Spoiled Rotten

My SSCS partner Dawnie has well and truly spoiled me.

Her gifts are amazing.  Two wonderful Christmas stitcheries to help the Yuletide spirit along each year.  The bag (to feed my bag fetish) is amazing.  I took the picture of the end, I'm not sure if you can see it, but there is a cute little sewing machine attached.  I love all the little details she's added to all of her work like little tags, pulls, and back pockets.  (I tried to take a picture, but it failed miserably)  Plus, new projects to drool over.  An adorable hatched and patched bookmark kit and a magazine with wonderful projects.  

I absolutely love everything!

Guild block of the month

I've posted a few of these blocks in the past.  My guild has been doing a block of the month these past 15 months.  We've each had a turn to pick a 12" finished block for everyone to complete and then each month we made that block for ourselves.  

I'm a fan of blue. :)  For my blocks I chose to work out of my stash.  Here are my last three blocks.

And here are all the finished blocks!

I really love how they've turned out.  Plus, it's going to be wonderful to see how different they've all turned out.  My friend is showing her finished blocks here, can you even tell that they're the same blocks!? 

Presents!

Wow!  Today's been a wonderful day!  Not only do I have a day off.  It's snowing!  (Though, it may be more significant to note that it is the end of November and this is really our first! snow).

Plus, I heard the front door open this morning, and look what I found!  Presents.

The first was a little gift from a very sweet neighbour.

The second is my SSCS parcel!  It made it's way over the ocean sooo quickly.  Can you see all the goodies that are calling my name?

The wonderful gingerbread man ornament!?  I have a real soft spot for gingerbread men at Christmas.  For me, it's one of the things that is really Christmas.  It may be because we grew up with a traditional Swedish song about three gingerbread men - tre peparkaksgubbar.

And, most importantly, who do I get to thank for all these lovely goodies??  The lovely Dawnie of a new to me blog - Itching for Stitching.

In with a Bang!

Wow!  I know, I can't believe it either!  I've actually finished something and it's still the beginning of the month.  Even more shocking is that I have 3! finished quilts to show.

Granted all three of them have been sitting around for a while just needing the binding...

To give you an idea of scale, the blue one measures 46 cm x 46 cm (18" x 18").

I also finished working on the SSCS.  (But I can't post that one until after Christmas)

October finishes

I have a few finished for this month.  Yeah!

First up are our traveling companions for the quilt show in Houston.  (I finished them the day we flew out!)

I then finally finished this little thread catcher/pin cushion/organizer.  I found the pattern for this one on sew mama sew.

I also needed to take a cutting mat for some of my classes at Houston.  Nothing I had would fit the mat so I created this bag and took the mat, rulers, and other supplies as carry on.

I also managed to *finally* finish this quilt.  I started this one many many many years ago, but it's done now and in time for Christmas 2009!  I actually quilted this one myself and did something a little different in each of the squares.  It was actually a fun way to practice quilting.

Houston - Part III

Gee, I guess we all like quilts.

While at the quilt show in Houston, they also had a pieced clothing competition.  I recognized one of the outfits from a blog I've been following - Blue Birds of Happiness!

And here are more pictures of the stunning and amazing quilts. 

I love how they made this quilt more than just a lone star plopped on a quilt.

Swirly and twirly, is there anything more to say?

This one is teeny tiny.  I think it was 9"x9" finished?

This is a quilt, not a photo!

I used to think I wasn't much for the art quilts or the abstract quilts.  I think my tastes may be opening up more.  There were quite a few that caught my eye.

Can you find the turtles?  Lizards? Butterflies?

I just love the colours in this one.

This one was such a fun quilt.

Circles, circles, circles.  This one was even more amazing close up.  Actually looking at the details of the amazing work close up was a real treat.

I just love this bird.

This was another quits from the antique collection.  All of the quilts in the collection were in amazing shape and real show pieces.

My friend and I both said that this trip was a once in a life time thing but, you know what, we both want to go again!

Houston - Part II

You want to see quilts!???.... :)

I've not posted any of the winning quilts.  You can see them on the festival quilt site.

These amazing quilts are the ones that weren't good enough or in non-juried collections.  And they were all stunning.  The caliber of quilts was amazing.  It was quite inspiring (and maybe a little intimidating... :)

This was from the antique quilts collection.  Aren't the colours amazing.

This was a fabulous hexagon quilt also from the antique quilts collection.

I think this one was either the antique collection or the texas guilds collection.  (Sadly, it blurred together a little in my mind)  This is actually one of the blocks my guild is doing for this year's charity quilts.

I just love all the things you can do with a simple log cabin.

The applique on this one was pretty spectacular.  This is one a couple members of my guild would love.

I think I'm developing quite the obsession with medallion quilts.  I may be seeing one in my future....  (After Dear Jane and Nearly Insane are finished of course)

And look!  Dear Jane!  I really loved how this one was quilted.  Instead of making the outer triangles, she quilted them in!

This was from the Canadian quilts.  Touques!

This quilt was just stunning in the clarity of colours.

I'm not sure if there is anything you can say about this one, except wow!

I like the swirly lines of this one.  Plus how even though this was constructed from mostly solids there is a lot of movement in colour.

I'm a sucker for curves and swirls.  Plus I love how 3D it looks.  As soon as we saw this one, my friend said that this was a me quilt.  And she's entirely right.

Pink and white. :)  This was from the collection of Hawaiian quilts that were made by Japanese women.  This one was to remember their wedding which took place on one of the islands.

I love the simplicity of this one.  This quilt was inspired by the Shakers.

Isn't this one stunning.

Houston

My friend and I got to go to the quilt show in Houston last week!

We both took tonnes and tonnes of pictures.  So you'll have to bear with me.  This will be spread out over several posts...

Here we are in the airplane going to the show.  We're really excited.  Plus!  One of the airline attendants goes to the show each year.  She gave us tonnes of tips for the show; like bring index cards.  That way if you see something at one of the 1100 vendors you can write down the item and booth number and find it again.

This was our first day of classes.  We showed up early, before the festival to take lots and lots of classes.  In the window you can see everything setup for market.  We weren't able to attend but left lots of nose prints on glass as we tried to sneak peeks.

We attended lots of great classes.  (I've got pictures of the projects for another post.)  In each class they provided machines for each of the students.  I took lots of classes on regular machines.

My friend, the lucky bum, just bought a long arm machine so she took lots of long arm classes.

The quilt festival opened Wednesday.  The Tuesday prior they had an evening event where they announced all the winners.  If you attend, you get to see the wining quilts early!

We got to take a tour of NASA!

They also combined the NASA tour with a little shopping.  (In case we didn't get enough of it at the festival. :)

We attended a class on all sorts of applique techniques.  We learned that there are as many ways to applique as there are to skin a cat.

Here we are very tired and very sad to be leaving but our brains were full so it was time to leave.