Quilt Guild Tree Decorating

For the past 3 years the Champlain Valley Quilters' Guild of New York has participated in a fund raising event where local groups and businesses decorate Christmas trees and they are raffled off.

This is a picture of the group of us that decorated the tree on Sunday. Mary Lou, Kitty, Sandy (aka Sarge), Deborah, and me.

The tree theme this year was the 'Warmth of Winter'. Handmade decorations included mini-quilts, felt hot coco mugs, and mittens.

Retreat Report

Its been over a week since the annual fall Wadhams quilting retreat but between unpacking and going strait back to work (lots going on due to budget cuts to the college) I haven't had the time to take photos or post any info.

The first thing I worked on was a WIP (Work In Progress). About 2 years ago I was learning to do curved piecing and made all the blocks in the middle of this quilt. At the retreat I added the thin inner border and did the top diamond border and the bottom off-set flying geese border. I ran out of the black background fabric so once I pick up more if it I will finish it with 2 side borders. This quilt does not follow any pattern I am just making it up as I go along.

I also packed up a bunch of my fall themed batik fabrics and found a pattern called "Down Memory Lane" in the book Successful Scrap Quilts: From Simple Rectangles by Judy Turner and Margaret Rolfe. All the patterns in the book use 2 inch x 3 1/2 inch rectangle pieces of fabrics to make the blocks. So it is a lot of little pieces.

I did all the cutting and piecing while at the retreat so it is pretty impressive I got all the blocks done and started joining them into 4-block mega blocks - what you see here are the 12 mega blocks laid out. I still need to add a small border to the edges and then I will bind it with some of the leftover scraps.

By Monday I was a bit burned out on working on the bigger projects so I switched back to my old stand-by the New York Beauty blocks. I am using the blocks from Karen Stone's pattern and using my fabric scraps to make the blocks. Here are 4 of the latest.

Evil Twin

I found a way to create my own evil twin!

I was playing with the web camera features on the laptop and found a way to make myself a twin. Kind of difficult to tell which one is which - but I guess that is the whole point to twins.

Checking Progress

I have been slowly making New York Beauty blocks since last summer from my fabric scraps and decided to lay them out to see how many I had and to see if I could find a design I liked. I think this pattern is my favorite so far. I would need at least 9 more blocks just to finish this design. Of course it would also need a border or two.

Back to Sewing

I have been a bit distracted and preoccupied with traveling, the quilt show, work and all the usual busywork of living and have done almost no sewing since spring. I have signed up for the Stashbuster (a Yahoo! group) No-Buy challenge starting on Nov 1st. So I hope I will have more time for sewing.

I decided to start small. Here are two small gift bags for Christmas gifts. Already tied up and ready to go. Plus they can be re-gifted so they are a green idea too.

Quilt Show Set Up

The quilt show set up was yesterday. We started just after 3pm and I left after the last quilt was hung up just after 9pm. We might have been out a bit sooner but the last row in the gym had set up with 8' pieces where they should have used 6' and of course they ran out of room! We told them they had to swap out all the quilts on 8' and put them on 6'.
The Bailey Ave. School is now packed with quilts. It is amazing how full it is. Everywhere you turn you are looking at a quilt. I took my camera but the batteries died - hopefully I will get some pictures from other folks taking pictures.
As I will be the one in charge of the set up of the next show in 2011 I have taken copious notes and what things needed to be done and what emergency items we needed - drills, saws, etc...

In preparation for my presentation at the Successful Teaching conference in Corning, NY in 2 weeks I have been playing with the video and audio equipment and software in the Faculty technology lab. Thought I would see how posting to the blog would work.