Another fun weekend...

Today, I head over to MM's(as she is affectionately referred to) house for a weekend of quilting/crafting and fellowship. We have been getting together for decades for a weekend of crafting, renewal and friendship. The members in the group have changed somewhat due to deaths and relocations but it is the same core members that have brought us together through the years. It is a great time to get together, encourage one another, support one another through hard times and seeing the growth we have made in our crafting expertise. I am so excited to be a part of this group and to share my talents with them and to gain fresh insight also.

I spent most of yesterday packing for this weekend. Truth be told I spent most of the day looking for the legs that go on my extension table. These legs.

I looked in every drawer, every basket, every tin, every nook and cranny searching for these things. I had given up and texted Tina to see if I could borrow her legs from her extension table. Unfortunately, hers were not the same as mine so I borrowed her complete extension table, which also did not work with my machine. I was just about ready to give up again when I remembered that I had moved a set of Rubbermaid drawers into another room, so I went digging through all of those drawers. Finally, I found them in a plastic baggie, which I figured would be the case, in about the 5th drawer down. I am never going to lose those babies again.
Too much drama and work for 6 little peg like legs.
In the meantime this is what my studio looed like while trying to pack up enough of the right supplies for the weekend.

The large tote on the right is not going with me, it is my quilted items for the craft sale in December, the smaller tote holds all my fabrics and supplies. The plastic garbage bag in front are t-shirts that I am taking to do the prep work of fusing interfacing to and cutting out the logos for the last t-shirt quilt of the year, maybe. If I do anymore this year it will be for family.

Here are 2 photos of the last quilt I quilted. It is a t-shirt/sweatshirt quilt done with all Steeler's shirts. The background fabric was a mottled black and she used gold stripes occasionally to fill in some of the sashing areas. It was a very nice t-shirt style quilt. I used the "cathedral windows" motif that is on their helmet as the motif for the borders.

The customer was very pleased with this and so was I. I am going to remember that idea if I have another Steeler's quilt to do in the future.

Well, I need to go get my stuff packed into the car so I can get over to MM's after lunch.

Have a great weekend and remember to enjoy the beautiful fall days. It has been beautiful here. The trees are glorious shades of red, orange, gold and greens. Spectacular. I love fall.

Short post...

I am sorry that there was no post yesterday. I had appointments yesterday for my 6 week scans and dr. appt. after to review the scans. It was the shortest day down there so far. I did not expect to get home before 6PM and I made it home just after 3 PM and I stopped at Joann's in Cranberry to see if they had any cotton/bamboo fabric that we use to dye. The results of the scans were good. All clear, nothing to worry about. I have to go back on Tuesday for my treatment but between now and then I am going on another quilting weekend. Margaret Mary is hosting this at her house this time and I am so excited to get to play while surrounded by good friends. Today I have to pack up my projects and clothes so that I am ready tomorrow.

I will have lots of fun photos to share with you come Wednesday. I will be absent Monday and Tuesday. I will try to post some photos tomorrow morning before I head on out. Have a great day.

Chautauqua show photos

As promised here are photos of the Chautauqua Show. Did you notice that I checked the spelling for today's post. I had been spelling Chautauqua wrong all last week.

Here goes. We started off the day witnessing a rainbow. What a nice sign from heaven that we would have a nice day, and it was.

We stopped at Erie to have breakfast where I was going to get a picture of the group together but by that time I forgot all about photo ops. On to the show pictures.

This room was divided up into smaller themed displays. Check out the pink valance topper that unified all of the displays into one larger display.

Who invited the ants to the picnic? This quilt reminds me of one that I made years ago that had ants carrying away the food. Cute.

Who let the fox in the hen house? Tina has made this quilt before, and she even has another one of the fox blocks done to make another one. Let's see it Tina. Bring it on.

Are you crazy enough to make a miniture quilt like this one? The hexagons are only 1/4". Tiny. This was beautifully framed under glass.

This is a gorgeous floral applique wall hanging and quilted beautifully.

Lovely kimono quilt.

The oriental booth. Tea is served.

This is what the men do that get drug along to a quilt show. Male bonding.

Super effective thread painting. I want to do this someday.

The different birds in this quilt are uber cute.

This quilt was beautifully quilted. I studied it for a good long while.

I love the dog in this landscape. He belongs there.

Such a pretty tree on this pieced background.

That is it for photos. I hope you have a wonderful day and remember to enjoy the fall days. It will soon be snowing and this year I am looking forward to that as I have plans to do some snow dyeing. I did not take any photos at the vendors booths but we saw some beautiful snow/ice dyed fabrics at one booth and they were selling for $28-$30+ a yard depending on type of fabric was used. So until the snow flies enjoy the fall season.

A weekend of fun...

Today I will share photos of the quilt show that the IQ Quilter's hosted on Saturday. You know that I have been talking about this heavily for the last week. So without much further ado, here are some photos of our day.

Tina sitting down for a few seconds at our demonstration table enjoying a little down time.

We hung our "quilt as desired challenges" in this area also and the row below are items that we created using the blocks that were made using the techniques we were demonstrating.

Some of my quilts.

Tina's Gatehouse Quilt. It received best of show at Jamestown Fair.

Kelly did a great job along with many other's hands creating a beautiful If the Shoe Fits display on the stage.

Mary and Edith ready to greet and welcome the public and of course take their money.

Some cute wallhangings over by the Kid's Corner.

Our honored member, Kelly. She was enjoying a lull in the visitors to sit down for a minute and relax, and what do we do to relax but look at a quilting magazine.

Kelly's Creations Corner.

Tina being silly after a very long and busy day and Patty enjoying the moment too.

We follow this long and exhausting day with dinner out as a group. I think this might have been the largest group we have had in a long time.
But to top it off, God did not want our man made efforts to out shine His own and He gave us the most gorgeous of sunsets to enjoy on the way home. I am sorry that the colors in the photo don't do it justice.

Saturday was a great success and we had a wonderful time. I hope that we will see you next year at the show. Have a wonderful day. Tomorrow I will share more about our day at Chataqua and the quilt show there.

Set up day for the quilt show...

Today is the set up day for our quilt show which is tomorrow. Last evening, I went over to the grange to help set up the quilt racks. We were done in about an hour. It makes today go easier and faster with all the prep work done. Today we will be hanging all the quilts that come in. This is a full day and exhaution usually sets in before we are completely done but many hands make light work so it is all good. The fellowship that we have during these hours is awesome too. We don't get to see each other as often as we would like and this brings us all together for a short while to love and support each other.

Tomorrow will be the big day though. We have all the beautiful quilts to admire, friends to catch up with that come to the show every year, demonstrations of techniques that we have been working on over the past year and great food that is provided by the ladies of the grange. (We could smell vegetable soup cooking last night when we were setting up. Oh, yummy.) The pies are always wonderful too. Oh and of course we have our wonderful country store upstairs where the members of the group can sell their creations that they have made. We also have quilt store venders down stairs set up their wares for sale also. It is such a full and fun day all around.

Sunday, I am headed off to Chataqua, New York, with Tina, her mom and aunt and some other friends to partake of another quilt show. This weekend is full of fun quilty escapades. I will have lots of fun things to share with you come Monday and hopefully lots of wonderful photos of quilts and projects. This kicks off October which will be a very busy month for me. I was checking out my calendar schedule for Oct. and I have 15 days out of the 31 that are filled, plus I am taking another online fabric dyeing class, so that will require quite a bit of time and energy.

So now I am off to get myself ready for working hard. Have a great day and remember to do something kind for someone else.

If the Shoe Fits...

If the Shoe Fits is the theme for our quilt show this weekend. You might remember back a while when I quilted and posted about the flip-flop quilt that is our raffle quilt. The stage will hold the quilt and will be decorated as a shoe store or perhaps as a woman's closet/dressing room. We start set up tonight of the frames that the quilts will hang on and then tomorrow is the real work of hanging all the quilts entered into the show. It takes all day to set up but we have mastered tearing everything down to 1 hour. The whole process is a lot of work but it is so much more fun than the work put into it. I get giddy just thinking about going to a quilt show. I get so inspired by all the beautiful quilts.

I don't have any quilts to share with you today but I do have my shoes that I altered for the show. If the Shoe Fits theme made me remember this idea that I saw on newdressaday.com several years ago. I am sorry that I can't seem to get the link to link. Anyways, they have stuck in my mind. So here is my version of Christian Louboutin's Googly Eye shoes.

His version had multiple sizes of eyes all over open toed black heels. I found a pair of blackish/brown heels at a yard sale this summer for 50 cents. They were my size so I picked them up with a few other pairs of sandals but I had this in mind for these babies. I used size 7 mm eyes for the majority of the shoe and filled in with 5 mm ones along the edge where the others were too big. I used E6000 adhesive. Use in a well ventilated area. I left the heel as it was.

They make a really cool sound when you walk and all the little eye balls wiggle. I am excited to wear them but not on Saturday. They will be on display.

When I was working on this pair I could have done 2 rows around the bottom and just left them at that. They were so elegant looking that I was really tempted to quit there. So I might have to find me another pair of shoes to try that out on. They almost looked like lace on the bottom edge.

By the way, the original pair had a hefty price tag of $1595.00 Yes sirree, I made my pair for less than $10.00 including the shoes themselves.

So what is on your feet and what kind of statement are they saying about you? I think my shoes say "Be happy and don't take yourself too seriously."

I hope you have a wonderful day and remember to lighten up a little and enjoy life as it is given to you.

Done...

At 9:13 PM last evening I put the last stitch in this quilt that I have named "Filling Negative Spaces".

It took me 7 days to complete this quilt from start to finish but I did not work on it at all on Sunday, so 6 work days.

It has a double meaning. First of all the obvious, filling the negative or background spaces of the quilt with beautiful designs. Practicing and perfecting them, making them my own by putting my signature style on them.

Here is the top edge and some of the quilting in the block area showing too. I did a peacock type feather in the square. The center pieced section is were the pops of color and pattern come in to play in this quilt. The focal point of the quilt.

In the bottom panel, which is all background fabric, I broke up the area with some quilted blocks that got there own motifs quilted into them. This is the largest box.

Secondly, I have been thinking about what fills up the negative spaces in our lives. What do we fill our lives with? Are the things we are busy doing adding to our lives in a beautiful and orderly manner or do they lead to chaos? As I look at this quilt, if I focused solely on some of the background areas they could seem unruly and messy I might think that the quilt as a whole is a mess, but when I regard the quilt in its entirety I see the beauty that would not be there without all the components. The dense busy quilted areas make the other areas pop and stand out. This is the same as our daily lives, the things that we are doing might seem like so much busy work and repetitive but these are the things that make the special moments wonderfully beautiful. Why is it even important to create beauty in such a world that is full of tradegy and ugliness? We do it to create a place of refuge and safety. Yes it all could be taken away in a flash but that doesn't mean we give up trying to do all we can to make this a better place in which to live while we are here. We can make beauty out of what is presented to us.

What do you think? I took what I had and made something of beauty. It took me way out of my normal comfort zone. I learned a lot. How we choose to fill the backgrounds (our lives) will be different for everyone but overall it tells our story. We have a story worth telling. Take some time to think about what story the activities in your life are telling. If you need to delete some then do so, if you need to add certain ones that reflect better the story you are trying to tell then do that. If you are frazzled by too many things then edit down to what is the most important to enhance your story. We all hope for the happy ever after ending but sometimes we forget that it is what we do or don't do today that gives us that ending to our story. Our families and friends are the beautiful centerpieces of our lives and its the background fills that bind us together and ground us.

Have a wonderful day. Don't neglect the story of your life that your actions are telling and don't let the activities tell a story that you don't want told.