Something About Nothing

I received a little surprise in the mail this past weekend. . . . . .the latest issue of Quilting Arts Gifts   which contains all kinds of yummy patterns for holiday Gifts. My friend Candy's pattern made the cover! Wahoo Candy! There are a lot of creative items to make in this issue.  I am always excited to see the great ideas people come up with!  And this time I was very excited to see that one of  my Gift Tags made it into the Gift Tag Challenge pages. . . (blue snowflake by the arrow!) . . .and my Ghostly Trio Banner pattern was publish! Wahoo! There is also a bonus online pattern for a Jack'o lantern variation, and another bonus of holiday cookie recipes that anyone can download here . This coming in the mail reminds me that there are only about 3 1/2 months until Christmas!   Gah!  I should start my Christmas making!   Have you already started? You haven't?  Well maybe a copy of Quilting Arts Gifts wi...

Tiny Prints is having an awesome one day sale on business cards - 50% off!  You don't have a business? This deal is still for you. They are great for moms and dads (i.e. mommy cards or contact cards), too. No one does business or contact cards better than Tiny Prints. They have tons of templates and you can completely customize them.  And for one day only, they are half off. Creating custom business cards is easy: 1.  Visit their  Deal of the Day Page .  Click through to the business cards. Make sure to do so before 7:30 AM PT Friday August 30 to allow yourself time to finish your order by 8:00 AM PT. 2.  Choose from hundreds of designs.  Pick the one that best fits your personality. 3.  Customize the cards.  Pick your own fonts, add pictures to some designs, choose your favorite colors, and play with the design. Make it scream "you." 4.  Double check your design.  Make sure it looks like you want it to. 5.  Checkout.  Whe...

The Utah Quilt Guild hosted a charity sewing event recently.   Floyd & Lizzie's , creators of the Tin Lizzie , allowed us to use the long arm machines in their shop.    I decided to stitch squares on this plaid quilt.  I had a lot of fun using the Tin Lizzie.   I used the self regulating stitch so all the stitches looked beautiful.  It is amazing how quickly I could move through but I suppose next time I do a charity quilt I shouldn't worry about quilting it so densely!  Oops.

Wall decoration at the Santa Barbara Courthouse.

When I blogged about my love of back-to-school supplies my friend Rayna mentioned that she likes to use gel glue to create designs on her silk screens. I had used gel glue as a batik resist and so I knew I had to try this as soon as possible!  I drew some circles and squiggles with the glue onto the wrong side of a blank silk screen and let it dry for a couple of days - NOT because it took that long to dry but because that is how long it was until I was ready to use it! I pulled out a strip of ice dyed fabric and some textile paint and went to town. My first try was with white and. . .  . . .OH MY COOLNESS!  After several printings of white, I added blue and purple.  I LOVE IT!  Here are a few close ups:  So much lusciousness!  Here is part of the back so that you can imagine more of what I started with.  I ended up decorating the paper underneath as well.   Oh so pretty...

It's time to restock the Etsy store. I made a few quilted covers for lined paperback Moleskine Journals :  They each have an elastic that can be used to keep them closed. I've made four so far and will be making at least another eight at some point. The paperback journal will be included with the quilted cover. I really like the way these are turning out! Now that the kids are back in school I might be able to really get some work done. Maybe.

Springville Art Museum has a wonderful quilt show every year.   In conjunction with the quilt show they invite a few local quilters to present a trunk show.   My friends Florence and Sylvia were two of the quilters featured this year.  I was having difficulty figuring out the lighting in the room thus I ended up with only one good photo of Florence and her amazing quilts.  So sorry Florence! Florence is an amazing math wiz.   She teaches a class on quilting math and makes it all so understandable.   Her quilts are always perfection. She was my first domestic machine walking foot quilting teacher.  Sylvia brought her first quilt to show where she started.  Pretty amazing for a first quilt I think. All the corners match and she didn't have a pattern! Almost every other close up I took of Sylvia, she has her eyes closed. We had a full house!  That light on the left made photographing a real pain. ...

 Iron gate at the Santa Barbara Courthouse. I love iron work.

Every year my quilt guild hosts a picnic dinner and auction.   Everyone cleans out their sewing related items and brings them to the meeting.  The items are placed in bags and we proceed to bid on the items like the crazy women that we are. Items go for as much as $500!   Oh, did I forget to mention we are using play money?   Everyone starts out with the same amount but money changes hands quickly as a person gets frenzied over a wanted item.  We usually have a lot of books, fabric and quilting notions.   One year we had two child sized sewing machines! That was a wild bidding war! The item I got excited about this year was: Foam Stamps! I couldn't believe my eyes! Who would get rid of those lovelies? I immediately bid $100 and no one dared bid against me! Actually the only other person who wanted them was sitting next to me and we agreed to share. Anne and I were very excited! However I got even MORE excited when I found...

It's back to school time! I LOVE back to school time!! What I really LOVE are the back to school supply sales!!! I went shopping today to grab some deals and while looking for something else I came across these erasers.   They are 4 1/8" long x 1 1/2" wide by 5/8" high.  BIG Oops erasers.   I like erasers. I REALLY like erasers. They make good stamps and the fact that these big ones were on clearance made them more attractive.  I bought two and brought them home to make sure they would carve up okay. One slice and I could tell they would be great so. . . . . .I rushed back to the store and bought them ALL! There were only 12 more but I don't feel like I made ANY mistakes in this deal! I'm looking forward to carving them up when the kids head back to school next week!

I'm not usually a fan of Marigolds but this one made me very happy.

When I pulled out the Cookie Monster quilt for my blog hop post, I pulled out another early baby quilt to photograph and thought I would share it today. When I became pregnant for the first time ultrasounds were not done.  I had no idea if I would be having a boy or a girl.  I decided to decorate the nursery in a nice gender neutral yellow (surprisingly his favorite color 26 years later is yellow!). I decided to hand quilt hearts across the quilt with yarn.  The quilt has been well loved by four children.   The flannel on the back has not held up as well as the rest of the fabric. Maybe someday I will repair it when I have grandchildren. Do you still have an early quilt project you love?