needle..  First problem crops up immediately.. I can't thread the needle.  That hole is tiny, tiny, tiny...  So out comes the red threader that I use with my embroidery.  Nope..the needle threader won't go into the eye either. 

look how tiny that eye is

 I guess I am stuck until I get that automatic needle threader. I guess my eyes are older than the rest of me?  So anyone have a favorite automatic needle threader they use?  I emailed Marsha and am waiting for an answer, but I am not the most patient person in the world. I really would like to start this project before it becomes a UFO....  This just in...Marsha uses a CLOVER brand automatic needle threader.  I will be shopping online tonight..

Nancy

Modern Guild meeting... (edited to add more Jamie!)

Last Saturday was another great Modern Quilt Guild meeting.  We did our usual short meeting and then got right to the fun...  We had 5 wonderful volunteers do a round robin of learning..

Marianne taught us how to make continuous bias binding... 

Grace brought her machine and a couple of fabulous quilts and showed how she does free motion quilting...

She had tons of samples for us to look over...

Jamie showed us all how to make her famous hexagons...I am pretty sure that "hexagon" is her middle name...She loves them and is making tons of them for a quilt.  She has given herself 5 years to make it.
Jamie also contributes to Moda Bake Shop and has a quilt she designed featured in the current issue (April 2011) of Quilters World. The quilt was renamed for the magazine and is called Sugar & Spice.  Jamie named it Ruffle Quilt and it is featured as a Moda Bake Shop pattern  under that name. It also hung in the Moda booth at Houston last year.  She was beyond excited...                                                                           

Marsha showed us a bit about hand piecing...and I've been thinking about it...

Sally (not sure why I don't have a photo of HER)..showed us tube quilting...quite fascinating

I actually put my camera away for show and tell so I have no photos...but we saw some great baby quilts and a table topper and more...

Then we signed up for a mug rug swap.... they are due next meeting and I have been thinking of ideas...It's a secret swap so I will be able to show you the mug rug because no one will know ..

Nancy

retreat...

Last Monday at this time I was on my way to 3 fun filled days sewing with some friends and some friends-I-didn't-know-yet...   Well, we had a wonderful time.  I had been to this retreat place before and so knew what to expect.  It's a church run camp that has tapped into the quilting retreat community.  You make your own bed although linens are provided. Meals are cafeteria style, but the food is good and there is plenty of it.  One day for breakfast we had a choice of pancakes, bacon, oatmeal, hard boiled eggs, bagels, fresh fruit, and milk, tea, coffee and juice.  Lunch and dinner were the same.  I ate so much I broke a chair...really!!  I went to sit down after one of the meals and must have hit it wrong and one leg crumbled..lol  I felt bad, but hey, seriously it wasn't the food...it was the chair...

So what did we all work on?

This is Linda with her Tweetie D Pie...She had all the embroidery done and the blocks cut before retreat. The fabric is Sugar Pop by Liz Scott for Moda

Dee and her cats. This started out as a panel..

Nancy (no blog) was working on this project.  It is a wedding gift for a couple that have been married for 13 years if I remember correctly.  She made the rest of the blocks, put the top together and had a border on by retreats end.

Miss Nancy sat head down and sewing machine going, going, going... She made so many table toppers and runners we all lost count..  I think there are more photos somewhere but I can't find them.. This is a pattern from Terry Atkinson.

a little Bow Tie quilt..

A sunflower table runner..  The edge you see there is fusible web.  The pattern was printed on the fusible.  After fusing the fabric onto it you just fold and stitch...

Here it is!! This was the first one she finished.. Very pretty and another from Terry Atkinson.

Double Wedding Ring. Another wedding present where the couple have been married 11 years. lol  It had been so long since she worked on it she had to read and figure for a couple of hours to find where she was supposed to start. She got one row completely sewn together..

This is Veronica and her quilt.  If it's Veronica and she is at a retreat she makes a Turning Twenty. This must be a version of that..

This is Linda. She is the one that was on the phone when I invited myself to her retreat... She asked me to bring some "Modern quilt books or patterns" for her to look at.   With her leftover Sugar Pop she made these two blocks.  It is a quilt by Barbara Brandeburg named Birdie Big Blocks. The original pattern has blocks that are 18 inch square. Linda reduced the pattern to fit her layer cake. 

Linda also worked on these Cross Blocks.  She did a little mini-tutorial on cutting them. They are so fast and easy, but I don't know where she got the tutorial or if it is hers so I can't reveal the secret. Maybe she will read this post and leave a link in the comments..  They do start with a layer cake..

This is a pitiful little baby quilt I worked on.  I got all the blocks done and slapped them up on the design wall to snap a photo.  They aren't my colors and I have no idea how the charm pack got into my stash.  It doesn't have a home but I am hoping that it will be adopted at some point..

I was intrigued by the Ticker Tape quilts I have been seeing all over Flickr and wanted to try the technique so I made this pillow for second daughter.  She has a bunch of red/white/blue pillows that were "gifted" to her and I am slowly covering them.. It's a great way to  try a new technique ..

I also worked on a super secret baby quilt that I can't show you as "someone" might see it and show it to the mom-to-be...

Then all too soon it was time to head back to reality...or home as the husband calls it..  Of course we did stop at a couple of quilt shops...  Monday part of the group decided to go to the local quilt shop.  They used Susan's GPS and came back with some goodies.  Tuesday another group decided to go and I was one of the drivers and ended up being the leader.  I got some good directions from Susan and we headed out.  After driving for about 10 miles the road split and we had to decide whether to go North or South.  I picked North. The next sign we saw said "East St Louis" 11 miles.  Oh no..we can't go there.  It's not a safe neighborhood.  I quickly took the next exit, turned around and started driving south back to town..  Someone else called Susan and between all of us we tried to figure out where we had gone wrong.  We finally ended up on South Main street where the quilt shop was supposed to be.  119 South Main was the address.  We looked everywhere for 119.  We found 116 and then it jumped to 124..  We drove up and down Main Street so many times we joked that we looked like we were casing the joint... Finally I stopped and walked into another retail store and asked if they knew where the "quilt store" was.  She said there was a store in the next town, but it only sold fabric.  I joked and said "well, we will just go there then"...but she owned an Antique Store and apparently didn't get the joke.  Wait! Next Town?  Yep, we had hung a right instead of a left and were in the wrong town.  So off we go with written directions to head south and then turn at the Sonic and then look for the Rural King and lo and behold we got to the store only to realize that...they...moved...  So I popped in next door and asked directions.  We finally made it...and everyone kissed the ground and started shopping...  I bought some beautiful RJR solids..

And that fiasco didn't deter us from  deciding to to find another new-to-us quilt shop on the way home.  In fact, I had my iPad with me so I got on and got GOOD directions and we didn't make one wrong turn.  It was a fabulous shop with one whole room of Thimbleberries. I am not a fan, but everyone else was in heaven.  I found a couple of polka dots and some hand needles.  And a book.. Modern Basics .  I hope to get to look at it this week.

Well, that's retreat.

And look what I have...

Second daughter, son-in-law and two grandkids went fishing on Saturday and caught 60+ crappie .  This is my share.  I got them home and this morning I used my seal-a-meal to individually freeze them.  Can't wait to have some...I am hoping more will come our way when we start fishing our little pond...

Nancy

P is for Packing and PIF....

It's very rare to find a quilter that doesn't give back to his/her community.  Eight of you entered and I wish I had 8 books as you all have such wonderful charities that you support...  I am so glad that I didn't have to pick....I let the random number generator do the job....

#2 Tonya

and

#6 Mary on Lake Pulaski

Please send me your mailing address and I will get the books on their way... 

Today is packing day.  There are three of us that car pool to the St Louis Modern Quilt Guild..  As we were heading home last meeting, Linda returned a phone call and to our horror we found out that her other quilt guild was short on people to round out their quilt retreat.  Nancy and I jumped at the chance to help them out..  I mean really...we are quilters, so we help our fellow quilters in anything they need, even if it means driving to another state and sewing for 3 straight days with others cooking for us....  So I am picking projects and doing some preliminary cutting..  I will also get the sewing machine cleaned and round up as many extension cords I can...  So far these are the projects I have ready..

1. baby quilt for great niece/nephew
2. apron for me
3. sewing bucket
4. solid challenge for MQG
5. pillow for Christmas present
6. hand stitchery project
7. circle applique charity quilt

there must be more as the big plastic box is stuffed full...   So off I go to finish packing the non-essentials...you know...like clothes and underwear ...

Nancy