ARE YOU READY TO RUFFLES?

Can't you just hear it now... Are you ready to RUMBLE RUFFLES?   

I know I am... NOT.... I don't have my project finished yet.  Well, I have one finished but I have ideas for another one or two if time permits.  You won't want to miss this blog hop.... and yes I know I say that every time but really, you WON'T want to miss this blog hop!

Here is a line up of the schedule.  There are some incredibly talented and creative people on deck for this hop!  Did I say yet that YOU won't want to miss it???  Please come on back and check it out.  My day is March 14th.  They're saving the best for last ... right???!!!  Hmmm...  I don't know about that .... they are all the best!

March 5^th

Sew Incredibly Crazy

Malini's quilts

Missouri Mel

Just Quilt It

In the Boon Docks

On the Banks of Frog Creek

Sparrow In Flight

March 6^th

Lily Patch Quilts

Hill Valley Quilter

Missy's Homemaking Adventure

Quilt in a not-Shell

Debby Kratovil Quilts

Quilt Doodle Designs

 QuiltnQueen (nope, that's not me.  That's the other Queen.  I'm on the 14th)

March 7^th

Ridge Top Quilts

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Just Let Me Quilt

MooseStashQuilting

Childlike Fascination

It Seams To Be Sew

Meadowbrook

March 10th

The Tilted Quilt

A Geeky Crafty Life

Constantly Quilting

Life in the Scrapatch

Pig Tales and Quilts

How arT you?

GrammieQs

March 11^th

Needle and Hook

Marjorie's Busy Corner

Blessings From Our Nest

Little House on the Dairy

Just One More Stitch

Creatin' in the Sticks

Just Sew Quilter

March 12th  

Quilted Delights

Patchwork Breeze

Sheila's quilt world

vicky myers creations

Words & Stitches

Sew Many Yarns

Sew and Sow Farm

March 13th

Seams To Be Sew

Tea Time Creations

Sew Peace to Peace

mila+cuatro

All Thingz Sewn

More Stars in Comanche

Stitchin' By The Lake

March 14^th

Thimblemouse and Spouse

Jane's Quilting

Bear Creek Quilting Company

Ipiece to Mary

The Quilting Queen Online

Miss Priss Quilts

Sew We Quilt

CATCHING UP

Why can't I get as much done here in Missouri that I do when I'm at home in Texas? It doesn't seem like I've accomplished much since I've been here.  I'm trying to catch up on William's scrapbooks (I haven't scrapbooked anything since 2006) and they are eating my lunch!  Mom and I (mostly mom) have been working diligently and we are making good progress.  I have been sifting though pictures on my computer and when I don't have what I need, I sift through the cd's mom has in a very large file box; at least she has them by year!  The photo tab at Walmart.com is my best friend these days.  So far I've printed all the pictures through 2010 and have the sorted and somewhat laid out in order.

In the mean time, I'm having some major sewing withdraws so yesterday and today I've been glued to the sewing machine.  I'm making lots of progress there too but there isn't much I can show you.  I have finished the quilt for the gallery showcase at Quiltmaker for the block that will appear in Volume 9 in May.  I've designed and submitted another block for Volume 10. I've been finishing up one of the projects for the Ruffles blog hop and it is sooo cute!  You're gonna love it.

Here's what I can show you though.  Surely it's okay to show you the label on the quilt made from the block I designed for Quiltmaker Magazine Volume 9 that's coming out in May.  I promise the label nor the binding is crooked; it's just the lousy photographer taking these pictures!

I'm finally caught up on a couple of my blocks of the month.  These are the Five and Dime blocks from B & B Quilts in Buda, TX.

Six more blocks are complete for the Farmer's Wives BOM at Quilts With A Heart.

And month 2 of the Log Cabin Houses at Quilts With A Heart is almost complete.  Do you see anything wrong with this house block though?  When I was making the 6" block that goes in the house, my pieces I had pre-cut weren't matching up with what I was trying to put together according to the directions.  And of course, after it was too late, I realized I was trying to sew month 2 pieces with month 1 directions.  No wonder it wasn't working so when I get home, I'll have to re-cut month 2 pieces and make the block there.

And month 1 of the online challenge at Quilts With A Heart Quilted Angels Club is complete.

I guess I'm making better progress than I realized.  Today I also worked on the project for the first month of Little Jo's Club at Quilts With A Heart.  I'll show you that progress, maybe even the finished quilt top in a day or two.  Tomorrow is a scrapbooking day.  My sister, Jacque, who lives in Kansas is coming to visit for the day.  I wonder if she knows she's coming to scrapbook too?!  :)

I'M A WINNER

It isn't often that I'm on the receiving end of giveaways.  In fact, I rarely win anything and I've never won any of the giveaways online.  I enter plenty, just never win.  But I have fun reading all the blogs I visit, and am in awe of the projects I see, and it fuels my creative gene so who cares if I win or not, right?

One of the recent giveaways I entered was on one of my favorite blogs Moda, The Cutting Table. Well today I got an email from Sarah at Moda United Notions.  I was excited as I have been trying to make contact to become one of the their "go to" quilters for their samples.  And as I read the email, I momentarily became very excited.  Sarah said "I am Sarah from Moda United Notions. You have WON the Bronze for our Winter Quilt Games "Name That Block"!! Please email me your mailing address".  Oh my gosh, I won!  I really won something!

  

Although I am still not on their "go to" quilting list, I'm still hopeful.  

TOP SECRET SCRAPBOOKS

I've been working diligently on a quilt using my block that will appear in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks Volume 9.  However, I'm so sad I can't show it to you yet.  It's the hardest secret to keep.  Even harder than when I was a kid and couldn't tell someone what they were getting for Christmas. It's going to be a long time until May.  Maybe you can sneak a peak at the fabrics I'm using.  They are SEW much fun!

So, when I'm not working on the Top Secret Quilt, I'm working on trying to catch up on some long overdue scrapbooking.  William will graduate in May and I want his scrapbooks up to date for the graduation party.  Want to guess how far behind I am?  Uhmmm... try 8 years!!!

Before we moved from Missouri in 2003 I was a consultant for Creative Memories and did a lot of scrapbooking.  I would trade off with quilting. Scrapbook a while, quilt a while, scrapbook a while, quilt a while....  And believe it or not, I didn't have UFO's for quilting.  Didn't even know what a UFO was until I moved to Texas in 2006.  When we moved to Arkansas in 2003, I didn't quilt much as I didn't have friends that quilted.  My friends in Arkansas scrapbooked.  So I was pretty much caught up on scrapbooking when we moved to Texas.  Then when I got to Texas, I didn't have friends that scrapbooked.  My friends quilted.  And quilt they did!  They introduced me to UFO's and I'm making up for lost time projects!

Meanwhile back at the ranch mom's house.  Since I'm in Missouri with no quilting machine, I thought it was a good opportunity to try to catch up again; at least with William's scrapbooks.  Mom and I have worked relentlessly on his books.  Okay, well Mom has.  I've snuck away a few times to sew.  hehe!  Here is the progress I've made today.  We started with December 2006 (where I left off to go have quilting fun with my friends).  I'm up to May 2008.

This is the progress mom made today,  She's working on July 2007.  

I thought I had recruited some help for a scrapbooking marathon over the weekend but my help seems to have run out on me.  We didn't make as much progress as I had hoped.  I don't know about mom, but I'm tired!  Tomorrow we'll be back at it again.

A VACATION APOLOGY

Recently I wrote that I was on VACATION FIT FOR A QUEEN!  You can read about it here.  I mentioned that William Webmaster The Prince was being well taken care of.  However I left out one very important person that is making sure he's well taken care of also.  That would be my mother-in-law, aka his Granny!  She does take very good care of him.  Probably too good!  She spoils him past the point of rotten!!!!  Here is a picture of William and his Granny.

And she takes good care of me when I come to town also; and in between also (wink, wink).  My most sincere apologies for omitting her from the original post.

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

I recently taught an applique class to my quilting group I belong to in Texas, The Texas Star Quilters.  I also taught the same class at the Nine Patch Quilt Shop in Nevada, MO.  This is my project sample.  If you've been following me, you already know that.

The original pattern was intended for a pillow but I made it a quilt.  I used a charm pack to make the patchwork border.  I cut the charm squares into 2 1/2" squares.  It finished 28" x 28".  I cut the center square 20 1/2" square (to finish at 20" square).  However you can make it any size you want and still add the patchwork border by making the center piece divisible by 2 and adding 1/2" for seam allowance to that.  

\

The pattern is a free download from Janome and you can find it here.

I thought I would share the color combinations from the students in my classes.

This is Ann's

And this is Pam's (of course if you know Pam, you know it will be red and black.  She's as predictable with red/black as I am with red/white/blue.)

And this is Bertha's. 

They all used red, white, and black but changed fabrics and background colors and it's looks completely different.  

This is Carol's

Don't you just love this multi-colored argyle fabric in the hearts.  Lots of added color!

And as Zona said, how can you go wrong with pink and lime green?

Another black and red project from Jackie

Of course I like this one a lot.  It's so "happy", just like it's maker, Judy.

And Charlene added pink to her black.  It kinda looks red in the picture but it's really pink.  

We all had a lot of fun and visited way too much.  I hope they learned something besides gossip!  What, wait, there's no gossip going around in class!  Just the facts ma'am!  And if you're interested, I'm going to teach this same class again in Nevada, MO on Monday, March 17 at the Nine Patch Quilt Shop.  

I hope you been hopping along on the Hugs and Kisses Blog Hop going on now.  You can see the complete schedule here.  

HUGS AND KISSES BLOG HOP

Hello SWEETHEARTS!  HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!

Are you ready to be smothered in sugar HUGS AND KISSES?  I hope so.  I've got a couple of things to show you.  This blog hop is all about paper piecing hearts and x's and o's!  I really enjoy paper piecing.  I LOVE the perfection it brings to a block or project.  It' really is very easy.  I hope you FALL IN LOVE with it and give it a try.

Madamme Samm, our fearless leader at Sew We Quilt, who is also our SWEETHEART of a cheerleader for this hop, has teamed up with Soma, at Whims and Fancies a SWEETHEART of a creative paper piecing lady to bring us the pattern we were to use.  You're going to want the pattern for yourself.  You can get it here at Etsy  or here at Craftsy. ( all proceeds will be going to 2 charities they are pretty passionate about). 

I designed this quilt pattern myself.  I'm calling it "FLIRT".  I thought the paper piecing took on a modern feel so I wanted the blocks to go with it to be larger, more chunky.  It was a little out of my box HEART.  The long rectangular blocks are 12" x 24" finished.  My original design was to be a twin sized quilt.  You know how I am about bed size quilts.  But when I laid it out on my design wall floor, I didn't like it.  So then I took away a few blocks and it was lap size.  I still didn't like it so now it's wall hanging size 48" x 60".  And now I LOVE it!

I played with my embroidery machine and finally figured out how to turn a design in the hoop to make it stitch out larger.  The embroidery made a LOVELY addition to the blocks.

And the paper pieced blocks.  I made 2 of each, swapping the focus fabric for the background in each of the 3 block patterns.

 KISSES......

HUGS.....

HEARTS.....

I quilted it with a whimsical heart pattern in a Glide thread called Magic Mint to soften it up a bit.

But since I had all those extra blocks, 3 went into the backing.

I quilted my label in the back with my longarm and this time I got it right.  The first time I stitched the label in the back of my son's quilt, I forgot to flip the design and you had to read it with a mirror.  My son thought it was neat.  It was a label in code!

And the other 2 went into a pillow case.

Now that LOVE was in the air, I made this little wall hanging/table topper.  I was scheduled to teach an applique class to my quilt group, Texas Star Quilters and this was the perfect project.  Didn't it turn out SWEET?  I also used the pattern to teach the applique class I did at Nine Patch Quilts in Nevada, Missouri.  Can you tell I LOVE that whimsical heart quilting pattern and the magic mint thread? I used it on this CUTIE PIE too.  

I hope you have fell in LOVE with all these projects and want to create something for yourself.  Be sure to hop on over and give the other ladies a HUG and a KISS!  Here are the other SWEETHEARTS for today.

Lady Soma

Whims and Fancies

Lady Laura Ann

fuzzyhatquilter

Lady Doris (you're in the Queen's Palace now)

Quilting Queen Online

Lady Rexie

Crow Calling Woman

Lady Shari

refreshedintent

Lady Cherry

cherry blossoms quilting studio

And many thanks to our sponsors

  and 

Now that you've made it all the way to the end of this post, YOU deserve a reward.  I'm giving away a charm pack and a candy pack in the Moda Valentine fabric line.  Just leave me a comment and tell me if you LOVE chocolate or could really live without it.  I personally can live without it.  It's really kinda funny.  I LOVE chocolate cake and some chocolate brownies but hate chocolate candy bars, hot cocoa, chocolate ice cream, chocolate pudding.... you get the idea.  I really just don't care for chocolate too much.  As usual, you get additional chances if you follow my blog, like my FaceBook page, or share.  I'll ship anywhere and make sure you're not a "no reply" blogger.  I can't contact you if I don't know who you are.  I'll announce the winner after the hop is over.

And remember....