Come One, Come all! Bib Class in Clearwater!

I will be teaching a Quilted Toddler Bib class at Country Quilts and Bears in Clearwater, Florida on Saturday, July 10th. The class will run from 10 a.m. until 4:30. Many will leave earlier than 4:30, but if you want to make a day of it, you certainly can! We really have fun in our classes there!

The Quilted Toddler Bib is a fabulous blank canvas that allows you to practice and learn any and all of the following if you are interested:
* Basic piecing
* Machine embroidery placement / personalization
* “Whole cloth” stipple, meandering or grid quilting
* Hand or machine appliqué
* Bias binding creation and application



You leave this class with a smile and a finished project in hand. You also leave with nearly all the skills necessary to create the Quilted Toddler Jacket. My bibs can be bought on etsy - my shop is: http://www.quiltyindulgence.etsy.com/

Above is my darling Granddaughter, Lucy, wearing the small size bib on her first birthday. See how well she is covered? It is marvelous! Coverage isn't the only plus for this bib, either. It wears like iron. It can be washed over and over again and is as comfortable as an old quilt.

These patterns sew up to make great gifts and with the holiday season fast approaching, it is a wonderful addition to your repertoire! I can promise you that once you make one bib, you will have to make more! They are great stash busters, too. You can use up those orphan blocks you have laying around. You can make a bib or two from leftover charms or jelly rolls. You can use plain denim with the edges finished in bias binding and no quilting.... the options are limitless! Let your imagination soar!

Catching Up, Summer Fun, Current Classes and ....Twilight!

Hi everyone! It's so good to be back here! I have many things to show you so I won't delay. Above is my newest bag - I made it large so I can schlep it everywhere I go. It's made of nothing but clothesline and scraps! Sturdy as can be and not bad to look at, either. I love it. I made it using the Bali Bag pattern from Aunties Two. That pattern really motivated me and as I have said before, one thing led to another, and then I found the book, "It's a Wrap" by Susan Breier. This woman is amazingly creative and talented and her book prompted me to try my hand at bowls. My first attempt is below. The photo really doesn't do them justice, but you get the idea. These were made from a very ugly fabric panel and the purple, greens and golds really do look better in person than they do in this photo.

Below is the next creation I made using the cotton clothes line. It is amazing, to say the least. Again, I used a pattern from Aunties Two, the Bali Briefcase. For this one I used Bali Pops instead of scraps. One word. Wow. Those people at Hoffman Fabrics really know what they are doing. Look at how marvelous that bag looks.

Needless to say, I will be teaching "Clothesline Creation" classes at Country Quilts and Bears in July and November. The class samples I am working on are amazing and I am having such fun making them. I will show them off as soon as they are done! If you are interested in a taking a class, the first one is Tuesday, July 6th at 10 a.m. at Country Quilts and Bears in Clearwater, FL. Give the shop a call and sign up. We will have a ball, I promise!

That's the cover of the Bali Bag pattern.

On to my next discovery.... Ever hear of the Twilight Saga? Well, about two months ago my dear friend, Jennifer, handed me the "crack pipe," so to speak, in the form of the first Twilight book. Now, mind you, I am nearly 50 years old, have grown children and a college degree. How ridiculous. These books that were written for 'tweens, right? I should read them? My goodness, I don't think so..... but in the interest of being polite, one evening I opened the cover..... and I never put the book down. I am not kidding. I have now read and completed all four books, have seen both Twilight and New Moon on DVD, and I find myself daydreaming about those vampires and werewolves from Forks, WA. The worst part of the books? They ended!

I like to carry a drawstring backpack so naturally my new love for Edward inspired me to embroider the drawstring backpack that you see above. I made one for myself and am now selling them in my etsy store. Below is the shirt I embroidered to wear to see the movie Eclipse on June 30th, the night it opens. Oh, and my dear friend, Jennifer, who opened the door to this wonderful, magical world for me, she will be wearing the Team Jacob shirt I made for her to acknowledge her allegiances. Stop laughing. Seriously. If you are feeling a little humdrum, let me just say this: I will always remember the summer of 2010 as the summer I felt young and giggly again. It takes a lot to throw a nearly 50 year old woman back into the excitement of adolescence, but that wonderful Stephenie Meyer is doing just that for women all over the world. Well done! I'm a Twi-Mom Twi-Hard and proud of it!

Oh, and one more thing. I will keep this one very short. On January 6th of this year I decided that after 33 years of smoking I simply did not want it to be part of my life any longer. So I quit. It wasn't easy - but I did it and if anyone out there is feeling the time has come for them, and you want help, shoot me an email and I will tell you what I learned. There is no one out there that can't quit smoking - you just need to WANT to quit and then you will have the power TO quit. Also, there are a few tricks I discovered along the way to success, and I will happily share them. Big, healthy sigh of fresh air. There.

The Importance of Keeping up with Current Events

Well, this was certainly a few weeks full of lessons for me. As I had mentioned, I will be teaching a Quilted Toddler Jacket class in a few weeks at Country Quilts and Bears. I have been a busy beaver sewing up samples for the shop that illustrate the many methods that one could use to create this jacket. I wanted to show a variety hoping to encourage quilters to sign up and take my class. I had made a bunch of jackets but I gave them all to my beautiful granddaughter like any good Grandma would, so my "jacket stash" was depleted. They were her size, after all. So, in my infinite wisdom I decided that I needed to make a jacket that was suitable for a boy, and another one for a girl. Hmmmmmm, what do little boys like? BASEBALL! Not thinking much farther than that, I decided almost immediately on making a Boston Red Sox jacket because their socks are just so darn cute (and I already had an outline of socks from a prior project) and what a wonderful way to show off my applique skills, right? WRONG!

I worked on this Sox jacket hours and hours before my husband noticed and says in the sweetest voice, "Honey, do you really think that a quilt shop in Tampa Bay is going to want to put a Red Sox jacket on display in their shop? Especially since there is a very good chance that Tampa Bay will actually be playing the Red Sox in the playoffs?" WHO KNEW??? Let's think about those odds for a few moments... I could have died. Cut ahead one week, and guess who's playing who in the playoffs? Yep, you guessed it. It's the Tampa Bay Rays vs. Boston Red Sox.

This past Friday I go marching into Country Quilts and Bears with my Boston Red Sox jacket in my tote bag and showed it to the wonderful owner, Marilyn. Oh, the look on her face. It was priceless. "Oh, my," she says. You see, as luck would have it, her husband and partner in the shop, John, is a die hard Rays fan and understandably this just isn't going to work. So home I go, humbled and laughing, with teal and yellow fabric under my arm, because after all, where do I live? TAMPA BAY! I really must start reading something other than quilting magazines.

So long story longer, here is the Tampa Bay Rays Quilted Toddler Jacket that is now prominently displayed on the counter in the quilt shop in Tampa Bay.....

“Tell us about your favorite Quilt Shop...”

I lived in western New York, in a very rural area, all my life. Nearly four years ago my husband and I very happily moved from there to sunny Clearwater, Florida. There was a great little shop in Fredonia, New York, called Mauzy’s that sold vacuums, sewing machines, quilting supplies and fabric. I got my beloved Janome from there, as well as a vacuum or two through the years. The owner of the shop was a magnificent quilter and sewer and also a brilliant teacher. Sadly, since I moved, that store has closed. One of the things I remember most about going to Mauzy’s was that never, ever, did I walk through the door that I wasn’t greeted with a warm "hello". It was like walking into your best friend’s kitchen. Always a warm welcome.

When I arrived in Clearwater, the search began for a replacement. I found this big, shinny quilt shop and thought I had found it. In fact, one day I walked in the door and nearly rubbed shoulders with Kaffe Fassett as he was walking out (he had just given a class there). I nearly gasped. I thought I had stumbled into the Bloomingdales of quilt shops! I decided I needed to introduce myself and start to create that wonderful relationship I was missing. I tried to chat a bit with the ladies that worked there, on several occasions, to explain that I had just moved to the area, etc., and honestly, they were simply not interested. You were never greeted when you arrived. Nothing. I was so sad. I was sure that my days of going to the quilt shop and feeling all warm and fuzzy were over.

Until one day my uncle came by and told me about this cute little shop called “Country Quilts and Bears”. Right here in the middle of Clearwater sits a log cabin and it’s a quilt shop! I couldn’t wait until Saturday! It finally came, and I shot right over there. I opened the door to enter the shop, and the first thing I heard was a cheery “hello”. The couple, John and Marilyn, that own the shop are so friendly, as are their employees. From the first time I walked through the door I knew I had found my new quilting home. Marilyn is an unbelievable buyer – the selection is so well rounded and I have NEVER not been able to find what I need there. I love chatting with everyone at the shop – seeing what they are sewing and talking about what I am sewing. They even listen politely when I drone on and on about my Granddaughter! Most importantly, every time I walk through the door, I feel like I just entered my friend’s kitchen. To me, that is the essence of a good quilt shop.