feeling lucky!

I know there's a lot of problems all around the world, and many things to obsessively worry about it I choose to go that way.  However, I'm am trying to maintain a positive feeling in my everyday life, without being Pollyanna-ish.  I just had a great time with my mom visiting us, and a quilt retreat, and a relaxing weekend.  I am even feeling really good about the fact that we have done a thorough sort and purge and reorganization of another storage closet!  

And some really fun things to look forward to on the horizon, too-- Dan visiting and bringing Jessica to meet us, a couple more quilt retreats planned, and, drumroll please, 

another grandson due in March!  Woo-hoo!

2 weeks ago while on quilt retreat, a few of us took a field trip to a new (to me) quilt shop in called Altoona, WI.  That's on the eastern border of Eau Claire.  It's called Stitch Supply.  I will definitely be going there again!  They have the largest assortment of Cotton + Steel fabrics that I have seen.  It kinda required me to buy several fat quarters of some of the prints that we haven't ordered for Bear Patch.  Don't they look fun?!  Odd bugs, fountain pens, rotary dials, matchsticks, jacks...

Good additions to my fabric gallery!

My mom stayed with us for a few days after that retreat, then flew out to Whitefish, MT, to visit Dan.  She can get a direct flight from Minneapolis to Kalispell, which makes it easy.  She was there 5 days, then came back to our house for an overnight before returning to Iowa.  Before she left Montana, she asked if she could bring me anything.  I jokingly said I would love a fresh huckleberry pie.  Well, she carried a piece of that pie all the way back to me!  I was so excited!  I'm eating only a little at a time so I can make it last!

After finishing up my recent garment sewing experience - and I will definitely try to get a picture of it in action - I really wanted to get back to sewing some quilt blocks.  So I picked up where I left off at retreat and went back to work on these faux wedding ring blocks--

I have some sewn together, and the rest in different stages of assembly.    I would like to get this done to put on the class schedule at the store after the 1st of the year.  

I did complete another small quilt, below, that could also become a class.  It's called Timbuktu, and I started working on it last January.  It requires the use of the X-blocks ruler.  After I got the quilting done, I couldn't remember if I had binding for it already picked out.  A lot of times I do that, and I usually put a little label on that piece of fabric and store it in a little box.  Labeled "Bindings", of course!  I looked all over the place for a cut of that green fabric because it seemed logical to me that I would have chosen that for the binding.  I never could find it, and it finally dawned on me that maybe it was a different fabric.  I found what was left from the backing fabric, and there was plenty of that to cut binding strips, so that's what I did!

Last week at Bear Patch, we received an order that included these hexagon pre-cuts of the most recent Tula Pink fabric line.  They work just right with my 2" hexagon papers for English Paper Piecing, so I have been getting those ready to stitch together.  Tonight is our employee sewing night at the store and I will be taking that along to work on.

I recently wrote about our English paper piecing group at Bear Patch, and I included the recipe for a yummy dip that I made.  Today I am making it again to share with my co-workers!  Time to get to the grocery store and pick up a few things needed!  I hope your day is lucky, too!

plenty o' projects

I just had a fabulous week with 2 special friends, having a sewing fiesta for a whole week!

I secured a condo at a resort, we moved in our "equipment" and spent all those days just doing whatever we wanted.  It was pretty cold, but we had few reasons to leave the fireside.  Except for a trip out for lunch, quilt shop visiting and restocking a couple groceries.  

Here are some of the things I worked on:

These turned into little pumpkins and were pretty fun to put together.  The curves are cut with the ruler shown below, and then the uneven ends of the curved seams are trimmed to make the correct size of block.  The directions are very good.

Mini Pumpkins by Sew Kind of Wonderful
uses the Mini Quick Curve Ruler
Available at Bear Patch Quilting Co.

I like this ruler so much that I am using it to teach a class at Bear Patch for a little tablerunner, shown in the previous post.

Here's a project that has been waiting about 2 1/2 year for my attention.  It is a set of signature blocks, about 20 of them, for my 60th birthday present from the Ham Lake Piecemakers.

I used my Electric Quilt program to design a small quilt.  This is just the beginning section, the rest is still waiting for me!

Below is another fun quilt with a fun ruler--

The X Blocks ruler.

It uses 2 1/2" strips, I picked a jelly roll of fabrics by Basic Grey for Moda.

I got all of the blocks made, and laid out as I wanted them.  Then I packed them up again for my next chance for sewing.

blocks for Timbuktu

 This is one of 3 little Sweet Pea Pods by Lazy Girl.  I learned to take apart a zipper for this, remove the slider, then put the slider back on.  That's how I got a turquoise zipper pull on that black zipper.

And a little bit of knitting happened, too!  This is the beginning of a scarf called Reyna, pattern available on Ravelry.  I'm using a new yarn (for me) that is a really nice fine merino wool from an Australian company called Cleckheaton.  I saw an advertisement for it at JoAnne's, and I went to check it out.  I turns out to be a pretty nice yarn, a little bit larger gauge than what the pattern called for, but OK for what I wanted.  It's definitely more expensive than the usual JoAnne's yarn selection, so remember your coupon!

And here's another little quilt that is all about dinosaurs for little boys.

This one is for Jack's upcoming 2nd birthday.

I realized that big brother Ian got all kinds of my quilts and snugglies, and I hadn't really made anything special for Jack.  I hope he likes it!

That wraps up the majority of my accomplishments on my sewing vacation.  I also bonded with my Bernina 820, which is a new machine for me.  And it worked great and I loved it!