10 days

YES....10 more sleeps until I meet up with Robin and Michelle and we take our yearly trek to Indiana where we will meet up with a dozen other internet friends for 4 full days of laughing, sewing, shopping and eating. Robin is from NY and Michelle is from Delaware so we meet in the middle at my house in NJ and we take the 13 hour drive...which is totally worth it.

I spent last week while I was on spring break from school "kitting" up some projects to take with me.

Now, you don't have to kit them up but it sure gives you a lot more time to sew if you do!

have 2 Christmas projects that I'd like to start with...This "At Home for the Holidays" by Heather Mulder Peterson and "Rectangle Reverie" which was in a Quilts and More magazine back in October.

Recently this Moda Bakeshop pattern called Chain of Faith caught Michelle's eye so one of those dreaded "lookie" emails went out to Robin and I and before you know it I had it kitted up from my stash and in a ziploc bag all ready to take to retreat too.

I have to admit that these are only 4 of the maybe 7 projects I will probably take with me and these are only the "fabric" kits. I kitted up tablerunners from stash woolfelt for the girls as well as pincushion kits and table runners.

If you've never been to a quilting retreat with a dozen or more women, you MUST try and find one and go. Angela, who organizes ours is the hostess extroadinaire.... The food's not fancy and the accomodations are not 5 star, we actually stay at a christian campground...but the friendships and memories are 5 star!!!

As the time draws closer and closer i get more and more anxious to be leaving on that never ending drive.....I wouldn't miss this adventure for the world......and this year, I am doing it in May and again in November!

Thank You Martha

I just wanted to thank Martha Stewart and my daughter Sarah for the cupcake recipe you see here. YES...hi hat cupcakes were served at my Easter Saturday dinner and some people didn't have 1 or 2...no, someone I think even had 3!!!!!!!!

That chocolate on top is hot melted Hersheys squares with the cold buttercream frosting dipped in and then immediately refridgerated. Talk about heaven!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Feel free to head on over to Martha http://www.marthastewart.com/337710/hi-hat-cupcakes and try some and you too can thank Martha for a few extra pounds :) Tell her Sarah sent you!

Peggy

Happy Easter Weekend

Happy Easter Weekend everyone!!!! What do you have planned? Dyeing easter eggs? Family over to celebrate?

We are celebrating today with my sister and her husband. Tomorrow we are driving to Maryland to my oldest daughter's house and then going to the Yankees/Orioles game :) I know that's a strange thing to do but when you live with Yankee fans you go where they are playing....and since they won't be back in Baltimore at all we're celebrating Easter there....

Hope everyone has a happy day whatever you are doing.

Peggy

FINALLY!!!

I am soooooo happy to report that I am FINALLY done with this quilt. Now, don't get me wrong, I love how it turned out and I totally enjoyed working on each and every embroidery block but seriously, I started this in July of 2009!

It was a 12 month Block of the Month that I did with a couple of online friends....it took me 21 months!!!

Below is a closeup of the first block we did....

I have the backing fabric and even made the binding already!!! I have to get a little money together so I can send it out for quilting, then I can cross it off my UFO List once and for all!!!

Peggy

Another Giveaway

Lookie Lookie..........another giveaway: http://www.littlebluebell.com/2011/04/ds-quilts-collection-giveaway.html?showComment=1303413833579#c5346835141922235949

Treasures and Tidbits

Don't go lookin at this blog http://www.jaybirdquilts.com/ . You will fall in love with the fabric and the pattern and it's mine, all mine!!!!

Julie, how about I just send you my address now?

Peggy

I have had this magazine open to this page since at least November or December. I absolutely LOVE the "Bliss" fabric line and since I have some fat quarters I decided to start looking around for the border dots and also the first border. NOW, I do have a problem with the grey separator strips as I don't think the grey "goes" so I'm thinking a pink??? I will probably make the blocks up and then decide what color to use instead of the grey. Has anyone else done this project?

Strings

This is what I did tonight because I just couldn't decide on a project to start.......

Have you been following out there in blogland the talk about the Denyse Schmidt fabric that is supposed to be in Joanns Fabrics starting tomorrow? Seems a lot of the people out there already have some. I was in a Joanns tonight after dinner looking for a template and asked the manager of the store if they were getting any and I got the "blank" stare. I thought she'd have looked in the computer but that wasn't offered. I wasn't sure I'd buy any but I wanted to see what the line looked like and how it felt.

What's the opinion of anyone that bought it? We don't have a local Joanns so I won't be rushing out to get it anytime soon, just curious.

Peggy

Saturday Goings On

Rain, Rain, Go Away!!! Does it seem like it NEVER stops raining? I am sick to death of rain!!!!

Ok, got that outta my system so now to get onto the Saturday goings on.............

Set up the new wireless printer, made a traveling ironing surface for retreat (27 days!!!), did some laundry, and cut and ironed some scraps to make string blocks.....so while I had the fabric out, I did just that, made 7 string blocks! It was fun too to walk down memory lane and point out which fabrics went with what projects I've done this year. I did notice I did a lot of polka dot and bright stuff this year but it's what I was into....

In the picture, the top 7 are today's and the others are sadly from a year ago :) I've been so bad at keeping up but the way I look at it, there will always be scraps so what's the rush to empty this bin out!

My friend Angela is participating in the Relay for Life in Indiana. She and her parents are all survivors and is looking to reach a $250 goal in donations. Please stop over to her blog http://thecountrycellar.blogspot.com/ and click and make a donation to fight this terrible disease.

I have lost friends, co-workers and my 26 year old niece to this terrible disease so anything you can do will help. If you go straight from Angela's blog she gets the credit!

Thank you in advance for anything you do....

Peggy

Conni

Hey Conni........

You came the closest of the 3 guesses with 200!

I will email you privately.

Thank you girls for your guesses....

Peggy

Guess

Guess how many pinwheels I get from that 1 gallon ziploc bag of triangulations and I'll send you a homemade woolfelt pincushion. I'm starting to assemble now (4:00 est) I will take guesses up to

8PM Monday April 11th!

Peggy

Sunday Afternoon

Do you remember this pinwheel project? It's called Chocolate and Cream but I'm trying to clean out all my older Thimbleberries fabrics and make room in my cabinets so my Chocolate and Cream is going to be Scrappy and Cream.

I need 314 assorted pinwheels!!! That's a lotta pinwheels but it will also use up a ton of my stash...gotta love using up the stash.

I worked on this project a little bit in January I think, or it could have been February but then I had other projects that needed to be done.

I stopped at 126 blocks but then this morning I decided that I needed to do some more on it because I don't have a fabric color picked out for the setting fabric. The designer used brown obviously but I'm thinking I might like red......after all, it is my favorite color!

So, here are the 126 pinwheels all lined up..... and here's today's pile of triangulations waiting to be ripped and put with the others so I can figure out how many more I need to sew up and decide what color fabric would go the best with mine. Off to rip, rip, rip.....

Pinwheel Quilts

Have you noticed that everywhere you look there are pinwheel quilts in all different fabrics, sizes and colorway? I have 2 pinwheel projects in the works right now...one I'm using Thimbleberries with a neutral and the other is leftover Hunky Dory fabrics with a variety of wow's. I can't seem to get enough of them. A little while ago I was blog hopping and looking at things on Pinterest and came across this pinwheel quilt thrown over a turquoise chair. I need a chair that color !!!!!

I wish I could remember who put the picture out there but thank you whoever you are! Your quilt is gorgeous!

Peggy

Bliss

What do you do when you have 2 jelly rolls and some yardage of Bliss???

We will blame Michelle for the "lookie see" email on this project!!!!

What was it, Wednesday of last week Michelle when you sent us the link to the Moda Bake Shop blog with this ---->http://www.modabakeshop.com/2011/03/chain-of-faith.html ?

When I saw the project I thought to myself that I knew where I had a jelly roll of "Red White and Bold" was but I knew I didn't have 2.....so I went in search of another. Well, that wasn't to be so I figured I'd look around in bins of "projects" and lo and behold I had a ziploc baggie with an American Patchwork and Quilting magazine and some yardage of Bliss with 2 jelly rolls. I was going to make the flying dutchman project that Bliss designers Camille Roskelly designed but when this Chain of Faith came along I decided I liked this project better so.......

All I had to order was yardage for the border since what I had would come up short. Well, that came today so I'm good to go on this one!!!

I will however, wait for retreat in May and work on it then with Robin and Michelle....

I don't have anything to show for this weekend except a clean garage....oh yeah, my car actually fits in now, and both sewing rooms are back in order. Can't complain about that!!!

Lookie What I Found

Yes, I did a little cleaning up and purging in my sewing room and this gorgeous fat quarter bundle was in with some kits along with a pattern and yardage! I actually still had the receipt with everything and believe it or not, I bought this fabric on 5/26/2010!!! It's almost a YEAR!!!!

Ugh......I need to stop buying and just use what I have!

The pattern is called "Around the Corner" by Heather Mulder Peterson and the fabric is also hers called "At Home for the Holidays" . I washed every single piece tonight because of all the red. I was so afraid I'd get the quilt assembled and wash it and find red everywhere.....

This quilt will be one of the projects I take with me in May when I go to Indiana for a quilt retreat.

(more about that when the time gets closer)

Another Friday Finish

I have had this mini assembled for at least a week but have had trouble staying awake at night to actually finish it. Since I was home today I did the buttonhole stitching on it and got it ready to mail to my mother. I'm doing these and mailing them monthly but with May being so busy I decided that I better finish June early and mail them together.

A Friday Finish

I got my scrappy "Red Pepper" quilt back in the mail on Wednesday so nothing else got done in the sewing room today until I got the binding on and clipped down so I could see how I like my binding choice.

This quilt already had over 1000 squares in it and I think I didn't use any fabric more than 3 times so my binding choices were endless! In the end, the black with white dot won out. I am happy that I chose that particular fabric since it really adds "something" to it.

Now, do you girls out there use these clips to hold your binding down while you sew? I'm having some trouble finding them here in NJ....I'm tempted to just go to the grocery store and buy some in the hair care department.