I have been soo distracted by other things these days, blogging
obviously hasn't been top priority. Its fun to look at the blogs,
however its been kind of quiet these last few months.
Life has been quite busy these days, so many things to do, so many
people to visit with and places to see. I have made great progress with
my Spring Birds of a Feather project, no picture to share, its a
wrinkled mess and I would be most embarrassed to show her in the state
that she is in :( So, maybe next time. I am almost finished with it,
maybe in the next few days??
I have been obsessed these days with quilting though, sewing, sewing,
sewing and collecting beautiful cottons for quilts, I have visions of
these quilts piled high! Someday I know I will accomplish this!!
Everyone has to start from the beginning right?? For now, each
beautiful chosen fabric is collected-- a stash of cottons like we have
oodles and oodles of cross stitch stash (well not even close to that
high pile!! LOL).
My MIL several months back told me of this great quilting place that was
recently featured on the nightly news. Said that this woman had saved a
small town from ruins with her quilting. What? So out came the ipad
to find out about this fantastic place called the
Missouri Quilt Company in Hamilton, MO. This woman has made her business grow with several
dozen folks helping her spread quilting everywhere-- quilting is not
hard!!! I was fortunate to learn the basics from a fantastic quilter
about 2 years ago, and wow, what a blessing (and a curse in the pocket
book!!) it was to spend time with her. She is a spitfire of a woman and
I have her on my shoulder each and every time I am quilting :)
I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the Missouri Quilt Company a
few weeks back and wow, what a stop this should be on every quilters
list!! As of right now, there are 5 shops--each dedicated to specific
fabrics. Ie, the main shop, reproductions, batiks, seasonal and
solids. You walk from one end of the street to the other, looking at
all these beautiful fabrics, with ladies and gentleman going out of
their way to help you with every thing you might need. There are
restaurants and a bakery, places to stay. Even the birth place of JC
Penny!! One of the shops-- the solids shop is in the location of his
first JC Penny Store!! (There is a JC Penny museum and you can see
where he went to school!)
This gal in MO, has made many tutorials to teach quilting to everyone.
No, you don't need a sewing degree to make quilts!! I did sign up for
her bi-monthly magazine called Block, each magazine is filled with 10
beautiful designs all with easy to use instructions and if I am not
mistaken, all have tutorials online? The year subscription I believe is
36 bucks.
Sign up
for her daily door buster email!!
In the burgundy issue of Block, I am making the Lattice Quilt. I fell in love with the pattern and knew I had to sew it :)
So here goes nothing!! I bought the fabric and knew that I wanted to
make it bigger then it called for, so away I went. The mailman has had a
hay-day with the deliveries for this quilt, and who doesnt love
packages of fabric?? The fabric is from Jan Patek called Front Porch.
The line is older, so piecing it together was a fun task. I love a
good hunt :)
I started out with a layer cake and a charm pack to make it 1 1/2 times
bigger then called for and I now have 252 of these blocks sewn together,
pressed and ready to go.
Trimming up the corners
There are far more then shown in the above pic, but I had all of them on
the floor, chosen to the best they would be without going crazy!! I
have 18 rows of 14. So today I had some time to spare so I fired up my
featherweight and completed 3 of the 18 rows. Not to bad, 15 to go. I
am hoping to have the top done this month, I am adding a couple of
borders to it and ta-da! It will be ready to be dropped off at the
quilt shop for quilting!!
Hopefully next time I will have a finish of 2 kinds, Spring girl and the
Lattice quilt! I hope each and everyone of you is enjoying your
summers, doing everything you want and more!!!