What I'm up to

About 5'2"....hahahhahahahha!  Okay, it's late and I have been SO busy this week that I am getting a little goofy.  It seems that things all end up in the same week so often, dontcha think?  I think I have been running non stop since last weekend.  I taught another class at Bernina of Dallas, (another one coming up next Saturday), spent last Sunday preparing for the Urban Street Bazaar with Lisa over at Vintage Modern Quilts.  We have a booth at the Bazaar!!!!  I'm so excited and I hope you will stop by and see us.  It's going to be a beautiful weekend and there are over 60 vendors scheduled to participate.

I have spent the last two days attending a conference for my day job so I can get the continuing ed hours I need to keep my license.  Wow!  It's a very dry subject and anytime I have to sit still in one place, it just about kills me!  I like to be moving around during my day, not sitting in the same chair for hours on end.   I'm just sayin......and it's really bad timing cause I need to be busy getting ready for the bazaar.

Next weekend, I am teaching the Disappearing Nine Patch technique at Bernina of Dallas.  If you want to brush up on your skills, or just come hang out with some quilty buddies, I hope you will call and sign up.

I sure do love that the weather has cooled off.  I had had just about enough of that stinkin 90 degree, humid as all get out, make me want to hurt something weather!  This weather reminds me of that joyous week I spent in San Francisco this summer.  And speaking of, I thought I would share a few more images of that trip(since I have no new crafty pics to share with you...)

This is the base of the coolest statue I saw as I was walking through the city one day.  Wouldn't that make a really cool quilting pattern?  Kind of like pebble quilting....

Here is the rest of her, isn't she just amazing??

There will be more crafty posts coming soon, I do have a quilt or two in the works and hope to be posting progress on those after the bazaar is over this weekend.

Progress and a Class

I have been busy working on the Match Box quilt this week.  I actually got a great start on it at the Saturday Sew for the Dallas Modern Quilt Guild.  If you are in the Dallas area, we would love to have you come join us some weekend.  You can check the schedule for the next one here.  So, here is what it looked like on Saturday:

I got quite a bit more done on it today and I hope to be able to show you a completed quilt top in the next few days.  

Sunday I went to the Trinity Valley Quilt Show with some quilty friends from DMQG and we had the best day!  It is so fun to hang out with women that share my interests and passions.  It's such a nice feeling to know I am not the only one always designing a quilt in my head or dreaming about the next line of fabric coming out soon.....and look at my goodies from the show

It's a lovely stack of Kaffe Fasset Shot Cottons that I purchased from Cabbage Rose Quilting.  They had a booth at the show, but they are located over in Fort Worth.  Isn't that the most gorgeous stack you have ever seen?  I am thinking of doing a quilt just using those fabrics, no prints.  They are so soft and drapey, almost like a voile.  The little gray stack are reproduction prints from the Civil War era, but I think they look very modern.  I have been designing an orange and gray quilt in my head for awhile and slowly collecting the fabrics for it.  These will add some nice texture to my current stash.  

I have a very busy week ahead.  I'm teaching a couple of classes at Bernina of Dallas this week.  Saturday is part two of the "I Never Thought I'd be a Quilter" class and next Saturday I will be teaching the Disappearing Nine Patch class again.  Back by popular demand!  Okay, maybe not, but I like saying that phrase.  I did have a couple of requests to offer it again and it felt really nice to know that people enjoyed it enough to tell their friends about it.  Here's a sneak peak at that quilt.

                        

If you aren't doing anything on Saturday, October 9th at 9:30, come join us for some quilty fun.  We would love to see you!

New Projects

I love starting new projects!  It's so exciting!  A fresh beginning, such endless possibilities, anticipation.  I have been working on a couple of projects over the last couple of weeks.  For the first one, I started with this:

My favorite is the bird fabric in the middle, it's Bird Seed by Alexander Henry.  And I ended up with this:

It was way too dark to be trying to take this picture, but you get the general idea.  I'll take better shots after I get it quilted.  I know I should have gone ahead and done that step next, but I was so excited about this fabric I picked up a couple of weeks ago that I couldn't wait to start in on that project...do you ever do that?

This is fabric from several lines, but the bulk of it is from American Jane's Breath of Avignon.  It is not my normal palette or style, but I just love this fabric.  The pattern I am using calls for a layer cake, a charm pack and a jelly roll.  The quilt shop I found this at did not have any of the precuts, so I calculated what I would need in yardage and cut my own.  It didn't take as long as I thought it would, maybe a couple of hours...so now it looks like this:

I'll be posting more shots as I go, but I'm working on MatchBox by Abbey Lane Quilts.  It's an adorable quilt that is sewing up pretty quickly, but I found a pretty big error in the pattern.  It has you cut the strips 1/2" too big.  When you look at the large number of strips in this quilt, that's a lot of fabric waste.  I didn't figure this out until after I had done all of the cutting and started sewing the blocks.  A little frustrating.  I would think that a pattern designer would have someone test these patterns out before publishing?  I do plan to write them and let them know.  I read through the pattern twice to make sure I hadn't missed anything or miscalculated.....Oh well, it's going to be really cute and I have enough fabric to finish the quilt so no great harm.  Stay tuned to see the completed quilt.

A bazillion things

So, I took so long between posts that I am about to burst with things to write about.  I am amazed at how therapeutic blogging is.  It's been several days since I posted and I am feeling all pent up with things to say!  I also have been really busy working on projects....the first one I want to tell you about is a quilt I just finished for a very dear friend.  She moved away recently and I miss her dearly!  This is the kind of friend who know all your deepest, darkest secrets (and loves you anyway).  So, to tell her how very much I love her...I did the only thing I know how to do - I made her a quilt.  It's not a total surprise, I wanted her to love it so I asked for her input on fabric selection.  I think she has been anxiously waiting for a posting about her quilt, so.....S, this is for you!

This is the front of the quilt and this is the back; I can't decide which is my favorite.  Sometimes I like the back better than the front!

As I was working on this quilt, I had the front of the quilt on the design wall and started to play around with the layout of the backing.  This is what I noticed as I stepped back to see how the layout looked.   I think I have a new quilt design in the making...

Today, I decided to start on another project I have had in my mind for awhile.  I wanted a little more pizzaz in the dining room, so the chair started out like this:

Well, it was actually an intact chair but I forgot to take a picture before I tore it all apart.  And now, it looks like this:

There were over 150 staples in the chair holding the old fabric on and by the time I pulled all of those out and stapled the new fabric back on, my fingers were very sore!  So, I'm thinking about one chair every few days.....we should be done in a month.  Okay, there are only four chairs so maybe in a couple of weeks I'll have the rest done.

I taught a beginning quilt class at Bernina of Dallas on Saturday and I have another class tomorrow night.  I will be teaching School House Tunic from Sew Liberated.  I have made this tunic twice now and I just love it.  It's really easy to make and looks so cute.  The possibilities are just endless for personalization.  It looks great with leggings or over jeans.  But above all, I just really love teaching.  It doesn't matter what I'm teaching, it's the act of sharing knowledge and watching the excitement as the project comes together, that I love.  I'm so happy to have found such a great shop that lets me do something I love so much.  The gals at the Bernina store are so helpful and have a wealth of knowledge between them.  And we all know how much I love my new machine!  I am truly grateful to own such an amazing tool.  I have been thinking lately that she really needs a name.....I'm thinking maybe we need to have a name Michelle's Bernina contest.  With a prize for the winner?  Hmm.....I'll come up with the specifics and post the rules in the next couple of days and we'll see if she can't end up with a name finally.