Happy Independence Day!

I hope you are enjoying the day off with family and friends. I'm off work until July 16! Going to spend time with family (hi Mom!) and get some things done around the house.

Buying a new ironing board today spurred a sewing room cleaning spree. I had a couple of neat second hand store finds that weren't getting seen, so I tidied up a couple of areas in order to display them. I got this cute green wooden wagon and staged it with some fat quarter bundles and some of my pincushion collection.

I also found "Grandpa's Tool Chest" that turns out to be the perfect storage space for some quilt books and a little fabric.

I hope you are having a great day, however it is being spent!

Cover up

I made an ironing board cover this weekend using a fun decorator weight Moda print.   Do you recognize it?  It's from the MoMo Wonderland collection.

I used this Moda Bake Shop tutorial for instructions, but I did not sandwich and quilt this, it's just one layer of the decorator weight fabric.

My "board" (hey du-u-u-de, do I sound like a surfer?) gets a lot of use and I like using lots of steam in my iron, so I imagine in a few hours, this will look as icky as the one I have on it now, so I will save this to take to my quilt retreat.   We leave one week from tomorrow and this will look great on my ironing board!

Whoooo's surprised?

Well that would be me! A dear friend pulled off a huge surprise - she asked 2 Etsy sellers to make me custom pins for my birthday. She must have directed them to my blog, because they duplicated my Stashmaster logo to a "T"

I had to get a new pincushion (also from Etsy) to display all these cute owl pins and in fact, think I need to get another because they don't all fit!

I love how the owls even have the same expressions as the ones on my blog - the baby owls have their eyes closed. And Pinks and Needles even printed my blog banner on the card that my pins arrived on. Cute, cute, cute!

Thanks to my awesome, super sweet and thougtful friend for an amazing, one-of-a-kind surprise gift.

You what?!

I don't recall the context of our conversation, but last weekend my 10 year old DD told me she "hates fabric." Now truly, I could not possibly have spawned such a creature! This is the girl that loves to help me organize my fabric and wants every quilt I make? Say it isn't so!

Fast forward to Tuesday - I was laying out fabrics that I'm thinking about using for an upcoming class quilt, Route 44 (Nicole blogged about it a couple of days ago). DD came into my sewing room and I ask what she thinks of the fabrics on the right hand side that I am considering for the accent color to go with these vintage Amy Butler fabrics. She goes on to describe in thoughtful detail why she thinks the one on the bottom (my pick - a Kaffe Fassett shot cotton that does not show it's true beauty in this photo) was the best choice and what was wrong with the other 3 choices.

And folks, she was RIGHT ON. So unbelieveably insightful for a 10 year old that "hates" fabric! I believe I have a future quilter with a terrific eye for color on my hands!

Oh my!

Good heavens - it's been over 2 weeks since I updated my blog.   Is anyone still stopping by?  I guess life just got away from me.  The boys had their first middle school concert and it was really fun to hear how good all the bands and orchestras sound.  Owen had a clarinet solo and I was impressed, as always, by his talent.  The band teacher has asked him to learn the bass clarinet in addition to his regular clarinet, so he must see potential in Owen too.   Eric plays the viola and is also very talented, but I wasn't able to get a photo of him - sorry E!

Tis the season for a million errands - I finally had a free weekend and we took the kids to see Santa, baked cookies, finished most of the shopping and decorated.  We bought a new refrigerator that will be delivered on Wednesday, so we won't put the main tree up until that happens or it will be in the way of the delivery men.

Here are the rest of our holiday decorations.  This little white fiber optic tree is so pretty, I just love it decorated simply with colored balls.  That tree skirt underneath?  My very first "quilting" project, before I knew a lick about quilting.   Yes, it is satin, and yes, I used satin on the back too.   Please, do not turn this puppy over - I beg of you!

My Opening Day quilt using Roman Holiday fabrics is newly displayed in the living room because it is the closest thing I have to a Christmas quilt.  I hope by the time next year rolls around, I will have completed more quilts that I can display during the holidays.

And this is my other Christmas vignette - you can see another early quilting effort on the top of this buffet - a Christmas tablerunner with prairie points along the edge.  I have a Tiny Christmas Annie at the base of the feather tree to the left, and my collection of Ballard Baines Christmas teddies on the opposite side.   A new find this year - the adorable snowman cookie jar that Lily found.   She must have been channelling Thelma and her wonderful cookie jar collection.

I've been working on cutting out a new Christmas quilt -  Miss Rosie's Toulouse, made of the fabulous Maison de Noel line from 3 Sisters for Moda.   Oh how I wish I had been a fabric hoarder back when these fabrics came out - I would have bought gobs more of this wonderful stuff!

Top o' the mornin' to ya!

Last weekend a customer at the quilt shop asked if we had any St. Patrick's Day fabric.  Sadly, we do not, but it reminded me that I had stashed away some adorable Alexander Henry fabric and it was high time to put my fabric to good use.

Miraculously - given the current disastrous state of my sewing room - I was able to find this fabric with the adorable leprechauns.  This is vintage Alexander Henry, dated 2002 - no one does novelty prints like they do!  The pattern is Toast Points from the Atkinson Designs book, Let's Do Lunch.  A very fast and easy tablerunner.  Now we're all set at my house for the Wearin' of the Green.

With a chick chick here...

I haven't done any embroidery for years and years, but when I saw these Buttermilk Basin Chickens thru the Year patterns, I just had to have them.  I will be piecing these stitcheries into a quilt in some manner.  I'm waiting on the teeny black buttons I ordered to use for the chicken eyes, but here is my first stitched block!

Happy Mother's Day!

What better way to spend the eve of Mother's Day than in front of her new Hello Kitty machine, teaching my daughter how to sew! Here she is in deep concentration.

She picked out yellows and pinks from the Strawberry Lemonade collection and she's going to put together a simple 9-patch, but for now, I'm just having her get used to the feel of the machine and practice on the leftover pieces to practice sewing a straight line.

And here is the result - her first seam!

Here's hoping all the Moms and Grandmoms out there reading this find a special way to spend Mother's Day with your loved ones. Happy Mother's Day, one and all.

Valentine's Day

I'm sorely lacking in holiday decorations except for the big holidays - Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween.  I have this perfect buffet table for decorating, so I hope to finish some seasonal runners this year to decorate for the other holidays.  Here is the Charming Hearts tablerunner I made last year, but after seeing Sharon's on her blog, I think I may want to take the hearts apart and put them side by side rather than end to end.  My original plan was to add borders, but it fits the table now, so I think I'll just bind it this size and call it good.

You can also see my adorable new Puppy Love Annie, now I need a cute little pink feather tree with some Valentine ornaments to keep Annie company.

The Gang's All Here!

I received 2 more Tiny Annies that I ordered from Nicole to sit with their sisters on my FQ shelf. Aren't they all freaking adorable? Now that the shelf is full, does it mean I have to stop buying Annies? I hope not, since I just asked Nicole to make me one for Valentine's Day!

A happy girl!

I got my DD's Michael Miller Kids' Toile quilt back from the quilter on Thursday, and gave it to her when I got home from work at the quilt shop that evening.  The quilt gets dragged everywhere in the house with her.  I'm glad she loves it so much!  The quilter used a fun Circle Lord template called Square Dance, although it's hard to see from my photo.  It's concentric off-beat squares and an alternating star.  I thought it might be too geometric with the quilt pattern, but it looks really great and DD gives it 2 thumbs up, and that's what matters!

Only 2 more sleeps until I leave for my quilt retreat!!!!