Happy Fall Y'all!

This past weekend was my local quilt shop's annual Backyard Quilt show. This wonderful show is Doris's way of showing her customers appreciation of the many quilts we all make and is the premise of the whole show! We all get our favorite quilts out and submit them to Doris, she sets them up with numbers on them and we all vote on our favorites. The winner of viewers choice then gets a wonderful prize to spend in the shop! It seems like this year had many more quilts than last for sure! Also this year, since the shop had moved to their farm, she also had a nice selection of vendors for us to peruse. Our guild also had a booth to sell the tickets for our the raffle quilt that was made, there was a nice selection of pumpkins and Indian corn to purchase and of course she also had an awesome supply of munchies. It was a great show!

Here is a mosaic of some of my favorite customer quilts and the vendors at the show!

....and here is the Lil Country Shoppe in all it's finery! You can see why I love going there!

....and one of the other really awesome parts of the show is the trunk shows that Doris gets for us to view....well that brings me to my exciting news! I was very honored to be asked to show my patterns as a trunk show this year!! It was a wonderful feeling indeed! Here are the quilts I showcased and their respective patterns!

This one is the latest of my patterns, Bluebird's of Happiness, and is made with wonderful fabric from Lecien's Floral Collection- Pastels. It has blanket stitch applique (which can be done needle turn as well) and buttons added for embellishment.

The first one is Blooming Bouquets and I made this sample using Sweet by Urban Chicks for Moda. It is fat quarter friendly with large blocks. Then there is Rolling Pinwheels, which is a jelly roll friendly quilt made with Beach House by Blackbird Designs and Patisserie by Fig Tree Quilts. All of these will be available in my etsy soon and I will post when they are!

It definitely was a lot of fun to see them hanging there at the show! I am busy at work on a couple of new patterns at the moment that I will give sneaks of next time but I can tell you that one is using Lecien's fabric I got from Spring Market and the other is using a jelly roll of Simple Abundance!!! Can't wait to show them to you!

Until then....

Happy Fall Y'all!

Cara

Introducing......

Hi all! I hope you are all having a wonderful summer! I know we have been. I wanted to write today's post to introduce a project that I have been sooooo excited about that has now come to fruition! A while back I showed this sneak of something I have been working on...

.....From this post here. Well I have finished it. Some of you may know that I started The Quilt Nook to design and make custom quilts for people. Well, I learned one of my favorite parts of my business was the actual design process....so since I had been designing for a while I decided to design a pattern for quilters. So here I am introducing the first published pattern by Quilt Nook Gal Designs!!!!

This quilt is called Rolling Pinwheels. I used a jelly roll (Beach House by Blackbird Designs) and some other yardage (Patisserie by Fig Tree Quilts) and pieced the backing.

I also opened an Etsy shop at http://www.quiltnookgaldesigns.etsy.com/ and the patterns are available there as well as some other goodies that I have been accumulating for quilters! Please check it out! I am excited to say that Doris, who owns Lil Country Shoppe quilt shop, has both the pattern and a couple of kits made up too. if you are in the Middletown (DE) area, the sample for Rolling Pinwheels is hanging in her store as well - stop on by! Below is the sample in her shop and me standing in front of it!

Well, thanks for checking out my new pattern and please stayed tuned as I am working on a few others that will hopefully be ready soon! So until then.....
Happy Quilting

Blogoversary and a giveaway!

Wow! Hard to believe that it has been a year since I started blogging! What a year it has been! I have loved every minute of it! I have met some wonderful people and realized how small the world can be thanks to technology. I have learned a lot, been inspired a ton and most of all had my heart warmed by the generosity of bloggy quilters! In a thanks and celebration of my blogoversary, I have decided to have my first giveaway! So here it goes..... Leave me a comment and I will have a drawing for this wonderful pattern and fat quarter bundle!



The fat quarter bundle is from Urban Chicks latest line "Sweet" by Moda and the pattern is from Fig Tree Quilt's quarterly publication Fresh Vintage- which if you have not checked out- do! It is awesome!

And to make it fun, in your comment please tell me where you are from and how you got started blogging! I will start:

Hi my name is Cara and I am from Maryland- a small town just north of Baltimore. I got started blogging after reading an article in McCall's Quilting by Holly Holderman. I started surfing the quilt blogs and decided I wanted to be part of the fun!

So, please leave me a comment by Sunday and I will draw that next day! Oh and if you post a link to this giveaway on your blog let me know and I will give you 2 extra entries!
Have fun and I look forward to reading your comments!
Thanks for a great year! (*just in the nick of time!)
Cara

Market, Retreat and a Sneak...

Whew! I have had a busy couple of weeks, as mentioned in my last post...I attended my first market then we had a retreat to attend and then unfortunately my littlest one has been sick so this is the first chance I have gotten to download allll those pics and share with you!

First, Market was a huge success! Stefanie and I met a ton of wonderful people, saw a ton of beautiful new fabrics and of course got the inside scoop of this wonderful industry. It was overwhelming but exciting and at times so daunting, but overall I am energized and excited about venturing into this amazing world!

The first night we attended Sample Spree which, to say the least, is crazy! We met some wonderful people in line from all over the country and of course met up with Sharon from Red Geranium Cottage and briefly met her friends Nancy and Karen. Then the next 2 days were spent looking through the booths and meeting some of our favorite designers- it was so hard to not be completely star struck, I tell you! Some of our fave's were Joanna and Eric Figueroa of Fig Tree Quilts fame...one booth I really wanted to take a pic of( go here to check out Joanna's pics) ...both Joanna and her husband are wonderful and nice and I am so excited for her new line Patisserie to come out! It is gorgeous! We met Barb Adams and briefly Alma Allen of Blackbird Designs fame. Very beautiful booth that one an award for Best single booth. They also have a really awesome book coming out that had this amazing cross stitch pillow to make! You can go here to check out pics of their booth. We also met Cyndi Walker of Wishful Stitches as well- her patterns are just wonderful. Oh there were so many others and we enjoyed meeting every single one and to see all of their newest designs- very inspiring! Unfortunately I did not realize that I had only taken a couple of photos....Stefanie, I believe took more. I am hoping to be a little better about the camera next time around!

One of my faves to meet was Lynette Anderson and her son Eddie at her booth Lynette Anderson's designs. She is the sweetest and talked with us a while even offering me some good tidbits of what it is like to design (thanks Lynette!). She is coming out with her first line of fabric in June from Henry Glass. Go to her blog and check out her sneak peaks- too cute! If you have not been working on her cute Noak's Ark Stitchery, then pop over and check that out too! I am hoping to have some of her paterns and books on my Etsy shortly so keep checking back if any one is interested.




We also bumped into Melly and Rosie from Melly and Me and Rosalie Quinlan Designs fame on the shuttle to the convention center! They were so sweet and so we made a point of stopping by their cute booth and they obliged us with a photo op! Their designs are just darling!

Like I said, Market is a bag of feelings but mostly it shows a wonderful example of our industry and I can't wait to be part of it someday!

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Last weekend, my bestest Quilt Buddy Stefanie came to visit for a wonderful 5 days! The reason was to attend the Lil Country Shoppe's third annual Quilt Retreat in Rehoboth Beach Delaware. She flew in on Thursday and we began immediately to catch up and of course pack our bags for a weekend of quilty bliss! I of course was way to ambitious and packed several projects of which are still untouched. Instead I pick an intricate wall hanging called 'Snowmen on Parade'. It is adorable and I cannot wait to finish it and show you! I will see if I have a pic from the shoppe. It involves applique and paper piecing and the prep from that alone kept me busy! Stefanie managed to get one quilt top pieced and 2 others almost completely pieced. This year we sat with the wonderful sisters that I sat with last year (guess I did not talk too much since they invited me again! : ) ) Here is the group sitting at our table getting some work done. From the back to front: Susan's sisters Charlane, Nancy and Susan (no blog-yet) and on the right is Stef. I of course am taking the pic so managed to stay out of it! LOL!

Here is a picture of the strip club quilt that was done this weekend and Doris graciously presented it to those members that were at the retreat! WOW! I am not sure what it is called but I will edit when I find out! Doris made this one out of the jelly roll Harvest Home from Blackbird Designs! I cannot wait to make this one!

All in all we had a blast! I am so ready for next years to come already! Doris and Susan did a great job as usual! Unfortunately it did not seem to last long enough before Stefanie was jetting back to her coast : (....

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I also manged in the past couple of weeks to send off my Stitcher's Angel present to fly across the big blue ocean to somewhere in Europe! I have included a sneak peak of what I made, just in case ---- reads my blog....I cannot wait to hear she has received it and I hope she loves it!

Once I know she has received and opened it I will post the other pics! I had so much fun doing this and anxiously await my own Stitcher's angel parcel to come! Thanks Helen for organizing this awesome swap!

Well, I have rambled on for too long and have to go hit the drawing board! Too many ideas in my head! LOL!

Enjoy your weekend!

Shop Hopping with the Quilt Buddy!

Well, where to start...I am back form San Diego and what a whirlwind it was! It took me a day to just veg out and get back to East coast time and routine...so about my visit!

It was cool! On the first day Stefanie and I went to Temecula and met up with a fellow blogger at the Quilter's Coop- who, you ask? Well it was none other than Red Geranium Cottage blogger, Sharon! I tell you she is one cool lady! We went to this cute little barbecue place down the road from the Coop and had a leisurely lunch chatting the whole time. I really did not want it to end!

After lunch we walked back to the Quilter's Coop to do some shopping and sadly had to say good-bye to Sharon. It was great to meet you Sharon! You are awesome!

So we went into the Coop to drown our sorrows with some retail therapy! My how cute the Coop is- check out the loads of samples they have hanging and they have a wonderful selection of fabrics and patterns. I bought some gathered Ric-rack and some patterns from here.

Then we went onto Rooster Creek- wonderful stitchery store with some antiques and shabby chic decor products in the front. I bought some wool felt for a couple of the patterns from the Coop and a cute little felted bunny for The Little Ballerina.



Then we were off to get some Starbucks and to go home. We decided to get Rubio's for supper. Let me tell you , if you have not tried their beer battered fish burrito...go get one...they are to die for! I dreamt about them the previous night knowing I could not get them out here on the East Coast! Yummm!


Well, I will leave you with that for now and tomorrow I will post about the second day and the Country Loft's outdoor quilt show as well as the loot we got there! Also, here is my Hexagon progress- check out all of that Fig Tree love! : )


Until then...T.T.F.N.