Stash Reduction Yard Sale #2

If you're anywhere in the Detroit area tomorrow, you simply MUST come by my place for my second Yarn/Yard Sale of the year.  I'm clearing out *quality* sweater quantity yarn plus a whole lot more.  Can you believe I will have close to 150 books for sale????  Patterns galore!  Plus some fabulous hand-painted Folk Art wooden folding chairs!  Daaaahling you simply MUST be there!!!  9 am - 4 pm on September 15th -- leave me a comment if you need directions!!  

Be there or be square!!!!

Happy Thursday!

I'm crazy busy getting ready for quilt guild tonight.  It's the first meeting of the GLHQ guild year and I'm in charge of programs for the year.  I've packed the year with lots of great speakers, workshops, and surprises!  I'd love to see the guild really grow this year.  Tonight's speaker will be Sharon Miner, an Accuquilt dealer who will show us all how her product line will make piecing faster and easier, with less waste.  We're also having a scissors sharpener come in -- something we all forget to take care of.  

If you live in the Detroit area, check out our guild's website, glhq.org, for times, locations, and other details.

For now I'll leave you with a few more pictures from Denver's birthday party:

I love this shot of my nephew Paul holding Denver.  Check out the reflection in Paul's sunglasses!

1 Year Old

Amazingly enough, my grandson is now one year old.  Time flies faster the older you get, doesn't it??!!

Loading up those cheeks just a bit, eh?

Loves his trucks and tractors:

A John Deere, just like Daddy's.  Lights up and has the back up noise too!

Handy Dandy Tips

I found a great blog post with tips on sewing machine needles.  If you've ever wondered which needle is the right needle for your project and why, here is the site for you.

I think I'll print it out and save it with my sewing supply box.

Next I found this tutorial on making your very own mini ironing station.  I KNOW I need to make this one too!  I just need to find that crazy staple gun and stash of staples -- they're never in the same place at the same time!

And finally, I re-found this great tutorial on making a magnetic pin dish -- must. make. this. one.  Thank goodness I found it again.  I knew I needed that E6000 glue but couldn't remember why!

Denver's Birthday Quilt

I've been totally absorbed the past several days with finishing the quilt for my grandson Denver so I could give it to him at his 1st Birthday party today.  Nose to the grindstone, head down, whatever you want to call it.  

I drove to Grandville, MI, on Wednesday to 'look' at the Juki TL-2010Q sewing machine at Family Sewing.  I won't lie -- I fully expected to drive home with it and I did.  It would have been a shame to drive 2+ hours each way and come home empty handed right?  I don't have a proper picture of it yet but will post one soon.  

In the mean time here's the quilt for Denver:

I began the quilt top before I even knew what the baby's sex was because Holly & Mike didn't want people to know until after the baby shower.  I pieced the center of it at Mystery Quilt Day in 2011 but set it aside to get back to knitting for my shows.  Once I couldn't knit any more I dug out the project and cranked it out for a 1st Birthday gift instead.  I got the last of the borders on last weekend and very quickly decided I could not possibly quilt it on my existing machines.  It's not huge, 56" x 74", but bigger than the baby quilts I've been able to manage thus far.

Machine quilting has always been a chore for me, full of expletives (enough to make me close my windows and scare off my children), lots of sweat, and much anxiety.  I liked the idea of it -- I just couldn't manage the pushing and shoving of the fabric in the narrow little harps of my current sewing machines.  My Chicken friends Diane and Joyce both have Jukis so I sought out opinions from them, soon realizing it was made for me as well.

I'm very pleased at how the new quilt turned out.  I need to play around with the Juki to get a better understanding of tension adjustments but overall it was great.  I even received applause today at his birthday party from the other guests!

All of the fabrics were purchased at Guildcrafters last year except for the backing, which my Chicken friend Kathy helped me pick out and it's absolutely perfect for my truck-loving grandson.  The pattern, Just Snowballs, is from Judy Laquidara's book, Weekend Quilts.  Don't laugh -- Judy doesn't say you have to finish the quilt in a weekend!  Judy's blog, Patchwork Times, is in my blog roll on the left.  She leads a very interesting life!

Hot Pursuit

I'm in hot pursuit of a Juki TL-2010Q quilting machine.  I've searched nearby dealers, even all the way to Cleveland, with no luck.  Seems it's a hot ticket item and no one has any in stock near me.  But.  I.  Have.  Not.  Given.  Up.  Yet.

Now I could get one from a dealer in Mississippi and they could over-night it to me for an extra $200+ !!  Uh, don't need it that badly.  I could always break out my Bernina (I know - poor me!) to get the job done and I still may need to, but it would be so much easier for me to use a Juki.  No chance of using my Featherweight -- Denver's quilt is just too big for the harp.

Tomorrow I'm putting in one last call to a dealer on the west side of the state and I'll haul myself over there tout suite if they've got one.  I sure wish I'd had this brilliant idea BEFORE I went to the AQS show in Grand Rapids back last month.  I'm sure I could have take one home that day if I'd known I wanted it.  That's the trouble with brilliant ideas - you don't always get them at the perfect time!

More Quilts from the AQS Show

Here are a few of the magnificent quilts I saw at last week's AQS show in Grand Rapids.  They were made by American artists and included in the Tentmakers of Cairo quilt display.  The  pieces that were made by Egyptian quilt makers were lovely, too, but to me they were not technically quilts as we refer to them since they did not have our traditional batting and were not quilted.  They were for sale and many had sold.

I got to see one Egyptian artist demonstrate his applique technique - very interesting!