Weddings & Engagements

Sunset in Key West

We are just back from Key West where our oldest son married his Stefanie and our middle one announced he'd asked his Stephanie to marry him.  (It gets very confusing at the table with the two Stef(ph)anies and the two James!)

The wedding was gorgeous, held at the Reach Resort out on their pavillion that overlooked the water.  Picture perfect weather - 86 and sunny every day.  By the time the wedding started at 5:30, it had cooled to a perfect temp.

Besotted with each other.

Jeremy focusing on getting the rings off his finger.

Mr & Mrs James Welch Jr.

Nathan was less than impressed with the whole thing and fell asleep after watching Stefanie come down the aisle.  He did manage to wake up after the formal pictures were taken.  The photographer said she'd photoshop eyes on his eyelids  :0) 

Sara, Nathan & Brian

Reception was held at a restaurant above Duval Street.

Dancing with the groom.

Jeremy & His Stephanie

No trip to Key West would be complete without a visit to the southern most point of the US or to watch the sunset.

Sara, Nathan & Brian 

Sunset in Key West

A wonderful time was had by all.  Gorgeous weather, gorgeous wedding, family & good friends - what more can you ask for?

Till next time. 

.

Cruisin!

About 10 years ago, I started doing weekend retreats down on Long Beach Island.  We enjoyed ourselves immensely and did it once a year.  Then the owners of the house we rented decided to retire and live in the house permanently.  No more retreats there.  I never found a place I liked as much that was close so we haven't done any retreats in awhile.


I thought about doing a quilting retreat on a cruise but never looked very far into it - until about a month ago.  Now I'm thrilled to announce our sailing date of April 21, 2012 to BERMUDA!  


We're calling it the Pink Sands Tour and we'll travel on the "Explorer of the Seas" from the Royal Caribbean line.  Five nights, two days of sewing, two days in Bermuda - what more could we ask for????  I don't know about all of you, but I'm ready for a cruise to Bermuda THIS April but unfortunately that isn't in the cards, so I'll be waiting & dreaming of next April!


Prices for the cruise have been worked out, I'm working on the details of what we'll sew and machines.  I'm planning on a first day project of some kind of a tote so we can use it while shopping in Bermuda!  And or the second day learning machine applique, bobbin work, couching and some other machine techniques while making a Pink Sands Memory Wall Hanging.  I'm chatting with machine companies about the possibilities of machines.  Stay tuned!  Whatever we sew, it will be FUN!


Why don't you join us?  We'll sail from Port Liberty in NJ on April 21st and return April 26th. You can find all the details by clicking on this link "QP Pink Sands Quilt Cruise".  We hope you can come!


Till next time,
Debbie

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.