Quilts for Japan

A friend posted this on her Facebook page and I'd like to pass it along.

Quilters Newsletter has long enjoyed a friendship withPatchwork Tsushin, a leading Japanese quilt magazine. So when Editor in Chief Naomi Ichikawa emailed to say her magazine is collecting comfort quilts for those impacted by the recent earthquake in Japan, we wanted to join the effort. QN will gather quilts from U.S. quiltmakers then forward them to Naomi and her staff, who will deliver them to those in need. 

Here’s how you can be part of this important worldwide response:

• Send quilts of any size from baby to adult to:

Dana Jones
Quilters Newsletter
741 Corporate Circle, Suite A
Golden, CO 80401

• Mark your box: “Quilts for Japan.”
• Send quilts as soon as possible and no later than April 30, 2011.
• Enclose your name, address, phone number, and email address with the quilts.

A SEW Day!

Every once in awhile I take a sew day at work - actually this week I've done TWO!  One of the great myths of the world is that quilt shop owners are able to sit in the shop and sew all the time.  In my shop, it rarely happens but when it does, I have the whole shop at my disposal!  I can use whatever machine I want, the thread color I need is ALWAYS available, there's a big surface for cutting, I never run out of fabric, I have the right size batting & I can baste on the classroom tables.  Ahhhh, nirvana!

My niece Carla's baby shower is this Sunday in Massachusetts.  Mom is here and we can't go so I'm mailing the gifts to my sister-in-law.  I made her four very nice receiving blankets - why are store bought ones so cheesy after the first wash?  I've been making these receiving blankets since James Michael was a baby, one 1/4 yard of each of a flannel and another fabric.  Sometimes I use two flannels, sometimes flannel and a Minkee, sometimes Minkee and a fabric - depends on when the baby is born.  Carla is getting a variety.

Riley O'Connor is going to have a great selection of receiving blankets if his Great Aunt Debbie is going to have anything to say about it!  Carla is doing the nursery in creams, blues and browns, hence the colors.  Loved the teal Monkey Cuddle Cloth too much not to use it though!  The back of that has a new waffle fabric from Moda.  It gives it an interesting texture - very soft.  I think Nathan needs one of those!


So yesterday morning I'm finishing the serged edges of the blankets (they can be done on the sewing machine too) so I can put them in the mail and I decide I should be sending a quilt.  Am I nuts?  Obviously, yes since today I'm mailing the receiving blankets and a quilt!  

I had no classes yesterday so it was a SEW DAY!  Started out with an EQ pattern at 8am, choose the fabrics at 10:30 and finished the binding at 3:40.  Yes, you can do a quilt in a day - Eleanor would be proud of me!

This is a pattern I call QP Twist.  This is the block and the block placement creates the pinwheel effect.  It's an easy pattern, one I wrote directions for in 2005 and hadn't done in awhile.  


I hope Carla, Danny and Riley like it.  I enjoyed my SEW Day VERY much!  Carla's sister Jennifer is due next month, there's going to be another SEW Day in my future very soon.

Quilting Is Murder Books, Blogs & Fabric!

The first round of Quilting Is Murder is over so while we wait for the next installment, six of the Killer Shops are offering a great deal on fabric packs to go with Becky Lomasney's Five Yards of Fun Quilt patterns and Terri Thayer's quilt mystery series!  This series is one I've enjoyed so much I kept the books to reread.  There's three in the series and our blogs will center around one book at a time.  

Right now it's the first in Terri's Quilting Mystery series Wild Goose Chase.  A snarky national quilting teacher is murdered at a quilt show, a bloody rotary cutter lying beside her. The suspects are many and few!  Our heroine is a local shop owner dealing with the unexpected death of her mom, who owned the quilt shop and an underhanded sister-in-law who feels SHE should have been left in charge of the shop.  Interesting subplots to go with the murder.


Our fabric packs & patterns are up online - click here - it's pretty neat.  We have three patterns and seven fabric packs - you choose a fabric bundle AND you choose the pattern you want to make.  The pattern is included in the cost of the kit.  The mystery is what you will make with the bundles!  Very cool!

So with this book, we're highlighting the Glorious Geese pattern - of course!  I'm think the fall batik bundle would be perfect for a "manly" lap quilt.  Of course it would also coordinate beautifully with my living room . . .


Enjoy the fun!  Pick the fabric, pick the pattern - you solve the mystery and make a quilt!

Spring!

March 20th is coming!  I see signs of spring more and more.  The birds are chattering, the robins have stopped huddling up in groups puffed up like round balls of feathers and the daffodils are up on the south side of the shop, one group has buds.  Yes, spring is alllllmmmmmmoooooosssssttttt sprung.  I'm really hesitant to say it, afraid I'll jinx us and good old Puxatony Phil will have been wrong.  


I'm sure my friend Janet who lives in Syracuse NY, where they've had ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TWO INCHES of snow this winter (their record is 192"), is hoping/wishing/praying for spring even more than I am!  I grew up in New England, snow shouldn't bother me.  I think it does because almost everything comes to a dead stop here when it snows, in Massachusetts you put your boots on your feet, shoes in a bag and you went about your life snow or no snow.


All the snow this year seems to be never ending.  We - fingers crossed - have crossed over into that late winter rain period.  We still can't garden but little signs that we can sometime in the near distant future are popping up.  So I've decided to garden indoors at the shop!




I've set up a Hoping For Spring SOON display.   I must have been on a butterfly kick last spring when I bought not one, not two, not even three but FOUR lines of fabric with butterflies!  All are gorgeous, but really four lines?  Spring must have been a distant memory when I was buying fabric this fall.

I also decided last fall to do a butterfly theme with QP's  shop hop quilt - which I finally finished and hung in the shop this weekend.  Ok, ok, I want to put beads in the grass so it looks like dew and I might still add leaves . . .
Anyway, I digress.  


We're working on some butterfly samples but we have some luscious, spring colored fabrics to entice you to think spring.  Purples, greens, yellows, blues, all bright & cheery - springlike!

Stop in and enjoy a breath of spring!

NJ's 10th Annual Shop Hop

About 11 years ago I had an idea to start a shop hop in NJ.  So I approached two fellow shop owners at a show and asked if they'd be interested.  They were and a new, to NJ, quilting activity was born.  Shops have come and gone - there are four of the original 11 shops left - but the fun of exploring quilting in NJ during a spring weekend remains.  We have a great time!

This year will be our 10th hop and we've chosen a garden theme - we are after all, the Garden State!  Pink is our color this year and pink charms have floated around my sewing room for months.  Sometime around Christmas, I finally conquered the charm mental block and decided to do something totally different for QP.  I knew I wanted to do a garden theme and butterflies.  Chatting with some other shop owners from around the country who were talking about 3D flowers made from ric rac, I thought I have ric rac and a need for 3D flowers, this could work.  

I used EQ and designed the background, sewed the quilt top and thought BLECH, boring.  I knew the embellishments would spice it up but I put it aside for the holidays.  Sometime around the beginning of Feb, I came across it in my to do pile . . .  YIKES, it's due this month!

I quilted it like a madwoman and started adding 3D flowers.  

Then I added 3D butterflies - some were limp, some were too stiff, pitched those and tried something else. 

 Of course I needed beads and that necessitated a bead buying trip!  Some years ago, Sandy Brawner gave me a button that said "Easily Distracted By Bright Shiny Objects", I think of her every time I play with beads.

I'm to the fun part now - playing with the embellishments.  If you look on the shop hop page and notice that it's cropped awfully close to the edges, you'll know that's because I STILL hadn't put the binding on when I sent the picture!  :0)

Till next time.

Hurry, hurry, hurry - WHY?

Reading the paper yesterday, I saw an article from a  columnist who bemoaned the fact that driving is no longer enjoyable - everyone is like a mad person.  She wondered what happened to the leisurely days of getting into your car and going for a ride to enjoy the scenery and the experience.  When, she asked, did it become "Hurry, hurry, hurry, me, me, ME!"?

Don't you feel that way sometimes? About yourself and about other people?  Do we REALLY accomplish more and do a better job when we're doing three things at the same time?  I know the driver yakking on a hand held phone is NOT doing a good job driving, of course neither is the woman yelling at the kids in the backseat or anyone texting (are they crazy or do they just have a death wish?).

Have we all bought into the thought process if we go faster, do more, we'll have more and therefore, we'll be happier?  Hmmm, how's that really working for us?  Reading the paper lately, it doesn't seem like it's going too well.

Gone are the good old days of sitting on the front porch listening to the radio for entertainment, but I'll bet I could find a lot less to do that really doesn't have to be done and I'd be able to sit on the front porch with a book more often.

So I'm going to slow down.  Leave a few minutes earlier for appointments, stop multitasking and look at what I'm doing to see if I REALLY need to do it right then.  I think my blood pressure just might go down.

How about you?  Got a front porch?

Valentine's Day

Our Valentine display.

Yes, it's almost that time - Valentine's Day.  I've been "fluffing" the Valentine's display at the shop and made up some quickie towels using ric rac.  I saw this on a blog somewhere and of course now can't find it.  It was one of those you start at one place and then click on a link, click on another link, then another, and another - and pretty soon two hours are gone, it's WAY past bedtime and you have no idea of how you got to where you are!


I do remember the blogger said that she'd bought towels like this in red and green for Christmas at Pier One maybe?  Anyway, she showed simple towels decorated with ric rac and I thought - I have towels, I have ric rak!


So it was dark and snowing last night so I knew it would be a quiet night at the shop and I could sew.  I dug out all the supplies and mentioned to Holli & Fern what I was planning and Fern suggested I use up the rest of the pre-fused hearts from the small heart wall hanging - two heads are better than one!

These are an EASY project and something you can whip up in a flash to decorate your kitchen.  Gather up a kitchen towel, some appliques if you want and some ric rac - we have ALL kinds at the shop!  Stitch the ric rac, and the appliques if you want them, onto your towels with matching thread.  That's it.  Oh yes, arrange them so you like them, then stitch!


Of course you can go crazy and add machine embroidery, or hand stitch some redwork hearts, cupids or something too.  If you want simple, quick and adorable - go with just the ric rac.


They were so easy, I made some for St. Patrick's Day in green!


Till next time - stitch something!