November is coming to a close

Can you believe it, tomorrow is the 1st of December! Don't know what I was thinking, my busiest time of the year and getting UFOs finished. Yea right. I did make a little progress on my Tree of Life quilt. It is fun to work on a quilt without a pattern, making it up as I go. This is my latest layout.

I am happy with the center medallion. Debating about adding a sawtooth border as an outer border design. It's between adding the sawtooth border into the corner tree blocks or letting them float between the trees... or leaving them out altogether and make a solid outer border.

Nada accomplished on two other UFOs. It's OK tho, I am getting quilts done for customers including a WIP with Janie. We are working together on a BOM she purchased last year. Amaretto Cottage. She asked me to help with some piecing techniques. I am making the quilt along with her in CW repros. Janie has her first two blocks finished...

 Four of block #1 in a 6 inch size finished and is working on 4 more 10 inch size blocks

 This is block #2 which she finished 8 in the 6 inch size.

Here are my blocks made in Civil War repros.

including block #3, another 6 inch block, my favorite size :0) Next are 12 log cabin blocks, easy for December. Janie can handle that on her own. She is doing great!

We enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving Day with Mom. Worked Friday. Today we spent the afternoon with friends that live up in the pines, picking up greens for some Christmas decorating. Having way too much fun (and time) on Pinterest gleaning ideas for quilts and the holidays. With the weather turning cold, it's evening time, cuddled up in a quilt, my laptop and my sweeties watching football :0)

Enjoy your weekend!  Groetjes, Jo

Enjoy!

Wishing you the very best Thanksgiving and/or Holiday season.

 May your day be warm and wonderful with friends and family, yummy food and memories for the future... and your weekend includes some time to take a few stitches :0) 

Groetjes, Jo

River City Quilt Show

Over the weekend I visited The River City Quilt Show in Sacramento, CA. Wonderful show!

Some pix of a few of my favs...
First up is a quilt made with Civil War repros. An uneven log cabin style block set on point.

LOVED this one because... yep the quilting :0)

This quilt was made and quilted by the quilt maker. Gorgeous!

Nice basket quilt in red and white

This Beauty is made with Civil War repros. Love it!!!

(Upper left corner the sun is shining on the quilt) Detail...

Cute appliqued baskets with striped handles

and some Art quilts...

This was a small quilt that drew allot of attention. This is hand dyed, machine stitched (the tree rings) and burned! Very unusual. I suspect it was made with synthetics as you could see how the fabric melted, turned black (cotton would turn to ash) and was recessed. It looked very much like wood. It is framed in wood. 

A challenge to create Bird's Eyes

The diamonds are turned edge applique and top stitched on this quilt.
Another challenge with the subject of vacations.

This one is fun because of the quilting :0)

There were about 200 quilts and 32 vendors. Great show and guild members of Sacramento. They had a big 'country store'. The food was very good. Wonderful building. I went to the show with Betty and Marion. We met Lauren there as well. Wishing we had as nice a venue in Chico for our guild, Annie's Star quilt show. We did get some good ideas to bring back to the committee.


Chatted with vendors that came to our show this year. Purchased some Civil War fabrics from Debbie's Quilt Shop, she carries the best repros. Met and invited other vendors to come to our next show.

 A busy weekend, worked Saturday, quilt show Sunday with no UFO progress. The Holiday Craft Fair with Honey Run Friday and Saturday went well. A few items sold and I purchased a quilt. Pieced by Teresa and quilted by Cindy Needham. Red stars and, of course, beautifully quilted :0) Pic to follow as soon as I take one.

Thanks for visiting. Enjoy your week

Annual Holiday Craft Fair

Honey Run Quilters is having their annual Holiday Craft Fair this Friday and Saturday.

November 15th and 16th ~ 9:30 to 4pm

At Cathy's/Honey Run Quilters ~ In the Classroom

2418 Cohasset Road Chico CA 95926

Theresa will have the store's quilt samples for sale (some that I quilted) plus more items from local needle artists and quilters. I have a few Christmas items there. Hope you will be there too! Link to the store's website about the event and Facebook. 

Quilts of Honor

In September our guild, Annie's Star Quilt Guild held a ceremony and presentation thru the Quilts of Honor program. Quilts made and quilted by members of our guild were presented to local veterans (Chico, CA / Butte County area).
Here a few of the photos from that evening in commemoration for Veterans Day...

Color Guard starting off the evening

Quilt top made by Sandra E. quilted by me/Moonbear Designs

The recipent, a Marine and Vietnam Vet, presented with our quilt

This quilt was made by Robbie, I also quilted this one

Presented to Kaywood, a guild member and a MASH nurse that served in Korea.

This was a total surprise to Kaywood and Robbie is one of her closest friends :0)

One of three WWII Vet and Chico resident that survived Pearl Harbor presented with his quilt by Gail. Another was presented the next day at the recipients home.

One of the color guard and also a vet was presented with a quilt made by our guild

Gail Belmont (on the left) is an amazing person and a longarm quilter. Yet, she has never made a quilt! Only knows her way around a longarm and does is very well! She quilts many of the quilt tops donated to the Quilts of Honor organization and does a gorgeous job of it! Her work includes the quilt behind her and the first quilt pic I posted. Amazing person! It was an honor to meet her. Here is a link to an article recently written about her and the group and the dedication they showed during the 'Government shutdown'.
It was quite an evening!

**Thank you to all that have served and are serving today**

Pinterest and an image change

Over the weekend I got lost in Pinterest!  Oh my, the amount of eye candy! I set up a Pinterest account for my longarm quilting business. In the process choose a logo for my board and decided to use the same image for my blog. My Tree of Life project 'in progress' (ignore the pins). Hmmmm, pins. I suppose that fits right in on Pinterest... :0)

Didn't get allot of my sewing done. Saturday I worked, custom quilting on a customer's quilt. Yesterday squared the rest of my HSTs for my Tree of Life project while watching football (gotta spend some face time with Mr. Wonderful). Brandie got a start on her TOL block and it looks great! Will see what this week brings. One quilt up this week for the longarm is a quilt for Sue of Cozy Little Quilts. Enjoy your week...

Groetjes, Jo (Dutch for Greetings or Best Wishes :0)

First book for American Homestead

Ellen Murphy at American Homestead has her first book coming out soon :0)

Just wanted to give a shout out. It's nice to see a fellow blogger making it in the quilting arena. I first 'met' (online) Ellen while working on Barbara Brackman's Civil War BOW. Both of us have blocks that Ms. Brackman included in her Civil War Sampler book too. Since then we both participated in Barbara's next BOW, Grandmother's Choice and Ellen is finishing up on Dixie Diaries.

The best part is that Ellen not only made her blocks, she posted them as a tute each week. They are the best! Especially for many of the CW blocks were we were cutting with 1/16th of an inch increments!!! A challenge but fun :0)

I know first hand how well Ellen can put directions together! She also has her own patterns and is now a vendor (she was at Houston market this year). Ellen is also well traveled. I enjoy following on her blog with projects, tutes, travel and food! Loved her trip to Holland :0)

This is a link to her blog. Wishing you the best Ellen!

Enjoy your weekend

Groetjes, Jo (Dutch for Greetings :0)

 

Mom's 98th birthday!

Happy Birthday to my Mom

 She is 98 years young! 

Mom has dementia so we had to keep reminding her that it was her birthday. Each time she would ask, How old am I? When we told her she would say, Oooooh , 2 more years and I'll be 100 and they will put me in the newspaper! (Except she says it in Dutch)

She had enough of taking pictures

Funny Mom!

These photos were taken last year. I put her to work in my studio unpinning a quilt from the leaders on my longarm! She liked it for about 5 minutes and then she was done :0)

Most days they just like to watch. Crystal says Hi too!

Groetjes, Jo

 

UFOs for November

Well, my list doesn't look much different from October's! I did make progress on the Tree of Life project...

Not pictured are more HST's sewn into sashing that will go around the center block or as a sawtooth border or both. Will see how many there are left when I get there ;0) Brandie (ABC blog) and I are planning to get together and get her started on growing some trees!

Still have these two to get back to. Backing for the flimsy above and to finish the blue and white top below.

One of my distractions is a BOM one of my customers wants to make. She asked me to help her with the blocks. It's a gorgeous quilt called Amaretto Cottage, a 2012 BOM by Marianne Elizabeth of Classically Home.

It's gorgeous as are the fabrics! Wouldn't this be nice in Civil War fabrics! Several of the blocks are the same or similar to blocks we made in Barbara Brackman's BOW and in her Civil War Sampler book.

Janie and I will be meeting today to finish the first block and set some goals. She is doing amazing, recovering from knee surgery, she is ready to get going on this beauty!

I am linking to Carrie's ~ A Passion for Applique ~ Nothing But UFOs in 2013...

November, wow this year wrapping up too fast! Holiday commercials are up and running. The wind looks like it's let up for today. After 3 or 4 days of wind, it's really looking like Fall around here!

Enjoy your day, stitching away!