Stash Report and My Mail There s an auction happening here on the blog. what is available and bid here. You can see So I didn t know if I should call today s post an In my Mail post or a Stash Report I guess it works either way. At nap time this day I saw the UPS truck stop. He was delivering a HUGE Amazon box. I was sitting on the couch between Ruby and Carver trying to get Carver to go to sleep and keep Ruby from barking at the UPS man and waking everyone. It was a task. The box was set outside the door and I left it there hoping Carver would go to sleep. While I sat rubbing his back I keep questioning myself. what did I order from Amazon?. My goodness, certainly I would remember if I order something in that big of a box, wouldn t I? For the later I while I to open life of me I couldn t figure it out. About 20 minutes gave up on Carver sleeping and sent him to the kitchen grabbed the box off the porch. He was excited for me it.
The outside of the box made it seem like maybe it wasn t from Amazon and inside made me sure it wasn t Amazon. wasn t losing my mind. Good. I Inside was a STUFFED kitchen sized garbage bag!! I was a good girl and read the note first. The note was from Kim. It said,.i noticed that you had lamented that while your found other goodies at auction, you didn t find scraps. Guess what? I have scraps! WOW Not only did she have scraps but she shared!!!
She said they were 10 years old I think that means aged to perfection! It s time to pull these out and put them into a quilt. Don t you think??? Kim also mentioned that if I thought I wouldn t use them I could pass them along. NOPE. I ll pass on fabric MUCH sooner than I would ever-ever pass on scraps. Honestly this is Christmas to me!! I didn t dare dig through the bag and pull some out. I m afraid it s so stuffed I ll never get the scraps back in the bag and I m not quite ready to use them yet. WOW. This is going to be fun. My next package came from Karen. There were cross stitch goodies and crochet goodies for Kayla and goodies for the kiddos. See?
The crochet leaflets were for Kayla. I m almost positive she s going to LOVE the one that says, Surprise Crochet: Sweater for Babies. She often crochets sweaters for Lutheran World Relief and I think this pattern would be perfect for that. She loves working with scrap yarn and that pattern looks exactly like something she d make!
This pile is all cross stitch. I m so sad I haven t been cross stitching much over the summer. I picked it up last week and did enough to see that I had screwed something up and had to un-stitch a star. It wasn t very big but who ever likes un-stitching especially after it had been awhile since I stitched. But I m hopefully back to stitching again. These are all more of the primitive style samplers with the alphabet. Kelli is in love with these. She primarily stitches these types of samplers. I m sure she ll want a couple. I haven t seen this designer before so that was fun to read all about them too. They are based on antique samplers. You know me and how I love history. FUN!!
I keep thinking I ll cross stitch more if I retire. Then I get notes from some of you who say things like my arthritis won t let me do this, my eye sight won t let me do that. Then I think I better do it while my hands and eyes and let me. Then I did through my cross stitch patterns and see this.
Isn t that the truth! MORE!! I do need to cross stitch more. LOTS My childcare girl that also loves quilting was loving on one of the cross stitch books in the bunch. It was an alphabet book.
She would ow and ah on each page continually exclaiming, Jo, that s so cute. They were cute!! Also in Karen s package, the childcare kiddos got stickers and notepads. I love the notepads for them. The kids can randomly use the paper however they want and I never worry that they are wasting paper or that there are only ten scribbles on a page. They love free paper too!! and stickers.they can NEVER get enough. I always sort through and find ones we might be able to do a project with. I give the rest to the kids. Oh they can plaster stickers on paper like crazy!! The smiley stickers I always take out and use for other things.
Karen all of your goodies will be loved. I so appreciate them. The last goodie in the mail box came from a blog reader in Minnesota. She sent a donation to go towards charity quilting. Aw that was so sweet. Kelli and I float a lot of the costs and we don t mind. We don t mind a bit. It s a mission for us as so many are helped by it. When we see the faces of ladies who are gifted fabric to help in their mission there are always big smiles. I think it validates their work and they can see others value it! That s wonderful!
Thanks so much to the annoymous reader in Minnesota. We appreciate your support. Your donation will help the stream of good things happening here in the charity quilt department. Many thanks to everyone.and now that I finished writing this blog post, I m taking that bag of scraps upstairs I m going to find a big laundry basket of something to put the scraps in and sew a string block or two. I m setting up on the Singer 15-91 so I can leave it out. YAHOO so much fun is going to be had. I ll report back how it s going in a week or two. NE Iowa Show Quilt Guild Quilt Earlier this week I told you about my fun packed Saturday I ended my time with Kelli with a visit to the NE Iowa Guild Quilt Show. Warning this post is VERY photo heavy. If you
don t have speedy internet, please be patient. We were welcomed by this wonderful quilt it s the guild raffle quilt. WOW. Impressive for sure! We were also met by lots of welcoming ladies. Kelli and I have often discussed joining the guild but to date have not. They meet about away from my house. I don t want to drive back late in the evening. They have day meetings too but for now, I m working so, no guild for us. They had a fun raffle bucket. If you bought raffle tickets you put the tickets in the bucket for the item you most want to win.
There was a wonderful Quilt of Valor display.. Check out this The quilting is AMAZING. In the white of the flag is the Pledge of Alligance. COOL right?? Check it out.
From there we drifted in to look at the quilts I have this pattern not made of course.
I noted there were very few applique quilts Check out the quilting on this one.
There weren t many modern quilts either.
Intense paper piecing on this one!!
I love the colors on the next one.
The quilting on this had me studying it.
Here s a clower view. Kelli liked this Santa one.
I liked it as well. This one below is one I love but will likely never make too much planning and planning equals patience and I have to save all my patience for the childcare kids.
This one Kelli and I both admired lots of work went in this small quilt.
Check out the next picture to see the back of the quilt and the quilting.
WOW WOW WOW!! There were small projects as well.
This one was intense.
Quilts ranged from hard to easier
Guesses on this pattern.
Yep Allietare from Bonnie Hunter.
I love barn raisings.
AHHHH!! We found the quilt we bought the kits for. Darn I want to do this. Maybe over Christmas break. I have a couple days off then. This was my favorite of the show. I don t need fancy. prefer wonderful color selection over design. I
It s a simple quilt but simple is okay if the colors are there to draw me in. Forest Mills Quilt Shop was vending at the show and I believe they have the exact kit for sale. Check out their information here on line if you re interested. I was tempted but resisted. I m still on my fabric diet. There was a lot of variety in the quilts here s a row quilt.
A simple half square triangle quilt this one I love. gets me. Simple
a Quilt of Valor. Batiks see? Lots of variety.
I could see me making this one.
Fun with the leaves around the outside. Anything star gets me.
This was Kelli s favorite of the show. We both loved it.
I had to mention this one as the maker mentioned me!!
I taught a crumb class to the guild and she used her blocks for this border. How fun. I m honored.
This one caught my eye too.
This was so fun. A tumbler eye spy. LOVE!!
We were given ballets to vote. Kelli and I didn t know what to vote for. Some had cool quilting others were fun like the one above. Some were SUPER difficult. We decided to vote for the one we d most likely vote for. How would you have voted?? We had a fun time and want to make plans to attend the next show. These ladies do really great work!! String Challenge My weekend was filled with and auction, quilt show, and then processing the things we got at the auction. I didn t have sewing time. OH NO!! Aw it s okay. There will be time for
that. I did finish Daylilies and showed it off on Friday. That s one more string quilt DONE!! I am incredibly happy to have it done!! If you missed that post, catch it here. Thanks to all of you who commented with such kind words about the quilt. So now I more on to another quilt from the book. left. I have two Pineapple Crazy, which is a top.i found a backing for it! I had picked something before but hated it. Yahoo. This is MUCH better. Now to piece it together and get it quilted.
The other quilt left is Tulip Fields. I got that out and have it set up on my 15-91. I don t have the string piecing done on it, or even started, so it will be a mess. It always is with string quilts. I did make a change in plans. Originally I thought I was going to do the quilt all batiks but I m kind of ready to do something different. The last several quilts I did were batiks so time to change it up. I am doing fall colors. My point of the tulips are a batik (red toned) and my sashing is a yellow/orange batik (more golden) I thought fall colors with that might be fun.
I ve been working on trying to make a bit more of a focused scrap quilt. To often I throw every single color in and aren t as selective as I sometimes want to be so very few blues on this one. This is a shocker. I always try to squeeze in blue AND RED!! I haven t pulled scraps yet so I started working on step C (who says the first step should be first??)
In other sewing news I looked at the calendar. We have a wedding in November. Well two actually. One is family but I hardly know them so, I broke with tradition and decided that I m done making quilts for everyone in the family. If I don t really know the couple and the invitation only came from obligation, then I m not making a quilt. I did send a gift as we won t make the wedding. With the rain we ve had Hubby still has only barely started harvest. It s troublesome. The other wedding is a neighbor wedding. We know the bride and groom and the parents and like them all LOTS. The bride is a sister to one of my childcare families the groom is on the fire department with Hubby. This one, I am making a quilt for. I did a long debate on what quilt to make I tried to think of something they might like. Then I remembered that I have Bricks in the Barnyard as a finished top. I finished it at retreat in August. The bride is a dairy farmer I think it would make a great wedding quilt so, (sigh of relief), all I have to do is quilt it. That s do-able for a Thanksgiving weekend wedding. Easily do-able. So this week another quilt was checked off the list and a
backing found for the other and the other was pulled out. That s good I think!! I m counting it as a WIN week of work. I m hoping to have some progress next week. Life has been pretty busy so we ll see. Stash Report It was slim pickins at the thrift store as far as fabric goes. Again they had TONS of polyester and silky fabric but very little cotton. I didn t find any at the main thrift store I go to but I did get a bag of ribbons and Goodwill came through with two pieces of fabric. I opened up the fabric.there were 3 1/2 yards in the large one the smaller one- only two yards. It was a great deal but I was slightly cheated. Typically it s $1 a yard and technically the $3 bundle was more than a $1 a yard ( I am totally teasing I don t mind a bit) Where can you spend $6.50 and get enough fabric to back a quilt!!!
About the bag of ribbons. bag. I was thrilled. The bag was $1.50. It was a gallon I ve wanted ribbon to make a couple tag animals like the one below. I told you about the elephant before. I got him at a craft show. This bag had LOTS of pink ribbon so I think I ll make a girlish one first.
I blogged about the elephant previously and provided links for lots of other tag animals. You can find that here. I m hoping to dig out the fabric and make one of these. I for sure have enough ribbon now!! It wasn t a big haul from the thrift store but exactly something I could use which is perfect!