A Great Day, indeed

Last weekend we drove to Kansas City to celebrate my birthday. I received tickets to see a favorite artist at the Uptown Theater as an early birthday gift:

On the drive down I finished binding my Diet Quilt…

and stopped by Stewartsville to visit the home of Tula Pink:

She wasn’t there, but her mom, who owns the Quilt Shoppe, was, and she bought ten copies of our pattern to stock in the store! She was picking fabrics for a sample to kit up before I even left the store! I could not resist snapping a pic of these…too cute and too clever:

The shop is definitely worth the short detour off the interstate next time you are on I-35 in NW Missouri!

We spent some time shopping, eating at cute independent shops like The Upper Crust (a pie shop!) and Great Day Cafe (that we discovered on our Quilt Market trip in May–it’s directly across the street from a quilt shop–bonus!)

I’d recommend them both. This was on the sidewalk between the cafe and the bakery–wish I knew who the artist was:

I took A LOT of photos, I seemed to be seeing quilts in every building, retail display, and article of clothing I looked at. No wonder Kansas City has such a strong MQG–there is inspiration everywhere! I’ll do a separate post to show all the photos. In addition to the concert tickets, my sweetie gave me this:

Not just a copy of the magazine–a SUBSCRIPTION to my favorite quilt magazine which comes all the way from France! Woo-hoo!

On the drive home I sewed one of my Candied Hexagon blocks before I took over driving:

Today, my actual birthday, was a good one. Started off with a delivery to the office (a VERY rare occurrence)…

…as if the weekend wasn’t enough, Sweetie felt guilty about working out of town on my birthday, so I received a balloon and lovely yellow and white flowers in a cute little paint can container.

My Mom was meeting me after work to treat me to dinner (have I mentioned how wonderful it is to have her living locally?!?–it’s awesome, we moved her to the Des Moines metro area in early June!) but she had to come save me when my Beetle decided to quit working (I think she –the car– may have been protesting the heat wave–can’t blame her!) and I had to have her towed from the front of the Des Moines library:

Not fun–but I have to give the Beetle credit for getting me home from St. Cloud retreat last week (a 6 hour drive), and getting us home from Kansas City on Sunday (a 3 hour drive)!

It was still a great day, lots of wonderful birthday wishes from friends, phone calls, my sister called and sang to me… it’s all good! And, I’ve always said I was easily entertained and easy to please; was surprised to see this when I opened the internet at work this morning:

This is a pic up close:

and when I moved my mouse over it, it reads “Happy Birthday Doris!” How fun–make sure you visit Google on your birthday–definitely brightened my day. I’m going to go open the Google home page a few more times before midnight. And, I think I may continue to celebrate tomorrow.

What was your last road trip? Any exciting road trips planned?

Do you seek out the quilt shops along the way when you travel somewhere?

The Diet Quilt

You read that right, not “the quilt diet”–a “diet” from buying fabric– but The Diet Quilt, the name of my latest finish.  I originally called it “Eat Your Peas and Carrots”, but my long-arm quilter, also my business partner, dubbed it The Diet Quilt while it was on her quilting machine being meticulously custom quilted…

The blocks follow the pattern Strawberry Fields (from the book Material Obsession), made from a fat quarter bundle of Kyle’s Marketplace by RJR Fabrics (gifted to me by my Mom). However, the border design is all my own, utilizing the Very Hungry Caterpillar stripe, carefully fussy-cut, and pieced to include the small blue stripes that look like a tiny sashing detail.

I finished this top two years ago, and the quilting is SO WORTH THE WAIT!  Love the irregular sized swirl background, the detail around the food in the border, and on the sashing squares and triangles–methinks I need to take better photos!

The backing fabric is a Mary Englebreit cherry print, the binding green quilters linen…

…and because, as usual, I didn’t buy enough backing fabric, their are leftover prints from the front used to complete the back!  However, it’s a happy accident–this is one of my favorite quilt backs, ever!

I’m keeping this one for me (why not, Tuesday is my birthday, after all!).  Maybe if I have it out on display, it will remind me to stick to a healthy diet!  I think The Diet Quilt is soon to become my favorite.

Do you have a favorite quilt you’ve made?  Did you keep it for yourself?

A Challenge

At some point about midway through retreat last weekend, everyone decided on something to challenge themselves.  Either a sewing skill they had never tried, or one they were uncomfortable with, learning a new craft or technique, or just stepping outside the box.  It’s always good to push yourself a little, right?

Stephanie chose curved piecing using her new Quick Curve Ruler (see those awesome Urban 9 Patch blocks?).  She also brought along an amazing medallion quilt for show-and-tell, and her tiny duffle bag made from Lucy’s Crab Shack scraps was the envy of everyone of us!

Amanda challenged herself to learn how to put in a zipper (taught by Terri).  She quilted her Oatmeal quilt (the entire thing) using the cursive e design, and shared her 36 patch quilt that she was making blocks for at last year’s retreat, and she made the cutest little fabric buckets (we each took one home!):
Cindy flew to Minnesota from California for retreat, along with her favorite Singer Featherweight (ahem.  it’s my favorite, too).  She has the most impressive selvage camera strap–seriously, what a great use of SCRAPS!  And her llama quilt blocks are truly awesome!  Cindy’s husband (a Minnesota native) joined her on Sunday and they were spending the rest of the week driving around Minnesota visiting family.  Cindy challenged herself to try free-motion quilting–and she liked it!

Mary’s challenge was trying crochet, she was teaching herself from a book she won on Cindy’s blog last week–studying and learning with all that activity going on around her!  She brought along an intricate piecing project that she hadn’t touched since February, that’s it in top left photo–she nearly completed the top and my photo does not do it justice!
Terri is back in school, studying graphic art and design.  She doesn’t have a lot of time to sew these days, so she took full advantage of her three days of sewing time.  She made two patchwork rugs, a scrappy pincushion, a tablecloth, table runner, a giant pincushion, a wrist rest and I’m guessing several other items I forgot about already!  I don’t recall what she challenged herself too, but no worries, there was no moss growing on her sewing machine.  ;-)
Rene flew in from the Pacific Northwest to join us, and brought along three beautiful show-and-tell quilts, including the peace sign quilt same made for her first grandson, who is just a few weeks old.  She worked on a shot cotton quilt, with fussy cut cowboy (and cowgirl!) fabric, and even challenged herself to go 3-D with a pincushion project after some coaxing from the rest of us.
Michelle, Rene’s little sister, joined us again this year from Georgia, and she still claims to be a new quilter, but this girl has made some serious strides!  She even shared a quilt this year (a challenge for her), the mini quilt in aquas and browns that she made for her sister’s birthday, that blew us all away–it’s beautiful!  And the fabric she bought at Grubers last year made a return trip to Minnesota and were turned into some very pretty window blocks.
I worked on my Love in a Mist Bee quilt top (it may actually be a quilt one day), cut oodles of 5″ hexagons for my niece’s quilt (thank you, Go! Cutter), paper-pieced blocks for a table runner from my scraps… and my challenge was to re-learn Adobe Illustrator, or at least enough to make diagrams for the newest quilt pattern.  I was grateful to have Terri in the room to help when I got stuck.  Diagrams drawn and complete!

• Do you challenge yourself to try new things?
• What sewing technique would you like to try (if nothing was holding you back)?

Quilting is my Therapy, too.

Angela has a familiar sounding blog title; I’m not sure I know a quilter that hasn’t used the phrase, or at least agrees with it!  Quilting is my therapy, and quilt retreats are the best form of that therapy!  Last weekend was spent with seven lovely bloggers in Waite Park, MN, at Grubers Quilt Shop Retreat Center.  This is our third Summer retreat, and each year Day 1 is just like a reunion of old forever friends.  I am blessed, and honored, to call them friends.  Here we are just before heading home on Sunday (standing in front of Terri’s lovely patchwork):

back row, l to r:  Me, Michelle, Rene, Terri, Mary

front row, l to r:  Cindy, Amanda, Stephanie

Most of the people I know don’t understand why I enjoy quilt retreats; and I’ve never found a good way to explain it to a non-quilter.  But maybe visually, with a few shots of our sewing space, I can make it a little easier to comprehend.

Sewing and quilting can be a very solitary activity, lots of quiet time for introspection, relaxation, contemplation.  But at retreat–cutting, piecing and sewing is surrounded by a flurry of conversation, laughter, shared obsessions; room to spread out with our sewing machines, iPads, laptops, etc., play together and inspire each other:

I borrowed this pic from Stephanie, because it is a great shot of the space, the table, and of Rene!

In a room full of bloggers, you’re bound to see some blog reading, writing, emailing, and texting going on…

Last year, we started a practice of exchanging happies (Rene explained the origin of “happies” in this post), no one is expected to give happies, but if you want to, they are always received with open arms.  Last year I was not on the ball, I did not give happies.  But this year I arrived the evening before everyone else, so I used the extra time to make each of my friends a vinyl zipper bag to hold sewing and quilting notions:

And what they look like inside:

I’m trying to decide if I should write a tutorial for those bags… what do you think?

and (OH, my!) the happies I received:

• A mini-trash-bucket made by Amanda (at the top of the photo);
• Lucy’s Crab Shack sachets made by Stephanie, along with a copy of The Quilted Fish book she is featured in!
•  A zipper bag made by Terri from her own Spoonflower designed fabric!
• A Mardi Gras themed FQ and “therapy in session” door sign from Michelle;
• Gourmet chocolates and FQs from Rene, each representing part of where she calls home.

I brought home plenty of things I “treated” myself to in the way of fabric, as well as an autographed copy of Amanda’s book, Sunday Morning Quilts.  Such talented friends–thank you all!!!  We already have next year’s July retreat booked.

• Do you go to quilt retreats?  Have a favorite you return to over and over?
• Does your family or group of friends have a tradition or practice similar to the Harper family practice of giving happies?

Sewing Studio Up-Do

(originally posted August 23, 2011)
It’s not really a redo, that was done last year, but this month, it got a definite up-do, or upgrade, anyway, with two great projects!

Today: Project #1, Making a Recessed Sewing Table (a Project ANYONE could do!)

I started with this, my Ikea bookcase and table that I’ve used for sewing for almost two years.

A shot of my studio in June 2010

But when I needed to do any quilting, especially free-motion quilting, I would pull out a little drop center table from JoAnn’s to put my machine in.  However, the Janome was too large to fit into the table from JoAnn’s.  And quilting with the machine too high was just too hard on my neck and shoulders to quilt for very long.  So… I traced the footprint of my Janome onto the table top, and my sweetie got a jigsaw and drill out,

and cut a big hole in the table.  We figured the worse that could happen is that we would ruin a $55 Ikea table, and have to replace it.  The core of the table was a paper cardboard honeycomb core, with two 1x3s running lengthwise for added support…

Sweetie added some more 1×3 strips to enclose the exposed core, added wood filler, sanded, primed, painted and eventually we added this shelf, attached with 4″ L-brackets to the table.  Here it is without the machine sitting in it:

and voila– A recessed sewing table, custom fit for my Janome Horizon! As you can see, there is extra space to the right of machine, that I allowed for access to the power cord, feed dog switch and power switch.  Remember to take that into consideration when determining the footprint of your own machine:

I removed the feet from the plexiglas table that came with my machine and made sure the machine would sit just high enough above the surface of the Ikea table to accommodate it–a perfect fit! If your machine doesn’t have a plexiglas insert, you can have one custom cut at a local hardware store, or glass shop.  Just make sure they have a very accuratetracing of the bed of your machine.

We finished this project on Saturday afternoon, and I spent much of Sunday sewing, it was such a pleasure to have the machine at the correct height for a change!  I think I could sew an entire day without feeling any strain in my shoulders.  A very nice UPGRADE, indeed.

Of course, once we finished I needed to clean the shelves and rearrange everything (sawdust everywhere!) but they needed cleaning and reorganizing anyway.

DIY Tutorials for the other parts of my sewing studio:

Project #2; a sassy new cutting table with storage!

DIY Design Wall anyone can make!

Big Board Ironing Board Tutorial

Fabric Storage (Stash Management)