Monday, June 21, 2010

Summer, SumMER, SUMMER!!!

It's finally feeling like summer outside! The sun is shining....the sky is blue...flowers are blooming and birds are singing!!! We've had so much rain and gray skies this spring that it didn't feel at ALL like summer would EVER come! I think we need to have dinner outside tonight....OOOoooo!! BLT's!!!! Yep, summer is here and I'm WILLING it to stick around!


NOW!!! Look at all the pictures we have! The one above is from Donna Babbitt. She wrote that there is cat hair in one of the buttons but ...they're from "my sweet deceased Mom's button box and the cat hair stays!!!" It's beautiful Donna! AND! I LOVE your wallpaper too! The Breath of Spring pitcher below is by Donna also. Gorgeous! So sweet and soft. Her background fabric was a really good choice!
Last weekend...no, the weekend before... I was in Spokane at Haberdashery Designs & Needlework teaching a couple of workshops. Unfortunately the only time I really had to get the camera out was during lunch! My apologies to everybody I caught eating (never how you want to get caught on camera!! LOL!!) This was the class on Saturday. LOOK AT ALL THE FLOSS AND STITCHERY STUFF IN THE BACKGROUND!!!!! Heaven.....sigh........ And everybody was SO nice! It was VERY warm that weekend and the shop, unfortunately had no air conditioning, just fans. Nobody got cranky ALL weekend!!! We DID at one point talk about going out and buying a couple kiddy pools so that we could fill them up with ice water and sit around them with our feet in them to stitch! LOL!!! There was also a big container filled with water bottles on ice and we talked about the benefits of filling our bras with the cold bottles.....yup!....real twisted group of girls!!!...MY kind of people!! LOLOL!!!
Spokane and the surrounding towns & area are really pretty too. We stayed (in our camp trailer....my tent days are SO over!) in a campground in Riverside State Park just a couple miles outside of town. Pine trees, wildflowers and the river......Ahhhhh..... not a bad place to be after being at the classes all day.......... The whole weekend was just great!
See the little tin on the table with the clear lid??? The shop did these as kits for everyone...they had their entire kit (including needles and a hoop!) and THEN ...(they had a theme of yo-yo's and buttons) ... they gave everybody a set of ALREADY MADE goodies!!! A little bag filled with a yo-yo encased measuring tape (the end you pull out has a ribbon with buttons attached to it! CUTE!!) A pin keeper made from 2 yo-yo's with buttons on each side and ribbons and bows...cute!! A needlecase made from 2 yo-yo's with wool pages...ribbons and buttons....cute,cute! A little fabric ORT bag (stands for O-something, R-something, Thread) to put your little leftover scraps of thread in as you work...you pull it closed with ribbons with buttons on the ends...cute, cute, cute! And an absolutely adorable little pincushion that looks like a ball with a cap of 2 yo-yo's stacked...buttons and ribbons and a pin...get this.....with two tiny, tiny, miniscule yo-yo's at the top so it looks like a pouf-ball!!! DARLING!! Then two little kits..one with round yo-yo's to make a little ruler holder and one with graduated heart shaped yo's to make an embroidery scissor holder!!!! Not only was this just really sweet of them to give everyone these things.....DO YOU REALIZE HOW MANY YO-YO'S THEY HAD TO HAVE MADE????
Well.... no yo's involved, but beautiful stitching!! on Ina Maslana's Snowflake Angel wallhanging! This was made for her by her BFF. She wrote that it's hanging on the cabinet she keeps her fabric in.
She says that Luna, her dog, is supposed to be guarding her fabric stash but "Obviously, doesn't take her job seriously!" Ina... I have to admit... I had a hard time finding Luna in this picture.......but I couldn't figure out why you kept your quilt batting in a cage! LOL!!!! What a sweetie!
Our last picture is from Gabriela Gaudet from Canfield Ohio. She took this with her to work on, on a trip to South America. I love the way she used different fill stitches to fill in all of the flowers! It's very artistic isn't it?? It always amazes me that twenty people can take the same pattern and come up with twenty different ways to finish it! Every one a winner!!!
Lona... Zelda's Fancy Hat is a witch's hat with lots of embroidery on it! It should be with the Autumn patterns on the website. We've heard from whole groups of people who have made them, but didn't make them as decorative pillow-ish hats.... actually made them into REAL hats! Also, I heard from someone a week or so ago who blew the pattern up and was making one that would fit over a traffic cone.......YES!!! A traffic cone!!! That's just TOO much fun!!!
Have a great summer day!!!
xox Meg

Friday, June 11, 2010

Off to the workshops in Spokane!

Well... we're getting ready to leave for this weekend's workshops at Haberdashery Designs and Needlework in Spokane! We're taking our camp trailer and have a campsite reserved at Riverside State Park (hopefully we can find the campground...the park service maps are ATROCIOUS!! and google maps just seems to have gone blind as far as this goes!) If we can't find it, we'll be the people camping in the WalMart parking lot!! LOL!!!!
Sheila and Cindy & I have been working all week getting the goody bags, door prizes and trunk show ready....we spent a panic-y hour or so tearing the studio and the house apart searching for the ONE sample that they'd requested...Zelda's Fancy Hat....finally we had to get Phil involved to do some heavy lifting and found it in the nick of time!! Ever store something SO CAREFULLY and safely, that you can never find it again????? THAT'S where good ol' Zelda was!! LOL!!
I hope I'll see you at one of the classes this weekend!? If not, hope you're going to have as much fun as we are!
xox Meg

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Show & Tell Weekend!

Hi everybody! Look at this "Hocuspocusville" quilt sent in by Mary Meats (I've misplaced your email Mary...hope I got your name right? And I don't have any of your other information about your beautiful quilt!! I'm SO sorry!!!) Don't you love her choice of colors???? I would have never thought to do it on lime green!!! It's PERFECT!!! and I love the brights used in the center piecing...WOW you're good with color, Mary! Thanks for sending this in so we could all see it!
This wallhanging by Debbi (sorry, no last name) was made for a co-worker. She says they had so much fun sitting on the floor of the office to choose fabrics! I can just picture that!!! LOL!!!! I love the little candy canes! Her friend chose only a few of the blocks from the Winter Wonderland quilt and Debbi stitched them up BEAUTIFULLY!!!! She says that she sewed on glass beads instead of the french knots on the snowflakes.........I'll bet it sparkles! Thanks Debbi!!

This next picture was taken last night while I was stitching on some new dish towels. Honeybunny likes to get as CLOSE as possible (preferrably right in in face!! LOL!!!) but he rarely grabs at the floss...........just likes to watch it go up and down....and purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs..........!

Phil took the pics....finally figured out how to use the flash in the one below so you can actually SEE Honeybunny's face! He's a real sweetie who just walked in one very cold, snowy winter (we think someone dropped him off......I just can't imagine doing that!) His two favorite things to do are get as close to your face as possible (I think he thinks he's a kitten that can curl up under your chin, not a 13 lb. cat) and ....run around the house all puffed up and gargling. We call it gargling...it's not meowing or yowling... it's.... gargling! He gets a little out of control on the hardwood floors but that just makes it funnier!!! What do you think cats hallucinate about when they go absolutely nuts like that????
This weekend I've tried to whittle away at projects around the house and studio. One, was to come up with some kind of curtains for the pantry and utility room. We didn't really need privacy...just something cute and simple. I used dish toweling for the pantry and "tied" it back with clothespins.
On my way down the hall to the utility room...stopped to take a picture of my first applique quilt. I LOVE to applique.......haven't had much time to in several years........can't imagin WHY???!!!
I just put an old tablecloth over the rod in the utility room (the other side of the cloth has some damage so if the sun fades it out it's not a huge loss. I also made a new ironing board cover using some reproduction 30's fabric. I didn't realize it matched my iron until I got it in there!!! LUCKY!
As long as I'm here!... These are the storage cabinets to the left of the window with my red stuff on top. They couldn't understand why I didn't want the cabinets to go all the way to the ceiling.....WELL!!!.....where the heck am I supposed to put all the cute stuff?????? Think men, THINK!!!!!
While I'm on a roll I think I'll cover the ironing board in the studio...wonder if I have enough batting?? I'll have to check.
Hope you're having a really nice weekend!?
xox Meg