Shameless Plugs

It's so exciting to finish a quilt you've been working on for almost a year.  Alright....so it became a temporary UFO for a few months.   I confess!    Here's my America quilt which I named "We the People".

The pattern is by Debra Gabel.  And, speaking of her design expertise.   Check this out! Amazon has listed Debra's new book due out early next year. 

One more shameless plug....One of the quilt guilds I belong to is having a quilt show next month.

Hope to see you there!

Who knew?

At my mother's 80th birthday party in April, a woman in her nineties was admiring the quilts hanging around my house.  When she indicated she used to quilt in the old days, I asked her if she had any stray blocks around she'd like to get rid of.  Then I didn't think anything of it.  A month later my mother hands me a Woodward and Lothrop box with quilt blocks in them.  All the the blocks were hand-pieced.  A note included said that she'd made a mistake by combining cotton and polyester fabrics in the same blocks.  If I could make a charity quilt out of any of the blocks, I was welcome to them.

I added some sashing, quilted them so that the hand stitches would never come out and ...voila!  Two Linus quilts have been donated to my guilds charities.  The guild is sending her a thank you note along with the picture above.  It makes my heart feel good!

Is anyone out there?

I've been waffling this summer on whether I should continue to blog or not.  Ok, so my old computer's hard drive died a slow death....enough so that I could get most of my data off.   Unfortunately, some of my old programs no longer work on Windows 7.  So, I've been spending my time trying to learn Photoshop instead of relying on my old standby, Picture It!   Aaargh!

Some good things have happened along the way.  Of course, my cache of pictures of the charity quilts I've created is now too many to post, yeah.   But, at least I have a visual record. 

I entered a block in the Alliance for American Quilts New From Old Contest and didn't win a thing.  It was satisfying, however, to know that my quilt was shown with all the other entries at the American Quilter's Society Knoxville show.  All of the contest quilts will also be shown at the Original Sewing and Quilt Expos in Chantilly VA, Atlanta GA, Kansas City MO, Minneapolis, MN.  So if you're going to any of these shows, please take a look at my block and let me know what you think.

I entered a block in the EAA Airventure Quilt Block Contest and received 4th place.  While my hubby and I were unable to fly up there during the Oshkosh, WI airplane show due to a conflict with my son's attendance at the Otakon Conference in Baltimore the same weekend, we might make it up there later this fall weather permitting.  The block will hang in the Airventure Museum for one year.

I entered a quilt I titled "Natasha Robbinski" into the Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza and just received a letter that the quilt has been accepted into the show.   

Finally, I'm not sure whether this is good news or bad yet.   My 17-year old son just passed his driver's license yesterday.  Advice and sympathy welcome.