In the Company of Quilters

I've learned this weekend that if you want to get inspired, have a Sew-In. And if you want to get frustrated, then do some paper piecing.

I invited all my friends from Glad Creations to sew for Saturday and Sunday. The food is great and everyone is sewing up a storm.

I've never seen so many fun projects.

I also finished my version of "Don't be Cruel" quilt. I added the borders the weekend. As you can tell I didn't go with my original pics for the borders.

I went with a 1" solid batik brown for the inner border and a 4 1/2" strip for the same line as the inside.

I also pieced together the back for the quilt. It is so fun with the birds and flowers.

It will end up on that couch too, once it is quilted. It won't be sprawled out quite so much, right Steve?

Someday I'll give the paper piecing another go.

Turkey, Pots and Pie

Steve made a turkey when I was retreating. We boiled up the left over meat and carcass.

We landed on a Turkey Pot Pie recipe to use up some of the meat and broth. As you can see, it turned out really well.

It was a little hard to get the pieces out of the pan at first, but it was much easier once the pie cooled off.

Steve had a great idea of how to deal with the broth. He poured it into a muffin tin and put it into the freezer.

Once they were frozen, he transferred them to an air tight bag.

Pretty smart, don't you think?!

Lets Rock and Roll

My sister Caroline and I saw a very pretty quilt made out of charm packs and jelly rolls from the Blossom line from Moda.

Of course we both wanted to make it, so we started buying the charms and jellies everywhere we went.

We finally sat down and figured out we had way too many, so we started looking for patterns to use them up.

On my last visit we found "Don't Be Cruel" by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company.

I started putting it together at the quilt retreat. Like any quilter, I decided to change the pattern a bit.

I'm going to use all the cut up jelly roll fabric to make the main bargello section longer and wider, which means no pieced border.

Instead, I'm going to have a thin tan inner border and a thicker outer border made out of a fabric from the fabric line.

What do you think? Stay tuned to see how it turns out.

Retreating for quilters

I'm just back from a quilt retreat. It was fun. I got a couple of projects done.

It was fun to sew with some great ladies and get some dedicated for sewing.

We went to the Wild Rose Inn in Nevis, MN.

The first quilt is Antique Rug, a pattern from Aardvark Quilts.

The second quilt was a baby quilt with the ABCs.

Please ignore the pajamas the show in the bottom of the baby quilt picture.

What is not apparent is that I'm wearing the same pjs behind the quilt.

I should apologize to the ladies for wearing them 3 days straight.

2 for 1

As you can see I've been bad and bought a new project. I'm going to be making Weather Vane, a Glad Creations pattern.

I was in Elk River, picking up Steve's truck. I just had to stop at a quilt shop. As luck would have it, Cottage Quilts was having an anniversary sale.

I found fabric I just couldn't pass up. Plus I took the fabrics in to Glad's and found other fabrics to go with it.

This was in April, so it has taken me a month to admit to it. The one bright point to this tale is that I am using background fabric I had in my stash.

Okay, I know that one of my last posts I talked about a fabric diet and I've already bought fabric, but I think I may have found a diet that I might stick to.

Here it is. I can buy new projects, but I can't work on them right away. For each new project, I need to complete two projects that I've had for more than a year, before I can start on the new one.

I think this might work, because I can buy new projects if I really feel like I need to, but I will also be completing older projects that I have lost interest in.

I'll keep you posted on my 2 for 1 fabric diet.