Happy Halloween!!

Griselda's pretty little face!

I want to introduce you to Griselda. She's a happy little witch that I made a few years ago and I love getting her out at Halloween to join the fun.

Here she is in a full body portrait. She is such a "doll". And to the right is her favorite black cat, Coal.

Here another that I bought at a craft fair, I guess I'll call her Gourdilocks, for a lack of anything else I can think of. She is a real "gourd" girl and gets lots of candy on Trick or Treat night.

This is a little table topper I made about a week ago. I just sewed some strips together and took my triangle ruler and cut six pieces and then sewed them together. And then I put the border print on, that was the trickiest part, getting those angles all mitered and flat. I wish I would have had time to do a little tutorial on this. I also made a couple more without the border print and gave them to 2 of my sisters. The little mugrug was just a few scraps that I sewed together, waste not, want not!!

This little plate is new to me, as I picked it up at a "flea market store" along with a few other things that I will show you at a later date.  I'm still reeling from the last 4 hours that I have spent in front of this computer. Please read my last paragraph and you will understand why my afternoon has not gone as planned. I need to get in a good mood before tomorrow night to get ready for all the ghosts and goblins. The weather is supposed to be quite nice here and I will have between 175 to 200 little ones knocking on my door. Yikes, I hope I have enough candy. Hmmmm, I have enough for 200 but don't spread the word!

This afternoon hasn't been totally wasted but it's been a frustrating one for sure.  I have uploaded pictures from the camera (slowly) and then rotated some (slowly) edited and cropped (slowly), tried to make a couple of collages (slowly), tried to transfer pictures to a couple of blogs (slowly), including this one and I am (slowly) getting very tired of this. I want to make some decent collages or slide shows but so far have not found the great program that I think must be out there somewhere. I have tried Photobucket (gave up there), Smilebox (kinda okay), Slide (hmmm, don't know for sure about it), Picasa (so far the easiest for me) but I am thinking should I just buy a Photoshop Elements and hope that will do everything I want it to..I need some input from you, suggestions, information and any help you would like to offer. Please!! Sew until next time, I hope you have a nice Halloween and get lots of trick or treaters..I know I will!!

A PHD Challenge Done!

I can't even remember when I started this quilt, it's been that long ago. Years ago, I had a Secret Sister and I hand appliqued a block for her and one for me every month for a year. When it was time to reveal my Secret Sister, I used my finished quilt top for show and tell and that's how she knew I was her SS.  It layed around my house for a while long time and then I took it to a machine quilter. She and another friend talked me out of having it machine quilted and thought I should hand quilt it because of the hand applique. So I brought it home and it layed around for a long long long time again until finally one day, I decided I was going to take it again to be machine quilted. I was sick of it laying around and thought DONE is better than NOT! I had the border and sashing MQ and I hand quilted the blocks themselves. I guess it was sort of a compromise on the quilting. I entered it into Myra's PHD Challenge last year and it's late in getting finished but it is DONE and I am GLAD!!! The pattern is in an old Piecemaker's quilt book and it called "Heart's A Plenty" and it is a calendar quilt as the blocks represent the 12 months of the year. I hope you like seeing it, sew until next time, have a "Stitches" kind of day.

Jo Morton Retreat

This post is a belated report on the Jo Morton retreat that I attended on Sept. 23-25. I am really slow in getting this on here so here it goes. My friend, Betty and I left on Thursday, Sept 22, to drive to Nebraska City to join some of the gals for a get acquainted dinner. (that was nice) I think most of the time, there were about 22 gals in attendance and we gave our undivided attention to Jo, (most of the time) beginning at 8:00 o'clock on Friday morning.  She showed us how to back-baste applique on a small Rachel's Reel, we learned how to hand piece a little bow-tie block and we English paper pieced a small flower. I had not hand pieced much at all and I find that I really enjoy it.



This was everyone's Rachel's Reel's





Everyone's Spool blocks

 


My little pile of "stuff".

 

My little hexie flowers



  Salt Cellar Pincushion, a gift from Elaine P. at the retreat, nice!!



Every technique we did would be a great "pick up and take a long" project. Kathy Hall, from Andover Fabrics, joined us and worked right along beside us. Kathy talked to us one morning about Andover Fabrics and showed us some things she had been working on. Beautiful things!! Kathy was a delight and I am so glad that I got to make her acquaintance. We had lots of show and tell and got to see every ones progress on our lessons. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were served every day right at the retreat center and that was nice, no cooking and no dishes to do. After dinner, we could sew some more into the evening, if we wanted. TJ Lane came one day with her silver jewelry, thimbles and lots of accessories, they are really beautiful.  I've had one of her thimbles for several years and it's the only one i wear and guard very carefully, lest I misplace it!!  And on Sunday morning, Stephanie Grace Whitson came and gave a presentation with quilts and her new book, Home on the Plains, Quilts and the Sod House Experience.  



The Book



I love this book!!  She co-authored this book with Kathleen L. Moore..Stephanie's coming was a bonus highlight for me as I have been a fan of her novels for many years. She has written many books and I love reading her stories. They are very inspirational books and I recommend you read one of her books, I'm sure you will love them.  All in all, the whole retreat was a great experience and we met many wonderful people, we had a good great time and hope to go again sometime. Jo is a very easy going, low key teacher but gets the lesson across to everyone and is most willing to help, if you need it. Can you tell, I really enjoyed the retreat?




Stephanie's Botch Handle quilt

 

Sew until next time, have a "Stitches" kind of day.

Souxland Sampler's Quilt Show 2011

I went to the Siouxland Sampler's Quilt Show on September 17, in Sioux City, IA and took a "few" pictures. Here they are if you want to look at some of their great quilts.

Slideshow design created with Smilebox

Isn't fall all about tons of quilt shows in your area?? I've been to several and there are more to go to. I guess us quilter's never get tired of looking at quilts, the workmanship, patterns and colors that other quilter's pick out. It's a great time!! Enjoy the pic's, sew until next time, have a 'Stitches' kind of day!!

Cottonwood Guild Meeting and Kathy Kansier

Back on September 20th, I went to the Cottonwood quilt guild meeting and enjoyed the program by Kathy Kansier from Ozark, Missouri. She was a very delightful person and had a wonderful sense of humor and many wonderful quilts to show us. Her program was entitled "Quilts with Great Edges". Most of them were antique quilts, mostly hand quilted and some hand pieced. Very pretty and I loved the old soft feel of them. Here are a few pictures of her quilts. I love this fan quilt and the border, it was so neat.

Another fan quilt, another edge treatment.

And yet another Fan quilt.                                                                                                                                                                             If you look closely at this pink and white border, the "scallops" are hearts.

Large scallops

This was a nice quilt but the prairie points were large and floppy. There are spider webs quilted between the blocks and I think the flowers are Daffodils.

This looks like a difficult border treatment to do.

This is a large Yo-Yo quilt but what was so unusual about it? It was completely appliqued onto a background fabric..It was really gorgeous!!  I have more to tell you about that trip, we found some bargain's at an "Outlet Store" or I like to call it a Flea Market. I hope to be back soon, I've so much more to tell..Sew until next time, have a "Stitches" kind of day..