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

Hand Quilting

Did I ever mention I love Hand Quilting? It is one of my favorite things that I learned when I started quilting. The problem?.....Not enough time, unfortunately. This quilt on my frame is the only 'big' project I have tackled the hand quilting on. I have done little projects and some practice squares but I found that I was not to fond of using my 12" hoop for bigger quilts. First off, it was obviously too small. Second I found I was constantly struggling with the hoop and quilt trying to get my hand underneath and just in general. So I put off doing it. Then I found a wonderful company - Hinterberg Designs. They make these wonderful frames and I figured why not try a frame. I decided to ask for one for Christmas. Last Christmas my wonderful DH surprised me with the Hinterberg frame in this picture.


This frame is actually their Easy Build Plus kit which makes it way affordable- especially if you have never used a frame and want to try it out. It comes with everything but the rails ( my DH purchased these at the hardware store and cut them to my specified size). So I finally have a place to set it up and have been slowly working on finishing my Star of my Heart quilt. This quilt is actually a class I took while Jeff was deployed to Iraq in 2003 (I know it should be finished by now but life got in the way...and of course the hoop issue). My friend Shelli is who designed and taught this quilt and she is also the wonderful person who taught me to hand quilt!

Anyway, in working with the frame, I found that I loved that there was always perfect tension and of course the best part- NO BASTING! It is like when you use a longarm machine with the leaders and what not. This gets me to why I am writing this post....You see, in using a stationary frame, I have had to make some adjustments. The first adjustment I made was learning to quilt with my thumb for the ditch quilting that went away from me. I found this to be fairly easy (I used Alex Anderson's book for the technique) and it helped then to go away from me with the thumb and towards me using the traditional hand quilting method. So then I found that I needed to get a thimble for my thumb- but could not find anything I liked -until I went to my LQS Lil Country Shoppe . My friend Susan was working and is a hand quilter and helped me remedy this by recommending the Ultra Thimble. Let me tell you- that is one amazing little tool! It was so much easier than trying to jam a thimble on my thumb! So that solved that problem- thanks Susan! My issue is with the curves. I am having trouble figuring out how to do these comfortably. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

So I will leave you with a couple of pics of a couple of the blocks that are finished:

Thanks for sticking with me till the end of this very wordy post! I look forward to hearing the suggestions that you may have for easier quilting using a frame!

Happy Stitching!

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!

This is going to be a gooood week!

This has been quite a productive week! I actually finished quilting Organized Chaos and am taking it off the TBQ list YEAH! I still have to do the hand stitching on the last half of the binding. For me though, that is one of my fave parts and I know when I settle down to watch a little telly, I will have it finished in no time. So I will probably be posting the finished product sometime this week.

On another front I received a great little parcel in the mail that I had ordered after seeing some of them on Home Sweet Home.

Recognise the pink box??? Well here are the goodies I bought- and the pin cushions I bought them for! I now have 'blinged' out pincushies!!! I highly recommend you go over to Pinks and Needle's and get some for yourself-- the pics do not do them justice!








Of course I am gearing up for a great week ahead- plenty of sunshine, a warm pool, lots of quilting to be done and this coming Saturday is the monthly 'strip' club at my LQS, Lil Country Quilt Shoppe. I cannot wait to see what Susan and Doris have come up for this month! I also am looking forward to seeing the products from market! Yes this is going to be a great week!

On a closing note, the other thing that came in the mail this week was my EQ software for Dear Jane....Yep, I am jumping in with both feet! In fact here are my first 2 blocks completed!!!! First to start the whole process I started with an easy one...A-6 Uncle Homer and then I tried out this freezer paper tutorial ( thanks Wendy : ) it really made this block a cinch!) to piece together H-13 Farm Fields.

I also cut out the corresponding plain triangles (does anyone know if they are to be included in the count???). So I guess my Dear Baby Jane status is officially at 2-0-0-16 (or if I count the plain tri's 2-2-0-18?). I am very excited about this quilt! I think I am pop an email off to Anina here to see if I can join the support! I also highly recommend getting the software if this is a journey you would like to take or are all ready taking- very helpful and makes the progress way easier! (note: you do not need to have EQ to run it). In fact I will be going to go do some more blocks tonight after this is posted.

Yep...This is going to be a goooood week!

T.T.F.N!