stormy craft fair

Saturday was my kids school's craft fair. I'm part of the PTA and helped plan and setup and stuff for the fair and also got a booth space.

It was a lot of fun and people DID buy stuff from me and I made more than my booth fee, so that's a bonus :-) now we did have to close up shop at 1pm instead of 4pm because of the bad tornado storm going thru NC, didn't really know how bad it was until this weekend and even today, pray for the people who got hurt and lost their houses and families that lost loved ones.

Here's a few things I've made for the craft show.

 I made quite a few scrunchies and figured out a trick with the elastic...

 I added a safety pin with the elastic to one end of the tube and attached the other end with a pin

then turned inside out with the safety pin first and pulled thru, then knotted the ends of the elastic twice and cut off the ends

 and sewed the end closed

cute little scrunchies

I also made several finger tip oven mitts.

 here's a picture of my booth.

 And this was a surprise our dog left for us sunday after church, we had just come home to then turn around and go to a neighbor's birthday party and this is just the beginning mess

 in the craft room a bag of crayons got chewed up

 further up he got into my trash can and emptied it right under my frame

 look at that mess! BAD DOG!

meanwhile I told my daughter to get ready to go while I cleaned up

 she put on make up!! gotta love the pink eyebrows....

please vote

I had submitted a block layout to accuquilt red barn competition and found out I made the top 100,

so please click the link and vote for mine

http://www.accuquilt.com/barnquilt-top100

it's the 7th one, with black/ white and pinks.

voting ends the 19th

spring girl dress

I was at walmart the other day and I always end up looking at the fabrics, and thinking that I know they'll close this section soon- they've said that for 2 yrs, so I don't know....

anyways, I saw this new CUTE floral fabric with a turquoise background and just thought my daughter would love a dress in that!

I've made this dress LOTS of times and made for friends- sold on eBay etc- before I started quilting years ago, so I had the yardage memorized. 1yd of one 1.5 of another, the 1 yd goes to the bodice and 2nd tier, the 1.5 yd is the 1st and 3rd tier ( either is for straps)

well I got 1.5 of each, figured I'd figure it out when I got home and with walmart prices, it's okay to buy half a yd too much :-)

Here's my little MODEL!

I had her turn around to show matching scrunchie, - I had to look up a pattern online, it's been years since I made these and figured there had to be a short cut, well there is, but I made my own short cut.

Here she is showing off how much the dress flares when she spins around.

BTW I embroidered her name on the bodice :-)

love hate french braid quilts!

I hate and I love french braid quilts...

this is my first one and it's taken me probably 2 yrs!

I'm into speed, so when I had to make 4 braids and then only iron after each little section, I got soooo bored with it, that I put it all in a box and forgot about it, then once in a while I'd get it out and do a few more sections, then get annoyed with the slowness of it again and put in back in the box.

WELL, finally I decided to use it as a leaders and enders project inbetween whatever else I was doing, and THEN it went together in a "snap".

Here the long strips are finally done, I bought this cool green/blue paisley fabric for the border and pulled all the colors from that to make the braid. Then when I finished the braids, I couldn't remember what else I was supposed to do!

Here I'm looking at other options for a skinny border or two

Then I decided to cut the paisley into border strips and cut on extra JUST in case, used the leftover paisley and cut 2" strips for sashing inbetween the braids, then decided to surround that with a dark green plus I had more to make a green all over border, plus a white skinny border as well.

Here I'm deciding which should be closer to the braid, the green or the white!?

what do you think?

I've sewn most of it together, but haven't posted it yet....

wait and see

UNC owls and portfolio

I'm having owls and portfolios coming out of my EARS!! LOL

well I can't say much about this, it's a secret, so I'll just show the pictures.

Angel panel

Call me nuts, that I quilted this in APRIL! am I early or late for christmas?

well.... I guess late, I was sorting my quilt projects etc. the other day and wrote them down on this white board I have behing my door- what projects need to be quilted, which ones are done but need backing/ batting etc, which ones need to get finished and so on, so I came across this angel KIT I had bought probably two yrs ago, and I took it out of the bag and remembered why I had put it back in the bag. It's crooked! I had washed the panel and backing and the whole thing is skewed now, I then pondered if I should trim it straight, or trim to follow the lines or just quilt as is... I decided on the latter, that maybe being pulled and taught on the frame would help.

 well it helped a little but it's not the angle of the picture it's STILL crooked! Grrr. I swear no more panels or printed fabrics with straight lines, unless I don't wash them first.

 The kit came with panel. backing and batting, all I made was the binding and hanging sleeve

 I decided to do custom quilting on it and follow the outline of the angels and all the ribbons etc and then ruler work on the border.

This is a close up of the back, where it's easier to see.

I like how it turned out if it wasn't crooked!!

well I emailed a pic to my mom, she LOVES angels, but not so much blue, but she said she liked it, so it might head to DK soon :-) you know MOM always loves what you make even if it's junk! LOL

skyline quilt?

This is just a test for a sky line quilt, a friend of mine wanted a sky line quilt- wall hanging- pretty big, I searched high and low and found a pattern, then bought it and when it came it said it was 6 x 9" finished!! OH NO!!

after thinking about what to do, I figured I'd at least try this technique and I enlarged it a little, the pattern is VERY vague, but I tried something new with applique, iron on with a straight stitch close to the edges...

I still have to quilt it.-add windows etc.

the size with border is about 18 x 24" which is better but not the size I need.

accuquilt runner

I finally finished another accuquilt project!

When I got the accuquilt I knew I had to make the blazing star, I bought that die seperately, but the mix n match set had all these fun triangles and squares etc. So I sat down in EQ and designed a quilt.

Then I started using scraps of white/ black and red, but at some point I ran out of something and punched out some red diamonds in reverse, anyways, I gave up and left it alone, then the other day I was looking at my notes and punched out pieces and decided to just use the pieces for the upper left block and see how far I would get. So I used the pieces as LEADERS AND ENDERS as I was working on other stuff and eventually got 8 blocks, then figured I would just turne it into a large tabler runner!

Here is the table runner, I deliberately didn't pay attention to how the blocks were turned or matched up as far as random colors- one kind of white vs another kind of white.

 I found this old 2 yd scrap of a wierd thin cotton striped fabric with flowers but it was black/ white and red, so I cut it into two pieces and used it for backing.

I then quilted just a curvey meanering type design with red thread and used white strips for binding.

from america to china

Last week our church helped host an international dinner at UNC,

they also had a food making competition and my husband and I got picked to be judges, there were 5 plates from all over the world, they were all yummy or "interesting"

anyways, after rating the dishes, I had given this small quilt to the woman in charge and she used it as a grand prize for the winner and it was a young woman from China who won it.

She was finishing her PhD in education I think- if I remember correctly.

She really seemed to like the quilt.

Long arm quilted free motion stars and swirls

I made a scrappy backing

embroidered label :-)

Here we both are. And I got a perm too that day so my hair is a little crazy, but I LOVE it :-)