Vacation from Farmville

I took a little trip a while back to Lanesboro, MN for a quilt retreat with Cheri, Amy and Judy. Judy has a great posting about the retreat on her blog.

I had this quilt cut out for quite a while, so it was on my UFO list. The pattern is called Weather Vane.

I made the half square triangle squares before I left. That way I didn't need to rip off the triangle paper or trim dog ears before I could start sewing.

By the end of the retreat, I was able to get all my blocks made and pieced the strips for the border blocks. It took me about a week to finish the quilt, partially because I was a little burned out.

I think it turned out great. I'm going to put it in the non-judged portion of the Minnesota Quilters Show in June. I need a name for it.

Any ideas?

Papa's Got a Brand New Bag

What's your bag? Mine is Maggie and Maggie Jr.

I think they turned out very cute. I think Junior would make a great gift card holder.

I got fat quarters to make them with. Out of two coordinating fabrics you could cut out 4 Maggies and probably twice the Juniors.

When Cheri was over, she had a great suggestion for making the template. She suggested tracing it onto freezer paper. That worked great because I just ironed it onto the fabric and cut around it.

I made my loops out of the fabric using one of the left over fabrics, a 1/2" bias tap maker and fray check. I like the result.

I'd also recommend fusible velcro for the closures. The bag is small enough that it would be hard to sew on the non-fusible velcro.

Look for them at Glads at the next Scraptamers!

Sunday Leftovers

I promised to post my progress with cutting out my Mystery Quilt #45 fabric, so we are time travelling back to Sunday.

I finished with the cutting as Cheri and Amy were arriving for our shindig. As per usual, here is the summary of the cutting. We have 466 pieces for the dark fabrics and 170 pieces from the background fabric.

Some of the pieces are big, so I'm guessing there will be me more crosscutting after we start sewing. I can't wait for my session, March 11th and 12.

You will notice my fabric all fits in an Artbin, which I highly recommend. I'll stop there, because my friend Judy has a great posting on Artbins.

As per Cheri's request, here are pictures from our amazing dinner.
We started with Pomegranate Margaritas, which were gone before I took any pictures.

The first picture is of an Amy Miller original salad. She thought of yummy stuff that would taste good with chocolate. She put it all on butter lettuce and shaved chocolate over the top. Yum!

Here is the rice I made. One was Arroz Verde and the other was just rice with onion and peas in it. Now the real treat was Cheri's chicken mole. She worked her magic with a mole mix and made it spectacular.

I think we are going to do more themed potlucks now. I heard talk of cuban for the next one. Can't wait!

Lazy Guy

I decided I'd like to spend the day with some of my quilting buddies and they are Steve's buddies too. We decided to do a chocolate potluck. Steve and I are making rice and bought a raspberry and chocolate mousse torte.

Cheri made chicken mole and Amy is making a salad with bittersweet chocolate. I think I got off easy.

Cheri got me a special treat. She, Nancy and Susan picked out fabric from the new Oz line to make a couple of Maggie bags.

I love Lazy Girl patterns. Joan Hawley does such a nice job of illustrating and explaining the steps in the patterns.

I also love her blog. It is fun to see the patterns made up in different fabrics. She is also on facebook, where she posts pictures of other people's lazy creations. Now that you have the links there is no reason why you can't be a "Lazy" too.

Provence Fantastic!

It is Mystery Weekend time again. What I love is how the supply list you get from Glads gives you great hints on how to pick your fabric.

This time I need 20 dark fabrics and 1 background fabric. The dark fabrics are supposed to have some variation of value or color. The background needs to contrast with the dark fabrics. There are additional instructions to avoid stripes or a strong directional fabric for the background.

I'm very excited about a collection of provence fabric I have in my stash. I got them on my trip to Missoula with Cheri last year. I got the reds, blues and all but one of the yellows at The Quilt Haus in Bismark. They were 50% off! There was a whole room of discount fabric.

Once I had the reds, yellows and blues. I thought it was missing green and a yellow. One of the next stops was ReproductionFabrics.com in Bozeman. They have a great website, but a visit to the shop is worth the road trip. The fabrics are grouped by the year the fabric pattern comes from. I found the greens and my background here. I also bought a yellow but ended up trading Cheri for a 5/8 yard cut off a yellow she found in the discount fabrics. It pays to shop discount and have generous friends.

It is so nice to pull fabric out of your stash and put them to use. Now all I need to do is cut up the quilt. I'll post my progress with that soon.

Not-So-Ugly and Not-So-Challenging

You know it has been a while since your last posting when your blog address disappears off your own recent web history. Sorry all!

I'll try to post at least every couple of days. Hopefully show more progress photos.

Last posting I talked about the ugly fabric challenge. The quilt actually turned out really nice. I love the mix of old timey victorianish fabrics with the leopard and bamboo leaf prints. A kind of classic modern quilt.

This quilt will be tied at my extended family reunion this summer. It will either be donated directly or auctioned off and the money given to charity. Pippin we will keep.

It feels good to give back and use my love of quilting to benefit others.