How long will this cone last?

Yes, I am wondering how long this 33,000 yards of Bottom Line, white thread will last?? This is one color of thread I use on almost all of my quilts? If I am not using "White" I use "Off White" so...


I guess I should show you how much off white thread I have used since October of last year.


I think the amount of thread used is more dramatic in person. But if you ask me It looks like about half of the off white spool has been used. I never thought I would use this much thread in my lifetime. Looks like about a years worth of thread. :) I better get busy quilting.

Now what I have been up to lately....


This is Lisa up front with this months block. She is giving the demo for how the block goes together. This was our first class for the "Redwork Revival" quilt. Lisa and I have been getting ready for this for a couple weeks, praying for red and white fabric to make a beautiful BOM with all the ladies that signed up for out class at the Parkland Parish Quilt Co. I have to say things went real well, and I think we had a good time.
So... why not peak at next block for the Redwork Revival Quilt (this is block two) ...


This is a block Lisa named Applesauce, Marti Michelle named it Applause. The story behind the new name is quite funny, I will save it for a slow day.
I have had the pleasure of making this block about 3 times now.. not counting the 2 times Lisa has been lucky enough to make this block. I am pretty sure I have all the directions down pretty good. I just have to rewrite a part so I can address the directional fabric that we had to use. At first I did not like this block, but the more I look at it from a distance, I think it has grown on me?? We shall see how I feel after a good nights sleep.

If I thought things were busy now, I am about to get a lot busier... I am not too sure how I will do it, but I have to get a few big quilts finished. I would also like to get a few of my quilts done, and I have to continue to sleep sometime?
At this time I am looking for a dog walker and a maid. I have given up cleaning and walking the dogs. Thank god for Dan or I would be in the marked for a cook or on a diet.

Well I have made this post while on the treadmill so. I have finished my walk and I need to go try to polish off some white thread.

thanks for following along...
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One busy weekend.

Where to start?
What a busy weekend I had....
I had so much to get done and so little time.
My Saturday started with a couple miles on the treadmill, then going to Seattle and getting my hair done. I'm lucky enough to have my hair dresser be my daughter but, that means you need to take her out to dinner afterwards. She and her boyfriend had tickets for the opening sounders game, but we found time to go to a nice Indian food restaurant in the U district. Then it was a quick road trip to the stadium, and we we dropped them off outside of the stadium.
We managed to get home at about 8:30 - 9:00 and I found time to finish up the cutest little cat appliqué quilt.



Then Sunday it was time to get ready for the red and white debut.
Block one is Ellis Island! block one of 12.
Lisa did all the homework and got the block ready.


I then finished two small baby quilts for charity. While... Dan drove to Bellingham pick up a cute little featherweight (I plan to paint it bright orange)
while I finished up another quilt for my customer.





And then to finish off the evening, I finished the cute little scrap basket that we plan to give away to one of the lucky recipients at our class monday night.



Okay that's enough I have to go and get ready for work.
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Friday was my lucky day!

Look what the fedex guy brought....
It is so cute, and little... and it has an 8 megapixel camera. Perfect for quit photos, I hope?

what packaging...apple has got it down.

I can hardly believe it. I hope the camera is worth it...

I insisted on getting it up, running and synchronized last night....

HERE WE GO...
The hope is that the photos are better than my old ipad (old? 1 year old?? really...) so here we go.

okay enough showing off. back to work.
Here is a customers appliqué quilt. It is so cute cats and mic. I have done bead board (piano keys) in the border do it looks like the mice are running next to the wall. It is dark in the room so I hope you can see it? (I may have to work on the lighting a bit, I think I can handle that?)

Here I hope you can see the cute background fill. I think the continuous swirl is perfect for this quilt. I couldn't imagine a heavier fill for this quilt.

I am in the process of figuring out the treatment for the log cabin blocks. I bet it is feathers?? what do you think? Definitely feathers, but I may do my feather meander? We shall see.

so the good news is this blog post was brought to you while I walked up an incline of 8 (a scale of 1-10) on my treadmill :) a perfect world, workout and blog :)
We shall see if the new ipad will keep me blogging?
stay tuned, and thanks for following.
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We are enjoying the Appliqué Academy

This post was written on Thursday (Feb, 9th).
I was not able to upload this from the hotel wifi, I am not sure why? I had to wait to post this today.

This is today's project. We are suppose to be making this block in 5 hours?
I have no interest in trying to keep up with this group. We just do not have enough time to make it, and my A.D.D. will not let me keep up with the group. I am not enjoying this method, and it is just too cumbersome. I am sure some of these ladies are enjoying it... It is a good method, just not my method.


This is Lisa intent on working on this method. She is a willing participant. She is working on her door, and learning how to do reverse appliqué.
Meet Lisa, she is very intent on working on this block.



Living the dream, appliqué academy 2012
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Sew it goes!

Look I got it done! Block 9 is finally finished.
My block of the month is done at the last minute, in the final hour... I know the image is a little grainy but the iPad camera is not that good at taking my blog photos, sorry. I am in a hurry to get this posting done and it is almost 11:00pm our time and I need to get up early.



thanks for looking...
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This free photo slideshow customized with Smilebox

This is what I have been up to. And totally loving it. This is the quilting that just makes me smile.
Thanks for looking.

Look what I found at the fair

This year I had the wonderful experience of going to the fair, and getting to see several of my customers quilts entered into the competition. I had a couple surprises, and... I knew a couple of my customers had expressed an interest in entering their quilt in the fair.


This is my customer with her Thimbleberries quilt. That quilt started quite a following, I have since quilted 5 of them, and I have 4 more waiting for me to get to them. Her quilt received an honorable mention from the judges. Way to go, thank you for letting me quilt for you.


This is another customers quilt. She called it "Canning and Tanning". You can't see much of the quilting detail, so I will try my best to describe it. On the blue border, I just quilted a feather border. On the jars themselves, I quilted detail in the jar lid so it looked like it screwed on, and I put detail on the jars that looked like curves of the jars and then added in cursive the words Kerr and Ball (like you would see on canning jars). As for the shelves, she used all black fabric, so I tried to separate the detail by creating a tile background behind the jars and a wood grain shelf under the jars. I am not sure how well I can explain this, I hope it makes sense. She was very happy to receive a honorable mention ribbon for her quilt. I am so happy for her.


This is another quilt by the same customer. This quilt is all primitive appliqué and embroidery. I just did an all crosshatch with a old style feather border. My customer wanted to keep the era an old style quilt, and asked to keep the quilting to minimum. She received an honorable mention on this quilt also. What an honor.


This is a closeup, maybe you can see some of the detail?



This customer's quilt was a major challenge for me. I put this quilt on the frame three times. When I put it on the third time I decided to turn it, I felt like I needed to change my luck with this quilt, I think I was feeling a little superstitious.


My customer ended up with a second place. What a surprise. It sure was a beautiful quilt, and I think I quilted the hell out of it. It took 10 days and too many bobbins, but... I finally finished the quilt. I was definitely intimidated by this quilt. When my customer brought the quilt to me she told me she wanted to put it in the fair. Now that it is done and I see she has done well at the fair, I am ready to face this challenge next year. (Wish me luck!) Congratulation, and thank you for letting me quilt for you.


This was the grand surprise. This was the first real customer quilt that I ever did. I had been quilting as a business for about a month, and quilting for the ladies at the LQS. This customer quilt came to me by one of the ladies that is in my BOM class, she recommended me to her friend because she had seen my work and thought I might be able to quilt it with more than a pantograph.

This quilt also took me a while, but I learned so much. I put rays behind the birds, because that is what the book that the pattern came out of had quilted (by hand) on it, and then I did my signature feather doodle in the tan border, and in the mariners compass I just did quarter inch inset rules around it, and then some swirls around in the tan part. You want to talk about intimidation. I think I sat and wondered what I had gotten myself into longer than it took to actually quilt it. I remember calling the customer to tell her I had it done, I was so scared she wasn't going to like it. I was so happy to get this done.


She received an honorable mention and an innovative judges award. I am so proud of this quilt, not so much my quilting, but the story behind this quilt. The customer actually had a group of women from her office that worked on it. It was like a quilters guild project, they each made a part of it for a co-worker that had retired. What a wonderful group of friends to make such a beautiful quilt and give it to their friend.

Now I just wish I hadn't waited so long to go to the fair. I had waited until the last Friday night to go, and I had to rush to get through everything. I only stayed long enough to get some photos and get out of there.

What a wonderful surprise the fair turned out to be.
thanks - star

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