More Poppies

I finished the orange version of my Georgetown Poppies just in time to send it to Roswell, New Mexico, so that they could have it on hand for the guild meeting. I'll be going there in February and we'll make the poppies in a workshop. Quilting this on my George machine was a snap!

The first version was shades of red.

Got The Butter Out, or A Tale of Accidental Dye Discharge

Krissy always has her camera ready. She snapped this one while I was standing in the parking lot of the Crab Trap. Phyllis loaned me her handy travel-sized spot remover so that I could try to get the butter out of my T-shirt. The sauteed scallops were very good, but very buttery and I must have been hungry and sloppy. The spot remover didn't work, so I tried a 24-hour soak with another spot remover when we got to the condo. Still no luck. When we got back from Florida, I tried an extra-strength stain remover that I had at home. TA-DA! Got the butter out, but got some of the dye out, too. This is why the label says, "always test in an inconspicuous area before treating garment."

Doodle-y Two-fers

I really enjoy this technique. Over the last few years I've made several of these doodle-y quilts. I have a sketchbook of swirly doodles that I drew with quilting lines in mind, but ended up using the designs for fabric shapes instead. It's so much fun to cut out the shapes and then separate them onto two backgrounds to get the positive and negative effects. This photo is of two little quilts, about 9" x 12" each, sitting side-by-side on the interfacing and backing so that I can quilt them both at the same time.

Did I mention that I love my APQS George? It's doodle-tastic!

S'More Retreat at Hummingbird Music Camp

Every year the S'More Quilting Retreat takes place in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. We had a wonderful time there this year--good food, perfect weather, and fun people! The class this year was the Georgetown Poppies project, one of my fused flower patterns. I met so many nice people and I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.

Texas Chainsaw MANIAC

Don't you love the sound of a chainsaw on a Sunday morning? Our neighbors needed to have a huge limb removed and Mike a/k/a "Have Chainsaw, Will Travel" was eager to take care of the problem. Given his history, I was a little concerned about the combination of chainsaw + extension ladder + rope, but all's well that ends well.

A Fabulous Week At QSDS!

Carol Soderlund (pictured above) taught a workshop that was everything I'd hoped for and more, and I'm pretty sure everyone in the class felt the same way. When was the last time you spent seven days in a room with nineteen women and never heard a single complaint? Okay, you can't count heating or air conditioning issues.

The days at QSDS flew by while we dyed 1,029 different swatches of cotton, plus a variety of larger pieces using techniques we learned in the class. Here are all of us next to our sample boards.

Everybody sing along:

Ninety-nine buckets of dye to be mixed,

Ninety-nine buckets of dye,

Take one down, stir it around,

Ninety-eight buckets of dye to be mixed.

No cats or sneezing allowed!

We could hardly wait to start assembling The Book, and, incredibly, by the end of the third day, all 1,029 colors had been dyed, cut, labeled and distributed among ourselves, ready for taping into our huge reference books. Here, Carol demonstrates the proper taping procedure with some Magic Pointer Finger action.

Ooooohhh, aaahhhh!

I'm so glad that taking this class was my New Year's Resolution. It was lots more fun than losing 40 pounds!