Book Signing at Sew Bee It

I attended a book signing at Sew Bee It this past week. The book was Color Mastery by Maria Peagler. She gave a nice talk about her book including 10 tips to innovative color palettes.

I enjoyed the talk. I bought the book and it looks really good. One of her tips is to start a color journal. This idea intrigues me. It seems like a good way to start getting ideas for new color combinations to use in my quilts.

Maria said that she has a monthly budget for fabric and suggests that you organize your fabric so you can determine what you are missing. Yesterday my husband also suggested I make a monthly fabric budget, instead of buying a larger amount of fabric a couple times per year. I think this is a great idea. I'd spend the same amount as I do now (or slightly more) but it wouldn't hurt as bad.

By the way Sew Bee It is a wonderful quilt shop. I wish that I lived closer...or maybe it is good that I don't. It might be dangerous if I could wander in any time I like.

Underground Railroad Block of the Month

I have finished two more blocks from my quilt guild's block of the month. I have 3 more left. Forgive the bad pictures. I've got to get better at this stuff.

Block Swap Part 2

A few days ago I received my blocks from my Facebook block swap. They are beautiful. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with the blocks yet but I have some ideas.

I need to get to work on my next block swap blocks. This time its going to be a 4 patch. The rules are that they are tone on tone, blue, yellow or green with white. I picked out some blues to use. I'm hoping that the blocks I get back in the swap will work with the blocks I got from the first round.

Back home

I am back home from my trip to Denver. Actually I have been back for a week but it took me awhile to catch up after coming back home.

I did go to two quilt ships in Arvada. Both were very nice. I planned on taking pictures of the shops but of course while I remembered to take my camera I did not realized that my husband left the memory card in the card reader when he last used it. So no pictures of the shops. I will show you some of the wonderful fabric I brought back.

The first shop we stopped at was Shared Threads. We were greeted by a very friendly Yorkie. My mom has 3 yorkies and a lhasa mix at home, so she felt right at home with the shop yorkie. The couple that owned the shop was friendly. They had lots of great fabric and books and had a great classroom plus 2 long arm quilting machines.

I was mainly looking for fabric for my Pansy quilt. So I was mostly looking for greens and yellows. I found some great stuff at Shared Threads.



After that we went to The Quilted Moose Quilt Shop in Olde Town Arvada. Olde Town Arvada is fun. It has a bunch of cool shops in the original center of Arvada. The shop was nice with great fabric and lots of great quilts on the walls. I found some nice fabric there also.


After that we wandered around the other shops on Olde Town Arvada. Paws N Play was still there. Its a pet boutique that my husband and I used to go to. We wandered through a spice shop, and a kintting shop. It was interesting to see how much that area has been restored and changed since I moved away.

Block Swap Blocks

Finished blocks for the block swap...almost. I have 5 blocks. 3 look good and the points are pretty close to matching. Two blocks didn't turn out so well though. Those are next to the sewing machine waiting for me to reverse sew and put back together.

Schnapps decided to help me take pictures. He was really interested in the wrist chord on the camera but wasn't so impressed with the flash as you can see from the irritated look on his face. Or maybe he just doesn't like the block.

Block Swap

I am participating in a block swap on a Facebook Quilt Guild group. I will make 5 6" nine patch variant blocks in blue and yellow. I'll post pictures of the blocks as I finish them. I have to get them done and delivered by Feb. 22 so I'll have to hurry. I'm so excited! I've never done a block exchange before.

Finished my stars quilt

I finally finished the binding on my stars baby quilt (its the one you see on the header of my blog). I started the quilt about 2 years ago as a gift for a good friend when I found out she was having a baby. The pattern is from Judy Martin's Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts. I had just finished the top when I found out my friend lost the baby. I felt so bad for her. After that I lost motivation to work on the quilt anymore.

I put the quilt away for over a year. Last summer I was starting to practice machine quilting and decided it was time to work on the quilt again. I kind of got carried away and its sort of over-stippled. So its a little stiffer than it probably should be which really isn't good for a baby quilt. I also realized it was over quilted part way through so I backed off a bit, which means its not evenly quilted all over. That's what happens when you are learning, right?

Even with all this quilt has going against it, I think it is the best looking quilt I've done so far. I really like the colors and the pattern. It might be good as a wall hanging.

Update: I changed my blog and the quilt is no longer on my header so here is a picture of the quilt.

Pansy Quilt

I have been making Grandma's Pansy blocks from Bloomin' Beauties by Billie Lauder. I started them at a quilt guild work night earlier this summer. I made 21 blocks and started trying to figure out what I wanted the quilt to look like.

I had a picture in my head with the blocks on point and I wanted them to look like they were meandering through the quilt. I couldn't quite figure out how it would work. I started out laying all the blocks out on the floor (someday I'll have a design wall) and moving them around, but I couldn't get a good idea of how it would look.

I started working with Electric Quilt to play with some layouts. I found a pansy block that looks kind of similar to my blocks and played around for a long time. I'm still not sure I'm totally happy with the layout but right now I think the quilt is going to look something like this. I probably will do a several different greens since I already have a few different greens in the pansy blocks.


The best part about putting it into EQ is that now I can print out the rotary cutting instructions for the broken dishes blocks, and I know approximately how much more fabric I need. I'm pretty sure I don't have enough green in my stash, so I'm just going to have to go fabric shopping.

Quilting Vacation Day

Today is my birthday so I decided to take a vacation day and just stay home and quilt. I had grand plans to catch up on all the block of the months (blocks of the month? ...what is plural for block of the month?) for the quilt guild, and to finish the border on my Turning Twenty quilt, and to finish the binding on two quilts that I've recently finished quilting. Of course that didn't all happen but I did get some stuff done.


I added a border on my Turning Twenty quilt. I finished the top a few months ago but have taken forever to add the extra border on. The pattern gives yardage for an optional 6" border, but I ended up putting a 9" border on. Its now plenty big for our queen size guest bed upstairs and almost big enough for our King size bed. I will demo this pattern at our quilt guild meeting next week.

I did get one block done from the block of the month that our quilt guild is doing this year. The blocks are from Elenor Burn's Underground Railroad and I'm using civil war reproduction fabric. I got the Carpenter's Wheel done today. I of course had to start the block over once because I couldn't get the flying geese squares to be square, and the points on the center star didn't match.







I also recently finished the second block from another block of the month quilt I'm working on. This one is hand applique. The quilt is from Storybook Quilts and is called Woodland Spirits.