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Belle's Mommy is our book winner!  Email me and I'll mail your book out.  Congratulations and thanks everyone for reading the blog and becoming our Facebook Friend!

It's That Time Of Year

I love fall, I really do.  I love the colors - crisp reds, oranges, golds - I love the cooler temps, and the trees!  How do those of you who can't watch the trees change colors mark the passing of the summer season?  This is the time of the year I really miss New England.  I don't miss the leaf peeper buses but I do miss that gorgeous spread of color across the hills.  We have the trees changing here at the shore, but not the glorious abundance of it like home.

I love to decorate my house with gourds and pumpkins - what makes those minature pumpkins so addicting?  All the different shapes & sizes.  Same with the gourds - the freakier the shape and colors, the better I like them!

Fall also brings a busy season to quilt shop owners and sewing machine dealers.  Life picks up the pace a notch and we hustle to keep ahead of it.  Sewers and quilters are now thinking it's time to get ready for the holidays and make gifts, the hall table needs a new runner, my sister-in-law is hinting she'd like a new quilt - you know the drill.  You're all thinking fall and I'm thinking Christmas!

So I'm decorating with pumpkins, gourds and fall table toppers.  Jim is churning our homemade pies with the apples we've picked.  The fall quilts have come out.  The sewing room however, looks like Santa's workshop three days before Christmas!  I think I need some elves!  I have three table runners in various stages of progress strewn about the room.  I'd show you pictures of my room but then I'd have to admit how messy it is . . . .

It's fall, the air is crisp and it's quilting time!  Put the soup in the crockpot, fire up the bread maker and sew.  It's that time of year and I'm glad.  It's one of my favorites.

Till next time.

Book Give Away!

Anyone who comments on our blog AND is a Facebook friend between now and November 1st will go into our drawing for a FREE book!  We'll draw on November 2nd.


This is a great book and would make really nice gifts for the holidays or make yourself one!  Flannel or Minkee for the winter - or how about terrycloth for the summer?  Flannel and a pretty cotton? 

Pattern includes an Envelope Travel Bag for your robe and a Ruffled Laundry Bag!  Sizes include XS-XXL


Here's the link to join us on Facebook.  Good luck!

Quilt Market is coming!

Quilt Market is the wholesale show for the quilting industry and every fall it's held in Houston.  This year I'm leaving on Thursday the 28th and coming home - brain fried and exhausted a day earlier than usual, on Monday.  My traveling companions, Barry and Nerma Springarn, will be on the same flights.  The first year I went to fall market, I got on the plane wearing my Jacket Jazz jacket and a man asked me if I was going to Quilt Market?  When I said yes, he introduced himself as my new Hoffman rep and offered me a ride to the hotel to save me the taxi fare.  Since I was with my friend Ann and we had NO idea of where we were going, we accepted.  I've been on the same flight with Barry, and his wife, Nerma after she retired, ever since, missing one when I decided on an earlier flight I think.   Now we email each other the cheapest flights when we see them and always seem to end up on the same plane.  Barry's generosity saves me a $40 cab ride.  Thank you Barry!  This year we're on the same flight home too.  


At this market I'm taking part in a dealer's panel where the audience will ask questions that we are supposed to have brilliant answers for.  I'm a little nervous about the whole thing imagining myself drawing complete blank after blank.  I'll be on stage with friends who also have shops so I'm hoping one of them will ride to my rescue if I need it.  Then again, here's hoping they're not hoping for the same thing!  


I have a list of things I'll be looking for at market - new patterns, a new block of the month (I can hear Lori shouting NO all the way from her house as she reads this!  LOL), new fabrics and any new trends so I can figure out what the heck I'm doing for the next 6 months.


One of the best things about market is seeing friends who I chat with every day by email and only actually see twice a year.  This year a few won't be attending market though and we'll miss them at our dinners, breakfasts and lunches.  The biggest plus of owning a quilt shop (besides getting to buy all that fabric!) is being friends with a group of amazing women, who firmly believe they can do whatever they set their minds to.  It inspires me to believe the same.


Till next time.

NJ Batik Challenge!

Last year I worked with a designer from Hoffman to make a QP exclusive batik fabric.  This is the result - three NJ lighthouses, Barnegat Light, Absecon and Sandy Hook.  It came out better than I had ever dreamed and we are absolutely thrilled with it!  We still have some left and you can purchase it at the shop or on the web by clicking here.

When the fabric arrived in June, I challenged you all to design something with the fabric and while we only had seven entries turned in, they were really something!  Check out this video of the challenge hanging in our lobby.  Voting is over and the quilts are now gone BUT

The challenge winners are - drum roll please!

$100 QP Gift Card - Janet Perry's NY Beauty
$50 QP Gift Card - Taffy Spaloss' Lighthouse Trip Around the World
 $25 QP Gift Card - Mary Simpson's Mariner's Compass

And Barry, my Hoffman rep, chose Janet Perry's NY Beauty to receive a Hoffman batik FQ bundle!

The other entries will receive a $15 QP Gift Card!  Thanks for participating and showing off your gorgeous quilts!

Till next time.

Fall is coming!

One of the first signs of fall for me are the local guilds holding their quilt shows.  I love to drive out to the shows to the west, I pass the sod farms, the Mum farm, the pick your own veggie farms, apple orchards, horse farms, the blueberry farm and the wineries.  All within 45 minutes to an hour of the shore - I'm sure that's not the picture you get when you think of NJ!  But that's my NJ, I live 5 minutes from the ocean and 40 minutes from farmland and in between the two runs the Pinelands, the largest stretch of public owned land on the east coast.  How about that!  Certainly not the picture most non residents get of NJ.  I certainly didn't think so before I moved here.

No color in the trees here yet.  It's coming, I can see hints of yellow in some of the maples but because of the heat and the little bit of rain we had, I don't think it will be a banner year for fall color this year.  Bummer.  We had rain this weekend - lots of rain on Wed night, Thurs and Friday thanks to a tropical storm that blew up the east coast and drenched us.

The show I went to yesterday - Jim is there today - is on the Delaware River in an old mill from the late 1800s.  The ambiance is great - big old beams, wooden floors with cracks you can see the water through!  The Courthouse Quilters Guild does a great job of decorating with mums, cornstalks and pumpkins.  It's just a really nice weekend, if the weather cooperates!

Back view of the mill.  

We've always been downstairs in the mill where the wheel used to turn.  This year we moved to a new section and good thing, they had to move the vendors in the basement up and out because the Delaware River was overflowing and so was the Raritan Canal that runs right outside the mill.

Look at the size of that swan!

I stood on what I think was an old train trestle but is now a gorgeous walking/biking path and took these pictures about 5pm last night.












I also took a video.  Remember, I'm not a professional videotographer. It will give you an idea of just how much it rained.

Till next time.

Crazy, Crazy Weekend!

Why does it seem like you have nothing planned for weeks on end and then EVERYTHING happens the same weekend?  With really no family local except Sara, Brian and the baby, we don't really have family things we run to all the time so we enjoy them immensely when they do pop up but usually we have to travel somewhere.  Not this past weekend, everything happened here.

The start of the walk

Sara arranged for a family team to walk in the Memory Walk for Alzheimer's research in memory of my Dad on Sat.  She rounded up her brothers, the Steph(f)anies, Brian, my Mom, Nathan and Jim and I. Nine of us hit the Point Pleasant Beach boardwalk on Sat for a three mile hike on a beautiful fall day. It ended up Stefanie, James' Stefanie, had to work but she was there in spirit.










 

Waiting to begin

Jeremy pushed Grammy, Brian pushed Nathan, and the rest of pushed ourselves!

Starting out

My Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease when he was 65 years old.  The hardest moment of that whole time besides the original diagnosis was the first time he looked at me and didn't know who I was.

We finished!

It was a gorgeous, fall day.  A little hot but the breeze was coming in off the water.  We were all happy to make it to the end!  Dad, we were thinking of you.

Sunday was Nathan's christening - a perfect cap to the weekend.  A smiling baby, who seemed a bit disappointed he wasn't going to get the usual head massage when his hair got wet, the kids all home, good food, good company - yup, it was a good day.

The kids.

Looking at these pictures, I'm now wondering why we didn't take a picture with all the kids and Jim and I?  Hmmm.

Brian, Sara, Nathan, Debbie & Jim

Nathan and his great grandparents.

Another wonderful family day. And a great weekend.  Nathan and Mom took multiple naps on Monday to recover and I admit, when I rocked Nathan to sleep in the late afternoon, I woke up about an hour later!